SFX 2006 Report

[desoto_hia873]

I only had one day--Sunday--at SFX this year. I missed both the Canadian Browncoat lunch and dinner/Shindig on Saturday. :-( As I was there for 2.5 days last year, with the Serenity fantable occupying much of my time, this year's quick Sunday breeze-through left me feeling a little as if I'd only gotten SFX Digest experience. Still, it was fun. And there was Gaius glee, which a total bonus.


Jim and I arrived right around 11 am, and our first task of the day was to see if Morena Baccarin & Christina Hendricks were there. They were! We stood in a surprisingly short line-up, and I had Morena sign the Serenity promo mini-poster we got at the preview last year (now I have her, Sean, Adam, and Jewel's autographs on it) as well as the inside of the Firefly DVD insert with Mal's picture on it. I also asked Christina to sign the same insert--gotta keep Mal's girls together. :-) While sorting through my various fannish pins, I discovered that I had two buttons that said "I ♥ Saffron, Bridget, Yolanda," so I brought my spare one and gave it to her. She said she hadn't seen it before and seemed pleased to get it.



Then we posed for the inevitable pics:



I guess there were was just no way I wasn't going to come out looking like a little dumpling next to two Companions. Morena is so thin! She must eat fewer than 300 calories per day.

Jim had to pose with them, too, of course. Doesn't he look smug?



That task accomplished, we next went to find Juliet Landau, but there was a sign at her table saying she wouldn't be back until 1 pm. So then it was off to stand in line for Carrie Fisher. I don't think we were supposed to take any pics of her, but Jim got one anyway while I was talking to her. She seemed shy, but was very polite and took a few seconds to talk to each person (which was why her line moved so slowly). I bet she was pretty fed up with signing pictures of her in that Jabba the Hut slave costume by the end of the day--every young man in line seemed to have one. If I'd thought of it, I might have brought my When Harry Met Sally DVD instead, but I didn't, so I got her to sign my Star Wars DVD.



Then it was time to go and see Kirk and Spock. The room was pretty full by the time we got there, so we weren't very close to the front. My camera has very little zoom and I could hardly see them anyway (I'm short), so I didn't bother trying to take pics. William Shatner was wearing an eye-popping hot pink shirt that made him look more florid than he already is. Leonard Nimoy just looked like Spock without the weird haircut. They talked and joked around for about 45 minutes, and then it was time to stand in line for their autographs.

I figured it would be a long wait, so I dashed upstairs to get Juliet to sign my copy of Bite Me. Her line-up was quite short, so I didn't have to wait long. She remarked on only having seen that book for the first time that weekend--I didn't tell her that I knew exactly who else had gotten her to sign them ::looks meaningfully at sunnyd_lite and redeem147:: I mentioned having recently seen her in a S3 episode of Nikita and she seemed pleased by that. She was very friendly. I also had a picture taken with her (and I thought Morena was skinny!), but my camera ate it. ::gnashes teeth:: I'm going to see if my cousin's husband can rescue the pic off the memory card.

Back upstairs to see where Jim was in line. I found him standing and talking to sunnyd_lite, who looked fetching in a purple wig. redeem147 also dropped by for a few minutes. Shatner and Nimoy were signing items production-line-style, so the very long line was moving pretty quickly and we got through it in a about half an hour.



Whereupon we had the tragedy of the day. Jim had brought two of the inserts from his Star Trek DVDs to be signed, as well as a photo. I was in charge of the photo and he of the DVD inserts. We saw them all get signed, but in the confusion at the end of the signing table, Jim took his eyes off the inserts for a second or two, and one of them (the one Kirk had signed) disappeared. We looked everywhere, but it was truly gone--either someone picked it up accidentally or someone just simply stole it. I went back inside and explained what had happened to one of the organizers, and he very kindly pushed the Nimoy-signed insert towards Shatner and got him to sign it again. Shatner looked at little confused by this, and I was amused to note that he didn't just sign next to Nimoy's autograph, but on the front page instead. It's an ego thing, I guess. :-) Anyway, Jim was kind of bummed out about that for the next little while. I have to figure out where to get a replacement S1 DVD insert for him now.

Next, we scooted back down to get into the autograph line-up for James Callis. It was his second signing session of the day, so the line wasn't as long as I feared it might be. However, it moved very slowly because he was really taking his time with each person. SunnyD caught up with us down there and kept us company while we waited. We weren't supposed to take pictures of James, either, but Jim just couldn't help himself. Most of them turned out rather blurry (he was trying to be surreptitious), but a couple were salvageable:





James was very nice and completely unlike the character he plays. I wasn't expecting the beard--I'll be curious to see if Gaius has it in the series or not. He shook my hand, chatted with me a little, and told me that he liked my shirt. Adam Baldwin similarly admired the t-shirt I had on last year. Do you know what this means?!? ::drum roll:: Jayne and Gaius have both stared at my chest!! Heeee.

Jim, SunnyD, and I wandered around the exhibition hall for a while after this. Sunny and I were talking about something or other when Jim suddenly came bouncing up to show us that he'd bought a framed picture of Yoda autographed by Frank Oz. He was so excited about it that the vanished DVD insert trauma was quickly forgotten. Yes, he's a dork, but he's a cute one.

Eventually, the three of us went to James's Q&A--we got there a little late, but heard most of it. We were marginally closer to the front, so I took a pic--it's not very good, but it was the best I could do. James was a very entertaining speaker and gave us a few clues about S3 of BSG (they've already filmed the first half of the season), which were spoilers for me as I haven't quite finished watching S2 yet, but oh well.



And that was the end of SFX. Like I said, I had the digest experience this time.

We walked back to the car and then Sunny guided us to a Japanese restaurant near her apartment where we all stuffed ourselves. Then Jim and I drove back to Peterborough and, in the spirit of things, watched a couple of BSG episodes.

Now I want to know who's going to be at SFX 2007!