{"id":1131,"date":"2010-02-14T22:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T22:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/2010\/02\/14\/in-which-i-succumb-to-lunacy\/"},"modified":"2010-02-14T22:50:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T22:50:00","slug":"in-which-i-succumb-to-lunacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/2010\/02\/14\/in-which-i-succumb-to-lunacy\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I succumb to Lunacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday night, I got to fuel an old addiction. Like many other addictions, the experience was thrilling and draining. It also cost a few bucks, but at least this addiction doesn’t do any physical damage. Really, I don’t remember when I was first bitten by the acting bug, but I know I was quite young. I understood even back then that some people got to share their games of make-believe with the entire world, and that sounded to me like incredible fun.<\/p>\n

Some years later, 1986 or ’87 I think, I attended Stellarcon with a crowd of new friends from a club named VTSFFC. We learned that their Saturday afternoon masquerade was desperately short of entries, and I remembered seeing at RoVaCon a group called “Doctors In the House” that performed costumed science-fiction comedy skits. Inspired, I grabbed what little I’d brought for hall costuming, and created the “Starfleet Vice” troupe. We had a great deal of fun over the next few years, but after many performances<\/a> at RoVaCon, Technicon, and SciCon, we moved on to other things, and Starfleet Vice faded away.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"'Starfleet<\/a><\/td>\n<\/td>\n\"Starfleet<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
“Starfleet Vice” – RoVaCon 1987<\/strong>
\n\t\tFrom left: Heather McLaughlin as “Kei” from the Dirty Pair, Paul Danielsen as officer “Crock”, Sonoko Konishi as “Yuri” from the Dirty Pair, and me as officer “Stubble”. I don’t even remember what the skit was that year.<\/td>\n		<\/td>\nStarfleet Vice t-shirt graphic<\/strong>
\n\t\tFrom the left, the characters are “Ruth” (Beth Lipes), “Dr. Whizbang” (Mark Haymaker), “Cmdr. Paisley” (Tom Monaghan), “Stubble” (me), “Crock” (Paul Danielsen), and “Herald Harold” (Mike Layne). Eventually, Tom acquired a paisley “Next Generation” Starfleet uniform. Audience members were driven blind.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/lj-raw>
\n
\nFurther years later, I learned that my VTSFFC friend Helen Madden had become involved with “Luna-C”, a group that I later learned had evolved from the old “Doctors”. I enjoyed Luna-C’s performances at many cons over the next several years, and often felt twinges of nostalgia for the stage – by then, I’d done “You Can’t Take it With You”, “Arsenic and Old Lace”, “Gentleman’s Agreement<\/a>“, and “Space Rogues<\/a>“. But I had plenty else on my plate and never seriously concerned myself with those old memories.<\/p>\n

Well, at this year’s MarsCon, I was socializing with Luna-C members after the performance, and I jokingly suggested that with the hall costume I was wearing I could have substituted for one of the players. A little further into the conversation, and it wasn’t a joke. So, this weekend I attended a convention I hadn’t planned to hit in 2010. I had an amazing time, and had my first hit of serious memorized-lines-and-costumes acting in ages. It felt goooood.<\/p>\n

They gave me six skits to do: an AFLAC parody (I wasn’t the duck), a “Fringe” skit where I played Peter, an SG:Universe scene where I played Dr. Rush, a James Bond \/ Austin Powers back-and-forth (guess who I played, baby), and two final skits in which I fulfilled a longtime ambition to play the Fourth Doctor. (I tried for days to get a Tom Baker voice going, and I failed; but Deb told me during the show that she thought I had the cadences of his voice nailed. Ego-boost +30!) I didn’t have as much rehearsal time as I’d hoped, and I know I mised some lines, but they covered for me wonderfully. I don’t think I did a bad job at all!<\/p>\n

Now RavenCon is coming up, and both Starr and I will be joining Luna-C there if all goes as planned. Yep. Won’t be kicking this addiction any time soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday night, I got to fuel an old addiction. Like many other addictions, the experience was thrilling and draining. It also cost a few bucks, but at least this addiction doesn’t do any physical damage. Really, I don’t remember when I was first bitten by the acting bug, but I know I was quite young. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[86,39,7,41,117,43,106,68,25],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-comedians","tag-conventions","tag-costuming","tag-fandom","tag-farpoint","tag-humor","tag-luna-c","tag-marscon","tag-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1xCb9-if","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}