Con 09 LA, Lucy on stage at the convention
by KT
fsktl@uaf.edu
When Lucy arrived on stage, there was a screaming crest of enthusiasm. I think it could well have been the most thunderous applause/appreciation that I’ve ever heard at a con.
Lucy was really relaxed and "set". I think this is the first time that Lucy has finished with her concerts before we got to hear her talk about them onstage and this may have had something to do with my feeling that she was more "finished", just very easy in her head, just here, wrapping up a few details of the job in a way that had not been true before at her appearances when she still had a show or two to go. She was at the finish line. (Too bad there weren’t any Finns around to help her celebrate.)
Oh wait, wait-the usual and now totally threadbare Disclaimer.
I take notes at the cons. This means that a pad is balanced on my knee while I jot down what I hear. I usually glance down to write but I try to also catch as much as I can of the stars’ faces and forms to fill out what they’re saying. Conversation is never just audible. How you stand, where you’re looking, how relaxed/tight up you are, how lively the look in your eyes is, how you move your hands, arms and hips or don’t move at all, the tilt, drawing down, or waggling of your eyebrows, all of this is part of the conversation. So if I only looked down at my pad, I’d be missing huge amounts of incoming information. Aside from this, my pad is not a good conversationalist and is very boring to interact with. It’s pretty mute and stolid, if you catch my drift. But of course if I don’t look down at my pad at all, then my writing wanders all over the page and the whole thing begins to look like a maze or a ball of string or just some REALLY challenging modern art. And I might as well just stick it up on my wall and never look at it again. So what with looking intently but very quickly at the person who’s speaking to get the gist of what they’re saying and then glancing as fast as I can down at the pad every other split second, trying to make sure I’m not writing on top of something I wrote before, my head looks like some kind of animate jack hammer pounding up and down at the cons. (And I wonder why my seatmate neighbors are sitting somewhere else in the hall the next year. They’re the only people that go up to Creation and ask for seats further away from the stage.)
All of this is just to explain that while I try very hard to get what folks said right, it’s never dead on with what they did say. I do sometimes use quotation marks, but even those do not come with a guarantee that this is really what the person said. Often I just jot down a phrase they said that I thought was funny or typical of the way they talk or that really defined something they were talking about. And then I have to fill in the surrounding words. Then the DVD comes out and I give a big "D’OH!" and slap myself dramatically on the forehead for screwing it up.
And of course, when it’s Lucy’s appearances I’m writing up, it goes without saying that for me to glance away from her and her antics for even a nano-second is a painfully excruciating trial. I just wanna be sure you all realize that I do, indeed, truly suffer for my art.
Okay, so Lucy came out and smiled around at us while we gave her a standing ovation and our usual thunderous applause. She always tries to talk before we feel we are finished with our standing ovations but we always make her give up trying to get us to quit it. Only when she stands there helplessly looking at us and shaking her head, then and only THEN do we sit down.
First thing she said-"It’s so crazy Renee and I wore the same clothes." Which were jeans and a dark shirt. (Though Lucy had long sleeves and Renee had short.) She assured us they hadn’t planned it.
Then, "What a lot of men we have!" She asked if any of us remembered when 98% of the audience was women. Of course some of us nodded our heads yes very adamantly. "How come we get all these men?" She kept looking around the hall. "What brought you here?", she asked one fella. (Whom I later found out was actually my friend Ed.) He immediately answered, "Xena" She laughed and said to all of us, "Xena. She just keeps on going."
A woman came up to the mike at the side of the stage. She was carrying an infant. Lucy looked at her and said in a very suspicious tone, "You’re not going to ask me to do something to that baby are you?" We all laughed and then Sharon Delaney said to Luce, "So you’re done breastfeeding?" Lucy nodded, then turned her back and sashayed away saying with a "So there" tone to her voice, "But I could if I wanted to." She declared that all she would need was two days to get ready and then she’d be able to breastfeed again.
Lucy told us that there were some Spaniards who had told Rob that they hated the Roxy show. One of them was in the audience and I believe was saying they didn’t hate it but they had concerns about it. Later on various Xena lists some of them explained that they would have preferred a concert rather than a performance piece. And some said that they were concerned because there had been police at the concert and they were worried that they were there to bust Lucy. (This would be the two large sheriffs who came in and stood right in front of me at one point.) Lucy listened closely-I couldn’t hear what the young woman was saying but could make out that she had a strong accent. Lucy said in a kind of teasing tone, "Well, Rob has been known to get things wrong." Then she explained that she was not naked but had been "wearing the naked thing". And that this was okay. (Okay with Rob or okay in the culture, not totally sure what she meant here.) But she added that for doing that, (being apparently naked on stage), "A Spanish husband would get rid of you. But he ain’t Spanish."
Sharon asked her how her pet squirrel was. (Lucy rescued a baby squirrel who fell out of tree last year.) "He’s gone back to the wild". Lucy talked about how Americans are not really into squirrels and I think she said something about people linking them with rodents. She told the story of the guy who told her (I think after hearing about her and the squirrel on the internet) that he threw rocks at squirrels. Lucy said in disgust that apparently he was proud of that and seemed to think that she should cheer him on for saying that. I think she said that she’d met him doing karate? Then added, "Not me-my kids are taking it."
She said, "I hate the squirrel story." Sharon was asking questions or making comments to her. Lucy said, "I don’t know what to say. He doesn’t roll over." And I heard from someone else that she said that he didn’t get the newspaper for them.
Sharon finally tosses in, "Q-tip wise". Lucy turns away, saying, "I KNEW what you meant." So she explains she looked up taking care of baby squirrels and found out that they need to be helped with peeing so that they don’t get (I didn’t write it down, but it was some kind or urinary tract problem.). She says that mother squirrels lick their genitals to stimulate them, "I wasn’t about to do THAT", so she took some warm water and dipped a cue tip in it and used that to stimulate the little guy. Then she imitated the squirrel saying, "What are you DOING?" Then she spread out her arms and legs and kind of leaned herself a bit backwards and said, "Oooooooh, Mommy! (Or as Lucy says it, "Mummy"). I have a new respect for you, Mummy! That’s FABULOUS!" And she added "So there’s the squirrel, spread eagled and urinating all over the place".
Lucy can never not act. She can’t just tell a story. She has to BE the character in the story-even if it means she’s playing the part of a stimulated squirrel.
Someone asked her about being on the show "The L Word". She asked us back, "Why does everybody hate Jenny?" There was laughing recognition and growling in the audience. "I reckon it’s because she is a conspiring, psycho vixen, troublemaking tramp." Lucy added that everybody was on the side of the lesbians who settle down in the valley and raise children. "A little respect for the tramp, please." She talked about an X-factor. And mentioned Xena. "To have a great hero, you have to have a great villain."
End of part one.
