call for the captain ashore, let me go home

[sab]

this puts me in mind of a story.

I was doing the friday puzzle this morning and the theatre listings told me Nana Visitor'd taken over Bebe Neuwirth's role in "Chicago," a bona-fide star turn, they said or something equally promising.

so I spent the last couple hours on the TKTS line, and now Shana and I have orch seats, single P. I checked with three separate people: "there haven't been any cast changes, right?"

anyway, this puts me in mind of a story, quick before I have to shower and motor up to Times Square.

I was in her fan club, the early one in the early days of the web. they called it ENVY (get it?). they might still. We made a recipe book and we invented Star Trek food. we heard it first when she and Sid named the kid Django. I paid my dues.

so it was the summer of, 199somethingorother, I was living w/SKL et al in her folks' house while they were away, and I talked my dad into lending me the car and letting me take it up to Worcester, MA for the weekend, my first real stay-overnight Star Trek con. NV was due to be there, the ENVY crew descended from across the eastern seaboard.

and they all came in uniform, with noses stuck on and those chain earrings, and I was a little spooked, at 7 am when they banged on my hotel room door, the ENVY troupe, so we could go stand on line.

Spooked, because these people didn't know me, and I was just a fangirl in a fanclub, teetering, so easy to fall in. I could have just fallen in.

breeze through the con, because it's not important except for the bit where NV actually didn't SHOW, but at the end, midafternoon on the second day, this thing.

They did a Voyager montage on the big screen, action clips, you know how they do, with closeups and running and phaser blasts, and Janeway in that grey tank top, hammering out across the conference hall of the Worcester Hilton or Marriott or whatever, banging out to the royal Beach Boys version of Sloop John B.

It knocked me out again, later, at the end of the Sports Night ep "Sword of Orion," Danny and Rebecca in a long shot, with the tape, wandering off to the Beach Boys Sloop John B.

and it was because. Because it would have been so easy for me to fall in, then. Fall in, and then next time I'd be the one in the uniform and the nose and the Bajoran earring, I was so close already.

what's the line between being a fangirl and being obsessed? what was I so afraid of? Now, years later, after a college thesis on fan culture, am I still?

because there were TEARS in my eyes watching the montage on the big screen, and the Beach Boys singing "call for the captain ashore, let me go home, I wanna go home..."

There were TEARS in my eyes, and I beelined to the bouncer and said KICK ME OUT, send me home, I can't stay here. one more minute and I'm done for, because I love this song, this show, this culture and community, and I am TEETERING, I will FALL IN and you won't be able to get me out, KICK ME OUT, SEND ME HOME.

and he just laughed, because he thought I was crazy. But there were tears in my eyes and I pushed open the door and it was hot as hell outside and I could still hear it, "I wanna go home, let me go home, this is the worst trip I've ever been on..."

I didn't renew my membership to ENVY, though my recipe for Hasperrat's still on record somewhere, testimonial to the days when I was just that close.

Now? later? now that I've found fanfic, and you people, these people? is it better? more respectable? safer?

Did I miss something, not falling in? did I fall without looking?

So I'm off to see NV in "Chicago" tonight with Shana, who understands. Still, I have a hard time hearing "Sloop John B," and still, I'm not sure where I fit in to all this, where the competition is, why I want to be the MOST, the BEST, somewhere between that and wanting to chuckle, heh, no, that'll never be me.

And when I go to conventions now, I make sure I bring my irony with me.

Comments

anchored down in anchorage...

[cofax7]

(Yup, still stuck on Michelle)

And this is why I don't go to cons. Because it's scary to be that far inside. Because, as someone said when I was playing D&D every weekend my junior year of high school, "after a while you start talking about Plus-2 pencils, and you've gone over the edge." I stepped back, haven't played but twice since high school, and I don't miss it. The ficdom is as close as I've gotten since, but it's more about the friends and the writing than the show (I still tell myself).

I like my irony.

But I'm still pretty impressed with the DragonCon schedule -- you know they're having a BuffyFic reading? Wow. And a whole track on Internet stuff, including a panel on Internet communities. Cool.

(I lied: I went to the Dunnett Gathering last year, and I went to Scullyfic Spring Training and I signed up to go again -- but again, that's more about the people and there won't be dealers and costumes, just roundrobins and lots of alcohol and people climbing the big scary tower, and cheesy potatoes. And walking in the rain with bugs.)

DragonConned

[noelleleithe.livejournal.com]

I actually considered going over to DragonCon this weekend. I went with some XF folks three years ago, and it was fun enough. It was while waiting for the showing of that night's favorite ep pic that I cracked up the group by saying "we're not obsessed; we're just intensely focused."

But as I told brynna earlier, I just want to go so I can throw rotten tomatoes at Kevin J. Anderson for writing horrible books in not one, but TWO of my fandoms.

(And now I'm craving cheesy potatoes. Dammit.)

ten years and going strong

[lizlet.livejournal.com]

Mom took me to a con when I was in the fourth grade. I didn't really watch TOS, at that point, but DeForest Kelley was there, and it was COOL, to be so close to a man who had done so many cool things.

(I was much closer to Woody Allen when he spoke right before Curse of the Jade Scorpion - seven feet! And he was much cuter that Kelley, but quel surprise.)

Now, I only go to cons for the toys and the comics, and then I tell myself I'm normal, but then I make plans to drag my friends to the Acme Comedy Theater so that we can see - yes, see! - Wil Wheaton perform live.

I've never been good at that normal game and I'm never cool enough to take it that extra step further - to meet Robert Wolfe Hewitt or wander around a con with Chase Masterson. But I cried at those montages myself, once upon a time, and when I move, I unpack my action figures with care.

Enjoy Chicago, Em. Be sure to report back.

I'm leaving this one for you while I'm gone:

[wearemany.livejournal.com]

One Wednesday night a few years ago, I was wedged into the middle seat on an airplane between a man with a fat file case on his lap and a woman wrestling with a day-old copy of The Wall Street Journal. A little after 7:30, the pilot's dry-plains twang crackled through the microscopic speakers overhead: "Uhh, 'scuse me, ladies and gentlemen. Jest wanted to tell you ... heard word up here ... Cal Ripken Jr. has just broken Leew Gayrigs's record ... Tew-thousand, one-hunnert-and-thirty-one con-secutive games. We'll keep you posted." And then, about 200 people riding an air-conditioned tin can over Lake Moultrie through the dark of the night put down their file folders and plastic cocktail glasses and wadded-up newspapers -- to applaud.

We were fans. By the time I landed at Washington's National Airport, other fans had laid down their laptops and sample books, or stood with an elbow on their rolling trash carts or floor brushes to lok up at Cal Jr. on the airport television screens. A grown man with a receding gray crown of hair, jumping up from the ball field like a boy to slap hands with fans and hug his friends, his familiy, and the men on the opposite team. "Goddamn," said a score of people, shaking their heads. "Goddamn, that's something. Isn't that something?" Not a small number of eyes, including my own, were glistening. You can tell yourself: It's just sports, it's nothing real; it has nothing to do with your life, no resonance in the real world of living, dying, and struggling. And you'd be right. Then, something happens. MJ leaps! Mac swings! Flutie scores! And inside, where your body cannot kid you, something takes over and it feels real. It's not like tearing up at your wedding, sobbing at a funeral, or choking up at a child's first steps. It's closer to seeing Caesar stabbed; or watching Emily Webb in Our Town so wistfully, tearfully, exclaim in Act III, "Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you!" A play that rubs something real.

-- Scott Simon, Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan

Re: I'm leaving this one for you while I'm gone:

[noelleleithe.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm just hormonal, but that made me tear up.

Or maybe it's just that I'm such a sucker for baseball in any form, and I have such vivid memories of 22 minutes of a silent Chris Berman on ESPN as Cal made his victory laps around Camden Yards. And here we all thought nothing could shut that man up.

Re: I'm leaving this one for you while I'm gone:

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

you're leaving the whole thing for me while you're gone, aren't you? *g*

Seriously, thank you.

I take it back

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

I love Bebe Neuwirth. she was Velma, not Roxie. turns out in the original cast Roxie was Ann Reinking, Fosse-choreographer who's still the choreographer on this production. she was Roxie.

I want the original cast recording, mostly to see how Bebe -- note the gorgeous shot of her in the billboard on Times Square -- rocked out in comparison to the mindblowing understudy we saw sing the shit out of Velma.

ALSO. look at this picture of Bebe Neuwirth and tell me, wasn't there a very, very similar one of Nana Visitor, almost identical, in some "Women of Star Trek" magazine issue several years back? another buck to anyone who can find that shot for me.