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August 30, 2004

A Fan Remembers

This article reminded me of something I'd wanted to talk about here... Go read it first, then come back...

When they say Doohan was something special and went out of his way for the fans, I can only agree.

It happened several years ago, before I could drive, and since I just turned 39 last weekend, that means something nearly 2/3rds of my life in the past. A friend and I had managed to convince our parents to allow us to attend an evening Star Trek fan gathering at nearby Northern Kentucky University. It wasn't anything big, really. They showed the Blooper Reel on a movie screen, showed us an episode (I'm pretty sure it was Trouble with Tribbles), then James Doohan stepped out to talk for a bit and answer questions. Something I'm sure he's done hundreds of times, before and since.

Afterwards, my friend and I waited in the foyer for our ride, which didn't arrive. It was about 20 minutes after the event ended, and still no sign of my step-father for our ride home. It was then that James Doohan stepped out, ready to head to his hotel room. But he saw two teenaged boys standing over by the exit and decided to make sure nothing was wrong. That's how it happened that, for the next fifteen minutes or so until our ride arrived, Scotty entertained two star-struck fans rather than leave us to get into trouble on our own. It didn't add a penny to what he was paid for the evening and it didn't save our lives or anything (neither of us were really ambitious enough to create any real trouble at that age). But it did make a couple of fans-for-life.

I've done a lot of conventions since then, met a lot of stars whose work I admired, some even in similarly informal situations. But never had one go out of their way to make sure they hadn't let even a single fan go ignored.

Fandom is poorer in his absence.

Posted by ghoul at 04:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Return to the Staircase

I've been neglecting this blog for too long... time to start posting again.

This last weekend was my birthday, and this year my regular "whale watching trip" happened on the day. The weather was great, we happened upon another semi-sleeping finback, and a good time was had by all. We even seem to have avoided sunburn except in hints.

Prior to that, I've been dealing with the car issues detailed in the last posts before this one... This whole mess had a happy ending because the good folks at PriusOnline pointed out that all Prius come with free road hazard coverage, as compensation for the need for not-exactly-cheap tires. And, after some paperwork, I was reimbursed 100% for the replacement. The fender-bender mentioned here did no real damage at all.

Work issues have kept me grinding and made me look for pretty much anything to do that didn't involve looking at a computer screen once I was home. I hope I'm past that because, if FedEx tracking can be believed, I have my birthday present to me (a dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 with a 23" cinema flatscreen) that will be arriving tomorrow. I do tend to over-spend on me...

I've also been making slow but steady progress through my backlog of DVDs, anchored by watching pretty much all of The X-Files in fairly rapid succession. I'm not quite done yet (there's two seasons to go, most of which I've never seen before), but I'm well reminded why I liked this show when it was on. And that while its best is very good, it had some real stinkers as well, mostly when they tried to tie into recent headlines too much or went for laughs rather than scares. None of which is to say that Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose and Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' are anything but gems, but most of the other funny episodes run out of steam with at least one act still to go. And rarely, if ever, does good seem to come of them letting the actors write or direct.

Posted by ghoul at 03:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack