Chronicles 99
Part I
Ealasaid's First Highlander Convention!
All photos by Ealasaid A. Haas (well, except for the postcard. See below). Sorry they're not higher quality -- they were grainy to start with, and I don't have room to store high-resolution scans. But they ought to give you an idea of what things looked like...
Most are linked to larger versions.
indentOne of the greatest weekends of my life started in a revolting way: I had to get up at 5am, because the taxi to take me to the train station arrived at 5:20, so I could make the six o’clock train. Putrid. Why the ultra-early train? Well, a bunch of con-goers were planning a tour of Cadbury World (which is just outside Birmingham, where the con was), and were planning to leave around 9 or so. I was supposed to get in around 8:25am, then hoof it to the Birmingham Grand Moat House hotel. Hence the pre-dawn train.
indentWhat was scary was that there was another taxi there at that time! I made it to the station, froze my heinie off waiting for the train, which came on time, and I hopped off at Doncaster to make my connection to Birminham. So far so good. But the train to Birmingham was delayed about twenty minutes. It finally arrived, but before we made it to my stop, the train was delayed another ten minutes by another train in the way. So, I got in half an hour late, and pretty convinced that I was going to miss the tour. I got a little turned around coming out of the station, and finally gave up and took a taxi to the Grand Hotel (location of the convention, and of my room), where I learned that the tour had already walked over to the rail station.
indentAfter checking in, I wandered back down to the lobby to explore, and found a couple other late tour attendees (my memory is failing me with names, of course… argh). We decided to try catching up with the others, and actually found them at the station – their train had been canceled!
indentThe tour was really cool. It was a mixture of history (both of chocolate and of the company), modern fact (a walk through parts of the factory, and displays about how chocolate bars are made), and cutsie junk for the kid (imagine "It’s a Small World" with chocoloate beans instead of kids). We got three different chocolate bars along the way, AND got little samples of Aztec cocoa (spicy and very tasty) and melted chocolate (yummy!). Colleen, one of our group, seemed to want a sample of something other than chocolate... (see photo to the left). Then we were turned loose in the gift shop.
indentThe shop had everything to do with Cadbury, from their various products to pencil boxes and books. I got some nifty postcards, an assortment of cocoas, a mug, and a bag of 25 creme eggs, all for under fifteen pounds! We then had lunch (in Cadbury World, and therefore expensive) and headed back to the hotel, where I took some pain killer and a nap to quell my exhaustion headache. I hadn’t really been able to sleep the night before, and so was running on excitement and three hours’ sleep.
indentWell, my prescription worked, and after my roommate (a terrific gal named Linda) showed up, we went down to register for the con. That was when I realised that I didn’t want to miss a single thing that was going on! Unfortunately, I was going to have to miss something, since the dealer’s room was only open during the other stuff.
indentI went to dinner that night with my roomie, Jen Allen, Dave, and Kay at a great place called the Square Peg. The food was great, and it wasn’t too loud. Ealasaid gives it four stars.
indentWhen we came back, we caught the end of "Revelations 6:8," then a presentation by Donna Lettow, the Associate Creative Consultant (which she says are "three words that mean ‘she’s American, and we can’t tell you what she really does.’"). It consisted of all sorts of footage we hadn’t seen – audition tapes for the parts of Richie and Kronos, blooper-type out-takes, various takes of scenes, and a whole bunch of takes (we’re talking a half an hour’s worth) of the "I was Death! Death on a horse!" scene from "Comes a Horseman." That blew me away entirely. Lettow said that both Peter Wingfield (Methos) and Adrian Paul (Duncan MacLeod) said after filming that they had been in the Zone - when the actor stops acting, and becomes the character. Unfortunately for the editors, that meant that every take was slightly different, and they didn’t hit their marks or get the lines exactly right every time. But it was incredible. That’s always been my favorite scene out of the entire show’s run, and now I know why. Yeow.
indentOne thing I sort of wish had made it into the final cut: in some of the takes, as Mac walks away, Methos’ panting very nearly turns into sobs, as if he were about to cry. It was a wonderful little bit, and added an interesting dimension to the scene.
indentThings like that are part of why I’m in the Peter Wingfield Fan Club. He’s brilliant. I could write for pages about the rest of the presentation, too – it was over two hours long, and packed full of wonderful little tidbits. For example, the dance scene on the Eiffel Tower in "Finale, Part II" was actually filmed ON THE TOWER. No nets, either. We got to see a bunch of takes of that. We also got to see a bunch of slip-ups from the fight in "Duende." Adrian Paul and Anthony DeLongis kept slipping, because the mat the fight was on was like a Twister mat – all slick to begin with, and then it started raining. Wow. The audition tapes were a hoot – I felt a little sorry for the guys who didn’t get it, even though we only saw a couple. They were… well, pretty darn bad, for the most part. But we could all see how Valentine Pelka clicked when he read the "don’t fight it, feel it" scene. It was creepy.
indentAfter another bout with a splitting headache (which I refused to allow turn into a migraine; it’s amazing what 1500mg of paracetamol will do!), I went to the "Bedtime Stories" presentation. It was a series of readings from upcoming Highlander-related books. The first was from the Cast and Crew Anthology, and made the others… well, a bit anti-climactic. It was read by the author…: Valentine Pelka.
indentHe was amazing. He’s remarkably soft-spoken and handsome, but his astounding performance and delightful prose bowled me over. He writes even better than he acts, in my opinion. Fantastic.
indentI wish I wrote that well.
indentThe other readings were excerpts from:
indenta story by Anthony DeLongis (I can’t remember who read it, but it wasn’t ADL, unfortunately), about Ottavio Consone
indentThe next highlander novel, Barricades, by Donna Lettow
indentA novella by F. Braun MacAsh, also for the anthology.
It was a blast. After that, I went to bed, looking forward to the next day!
