So, early this morning I was clearing off the TiVo, which included an episode of Stargate SG-1. I remembered that I had seen a commercial that there was a Stargate convention in NJ this weekend. With nothing else planned for the day, I decided to jump in the car and head up to Secaucus.
These conventions can be a little silly, but I went to the same one last year with a friend from work, and it was fun. This year Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson) and Christopher Judge (Teal’c) were headlining the Sunday events.
First on stage at the convention was Pierre Bernard from The Conan O’Brien Show. Pierre had gained notoriety for an anti-Daniel-Jackson segment that he had done a couple of years ago on “Pierre Bernard’s Recliner of Rage.” They actually brought a recliner out on stage for Pierre. A camera crew from Conan’s show followed him around the entire day.
Next up were Michael Shanks and Christopher Judge. They talked about the show and life on the set; they spent quite a bit of time ripping on each other; and they graciously fielded some pretty insane questions from audience members.
People don’t normally dress up for these things the way they would at a Star Trek convention; however, two individuals with way too much time on their hands showed off their impressive homemade (but poorly ventilated) Jaffa costumes.
The rest of the day’s events were somewhat formulaic. They had the usual “stump the volunteers from the audience” trivia contest. They showed a few amateurish montage clips of Stargate scenes set to music. There was a memorabilia auction that sold off items from the dealer room. Weird thing about such auctions is that the fanboys (and fangirls) tended to bid these items all the way up to retail price just to win the auction when they could have bought the same items from the dealer room five minutes earlier.
Finally, all those who forked over $30 (or more) for a signature (it’s quite the racket) queued up like cattle so that Michael and/or Christopher could make a few ink squiggles on whatever eBay-bound merchandise the fans had brought with them. (Not me. I figured that $25 for a general admission ticket was quite enough.)
BTW, this post’s title is an obscure reference from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”
Sounds like a fun convention. Much cheaper than the Star Wars one I went to. Would have like to have seen Shanks and Judge. Those Jaffa costumes look terribly hot.
I’ve never done a Star Wars convention. I did do two Star Trek conventions in San Jose when I lived in Monterey (got to see William F*ing Shatner, Patrick Stewart, and Leonard Nimoy on stage).
Since there isn’t a great deal of licensed merchandise, relative to SW or ST, the dealer room for this convention was tiny. Still it was a fun afternoon.
Christopher Judge was abundantly thrilled when he saw the two Jaffa in back. He came off of the stage and walked down the aisle to get a closer look. After a few exclamations of “that is SO cool,” he invited them to go up on stage. However, they had to be led up there because the helmets left them with little to no visibility. When one of them took his helmet off after, you could see the sweat pouring off of him.