Greg Bishansky writes...

Gathering Journal Part 3
Saturday, August 7

Woke up, showered and dressed and went downstairs. Auditions for the Radio Play were going on, but I decided to sit it out this year, which I kind of regret now. Aw well, there's always next year. So I just wandered around for a while, chatting with people and chilling. Eventually I ran into Carol Wagner (who was my guest coordinator last year and was doing the same thing this year. If you ever run a con, get this woman on your staff, she does an awesome job). Anyway, she told me that the DVD film crew were downstairs doing fan interviews and suggested I go down since I was a Con Chair and if I saw Aaron and Mara to send them down also.

I go down and walk into the room for the tail end of Siryn's interview, and she gave a good one. Kathy Pogge and Mandi give their interviews and afterward it's my turn. THey ask me a few questions, like how the show has impacted me, what I would say to get people to watch it, what I liked best about it, and who my favorite character was... the last sentence gets me into a two minute speech about Demona, to which the camera crew asked "Are you the guy with the tattoo?"... heh, I got confused for Aaron. I say I'm not, but that he'll be down to be interviewed shortly. I thought it went well, hopefully I'll make the final cut. So I get up and Christine Morgan is being interviewed. As I'm about to walk out, Aaron and Mara come in with Lynati, Hudson and a few other people and I tell Aaron they're waiting for him. So I stick around and watch them get interviewed, and Aaron does show his tattoo... that I'm sure is a definite lock for the final cut. I hope they quote him saying "permanently etched into my skin.".

So we head up, and I end up joining Mara for one of the Clan Olympics events... really hard pictionary. We have Kyt on our team, so we figure this will be easy. It wasn't, I swear it was rigged, we got the hard ones. We lost, but didn't mind too much since we didn't want to do the next event anyway.

Afterwards it was time for the Radio Play. This year it was "The Journey". A terrific production if I do say so myself. Emambu was great as John Castaway, Jen and Ethan played off each other really well as Banquo and Fleance, Cindy was great as Margot Yale, and Chris really brought down the house as Macbeth with his MADAME THEY BURNED WITCHES LIKE YOU IN THE MIDDLE AGES! line. THe guy who played Vinnie was great too, as was Stormy as Cagney. Lots of applause.

Since there were no events schedualed for a bit, Alex and I went with Ethan to this Irish pub for a couple of drinks. It was fun, the bartender was cute. Talked American politics there and came back. Ethan went to the Masquerade and Alex and I went up to Aaron, Mara and Lynati's room where they were busy finishing Lynati's Ophelia costume. I won't go into the details here, but unfortunatly things ran late. I head down to the ground floor where we're having the masquerade to keep an eye out on when the masquerade starts and keep them informed and make sure Lynati is schedualed to go last, but again I'll spare you the details.

While doing that I meet Keith David who finally arrived (the voice of Goliath, Thailog and Officer Morgan for those who live on Mars). I first met Keith David briefly four years ago in Central Park when he was performing Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale" where he played the king. I met him for thirty seconds after and told him I thought he was great and mentioned I loved him in "Gargoyles", he shook my hand and really appreciated. Keith then came to the '01 Gathering in LA but had to leave early, so I didn't get to meet him. But I got to say hello and told him I saw him in "A Winter's Tale" and I'll be damned... he remembered me. Keith is a really great guy, and he has a very, very, very strong handshake.

Anyway, the masquerade begins, I miss the show cause I'm standing outside the room, but all the costumes this year were terrific. I can't really name a favorite here, but I'll give special nods to the guy who won... forget his name. Revel as Dracon, the entire con staff was great, that girl who was Ekidna, Flanker as a Hunter, everyone was great. Finally Lynati came down and her Ophelia costume was terrific, one of the ebst costumes I've ever seen at any Gathering.

Masquerade ends, and we just party and hang out, people start singing Karaoke, and this is where Emambu sings "Blame Gargoyles"... once again the link is...

http://s8.org/gargoyles/gathering2004/videos/Blame_Gargoyles.avi

just right click this link and hit 'Save As'

Cindy sang really, really well. There was a dance to "YMCA" but no one knew all the words so it went something like this...

Young man, something, something, something
I say young man, something, something, something.

You get the idea ;)

Chilled on the sidelines mostly talking a bit with Greg Weisman and Carol and Jen, and several hours later he had to turn in, as he had to leave early in the morning. Said good bye and ended up hanging with Aaron, Mara, Hudson, Ethan, Silver and a bunch of others outside till around 3:30 in the morning. Before we all went to bed.

To be continued