2000-07-25 - 19:35:20

I feel I must finish the saga of our weekend in Minneap. Saturday was a bunch of Xena convention stuff, which mostly means sitting in a chair watching bloopers reels, & the top ten best Xena scenes, & stuff like that. Or you can wander around the merchandise. And the best part was Ted Raimi/Joxer speaking, which I already covered.

Saturday night, Syd & I showed up at the cabaret that had Ted Raimi, & also Ebonie Smith who played M'Lila, a mentor of Xena's who I do not remember. Bruce Campbell was originally supposed to appear, a large part of why we went, but had to cancel to direct an ep of V.I.P. That is my excuse from now on, for everything. So Ted Raimi sang beautifully & charmingly, he sang Moonlight & other standards, & then before we knew it, he was on his last song.

All I'm going to say is that it was called Papa Loves Mambo, he split the crowd in half & made us sing different parts (which is quite bad enough in my opinion), & then he made his way to the back of the crowd. He grabbed some poor woman & placed her hands on his shoulders & yelled FOLLOW ME! & started bullying everyone into doing a mambo train!!! Oh my GOD. A tense, desperate exchange took place between Sydney and me (this is the nearest I can remember):

Sydney: What do we do???

Me: I just don't wanna get hurt.

Sydney: He's gonna hurt us?

Me: I don't know. Do you think?

Sydney: What's happening?

Me: What is happening? I think we have to be part of it.

Sydney: You do?

Me: If everyone else does it & we're just left standing, he might get us.

While I stood there talking about how we had no choice, Sydney went & made us a space in the mambo train. I cannot stand it & the worst part is that I had some shoe problems earlier, & was wearing black tights with FLIP FLOPS. Ugh. You canNOT walk like that. Try it. So I pretty much shuffled along behind her, at one point whipping my head wildly around to the lady in back of me, all panicked, to say "I'M SORRY! I'M JUST REALLY SORRY!" She smiled blandly. Whatev, curly shuffler, go on working on keeping your flip flops on. I know that's what she was thinking.

After this madness died down, the show was pretty much over. We went back to the hotel. The way I was walking it would've been faster to crawl, or crabwalk. I put on a more reasonable outfit, & we went to the Dragon Room. We'd heard from a few people that it was pretty, & had really strong drinks.

It was pretty. & it did have very strong drinks. We drank several Mai Tais apiece, & we drank them FAST, under the pressure of the 1am deadline. I remember being so upset that Sydney wouldn't do Joe Flaherty. When I say do, I do not mean impersonate. I remember a few other flashes of the conversation. Back and forth. "YOU'D DO PAULIE WALNUTS???" "I LIKE HIS CHARACTER!!" Good times.

I'm going to fast forward past the search for a cab. Not good times. I woke up not feeling good. I went back to hell for breakfast while Sydney went to the Walker Museum & saw great things. All I saw in hell was a demon who sat at the table next to me, never letting up on the giggling. Never ever letting up on the giggling. Giggling while she read & her breakfast companion ate silently. Giggling even as she read aloud to her companion, from her Dave Barry book. I told you it was hell. It took me at least 1/2 hour to get the check. I filled a page of my journal writing the sentence "I feel distinctly unwell." I am crazy when hungover.

The last day of the convention was uneventful. We left before Aphrodite spoke, which was sad. I saw M'Lila, who is a black actress & mentioned that it was not a race specific part, they saw any race of actress for the part. Weird for TV casting, I'm sure. I'm thinking you probably wouldn't have a ton of luck going in to audition for "Frasier" or "Friends" if you aren't white, unless it were a specified non-white part. So that's another thing for me to love about Xen Xen.

Ok, so Minneap is a great place that is so low key compared to Chicago. Also I forgot to mention I ate this really REALLY good thick creamy chocolate custard flavored with Earl Grey tea. It was GOOD. You don't even know.

Last night I rented "The Straight Story". I am a big sap & cried through the entire thing. Except when I saw John Farley, brother of Chris Farley, who harassed my friends & me at the Gold Star once, & is bigtime ON MY LIST. Besides him being in it, it's a good movie & I really wish I'd seen it in the theater.

Barnga darngdarng.

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