Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride

April 1, 2010

Hold on to your hats!

I got an email today telling me that THE Sylvester McCoy will be making a rare appearance in NYC, and seating is limited to 100. GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!

WOOOO-HOOOOOOO! SYLVESTER MCCOY! YEAH!

What? No, he’s not the guy from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He’s Doctor Who!

No, he’s not the one with the scarf.

Hmm? Sorry, you’re thinking of Dr. McCoy, from Star Trek.

This is the guy who flies through time and space in a police box, sort of a British phone booth.

Well, kind of like what Clark Kent uses to change into Superman, but it’s blue and you can’t see in………….Yes, true, that would be handy for Clark Kent if no one could see him change.

Well, um, speaking of costumes, this is what he looked like back when he was playing The Doctor:

Who?

The question marks, yes, well, that was kind of the point. He was Doctor Who, get it? Like who is he?…………No, not what, who.

(Sigh.) I don’t know whose car that is.

Right, ha ha, “I don’t know Doctor Whose car that is.” I get it.

Anyway.

Sylvester McCoy is coming to town and a New York based group of Doctor Who fans have left their basement and organized a small meet and greet with a Q+A. (“Meet and greet.” “Q+A.” I feel dirty.) I’m not quite sure what to expect, as he had one of the shortest tenures as The Doctor (there have been about a dozen men playing that part) and fully three-quarters of his stories, er, were found lacking, let us say. On the other hand, HE WAS DOCTOR FREAKIN’ WHO!

I’ve been to conventions before, and thank God, this thing is not calling itself a convention. It is being held in some hipster lounge/trendy bar place I normally wouldn’t set foot in, but since I am, it is a good thing they serve alcohol. One of my favorite places, now closed, was a place in a bad neighborhood called Joe’s Cafeteria. It was what you’d expect- a hole in the wall place, with three cramped tables, and a surly guy not named Joe behind a couple of steamer trays. Damn his food was good. And not a hipster doofus/trendy “metro-sexual” in the place.

So this thing is not a convention (despite charging $20 for autographs) and its a good thing, because I have had my fill of conventions. Back in my teens I went to a couple of sci-fi conventions. I may have gone to two or two hundred, they all blur in my mind, which must be one of nature’s defense mechanisms.

Think of a Star Trek convention. You get mental images of nerds in Spock ears and fat guys dressed as Klingons speaking gibberish. That’s close. Sure, you find both kinds of life forms there, but if you can imagine a hybrid species, a fat Klingon with Spock ears, eating a sandwich and speaking only “Klingon,” you’re a little bit closer. I went to one of these shows and the guy who played Sulu, George “fuck Bill Shatner” Takei, was there. I got his autograph on a Star Trek quiz book and not ten minutes later one of those greasy Spock eared-Klingons in a tight “I grok Spock” t-shirt begged me to see it. I let him, and when I got my book back it was covered in his chocolate smeared fingerprints. I didn’t totally mind, as it turned that, up close and personal, Sulu was a bit of a jerk.

At either the same convention, or one just like it (it is all a merciful blur) Jonathan Frid made what was billed as “a rare appearance.” True, the guy did about a gazillion Dark Shadows and sci-fi conventions (he was Barnabas Collins) but this one was different, hence “rare.” He refused to talk about Dark Shadows. At all. He wouldn’t even take questions from the audience. No, we had pilled into a convention room for “An Evening With Jonathan Frid.” The lights were dim, there were candles on the stage, he was wearing a dark suit, it looked for all the world like he was recreating Collinwood on stage, but no.

He was there to recite his poetry at us. Awful, awful poetry, and once he started he would not stop. Old fashioned, archaic poetry like an English undergrad at community college wearing a beret with a paperback of Shelley in his back pocket, all aimed right at your face. I had heard that human brains have “pleasure centers,” but this performance fueled the discovery of the “displeasure center” and I felt appropriately nauseous. Plenty of people walked right out in the first ten minutes, me included. Frid didn’t sell many pictures that night, but I’m sure the three guys who stayed behind loved the poetery.

Another time a friend played a practical joke on me with a fake ticket. The less said about that the better (because it makes me look ridiculous, and a man in my position can’t afford to look ridiculous. [How well do you know your Godfather quotes, hmmm?]).

At one convention I badmouthed Peter David’s writing, totally unaware that the squat geek three seats away, in the ranger vest covered in Star Trek buttons and sporting a beard that made David Patterson’s look well-groomed was Peter David.

Against all odds, I’m going to venture to the Sylvester McCoy non-convention in the hopes, that at the very least, if it is a train wreck, at least it’ll make a good blog.

P.S. – Curse of Fenric was good, Survival is overrated, Silver Nemesis is disappointing, and Remembrance of the Daleks wasn’t bad. The rest? Ugh.

Tags: bad poetry, Barnabas Collins, bmj2k, conventions, Dark Shadows, Doctor Who, George Takei, I grok spock, Jonathan Frid, klingons, Mr. Blog, Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride, Peter David, poetry, sci-fi, seventh Doctor, star trek, Sulu, Sylvester McCoy