tavie.com

Back from the whirlwind weekend in Toronto with the goils to attend the first Hedwig and the Angry Inch Hed-head convention.

The trip: great. I only got really sad a couple times and my goils were there to hug me and distract me. My sister was, too. (Being a Hed-head herself, she was also in attendance.) Wandered around Toronto, visiting MAC stores and yarn shops. Called up the nerve to call up Jim Millan (remembered as the director of the KITH tours and various fabulous plays in Toronto, including The Chet Baker Story and the Toronto production of Hedwig) and ended up having a strange but fun lunch semi-with him. (He was eating at a sushi place with the cast of his current production, and since my group was so large we ended up scattered around the restaurant, with Jim visiting our tables cocktail-host-style and chatting with various groupings of us.)

The convention: Conventions are definitely not my scene-- except for anthro conventions, I usually enjoy those-- because of my Dad's Fan History and the tales of creepy geeks (as opposed to regular geeks, who I love.) This one started out slow and boring, badly lit and awkwardly set up. There were some terrible tribute bands. But eventually they got the little kid, Ben something-something who played young Hansel in the movie, up to do the "Freaks" dance, and then John Cameron Mitchell started answering questions from the audience, and those things were worth every minute. The man is so charming and hilarious. When he started asking for questions, I turned to Kitana and Tara on either side of me and whispered urgently, "Oh, I wish he'd do the Yorkshire accent from The Secret Garden! Oh, I hope someone asks him that! I wish I had the guts to ask him that!" I kept this up ad nauseum. I'm sure both of them wanted to smack me.

And then something amazing happened. Someone asked him about past roles he was proud of and he mentioned The Secret Garden. I started muttering, "Do the accent, do the accent, do the accent" --and heard myself getting louder and louder-- "do the accent, do the accent, do the accent"-- and suddenly I was shouting it-- "DO THE ACCENT!" And John heard me, and he looked at me, and smiled, and said in thick Yorkshire, "Hello there, Mary! I'm Martha's brother, Dickon!" And sang a snippet, "When a thing is wick, it has a life about it", and the crowd went wild, and I was ecstatic. So that, my friends, that was my favourite moment of the weekend. Even better than Lord Jim calling me back.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 5:41 PM | shower me with attention