So said Janet Fielding to Sylvester McCoy in their joint panel today.
Geez, this is the earliest I’ve written this weekend, yet I’m at my tiredest. The lack of sleep over the weekend is finally getting to me.
Today was another wonderful day at Gallifrey One. We decided to try Denny’s today and Estelle drove us to the restaurant. Dave somebody-or-other, a nice pediatrician from Illinois, joined us for breakfast and the six of us had a nice time talking and eating. Back at the hotel, we caught the second half of the Doctor Who Collectible Roadshow and once again, Emily was wonderful and had seats already saved for us.
Paul, Susannah Harker, and a fellow from BBCi talked about the making of Shada and Paul impressed everyone with his lungs when he shouted “Fire!” in a manner like Lt. Bush. The PMEB was notorious by this time and when they first arrived and Paul saw us all sitting in the same seats as the day before, he wondered if we’d slept there last night. Susannah didn’t really talk a lot, but she seemed to enjoy just listening to the answers and looking at Paul and his Brigade.
After the panel, it was off to the autograph line to wait and wait for McGann’s autograph session. The line was even longer than the McCoy line the day before, but we all stood and chatted and had a blast while waiting. I bought a nice Willy Wonka photo of McGann (aka the 8th Doctor) for $20 and had him sign it. (And, alas, the Sylv autograph line had a new BW photo that they hadn’t had the previous day and which is *not* in my collection. Perhaps I shall see it again — I just didn’t wish to wait in another long line just to get the photo.)
As McGann was leaving to fly back to England (he has a film shoot tomorrow, lucky guy) they had him pose by the very nice Dalek that some fans had made. We got quite a few shots of the pair. Quite a cute couple. 😉 But then Paul had to leave and we all were sad to see him go. Thrilled that he’d been there, of course.
Steph (hergrace) needed to get packed in order to leave (awwww) and when she returned, we gave lots of hugs. Then Denise, judiang, and I went back to the ballroom to await the Sylv & Janet panel. There were still some second and third row seats, so we watched the panel with Paul Darrow, Yee Jee Tso, and India Fisher on voice overs. I asked about how it was to make “Fly Me to the Moon” and India admitted that it was interesting to make (they recorded it live on audio after she’d toured with it) and, despite having Sylv in the live recording making the show fresh, she still didn’t care much for the play. I think she’d gotten tired of doing it during the initial tour.
Sylv and Janet were on next and were very entertaining. Gary Russell should be proud because quite a few people asked Janet if she’d do a Big Finish audio, and the usual answer was a cold stare and once a demand for the speaker to leave NOW. 🙂 At one point during a discussion about an alleged nekrophiliac, Janet said the above quote to Sylv, so it’s my quote of the day. They played off of each other well – the dirty old man and the militant feminist… 🙂 A rather fun panel and a nice way to end the convention for us.
The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent looking for lupper and eventually supper. On the advice of the hotel, we went to the 94th Squadron for seafood, only to discover that we needed reservations to get in at a decent time *and* that the place wasn’t really a seafood restaurant. We did have drinks at the bar courtesy of Judi (thanks Judi!) and Estelle and I had virgin strawberry daiquiris, Denise had a Shirley Temple, and Judi got her usual mudslide. And then asked for sweetner to add to it… After the 20 minutes were up, we checked back with the hostess only to find out that it would be another half an hour before they could serve us. She took pity on us and tried to seat us in the bar with a rather frazzled waitress to wait on us. But after we looked at the menu and discovered that they really didn’t have a big seafood selection (and had prices that made us balk) we figured we could try something else. Estelle suggested the Cheesecake Factory and we agreed.
It took awhile to get to the joint – the something-or-other Galleria – which turned out to be an open-air mall. Rather cool. They had Fuddruckers, Tower Records, and other mall and upscale places. But Cheesecake Factory had an hour wait, and the Chinese place that we looked into, likewise. So we stopped into a fastfood Japanese joint (Hana Grill? I forget the name) for some pretty decent (and far less expensive than the “seafood” place) food. I got spicy chicken teryaki and (of course) California roll. It wasn’t too bad for “fast food.” Denise let me have one of her rice-filled bean curd thingies, which is a sweet dessert. It was good – like a donut stuffed with rice instead of donut fluff.
After supper, we headed back to the hotel and went up to Estelle’s room to gawk at all of her lovely Paul (and Sylv – yay!) photos. Great stuff. I eventually left Judi & Denise to pick out the top 10 McGann pix and Estelle and I came back here. She photographed the McGann shrine that Judi set up for Denise and we talked awhile. Then she headed back to her room (to wipe the drool off of her photos, I suspect) and I got online to type this up.
I think I’ll head for bed now, but first, a photo to whet your appetites for more to come. (Oh shush, of course it’s not a McGann picture!) Click here for the photo of Sylv.
