August 4, 2000people were met,
trout were violatedWritten for general audiences, general as in lotsa people, not in G-rated. C'mon, it's Scapers I'm talking about.
Kathe @ ScaperCon: Adventures in Dumbassness
August 4-7, 2000Concourse A-GateA2
Jacksonville International Airport
5:Something Hellish AMSo ScaperCon finally begins, fourteen hours or so after it should have. Not surprisingly, me making more blasphemous remarks than usual this week probably explains why my flight from Atlanta to St. Louis got canceled. No Uncle Doug's margaritas for Jakey dammit! Yeah, I'm quoting "Daria" [This week's episode saw Daria sorta kinda hooking up with Jane's soon to be ex, Tom. I'm emboldened that if a righteous chick like Daria can get an intelligent and good looking guy then so can I. Yeah, I'm getting courage from a cartoon character. [Nat: "We need help!"] Wonder what I would have turned out like if I had watched Daria as a kid instead of Thundercats and GI Joe, "And knowing is half the battle."
· Forgot to set the VCR to tape on FRIDAY but I've got that first hour of Ultraviolet. Whee.
· Further Adventures in Snark: You've reached "Elite Sky Miles" status. Oh, I'm so frelling proud.
· The Clarion Airport Shuttle. The only way to fly.
· Forgot to bring my Hawaiian shirt. Damn! "No Don Ho karaoke for Jakey, either!"Dionne wants me to write about Funky Vibes Weekend while I'm at the airport. I can see it now-- I'm relating James' quest to turn his blood into alcohol and then suddenly James' house is
ascending to 35,000 ft to avoid that nasty thunderstorm down there. Oh yeah, and stop calling me Shirley. -- Oh yeah, that would be a *blast*.Atlanta Airport
Approx 7 amI'm seeing all these people in the airport that either look like people I know or people from movies. Like the guy who sat behind me from Jax looked eerily like Jason Biggs. Wanted to tell him his twin was chillin' in Tally. But now, sitting at my gate with an hour to wait, when not leering at the guy that just got off the gate opposite me, I'm keeping my eyes peeled for anyone obviously screaming "SCAPER!!" Aside for a fondess for yellow, tech pants or leather, I don't have a whole lot to go on. Oh look, there's Ed McMahon's doppleganger. Freaky.
Took a 'troll down the length of Concourse D trying to find a food place that did not have a line to Timbuktu, and kept waiting to see Loki freaking the hell out of some nun and Bartleby sitting
watching the world go by.There's a guy in a bright yellow shirt sitting in the gate area, yet somehow I don't think I'm going to see him at the Founteac later.
There's something psychotically attractive about West Point guys. The two here seem to be going to Jackson, MS. Makes sense, the shaved heads and attitude wouldn't be out of place there at all. [Correction: They went to St. Louis. Who knew?]
And so ends any play by play chronicling of my ScaperCon experience. I freaking gave that job over to Natalie and her evil Book o' Quotes.
[…]
Friday August 4, 2000
9 amI arrived safely at the claustrophobic St. Louis Airport, having flashbacks to Lincoln every five seconds, and retrieved me bag. Go me! I figured out the Red Phone, made sure I wasn't launching nukes or something, and was told to book it to the pick up point because the shuttle would be there in a couple of minutes. I walked outside and saw some women sitting in the bus shelter. Without knowing it I had caught sight of my first Scapers. Trying to be all cool if
indeed they were Scapers, I turned so that the PK symbol I had stitched into my back pack was facing them. No luck. The shuttle came and everyone started coming towards me, "Scapers?" I asked. I happily set myself in the back of the van with Zakalwe and a terrified wedding guest. We got to the hotel....which I figured out later was the love child of Cinderella's chateau and the Labyrinth [thank God a tight clad Bowie didn't jump out from any corners]...I grabbed my bag from the driver, Mark, and had to restrain myself from giggling madly right then and there. I
started towards the doors and spied Sarah in the lobby. She saw me to and we threw up our hands like two sleep deprived cheerleaders.Sarah escorted me to her hotel room so I could stow my stuff and just to show you how warped my brain was already at that point, I don't even remember if I saw Natalie and Nick there. Shit, and it was only to get worse. Somehow I ended up in Gigi's room and was
fronted with all these beautiful and well, frantic ladies answering to Heather, Gigi and frell, I know other people were in there too. Miranda showed up around that time too, and I recognized her as one of the people from the shuttle ride. Rock. She's got a repository
of style I really really need to get a hold of. After some mucking around Gigi set us to work while the blessed committee went out for some food. I got the task of putting together packs of Season One cards...and keeping Natalie away from the Larraq cards as best as I possibly could. Read: Not Very Well. She was sitting there and sighing over him for a good half hour, I swear.Around this same time I got to introduced to Matthew, Jason and Pru. Matthew, as has already been said numerous places, is a dead ringer for Crais' other younger brother and I think the man has the ability to independently flirt with five different women all at the same time. Jason has the coolest hair I've ever seen, it's got to be conscious I swear. And Jason provided us with so many pictures from the weekend with his digital camera [including one of my chest, as I was half passed out on Sunday] that he deserves a big ole' whoppin round of applause right now. And now Pru...at first I wanted to adopt Pru and take her home with me...then I scrapped that idea and wanted her to adopt *me*. And aside from being what Sarah dubbed as The ScaperCon Entertainment Center, Pru used to baby-sit Ioan Gruffudd; aka, Kathe's New Obsession. So I probably annoyed the hell outta Pru by slipping into what passes as my British accent and trying to pick up any of her vocab. I'm a vocab/slang leech. So sue me.
We packed more an more people into Gigi's room. Sarah played answering machine for Gigi and tried not to wake up Heather's brother in the next room. Dabee dropped off the six foot trout,
excuse me, IDGET and Heather came back with her CDs. Innocent non connected events? Yeah, on the surface but this combination would result in my brain being scarred for the rest of my natural life. I'm gonna be eighty and still traumatizing my fellow nursing home residents with this tale. Heather sticks on this song that I'm unofficially titling "I Wanna" since I don't really feel like perusing around the net to see if I can find it, traumatized as I am. So Heather sticks on the song and immediately Matthew and Amy start dancing to it. Oh yeah, I met Amy around this time too. I don't really remember when because I was too busy keeping my ass safe from Matthew's camera and promising a pic later when I had more ass enhancing pants on. So anyway, I do have a picture of Amy and Matt doing their hilarious little dance but after that I
need my mind wiped clean. See, the song starts off repeating, "I wanna, I wanna" but then moves into the meat of the song [pun intended], "I wanna fuck you in the ass". Now Matthew and Amy, and eventually Theresa get a hold of the trout and start violating it ten different ways till Sunday. Camera flashes are going off like crazy, I fell over and hit my head hard on the floor and all I could think about was the underage eyes of Dani witnessing this whole spectacle. Freaked as I was, I was immediately glad I had spent the money to party the weekend away with this crew.I spent the next few hours in the Farscape Squatters Village in the lobby which turned out to be the best place for spotting people as they arrived. Soon we had Corde and Tinka presenting me
with bottles of French's Mustard hidden behind Bongo, John [Elflore] hanging out with Rachel on the floor, Sarah, Natalie and I skimming through Ann's famous notebooks, several of us trying to explain to Robert just exactly what the Shippers List was. How soon he was to find out. *eg*We started gathering in the bar around seven or so, the Shippers having staked out the couch area closest to the screen. No one can accuse us of being unprepared in our obsession. I ordered my margarita, to several groans. Now what was that about? <snerk> And since Shaye was absent from ScaperCon, I was without my twin. Natalie and I spent several hours trying to find a surrogate Shaye for me, but then finally decided that I would have to play Shaye as well as myself. So there I am, happily sipping my margarita, and I hear Shaye in the corner of my brain, "You and your damn margarita." Damn twins. As is becoming apparent, if you give me alcohol, you just get the normal Kathe Spectacle...just upped a bit. So this explains why at one point I was standing up in front of the table waving my arms about...and doing it another
two times because everyone had to get a picture of it. I was doing this for a purpose, to explain some point, but for the life of me I can't remember what exactly it was. This is why it's good
to hang out with sober people, they can remember these things for you.Lemme just say there is nothing like watching an episode of Farscape with a bunch of other Scapers, eighty by Sarah's rough count, and then your Shipper buds doing what they do best,
spazzing up a storm. When the infamous "hot tub" scene with John and Jenavia came on the entire bar erupted into groans, hisses and just general ill will to my favourite little PK Skank. I
meanwhile was smiling and nodding, happy that John was getting some. At the commercial break everyone immediately started gabbing about what we had just scene. I got up, pointed to my hand and defended him. "This! This has been his sex life for god knows how long...He's getting some, I'm happy for him!" Between that and my less than stellar reaction to the tag scene, Tinka apparently figured out that I am a pure shipper; meaning that I'm just happy if people are getting laid, or something like that. After the entire Scaper population of the bar had finished sufficiently spazzing, it seems that Heather started a chant of "Shipper! Shipper!" for our little enclave. Frelling cool.I retreated with some of the Shippers back to the Squatters Lobby and hung out there till the second showing of Farscape at eleven. By this time my total intake of food an alcohol had been as follows:
One bagel
One glass orange juice
Two comparatively weak margaritas [during the first showing]
Small plate of finger foodsI was to follow this lovely food intake with two much stronger margaritas during the second showing. I was still fine by the third one; but when Tenebrae bought me that fourth one in payment for getting up to get him a beer, the fourth one that I drank in ten minutes…I was one happy Scaper. I somehow limped out to Sarah's Explorer, probably jacking up my strapless bra all the way, and hopped in the back with Tinka. I know Tinka and I had a conversation, but what the content was outside of Corde running for corner in her home county, I will never know. There's a quote from Sarah that I think might reflect my state when we got back
to the hotel, "You're standing up, you're conscious, that's good." Now whether that's in reference to me or not, I can't be sure. There was a lot of drunkenness of about. I trudged back to my room, managed somehow to get that frelling magnetic lock open on the first try [I think being drunk helps me with that, couldn't do it again the rest of the weekend.] and accidentally woke up Nick who had fallen asleep face down on his bed. When Natalie came in later, she asserts that I was already passed out in our bed. Lemme take this moment to officially assert that it's called SLEEPING. Passing out constitutes being awake and
functioning and then…not. But then again, that's how it could have happened.
And thus ends Friday @ ScaperCon.
