Rapture!Fest 2012 ~ Memories of 6/9 ♥ ♋
PIC BY aletter2elise
LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
It seems like longer than just 2 weeks since I was in NYC, hanging with peeps & Leeeeee Tergesen after seeing "Rapture Blister Burn"! More pics to follow in the future (can't wait to see the pics on trillingstar's camera, eeeee!). Below is a pic collage from my iPhone that I took that evening with Lee playing with the Oz Dolls. It was Lee's idea to put Beecher!Doll on his shoulder for the photos, lol...and cwitch provided Beecher!Doll with the next best thing to Keller!Doll (who stayed back at home 'in the hole'), a cellphone with a still of Chris Keller to admire. ;>
The play was great...the themes about women's opinions of other women and their personal choices of being married w/children or single w/the career life read loud and clear, and I remember 'guffawing' more than once at the quick & witty dialogue. Lee was the only male in the almost exclusively-female cast and eased into his role quite well (it really picked up for me around the 3rd scene or so, in a scene with Lee & Amy Brenneman sitting in patio chairs, talking about old times).
I loved the exterior of the theater (dang it, never did get the nighttime shot I wanted of it, doh!). It’s very colorful, and our seats were fantastic (up front, stage left), where you could see the actors extremely up close & personal! The scene I mentioned above was right in front of us, and a scene later on when Amy was sprawled atop a shirtless Lee was right in front of a gaggle of peeps, I bet they were elated (tobyfan must have been in heaven)! :D
"...and then, this is where it gets weird..."
When it was over and everyone was exiting down the staircase inside the theater, a man looked at me as we were walking down (I was like, wuh?) and said, "You’re the writer?" and he asked if I was the lady who wrote the play (Gina Gionfriddo). o_O Um, noooo, sorry sir! LOL IT WAS SO WEIRD, I looked around at the other peeps and they too were, like, wuhhh? I finally saw what she looks like and aside from the dark hair, I see no resemblance (I relayed the story to Lee later on, he thought it as weird too, lol). Did I just have that *PLAYWRIGHT GLOW* about me? I don’t even know, but that was definitely a weird start to a very fun evening.
When all the fangirls made it outside, Lee finally filed out of the theater and started his round of hello's. I was about the last one for him to get to, and I wasn’t going to presume he remembered me (lol!) so I said, "Colleen..." when he came in for a handshake and then a hug. He lit up a bit (like a lightbulb went off in his head, heh) and said, "Ah, Yuko was asking me if the fan who makes the dolls was going to be here!" (cue internal ''EEEEEE!!', because srsly, even Yuko remembered me, hee!) and I said, "Yessss, here I am, and I have a couple of new things to show you later on..." (SO MYSTERIOUS, LOL) We all then followed Lee across the street to the West Bank Cafe, his gaggle of peeps following behind like baby ducks, per usual. ;)
The 'timeline' of the get-together might be off a bit in my head (as Lee was bouncing around from fangirl to fangirl like a rubber ball at one point), but what I remember quite well was the end of the night, up on a rooftop with trillingstar (♫ 'UP ON A ROOOOOOF...' ♫), reliving the entire encounter, detail by detail, to engrain it into our brains: trillingstar: "Ok...so we got to the theater-"
(...and it went on from there, detail by detail, the finest of minutiae...lol)
trillingstar: "...la la la and then I went inside, but you stayed out for a little bit-"
(ten minutes later)
colleendetroit: "...and then there was that guy who thought I was the playwright-"
trillingstar: "RIGHT?"
colleendetroit: "DOOD."...(etc, etc, etc) LOL SO, I'm hoping whatever I forgot, trillingstar will fill in! ;)
LEE MEMORIES BEHIND ↓ THIS CUT
LEE & HIS 'GO MY WAY ~ HILLBILLIES' YOUTUBE VIDEO
Lee came over and plopped down next to me in the booth (I was on the end) and said, "So, whaddya think of my vid?" [Lee had shared it with fanfromfla the week before, who posted it @ YouTube here] and before I could answer, he said, "You hate it. You HATE it. I mean, you make all the vids, you would knowwww, right? She hates it - you hate it!" HAHA omg I asked, "Is it because I didn't leave a comment yet? GEEZ LEE, I just saw it!" :P In a failed effort to tell him I didn’t hate it, he wouldn’t hear more of it so I just had to condede that, yes, I hated it (lol, of course I don’t, but I think Lee is a bit of a masochist and wanted to feel my scorn, lol). I mentioned that the guitar he was using in the vid looked like the guitar I have (I just remembered my guitar is named Drake, haha, if only I’d brought *that* up!) and he said it was his niece's guitar (I remember her from MobFest 2010).
I remember mentioned something about the crazy number of views on some of my Oz videos and Lee said, "Yeah, well you know who all those hits are from..." and then he raised an eyebrow.
MOI: "They’re all from you, aren’t they, Lee?"
LEE: "YEP."
MOI: "You’re on Youtube, watching all the vids I made of you because you’re a narcissist, right?"
LEE: "YEP."LOL, so I guess Lee's been on my YouTube channel? ^_^ When I met him for the first time in 2008, I left him with a DVD of some of my favorite B/K vids (+ an Eddie Drake vid) for him to watch at his leisurrrre...I guess he did!
PIC by toby_fan
RANDOM NAKED LEE
I can't remember when (probably when Lee was sitting with us, posing dolls and taking pics...omg, just typing that makes me laugh) that we were talking OZ and he brought up the "MEN OF OZ" website (he even referred to it as "MOO", lol, as fans know it as) where they posted nothing but naked stills of the actors on the show. I told him, "You know that's made by gays, for the gays, right? I mean, WE enjoy it, don't get me wrong..." haha
LEE & THE PLAY
Lee asked us what we thought of the play...I told him, "It wasn’t just a play, it was an education," he seemed to appreciate that and it was true, imo. Every woman in that room could probably identify with one or more of the points made in the play, the theme was universal. I did mention that the 'switch' was too easy (the two females basically switch roles/lives/homes), but that’s what made it fun and they just rolled with it.
Then I asked him, "What I want to know is, where did Don get his weed...because that was some serious shit he was on!" Lee's character was a pothead and must have been 'smoking' something crazy when he hooted and hollered his way through a scene. Then I mentioned Cheech & Chong's "Up In Smoke" to cwitch that was playing in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery the next week and "Nightmare on Elm Street" the week before, and somehow got into a short conversation with Lee about horror movies and I mentioned how when I saw the Freddy Kreuger movie as a kid and the scene where his claws come up out of the bathtub, I was always scared his claws were going to come up out of the toilet and thrash me to death (why yes, this is a normal conversation for me, even when talking to a celebrity, hahaha). I asked WHY must they always have scary scenes in a bathroom, the one place where you're supposed to feel safe & secure behind a locked door? WHY? Whyyyyyyyyyy? :P
LEE & THE OZ DOLLS
I’d brought along three Oz Dolls (Beecher, Said & Adebisi) to show Lee because the latter two are new, and when I had them out on the table (they were doing naughty things to each other, I think), and totalee_smitten's friend, Barb, who was sitting next to Lee across the booth said, "I didn’t know they made dolls for this show." I saw Lee was listening and I answered, "They don’t, but *I* do." and made a maniacal grin to go along with it, haha. I explained how it started as a whim, and then turned into an art project and how I’ve received many requests over the years from people visiting my website asking if they were for sale, or if I could make more sets, but I said no, not gonna happen. They are to remain one-of-a-kind forevahhhh! ♥ Thank you to everyone for the compliments on the dolls, I loved being able to share them in person so the details can be seen up close and personal. :D
I think it was after that, that Lee jumped up and came back over and scooted in next to me on the booth and said, "Ok, OK...come on, show me what you got." I think he asked where Keller was, and I said he was in the hole and couldn’t come. ;) Lee was impressed with the details (YAY) and took pics of them with his iPhone and was sending them to Yuko (and maybe Eamonn, I hope! Lee said Eamonn was ‘heartbroken’ that he didn’t have a doll...Lee is so dramatic, heh). Lee even took a pic of Said’s tiny Koran in the palm of my hand, to show the detail of the actual pages inside (and for a fleeting second, I realized a pics of my dolls and tiny Koran was going to be in Lee’s iPhone, lol). ♥
I told Lee how I think this is it, that I’m finally done with the Oz Dolls and he stopped me and said, "I hope you don’t mind this, but-""Really...really, these are just great." \o/ THEN he said, "You know what you gotta do now...." (NO...WHAT, LEE?) He said, "Stop animation. Scenes from Oz, with these dolls." HAH, I told him I had thought of that and said I had the idea before Robot Chicken, tyvm and Lee said (in jest, of course!), "Fucking Seth Green. FUCK him." LOL I added, "Well, if I DO make vids like that, you know what people are going to say. They’re gonna say, 'WOW, you have a lot of free time on your hands,' (and Lee raised an eyebrow and gestured towards the dolls, and said, "Well...") HAHA, but told him, I’m just going to blame it all on you. I will make sure to mention that LEE TERGESEN TOLD ME to do it." :P
More of Lee with the Oz Dolls here in a video from that night. :)
LEE & LEELONI
When it came time for signing things, Lee came back and sat down between trillingstar and me because I wanted the 'photo op' of us 3 together, with Lee holding up the leeloni banner that I printed out (YAY!). Lee looked at it, asking, "What is this?" and while I quickly explained, he was muttering things like 'that jerk', 'what an asshole' (hah) about Meloni. It was kinda cute, Lee’s mock scorn for him (Does Lee mock? IS THERE TENSION IN LEELONI LAND? lol Sexual tension, yeah huh.). I also had a business card from The Chowder Barge here in L.A. (Eddie Drake’s bar on WANTED) and I said, "Remember this?" and he said, "Yeah, that was my bar!" and then was reading it, flipping it over, saying, "Where the fuck do you want me to sign it?" haha On the back Lee, just flip it over...it’s ok, we’ll walk you through this... (hehe) ...and the last thing he signed was the Playbill and thought a bit on what to write and finally settled on "DETROIT ROCK CITY" (and I was personally amused, especially since I never mentioned that night about my nickname being Colleen 'Detroit', so clearly he remembered all on his own. HOLLAH.)
I went to put the Chowder Barge business card back in my wallet for safe keeping, I saw one of my Chrome Skies business cards so I pulled one out, signed my name on the back (lol) and thrust it over to Lee, I think it got passed along the fangirl chain. He looked at it and laughed, "You even signed it!" Heck yeah, tit for tat! ; )
MORE RANDOM LEE
• Somewhere there's a pic with Lee giving me a smooch on the cheek...SOMEDAY I WILL SEE THIS PICTURE. SOMEDAY. Also the classic :P Lee!tongue pic, hah! ;>
• Before he was getting ready to leave, Lee saw a message on his iPhone from Yuko that asked him to bring pudding home, but the waitress said it was too late. Lee mocked panic, crying, "FUCK, she’s gonna kill me. I’m dead! lol I doubt it, Lee.
YING~YANG + LEE SAMMICH LURVE
PIC BY aletter2elise
It was so fun to meet peeps who I’ve known online but hadn’t yet met in person and also to have a chance to see peeps from before as well ~ waves @ aletter2elise, fans hagiologic ;D & blows kisses @ discreetmadchen (lol I remember doing that during the night from across the tables!). trillingstar and I had a great conversation with ✿milti during the play intermission, and continued the gab later on in the evening...that was great, and the size of the group was *just right* that we all had a chance to chat with Lee and gab together at the tables. I was super impressed by sophytofu's dedication by traveling all the way from Sweden, that's quite the trip! :D
Can't wait to do it again, I'll start saving now, ay? :)
\oo/