Sunday at the Asylum convention

[kelbub]

Here’s the link to my account of the Friday and Saturday at the Asylum convention for those who haven’t read it yet: http://kelbub.livejournal.com/2007/05/28/

Sunday:

After about 2-3 hours of sleep I felt well rested and ready for a new day of con fun. And the Sunday morning started on a very healthy note too with me and Jessica skipping breakfast and heading straight to the Leofric to queue for...whatever - (we just didn't want to miss anything!). Since Allison Mack had left the autograph room earlier than Jensen the day before (to go to her panel) we hadn't gotten her autograph yet so getting her autograph was first on our agenda. Allison Mack was also very nice (sensing a theme yet?) and she signed a photo and the event guide for me. I don't watch Smallville so I'm not very familiar with Allison's work, but she is my friend Jessica's favourite actress so meeting Allison meant a lot to her. Allison was the only guest who, that I know of, signed autographs with 'I love u'. I found that very sweet.

Here’s the photo Allison signed for me:

http://pics.livejournal.com/kelbub/pic/0000xzbx/g24

We had planned it so that we would get Justin Hartley and Alan Ritchman's autographs this day too so we headed upstairs to buy headshots of them that they could sign. But while we waited in line to pay for the photos, Jessica (or EagleEyes as is more fitting) noticed someone holding a ticket that read 'Jensen Ackles photo shoot' on it. She told me this and we asked the steward about it and he said they had released additional photo shoot tickets for Jensen which were almost sold out. (Almost - meaning they still had tickets left.) So, naturally, we had to get tickets for a second photo shoot with Jensen. We paid the steward and hurried over to the photo studio to meet Jensen for the sixth (me) and fifth (Jessica) time that weekend.

Jensen was more at ease this day. He smiled more in the photos and just seemed more relaxed. I watched as several girls, and one guy had their pictures taken with him. Then it was my turn and I walked up to Jensen. There was a flare of recognition in his eyes and he nodded to me, smiled and said “Hey!” (I guess he had seen me quite a lot the day before lol). He was even handsomer this day. I came to a halt beside him and asked how he was. And he was doing just fine. :) He put his arm around my waist and pulled me close and I put my around his waist. He stood a lot closer to me in this photo than in the one from the Saturday. When the camera flash had gone off I turned towards him and said "Thank you" (I already told you - I'm very polite...lol) and he said: "No, thank YOU. Cheers!", and then he rubbed my lower back!

I think Jensen is very good at reading people. I read one girl's account of the convention on her LJ and she wrote that she'd been so nervous about meeting Jensen that she, when walking up to him for their photo shoot, had suddenly forgotten her name. She also mentioned she'd been really scared she'd stumble or faint in front of Jensen. According to her account Jensen had picked up on her nervousness and had asked her: "Are you okay?" She'd said: "No. I'm scared". *good girl for telling the truth!* and then Jensen had told her: "Don't be." I really liked reading this. Jensen seems like a very considerate, kind and compassionate person. There are more accounts from the convention of similar situations and the writers all say that Jensen was sensing how they were feeling at the time. I believe he is good at reading people.

By the way, here’s the photo of me and Jensen that we took on Sunday morning: 
http://pics.livejournal.com/kelbub/pic/0000d43c/g24

After having our pictures taken with Jensen for the second time, me and Jessica made our way to the autograph room to get Justin and Alan’s autographs. I spoke to Alan first. He was a really sweet and friendly guy and the first thing he told me was that I looked really tired. lol (Thanks for dissing my looks, Alan! ;) He asked me if I had been dancing [at the disco] all night and I said I had and that I’d only gotten about two hours of sleep. (But in truth, I hadn’t spent all night dancing. Because after the disco I had actually spent an hour or two writing down everything from my coffee lounge with Jensen so I wouldn’t forget anything.) Anyway, Alan kept talking about anything and everything and didn’t seem to be letting me go any time soon. I was of course very happy that he was so friendly towards me but I also felt a bit uncomfortable because I didn’t really know much about him and didn’t quite know what to say unless I was answering his questions to me. Also, there was a line of people behind me (as usual) and I wanted them to get their autographs too. I thanked Alan and quickly moved to the line for Justin.

Here’s the photo Alan signed for me:

http://pics.livejournal.com/kelbub/pic/0000ws13/g24

When I was first, and Jessica second, in line to get Justin’s autograph, Justin just got off his chair and left. Me and Jessica and the other girls kinda groaned in unison, annoyed that we’d just missed our shot, but one of the stewards quickly told us that Justin had just went for a ‘bio break’ (her words, not mine). Since English isn’t our first language, me and Jessica didn’t quite get what she meant by ‘bio break’ and so she had to be overly informative with us and tell us that Justin had ‘just gone to the bathroom’. (OK, so that was embarrassing!) Anyway, he returned about five minutes later, lol, and signed a photo and my event guide for me. Justin didn’t really say much and seemed kinda distracted. I thanked him for signing my stuff and left the room.

Here’s the photo Justin signed for me:

http://pics.livejournal.com/kelbub/pic/0000yqfk/g24

After having gotten the guys’ autographs I went over to the main hall to listen to Nicki Aycox and Brooke Nevin's panel. Jessica, the lucky duck, had won a ticket for the coffee lounge with Alona Tal and Allison Mack and left me at the panel to go meet them. :) (By the way, I can’t believe how lucky we were to both win tickets for a coffee lounge! Me for Jensen’s on Saturday and Jessica for Alona’s and Allison’s on Sunday. It was really great that Jessica won the coffee lounge ticket on Sunday, because like I said Allison is her favourite actress.)

So, by my lonesome, I walked into the main hall and settled on the floor (first row! lol) to listen to Brooke and Nicki talk about working on Supernatural. The panel itself was (regrettably) pretty uneventful. Jessica had attended the Brooke/Alona/Nicki panel the day before when I was at the Jensen coffee lounge and the panel then had been hilarious and great to watch, apparently.

I don’t know what I was expecting really but I remember thinking it was a shame Brooke and Nicki didn’t share more with us than they did because they sure seemed to have the material. Anyway, I eventually gathered up the courage to ask Brooke a question - trying to get her to open up a little about her experiences working on Supernatural - but her answer was short and not very informative so I gave up. Both Nicki and Brooke seemed to be in good spirits though and laughed a lot and seemed genuinely happy to be there. Nicki even shared some personal facts with us and told us that she has a deathly fear of the ocean and that she sometimes has nightmares about waves crashing into her bedroom and drowning her. Poor thing!

After the Brooke/Nicki panel was the Allison Mack panel so I just stayed in my very good ‘seat’ on the floor and waited for Jessica to come back from her coffee lounge. She was a bit late and didn’t show up until after about ten minutes into the panel. We listened to Allison talk about Smallville and her other work, her interests and her love for chocolate. Then she was asked to sing for us and surprised us all by actually doing so. She was really good at singing and she seemed like a really nice, down to earth person. My favourite part of the panel was when someone asked Allison why she in an audio commentary for Smallville season 4 had laughed during a scene where Jensen unties a bare-chested Tom Welling from a cross. Her answer was that to her the scene was kind of homoerotic and she thought that was funny. lol I’m pretty sure that thought had crossed other people’s minds too because there was a roar of laughter from the crowd when she said that.

Here are some photos from the Allison Mack panel:

http://pics.livejournal.com/kelbub/pic/0002txsd/g24

http://pics.livejournal.com/kelbub/pic/0002w7es/g24

http://pics.livejournal.com/kelbub/pic/0002xabk/g24

After the Allison panel was the Justin Hartley panel and at this point people were starting to realize they would have to stick around if they wanted good seats for Jensen’s panel later that day. Me and Jessica decided we should stay during the Justin and Alan panels and try to get seats whenever the Smallville fans, hopefully, left their seats after each of their panels. Nobody was leaving their seat though. It seemed like every Supernatural fan in the building had planned ahead for the Jensen panel because apparently people had been queuing since seven in the morning to get a seat and keep it for the day. There wasn’t a chance in hell that we’d get seats in the first 15 or so rows. There were also new rules for the Jensen panel. People would not be allowed to sit on the floor (my favourite spot! sniff) or stand at the sides of the hall. Everyone had to be seated for Jensen’s second panel. *grumble*

Anyway, Jessica left again to go have her picture taken with Brooke, Nicki and Alona and I remained in the main hall just standing around since there were no free seats. Justin came into the room and sat down in an armchair opposite the panel host (Andrew/Andy) and I watched for a while from the side of the stage before deciding to go check if Jessica or I had won seats for the second Jensen coffee lounge. I left the room, walking in a fast pace because that’s how I walk lol. I checked the board for the coffee lounge winners and realized with a heavy sigh that neither I nor Jessica had won this time around. Well, we were lucky winners anyway. After having checked the board I decided to go back into the main hall and watch the rest of Justin’s panel while I waited for Jessica to return.

I walked inside and stopped to lean against a pillar at the side of the stage (right where I’d been standing before) while I watched the panel. Suddenly I heard Justin say “There you are” or “Hey you!” I was watching one of the TV screens beside the stage at the time and noticed that Justin seemed to be looking in what could possibly be my direction. I averted my eyes from the screen to look at the stage and noticed that yes, Justin was in fact looking at me. Once again he said something to get the attention of the person he was talking to and still he was looking at me, so I kinda pointed at my own chest, disbelievingly and curiously, as if asking “Are you talking to me?”

Yeah, that was an affirmative, because Justin said: “Yeah, you.”

Okay, so that was creepy.

“We were just talking about you,” Justin continued, still looking at me.

Right then Jessica walked up to me, seemingly just as puzzled by Justin’s sudden and weird interest in me.

I looked back at Justin and was like “Huh? Me?” Is he joking?

Then Justin said “Come up here!” and motioned for me to come join him on stage.

No way, Jose! was the first thing that came to my mind. There was just no way I’d get up on stage in front of several hundred people to talk to this guy that I knew nothing about (I haven’t seen Justin in anything and know very little about him). I waved him off and shook my head in indication that I was fine staying right where I was, thank you very much.

Justin tried again to get me to come on stage but I still refused, so he gave up and instead said: “Where did you go? Or more importantly…(and the following was said in a voice that just couldn’t be misinterpreted)…do you feel better?”

Maybe it’s just because I have a dirty mind, or maybe it was the fact that I had just an hour earlier been told that Justin had to take a ‘bio break’, but I instantly knew what he was hinting at. Do you feel better after having used the bathroom?

The first thought/reply to pop into my head was: No, but I feel relieved. lol It was a reply that would fit well with his joke but also be the truth since I wasn’t exactly feeling better after having found out I didn’t win a ticket for the Sunday Jensen coffee lounge. lol I did however manage to stop myself from blurting out that answer, thank God, and instead I smirked at him and nodded, while thinking that after refusing to go on stage the least  I could do was play along.

A roar of laughter erupted from the audience because, of course, me nodding meant that I’d just (unknowingly, they thought) admitted to using the bathroom for whatever reason.

Justin laughed too and then said something about me being a good sport. lol (Heck, yeah, I’m a good sport! And y’all will know just how good of a sport I am when you read what Justin said about me after I had left the main hall to go check who’d won the Jensen coffee lounge.):

”ANYWAY. Justin is frikkin HILARIOUS. Seriously! Dude, he totally called a fangirl who got up and walked out at one point: (transcript)

ANDREW: Have you got a question or are you just trying to get to a seat?

JUSTIN: Are you leaving? Wait a minute! Hey blonde girl with green and black stripes!

JUSTIN: Get her! *makes to run off stage*

ANDREW: If no ones got any questions, let's talk about Aquaman

JUSTIN: *transfixed* We could do that, but she's like seriously not coming back!

JUSTIN: I honestly thought she was being cute, like pretending to leave, but she just left!

ANDREW: You know what it is. Jen-

JUSTIN: *cuts in* diarrhoea maybe?

Then she comes back and Justin's like 'HEY! WHERE'D YOU GO?!'

JUSTIN: The most important question. Do you feel better?!

THE GIRL: Er, yeah? *confused*

THE REST OF US: *cracks up*”

(Source:  http://purplephoenix03.livejournal.com/118618.html)

Like I said, some people didn’t quite get the fact that I was just playing along. lol Here’s another notice about what Justin said about me:

“At 2.00 pm Sam and I decided to go and see Justin Hartley's stage talk so we said goodbye to Morgan and went back to the panel room. Man, I laughed my ass off! Justin was on crack, he had to be! He made us laugh our asses off; he kept digressing, kept forgetting what the original question was, then he saw a girl leaving the room and was like 'she's leaving the room. Hey, you. Yes, you the girl with the striped-shirt' but the girl didn't turn and he started being silly about where she was going and then was asked a question by Paul but instead of replying he just said 'no, but she's really not coming back', And when she did come back? He talked to her and just - man, poor girl! lol Then a guy sitting behind us asked a question except Justin didn't understand a word so he actually got off stage and ran down the ail to come face to face with the guy, which, as you can imagine, made the crowd go wild again lol”

(Source:  http://castalie.livejournal.com/523363.html)

After Justin’s panel it was time for Alan to be ‘interrogated’ by the fans. His panel was pretty boring - not because Alan was boring or anything but because I was tired of standing and because, quite frankly, I was not very interested in conversations about his role as Aquaman on Smallville. Also, everyone was pretty much just waiting around for Jensen’s panel to start. Alan was asked to sing (there was a person in the crowd that day that kept asking the actors if they could sing for us) and he did. He was, like Allison Mack, very good at singing.

During Alan’s panel, Jensen and ten lucky people were busy talking at his second coffee lounge. Here’s Freeyoursoul’s account of the Sunday coffee lounge:

http://z14.invisionfree.com/Supernatural/index.php?showtopic=19135&hl=

(I think you have to be registered at that forum to read her post, but trust me it’s worth registering for.)

When Alan’s panel was over, Jessica took off to have her picture taken with Allison, Justin and Alan while I looked around in despair at all the taken seats in the main hall. There didn’t seem to be any possibility of getting a good seat for the Jensen panel. Actually, we’d be lucky if we got a seat at all! Just as I thought this, one of the stewards called out that everyone had to leave the main hall because the chairs had been moved around too much and were now a ‘fire hazard’. Cries of discontent, groans and angry grunts were heard but people actually obeyed and began to vacate the room. I started towards the exit as well but since I had been up front by the stage the entire time and the exits were at the back of the hall I would be last to leave the room and people had started to crowd outside the doors to the main hall and wouldn’t let the rest of us out. (I guess they wanted to be first in line as soon as the doors opened again.)

Anyway, I waited inside the doors while the stewards tried to get people to move back so that the last of us could get out. But people wouldn’t move so we were stuck inside the hall. Then a steward said that some fans could help realign the chairs and thus get to stay in the hall. They pointed at ten people, myself included, to help them with the chairs. So I did and then when the doors opened for the people standing outside me and the others that had arranged the chairs got a head start at getting good seats. The first three rows had already been promised to those who had waited since seven in the morning but rows four to twenty-something were all free. I got a seat at the fourth row (centre) and tried to hold a seat for Jessica, who still hadn’t come back from her latest photo shoot. The stewards immediately told us that nobody was allowed to hold seats for anyone so I had to give up Jessica’s seat. But fortunately, just as Jessica found me in the crowd a steward announced that they had a free seat on second row and I told Jessica to take it and she did. lol It’s quite amazing how lucky we were this weekend. I mean, at first we had no seats at all in the panel room and still we ended up getting seats on second and fourth row. Not bad!

Before Jensen’s panel there was an auction where they auctioned off Jensen photos, a Supernatural interview CD, paintings etc and I was astonished by how much money people were willing to pay for these things. Two people bought a Supernatural CD and a signed photo of Jensen for a shitload of cash. I love Jensen and I love Supernatural but I would’ve never spent THAT much money on a CD or a photo.

When the auction had ended it was finally time for the second Jensen panel. The room was full of people - I’m pretty sure all 700 something convention attendees, all the stewards and all the organisers were there. The other actors were there too, watching from the balcony. The air was thick and lacked of oxygen and the heat was almost unbearable. But as soon as Jensen got on stage I forgot all about that.

Here’s a clip of Jensen before the panel session began:

Click to view

Jensen was as beautiful as ever and he answered people’s questions with grace and humour. I thought some of the things people asked were a bit off to say the least but Jensen handled them well. To be honest I don’t have the energy or the patience to write up the entire panel right now but my pal Ash, known as purplephoenix03 (at LJ.com), wrote a transcript of the Sunday Jensen panel. It’s a PDF file and can be downloaded from here:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ahshgi

Be sure to check out Ash’s LJ for more Supernatural related stuff: http://purplephoenix03.livejournal.com/

After the panel the other actors joined Jensen on stage to thank us fans and there were a couple of minutes of us applauding them and them applauding us and the organisers of the event. Click link for a clip of the guests on stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue0_VQbO2zc

After the fans, stewards and organisers had been properly thanked the actors were all ushered out of the room and out of the hotel while the rest of us were forced to stay inside the main hall.

That was the last I saw of Jensen. *sniff* I really missed him and the other fans of the show and for the last days of my vacation (also spent in London) I was sad and felt empty inside. Post-Asylum depression aside, my trip to England and the convention was awesome and is definitely one of the highlights of my life.

PS. I’ve got a treat for ya! My friend Jessica’s brother managed to recode the video clips I had from the convention. Check them out at my profile on youtube.com:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kellybubble

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to watch the reruns of Supernatural every Thursday and Sunday on the CW.