The first star trek convention I attended, back in 2004, was about memorabilia. I’d never seen most of that stuff before, and admittedly, there were some very special items being sold there. It was the Vegas convention, after all, and Vegas is always bigger than anything else because it’s the main show for Creation Entertainment. Meeting the actors was just as important, but I was very focused on bringing home mementoes, things I could touch and hold, as it were. 2011 was far different, and it its way, far better. This year marks forty-five years of star trek history, and for me at least, it was all about experience, memories.
I was able to attend the Nashville convention because it took place in my home state, and I could attend without having to pay airfare or hotel booking or dining prices. Hundreds and hundreds in savings. I didn’t attend on the first day of the three-day convention, because there wasn’t much I wanted to see. Day two as a different story. I got there only to discover that I’d had the cab drop me on the opposite side of the building from the convention center. That was a long walk I tell you. I got there and the process of standing in line began. That’s just part of the experience; you stand in line after line after line for everything. Nashville wasn’t too bad as far as that went, nothing like Vegas. That’s the advantage of having fewer attendees.
The first presenter, Max Grodenchik, was typical of the actors who spoke. He talked about his acting experiences both in trek and outside of it, told us how he landed the job as Rom, and took questions from the audience. Things got interesting during the following presentation though. I had known that John Paladin was going to do a special on Klingon makeup, and as part of his presentation, he was going to have a volunteer put on stage and transfigured into a Klingon in front of God and everybody. Not to be too blunt, but I wanted that person to be me. Didn’t we all hope to be up there? I was curious to see for myself what the Klingon face looked like, and as visual as makeup is, I dreamed of being able to wear that face for myself. Well as it happened, the makeup artist got wind of what I’d said to fellow fans in line about it and approached me in the memorabilia room before the first show and introduced himself. To make a long story short, he was just as happy to find a volunteer as early as possible in the day, and he was fine with it being me.
I sat on the stage under the spot lights and he applied makeup while taking questions from the audience. The makeup consists of a face piece and a wig and some coloring to blend my natural skin tone with the prostheses. When it was done, I wore the long hair and the forehead ridges. Touching the ridges for the first time was interesting. And it was the real thing, exactly the sort of stuff he, John, had put on .G. Hertzler or Bob O’Reilly when they went on set.
I didn’t realize just how much it’d transformed me until I left the stage and was swamped with photo requests. For the next two days, people would stop me randomly or come up to me as I stood around and ask for either pictures of me in makeup or to have their picture made with me. It was flattering and I admit I enjoyed it as much as anyone would have. But for what it’s worth, I didn’t just enjoy it because so much attention was coming my way, I enjoyed it because it allowed me to contribute something meaningful to my fellow fans at the convention. I mean, if they couldn’t get photographs with the actors who portrayed the Klingons, getting a photo with someone who, at the very least, had been turned into a real Klingon was maybe the next best thing. I’ll never forget the Kiskinus family. It’s a Greek last name and I doubtless misspelled it. But Autumn and her mother pretty much hung out with me this weekend. They were always spotting me in the memorabilia room, and if memory serves, Autumn was the one who wanted to snap the pic of me eating my chicken sandwich. After all, when did you ever see a Klingon eating a chicken sandwich? I definitely saw the humor in it. The thing with the makeup stretched over both days I attended, because I slept in the makeup. I really wanted Hertzler and O’Reilly to see me in it. The following morning, in fact, Paladin said the makeup looked as fresh as it had when he first applied it. I’m glad I was careful with it, and the Klingons’ reactions to it were worth losing sleep the night before, but I digress.
I’d say the most memorable presentation of Saturday was Kasey Biggs, Deep Space Nine’s Damar. There was something he said about the acting classes he teaches, and I’ve endeavored to recall it word for word: “even though not everybody I teach is going to go out there and become an actor, I can teach them one thing, how to live in the moment. Too often we’re focusing on the future or the past, what I did yesterday or the things I have to do next week, but if you’re going to act, you’ve got to live in the moment, in the now. And I try to give them the tools so they can learn to grasp at right now. I don’t think you can have a full and satisfying life until you learn how to appreciate right now.” It was well put and meaningful. Not that the rest of the guys were chopped liver, by no means, but it was thought-provoking.
The photo ops on Saturday and, indeed, throughout the convention were fun and the pictures of me in Klingon makeup are probably hilarious, but I have to say I truly treasure the autographs. The autographs, with one exception, were complimentary parts of my ticket package. But until about 3:00 Saturday morning, I couldn’t find any way to make a signature meaningful. I’d probably manage to lose whatever I had signed, even. It was frustrating. People love autographs, but for blind folks, your normal autograph just isn’t such of a much. Finally, a solution came to me, a novel idea. First, I went through the episodes and movies and found one character quotation for each actor whose autograph I was receiving. I made a list of these quotes with space underneath each quote for the actor to sign, each to his own character’s dialogue as it were. I kept my list in hand, and for each actor, instead of having them do something meaningless like writing, “to my good friend Brad,” I asked each man if he would read his character’s dialogue as he signed his name, and whether I may record them doing so. I expected flat refusals. What I got was interest and excitement. Every single one read his line, and only William Shatner couldn’t get recorded, only because there wasn’t enough time with the hundreds in line behind me waiting for his autograph. Max Grodenchik was the first I tried this on. When he understood what it was I wanted, he got into it! He wanted to record his line three times to get it right, and he even gave me some vocal coaching on my own Rom impersonation. The rest of the actors were delighted, frequently asking if they themselves could hold my digital recorder and often taking extra time, by their own choice, to read over the lines before recording them. To a man, they seemed to think this was a novel way to get an autograph and in many cases, the reading was followed by their comments on the line I’d chosen. Kasey Biggs described the experience as wholly unique, and we talked for a minute about how important and transformative the particular line I chose had been for his character. It seemed that they all appreciated the fact that I chose meaningful lines. In many cases, the lines I chose came from episodes they spent a while talking about or citing as meaningful for their characters’ development during their on-stage presentations. Well I sure wasn’t going to use throwaways. The most special instance of this came when I saw J.G Hertzler on Sunday. At one point in his presentation, he’d hinted at his favorite moment as Martok, and I felt a thrill shoot through me, because the line I’d chosen for him was from the very scene he was describing. It was Martok’s speech to Worf on the worthiness of marriage. It was especially meaningful that so important a line, important to me and too, to my fiancé, was equally meaningful to him. He read it well, even if he was a tad too close to the recorder’s microphone.
Sunday was as jam packed as Saturday. By Sunday morning I was tired, because I didn’t want to sleep too heavily and risk ruining the makeup. The first event Sunday morning was a continental breakfast with O’Reilly and Hertzler. This took place well before their stage presentation, and it was the first time fans saw them at the convention. Only 30 tickets were sold for this event, and I was glad I took the trouble to buy one of them. They were hilarious and personable. They remembered your name when you told it to them, and they were obviously happy to be there. While they didn’t comment to me directly about the makeup, I got word that they’d spoken with John Paladin about it and were very impressed with his makeup job on me. Well I was glad. It was positive attention for me, but also for the makeup artist. John really did do excellent work on me, and if I wore it well, most of the credit goes to him. That made sleeping in the makeup worth it. Their on-stage presentation was hilarious and noisy as hell. They gave you good natured ribbing when you asked questions and the audience loved them. Me, no less than anyone else. They were also the two best readers of their dialogue, coming very close to their on-screen performances of the text, which says something considering that those performances are both more than a decade in the past. On the other hand, I treasure those that weren’t close to their set performances, because they read them live, and the vocal divergences simply represented other possible interpretations of those character moments.
Sunday closed with William Shatner. The afternoon saw the hotel packed. Hundreds of people showed up who hadn’t been there all weekend long. And of course, they were there for Bill. I went to the photo line an hour beforehand, because I had had experience with Vegas and knew that in his case, I’d better get there early. By the time he appeared for the photo op, the line stretched for more than five hundred people, and I was about fifteenth in line. His on-stage talk was lively and drew on four and a half decades of star trek memories as well as talking about his future projects. It was here that I finally got to do something I’d meant to do when I saw him in Vegas. When my turn came in the Q and A, I took the opportunity to thank him for narrating so many of his own books, explaining that I’d likely have never read them if he hadn’t narrated them. He seemed touched by this, because almost nobody asks him about his books. His movies, music and plays, yes. But almost never the books. I wanted him to know that all those hours in the recording studio had mattered to someone.
These experiences are unforgettable, and though I spent a respectable amount of money at the convention, I spent it on things like photo ops and the breakfast, things that would leave me with experiences and memories, which you can’t lose the way you can lose a t-shirt. I plan to save those recordings, backing them up as I would my dissertation, to which this last year of study is devoted. I intend to have the quotations paper they all signed framed. Something to hang on the wall. I’ve made a few Facebook connections with fellow fans, and there are people I definitely intend to keep in touch with. Again, experience. It was enjoyable to be around hundreds of people who were as geeky as me, who knew all the obscure details of the characters and who could appreciate quoting the dialogue These are normal people, people with jobs and families and drudgery and troubles, but for one weekend, you get to forget being who you are, whether plumber or housewife or doctoral student or soldier, and you become a star trek fan, nothing more, nothing less and nothing else. If I could attend any other convention, just one more in all of my lifetime, I’d attend the Vegas convention of 2016. Vegas is the main attraction, and 2016 will mark star trek’s 50th anniversary. That convention had better be a blowout, and I intend to be there, God willing.
