Random Notes From The First Two Days of Vancon

(photo credit goes to @postalpixxie)

I’m having a great time here at Salute to Supernatural in Vancouver.  Me and Tigershire have been attending the panels and sharing in the overall mayhem of the weekend so far.  Here’s a few random notes I jotted down about the madcap events yesterday and today.

When traveling from Seattle to Vancouver, allow some extra time – like a millennia

Even though it was my plan to arrive at Vancon around noon on Friday, obviously fate or something cosmic was fucking with me.  Seattle was okay, until the northern part where it didn’t move for 30 miles.  Then there was the stalled car, the accident, the dump truck that lost a good portion of its sandbag load in the road, the slow drivers, and finally, me getting in the wrong lane at the Canadian border and having to go inside the building to be cleared by customs.  Then there was the 1 hour traffic jam trying to get through the tunnel into Vancouver.  I arrived at 5:30.  Ah well, after wine with dinner, I was all good for Karaoke.  I missed the con for Friday though.  I was told, “It was good.”  So there!  

Lessons learned when you invite a Frenchman to karaoke

 The theme on Friday night’s karaoke party was the sixties.  The party was hosted by “The Karaoke Kings,” aka Richard Speight Jr. and Matt Cohen, both decked out in their sixties gear.  Well, sort of.  Matt Cohen actually was wearing a wild shirt and plaid pants that were more reflective of the tacky 70’s, but no one was calling him out on it.  

As the wildness progressed, plenty more “special” guests were brought out gradually to sing along.  It started with Chad Lindberg, Alona Tal, Colin Lawrence, and Guy Norman Bee made an appearance too.  Lucky for them this was a big stage.  Once Sebastian Roche showed up though, all control was lost.  He was front and center, hamming it up with every song, but it’s when he led the long and very loud sing along to “Hey Jude”  that karaoke had officially turned into a complete free for all.  

The entire night the special guests circulated through the crowd.  Chad Lindberg could be seen walking on chairs through the crowd, Matt Cohen walked around giving hugs (I got one!) before getting on stage for a very revealing belly dancing lesson.  When Sebastian Roche got into the idea of stage diving though, playful incidents of “crotch grabbing” were reported, but we’ll stop there.  What happens at the con…  There is still a fan though that’s hoping Sebastian will pay for the dry cleaning for her whale hat. 

Why furniture backorders disrupt lives

Russ Hamilton, locations manager for “Supernatural”, during the location tour on Thursday took at least one (if not more) opportunity to vent about an ottoman that he ordered six months ago.  It had arrived finally that Thursday while he was doing the location tour.  Considering Russ adores using a lot of “colorful” language, there were plenty of adjectives in his vocabulary when the ottoman was mentioned (as well as his different tastes in interior decorating).  

Considering his boss Jim Michaels was there in the audience, more colorful “metaphors” were used in an attempt to get him a raise (as well as using a fan to pass hints).  He also had the sacred “green” book with him, the one with all the location shoots from the past seven seasons.  He held in close though.  In his words, “No one touches the fucking binder.”  The words of warning printed on the book too are rather stern, threatening eye gouging and other nasty acts of harm.  

Why Russ Hamilton is truly my kindred spirit

Guess who hates “fucking” Celine Dion as much as I do?  As he was introduced to the stage, Celine’s “My Heart Will Go On” played.  He had no idea why, but he had plenty of explicatives for that.  Then he saw the two large monitors on each side.  It’s a picture of him with Celine Dion.  When a fan tried to get him to confess that he really loves her, he fessed up.  

“I would like to spend more time listening to her music while I shave my nuts with a cheese grinder.” 

It just goes to prove, I’m not the only one in this world that lives on the mantra that Celine Dion sucks.  

Best avoidance of awkward fan request

When Corin Nemic first came up on stage, he mentioned how he got in late and missed Karaoke last night.  A fan asked him what would he have sung if he was there.  His  answer wandered to a story about how one time he ticked off a karaoke purist in a bar by rapping to the Beach Boys.  

Fan:  Can you rap anything for us here?
Corin:  I can wrap a present. 

He’s been around the block a while.  “With the advent of the Internet, I shall not be rapping this evening.”  He wasn’t about to let anything leak to You Tube and mistakenly be taken seriously.  

Even The Bible has been translated into Klingon 

Someone asked Corin Nemic what his most memorable fan convention was.  This is a guy who’s been to a few, especially since he was on “Stargate SG1.”  I’ve heard a lot of convention stories in my day, but I’ve never heard this.  

He was at a Star Trek convention and a Klingon comes up to him, noticing his wrestling shirt.  The Klingon says something incoherently about his shirt and then jumps on him, taking him down to the ground, trying to wrestle him.  Corin manages to break free, run, and he goes to the elevators.  “It was like a scene out of a horror movie,” he said.  He kept pushing the button to the elevator, anxious for the door to open, while the Klingon got up from the floor and started coming after him.  Somehow, he was rescued by an asian Mr. Spock.  

Then later, he was walking around and heard a guitar playing by the pool.  He saw it was the original actor who played Flash Gordon singing.  There were 8 to 10 Klingons nearby in a hot tub (head gear and all) and it looked like they were holding captive original Flash Gordon and had him sing for them.  He went on to describe something about Klingons and the way they were consuming blood wine (by pouring it all over them).  It’s obvious that overall, Klingons made the whole affair a rather disturbing experience.  

So Supernatural fans, we’re pretty tame at these things.    

Black men apparently aren’t Jewish

Steven Williams, who gave us a very fun and lighthearted panel, learned something new today.  A fan was curious if he thought Rufus was born Jewish.

“Is he Jewish?  Where did I miss that?”  

The Star of David on the gravestone is mentioned.

“No kidding?  Me and Sammy Davis Jr!”  He didn’t think so, he believed it was a conversion. 

Actually, Steven Williams got quite an education from fans today.  He also learned a traditional hunters burial is a salt and burn.  He also was recently shocked to discover one thing when he started watching the show on morning reruns on TNT.  “Dean is a sadistic killer!  Dean is a homicidal maniac.”  

Angels really need to get laid more

A lot of the suggestive angel talk didn’t come from just Sebastian Roche.  Oh yeah, Misha contributed big time, but some of it also came from Matt Cohen and Richard Speight’s panel too.  Someone asked what Gabriel and Michael would say to each other.  Richard passed the question onto Matt.  He probably shouldn’t have.  Matt suggested they would take long walks on the beach and share their feelings.  

Richard:  You can’t hit on me, we’re brothers. 
Matt:  Apparently you haven’t read the fan fiction out there.  According to that, Michael can do whatever he wants whenever he wants. 
Richard:  I think Gabriel would skip that lunch meeting.

The two were rather playful the entire panel, with Matt giving Richard a tender hug after he confessed he was wearing something in honor of a friend that died of cancer, and Richard assisting in a confessional by Matt over missing his father’s birthday by positioning a spotlight where it lit up his crotch very nicely.  

Misha won the dirty angel story contest though, telling about Castiel and God’s torrid love affair (more on that in my upcoming full report on his panel).  

Inflatable ducks make great sex toys

The Frisky Frenchman had his turn on the stage, and it was probably not the best idea to give Sebastian Roche the chance to play with a giant inflatable duck.  Apparently is was blown up by a fan.  “She blew the duck for 4 hours.  Lucky duck.”  Just about everything out of Sebastian’s mouth was an innuendo, but all of those probably got past the children in the audience.  However, that’s not the case over what he physically did to that duck on stage.  He spent a fair amount of time sitting on it’s face (and even singing a song about sitting on faces, as well as “The Lumberjack song”), not to mention riding it by bouncing up and down wildly across the stage. 

The topper though was a graphic story he told about Jared grabbing Jensen’s crotch as he and Jensen were trying to do a serious scene.  He went back to the duck, which itself had been blown.  “Look at it, it’s smiling!”  Fill in the blanks people.  

Of course none of that compares to Misha, who wrote a message on the duck and told us to give it to Clif the next day.  “Clif, I want to give you my big duck.”  Except the “u” was really an i crossed out.  I have a picture I’ll share later when I get it off my camera.

I’ll have a full report on Misha’s panel, which as usual was a total riot.  I’ll share though one hilarious answer to an off the wall question:

If you were a mystical creature, what other mystical creature would you get together with?

“I would want to be a Moosekateer having sex with a Minion.”