So, since she's always so articulate and funny, why does Adrienne Wilkinson have to keep going first so that I miss the first halves of her presentations? (Note to Ms. Wilkinson: please do a nice long presentation on Sunday at the next convention?) She seemed so comfortabel with us. Someone asked her favorite "stupid Eve" moment, so she said she'd had to work to justify the way that, while Livia is so cunning, Eve can overlook things that are so obvious. Eve is like an addict in the final stages of recovery, Ms. Wilkinson concluded. She's ultra-focused out of necessity, rather than stupidity.
The people who ran the convention reset the stage for the trivia contest, and I had a chance to put a face and voice to another XOC-er I'd been waiting to meet, Unwise Ocean. She's a neat woman with a lot of depth, and she's been so many places.
The trivia contest followed about the same format as the Burbank trivia contest. Three fans were on stage asking questions, and the rest of the fans came up with the questions. After several very hard questions, I raised my hand and asked what Xena had said to Flora before pulling her hand away dangling out of a tree. "Xenavirgin"'s correct answer was, "You've got to have faith." (Two of the contestants wanted to be known only by their online names. The announcer was so funny: "Xena...virgin...isn't that a contradiction?") Xenavirgin's a blast, though. She has Amazon dance parties once a month or so for UK fans who live around her. I wish I could go! Anyway, the team ended up answering five questions in a row correctly and winning their gift certificates. They could describe seven separate outfits for Gabrielle. I'm not sure whether to be impressed or frightened!
Steve Sears was the last guest on Friday. He was fantastic, as usual. I've put all my notes from his presentations on a separate page, since there are too many of them to recap in my general convention pages like this. When you love a story...no matter how good it is, and no matter how deep your love goes...it's hard to keep it consistently alive. (I watch Xena maybe once a week on average, but I'll go through phases where it seems distant as well as where it seems present.) Steve Sears has this gift of bringing Xena, Gabrielle, and all the others right there in the room in vivid technicolor detail, and then adding brand-new things to the story. During that presentation, he mentioned that he'd tried to photograph Tilly, the horse who played Argo, but ended up only taking pictures of Tilly's butt. So then he signed the banner and said, "This is your golden opportunity to get a picture of my butt. (It was an opportunity I didn't take...I was laughing too hard.)
The last stage event was a Xena fan film by Deborah Abbott, Wendy Woody, and some others. All about a Xena action figure coming to life, and a fan too obsessed with Xena: Warrior Princess for her own good (none of us know anything about that.)
LadyKate, Unwise Ocean, Pandora, and I had inner in a fancy upstairs restaurant. It was a mixture of several different kinds of food. I ended up with a kind of spicy curry, and it was quite good. Oh, and British restaurant portions aren't that much smaller than U.S. equivalents! Pandora pointed out the London Eye. |
