AgtSpooky's Hangout

Wow, I barely know where to start with my adventure at Cyphan 2 with my buddy charityflint this past weekend. It was one of the best days I've had this entire year. :-)

My husband originally told me about the convention because it was featuring FOUR stars from the ORIGINAL Battlestar Galactica. I was only eight years old back then, but I had the biggest crush on Starbuck and I absolutely loved the show. So when I found out that Dirk Benedict, Richard Hatch, Herb Jefferson Jr. and Jack Stauffer were going to be there, wild horses couldn't have kept me away. :-) Plus Jason Carter was going to be there, too! Bonus!

Charity and I had no idea what to expect. Would this be like the awful Creation cons where you get 3 seconds with each actor? Would there be a mob of people like at Creation? There were no assigned seats for the Q&A, so we had no idea what time to get in line.

Turns out we were worried for absolutely nothing. This was the most fun, well-run, relaxed cons I've been to in years. Not only were there actor Q&A panels, but gaming panels, costuming panels, various TV show discussion panels, a room for movie screenings and a very large dealers room. The costumes people were wearing were amazing. It was basically Star Wars or Steampunk, with a few faries and a Godzilla thrown in. *g* As for total number of attendees - I'd say there were maybe 100-150 fans there. A small, kind of intimate con which worked out so well when it came to meeting the actors.

All of the actors attending the con were at a row of tables right in the middle of the dealer's room. I was expecting a line of 10 deep waiting for autographs and pictures. Imagine my surprise when there were only 1 or 2 people in line! What was great was that all of the actors were there all day long for three days, so there was no huge rush like with Creation when you have 1 hour to get 400 fans through. Cheers to Cyphan 2 for doing it their way instead because it worked out beautifully.

Not knowing what to expect, Charity and I got there early, as soon as the convention opened, so most of the actors were still getting themselves set up at their tables. We spied Jason Carter first, who was set up and ready to go, so we went over to his table. Most of you know Jason as Ranger Marcus Cole from Babylon 5. While I loved him on that, he was also on one of my favorite shows, The Sentinel and did a horror movie called Demon Under Glass with one of the stars from The Sentinel.

Jason was AMAZING. Seriously, I can't say enough about him. He was just so absolutely thrilled to meet us and is just so appreciative of his fans. He was laughing and joking with us and it was so nice to not be rushed through a line, but to be able to have an actual conversation with an actor you like.

I mentioned Demon Under Glass to him and that got us talking about Garett Maggart from The Sentinel, which led to him talking about filming his episode, Attraction. Get this, all you Sentinel fans! He told us a story I had never heard before. I had remarked that we were sorry his character died a firey death in a car bomb and he told us about filming that scene. He even remembered it was a red Porche! So they filmed him getting into the car, called cut, then put a second red Porche on the street that was rigged with a HELL of a lot of explosives. They all got back a safe distance and they blew the car up. Well, you know that fake tint you can put on your car windows yourself? They had done that to the Porche and the heat from the explosion melted the plastic right to the window, so instead of the glass blowing out in pieces, it turned into a giant flaming ball that was projected up FIVE STORIES and went through the window of an apartment! Thank god no one was hurt, but Jason said they all turned and saw this poor man standing on his balcony with a WTF expression on his face with a shattered window! LOL! Now all you Sentinel fans on my flist will remember that TS was famous for this kind of…mishap when it came to explosions. You all know the story about what happened when the filmed Siege, right? [snort]

After our autographs we asked to get our picture with Jason and OMG, what a HOOT that turned out to be! He jumped up and came bounding out from behind his table and just grabbed me into this HUGE hug and started dancing around with me. I was laughing SO hard. He kept going, "put your hands here, no here, no like this" until I basically ended up with what looked like a prom picture with him. I LOVE IT! Charity's photo was equally as funny, as it looks like they're doing the waltz.

So here's Jason and I now, and Jason back when he was Marcus: