Asylum Europe convention
So, I figured since I actually have something sort of interesting to post about I'd do so :).
(But because I'm lazy I'm more or less copying the post I made to a forum I hang out in (sorry Jen, nothing new except a link to pics ;))
OMG, I had SO much fun! Seriously, the whole weekend was awesome. Way beyond what I expected.
I've met some people who told me out of all the cons they had been to this was one of the best they ever attended. The atmosphere was very relaxed, which I guess was in part due to the site and the weather. The hotel was kinda in the middle of nowhere, a small spa town, which at first people were complaining about, but I think now everybody's really happy about it. There was a little river right in front of the hotel so in between stuff we were all lounging around on the riverbank in the sun. I even managed to get a sunburn yesterday...
So Friday afternoon me and iolandasblog, who I shared a room with, were lounging around on our balcony after unpacking and suddenly there was this really strong smell of incence in the air. We were all "who on earth burns that much incence in a hotel room?" Well... turns out it was Traci Dinwiddie who had the room below us *gg*!!
And guess who lived right next to her? :D
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I probably came across like a total creep taking a picture right then, but Jesus Christ, I couldn't help myself lol. We met him on the balcony again the next day though and got a chance to talk to him a bit more. He's planning on taking a road trip to Barcelona (to the next con) and we gave him advice on driving *g*. He didn't know there's no turn on red here, so maybe I saved him from getting a ticket lolol.
He also speaks some German, which I didn't know. On Saturday, to his first stage talk, he wore a t-shirt that said "Bobby Singer will Ihnen zeigen seine Panikraum. In privaten.", which is (slightly false ^^) german for "Bobby Singer wants to show you his panic room. In private." I laughed so hard XD.
Unfortunately I can't give you guys pics from the panels. But iolandasblog took some *really* awesome ones (Though I think they will be flocked).
ETA: She posted some that are flocked, but the pics from the stage talks won't be. So go check them out later!!
Another perk of our room was that we had a great view of the terrace of the room where the "meet and greet" for the diamond ticket holders was held on Friday night. So I got to take stalkery pics of the guests talking to the fans ;). There were several other people watching from balconies and when Misha noticed he started throwing peanuts and stuff up to us :D.
Here's the best pic I got of him in full swing - note that my zoom is pretty crap, too...
(There were rooms on two sides of the terrace, but when he was throwing to our side my photo came out really blurry)
The guy in the blue shirt in the front is Jason Manns btw.
Here's another one of Misha. Traci is standing at the table in the back (with the orange cap), but unfortunaly you can't really see her.
Here's one where she's at the front table and Jim at the one in the back:
And here we have Mark Pellegrino and Chad Lindberg (who's looking the other way):
Unfortunately the sun went down shortly after that and it got dark fast. So the pics with Chad and Samantha are even more blurry.
Anyhow, yeah, that was Friday evening. We went downstairs afterwards and saw all of the guests again shortly at the little bar right in front of the hall where the panels were held, which caused fangirls to form a slightly awkward, staring crowd around them taking pics like crazy. That was a bit uncomfortable. But I guess since most of them probably saw the guests the first time irl everybody can be forgiven their lack of social skills and going crazy for a bit.
The guests went to another hotel bar shortly afterwards and me and some other girls kinda wandered into that one by accident a while later (the hotel really wasn't *that* big!). We didn't know they had gone there (or at least I didn't) but when we went in we were politely thrown out again by con personel telling us to give them some space in their down time. Well - we probably weren't the only ones coming in there, whether by accident or on purpose.
Apparently later that night - when yours truly was already in bed - Chad was dancing down there with some fans who went back later. lol.
Poor Chad was totally hung over the next day during his panel which Sam and Traci mocked him for endlessly :D (The three of them had their first panel together).
I didn't take notes during the panels, so I forgot a lot... but here are the highlights I do remember:
(This is a mish-mash of boths days, I'm not necessarily recounting this chronologically...)
Misha told us about a prank Jared and Jensen played on him during "My bloody Valentine". It was during the scene where Sam and Dean inspect
organs of the victims in the morgue and Castiel comes to talk to them. He had to walk up to the table and every time he did so Jared would raise his leg under it so his foot would land in Misha's crotch when he came close enough XD. That went on for several takes and Misha said he cracked up every single time. It got later and later, so he finally complained about it and Jared was told to stop (or maybe he just did it on his own, not sure anymore) so they could get this wrapped up.
But then instead of the foot thing Jared would pull this really funny face every time Misha had to talk. He'd open his mouth really wide and lick his lips exaggerately *g*. Which of course caused Misha to crack up again. And again.
So finally Jensen stepped in and told Misha to just ignore Jared and to focus on him instead when he had to deliver his line. Which Misha thought to be great advice and did so the next take.
... Only to have Jensen do the exaggerated lip-licking thing to him. :D
I swear it was a lot funnier when he told us cause he immitated the faces they were making. I laughed so hard XD.
Apparently it was pretty late by the time they finally got to go home that night lol.
Also, one time they were shooting in a really shady part of Vacouver that you really don't want to spend more time in than necessary, and Jared let all the air out of Misha's tires. Misha tried to retaliate by having Jared's truck towed, but Jared showed up at the same time as the tow truck *g*. So he said he still owes Jared one and he'd get him back for that later...
...
Jim Beaver was mock complaining about the kiss from Crowley during his panel lolol. He was all "five seasons of hot female cross road demons, and what do I get??". And he said Mark Sheppard (Crowley) wanted the kiss to be more, but he didn't *g*.
He also talked about Bobby getting out of the wheelchair, and how, on the one hand, he was really glad about it, cause it was very hard to hit your marks exactly in that thing and also because he simply likes to "kick some demon butt" instead of just sitting at home and answer the phone when Sam and Dean call. But on the other hand he said he sort of regretted that the writers went this route because in real life people don't just get out of wheelchairs again, and he took it very seriously for how he played Bobby. But he admitted that SN is not exactly a show that works like real life, so... whatever ;).
At some point he told us that he learned German in school and in college cause his great grandfather was from Germany and he wanted to be able to talk to him. It was really cute when he talked to us in German *g*.
The second day he had a panel together with Traci Dinwiddie and someone asked Traci about her yoga and if she'd do something for us on stage and "teach Jim". Jim replied very indignantly that he'd done yoga before, thank you very much lol. So Traci did something (forgot the name) where she was bending down to the floor and basically presented her butt to Jim, which he made a show of looking at *g*. Then Jim did this move where you reach over your right shoulder with your right arm and up your back with your left (or the other way around) and clasp your hands behind your back. When he sat back down again afterwards he was all "OUCH!".
Traci was also asked about a thing called "Organic Movement" (I think lol) that she advocates and whether she could demonstrate it. So she called up a few volunteers and coerced Jim into going along with her, too. He was a bit grumpy about it :D. It basically consisted of one person (Traci) starting the movement by striking some pose and the others going along with it - moving whatever way felt right to them. Thus the term "organic movement". It was really weird but also really funny, mainly because of Jim, who was all WTF?? (just for fun of course) but went along with it anyway.
...
Samantha Ferris told us a really funny story about "Abandon all hope", where she "finally got to handle a sawed off shotgun!". Apparently she always wanted to shoot one during an ep and be all bad-ass, so they finally gave her one. She then played around with it all the time by cocking it (that chi-ching sound) cause it was so much fun. You know how when they shoot a scene, someone (the director??) will call "rolling" and then everyone will go quiet before someone else calls "action"? She said she waited until "rolling" was called and then cocked the shotgun in the quiet so they had to start over...
Anyhow, they were finally shooting the scene where she got to fire it, the one where they're all running away from the hell hounds in the street before one of them gets Jo.
Every scene that has guns in it gets handled very seriously, even though there isn't real ammunition in them and there's extra security close by. Under no cicumstances are the actors ever supposed (or allowed) to point their guns at another person.
So during the scene when Sam was supposed to fire her shotgun it kept jamming and she said she got REALLY frustrated, and finally she turned around and told them something like "guys, this is not working!" and EVERYBODY was suddenly ducking away from her and shouting. Even Jared, who she described as "6 feet 20 or something" was cowering and she didn't know what was wrong and kept turning around all confused, until finally some security guy ran up to her and slapped the shotgun out of her hand ;). She said she was SO embarrased because first she had whined about never getting to use a shotgun, and then told everybody time and again that she could handle one. lol. Poor Sam!
At the end of her panel I had finally talked myself into going up to the mic to ask something. So I was standing there at the mic, waiting for her to finish answering the question of the person before me (on the mic aross the room), when one of the guys from Rogue Events came up to me and told me to not ask my quetion yet, they'd got "something planned". I was right next to the side door where the guests came through to go to the stage and I saw him taking another mic out that door.
Then Sam told me to go ahead with my question and I was all "er..." and looking around me, when suddenly there came a voice with a really thick german accent through the speakers. A guy's voice who asked Sam how she liked working with Jensen and Jared and especially with that handsome Misha guy lol. You can probably guess who it was. By then Sam and the audience had also caught on and she was all "Oh, Jared and Jesen - they are awesome. But who's Misha? Oh, him... Eh... you know."
lol, so funny.
...
When Misha and Mark Pellegrino were on stage together one girl asked if she could pour a salt circle around them. lol, so random. But after a bit of making fun of her they agreed and for the rest of their shared panel they were trying to each keep one foot inside of the salt circle. Mark also did this really funny jiggly dance in and out of it *g*. They REALLY enjoyed torturing the audience btw. At one point they got the tech guys to play a part of a German dubbed SN episode. The whole audience was groaning and covering their ears, begging them to stop lol. (The dubbing is really horrible! It ruins the whole thing, I swear.) But they let it play for like 5 minutes and making a show of analyzing it. ^^
Oh, and Misha an Mark started a war lol. Mark founded "Lucifer's Legion" to counter "Misha's Minions" and was trying to get us to join him instead. Mark claimed that "Minion" sounds like something a doctor would "scrape of your testicles" XD. Like "Can, you help me? I think I've got a Minion". And Misha would counter with something similar about "Legion". Unfortunately I can't recall what exactly they said anymore. I hope someone managed to film it - it was pretty hilarious!
...
I bought a "Coffe Lounge" ticket for Sam on Sunday, and apparently neither hers nor Chad's was sold out so they put the two together, which was awesome for me since I got to talk to both of them :D. They're both so genuinely nice people! It was a real treat to be able to chat with them. Well, there were around 15 people, so it wasn't really chatting, but most of them apparently didn't want to ask anything or were too shy, so me and like 3 other people asked most stuff. Chad told us about his paranormal experiences (he's seen a freaky lot of ghosts... o.O) and they both talked about getting recognized on the street. Sam said most people recognized her by her voice and that no one in her family was able to talk in a quiet voice or whisper lol.
We also somehow ended up talking about crossing the border between Canada and the US vs. coming into the US by plane. We all agreed that US custom officials are scary as hell. Chad told us how they pulled him aside once and questioned him for a long time about the drugs they were sure he must be hiding somewhere in his car. Was not a good experience apparently...
I'd have loved to do a "coffe lounge" thingy with Jim or Misha, but they were both sort of expensive, and Misha's was sold out before I could make up my mind about it in any case.
Well, as I said I had a really great time, all in all. Can't wait for next year :D.
ETA: My room mate iolandasblog just posted her pics from Saturday. They are amazing!
(But because I'm lazy I'm more or less copying the post I made to a forum I hang out in (sorry Jen, nothing new except a link to pics ;))
OMG, I had SO much fun! Seriously, the whole weekend was awesome. Way beyond what I expected.
I've met some people who told me out of all the cons they had been to this was one of the best they ever attended. The atmosphere was very relaxed, which I guess was in part due to the site and the weather. The hotel was kinda in the middle of nowhere, a small spa town, which at first people were complaining about, but I think now everybody's really happy about it. There was a little river right in front of the hotel so in between stuff we were all lounging around on the riverbank in the sun. I even managed to get a sunburn yesterday...
So Friday afternoon me and iolandasblog, who I shared a room with, were lounging around on our balcony after unpacking and suddenly there was this really strong smell of incence in the air. We were all "who on earth burns that much incence in a hotel room?" Well... turns out it was Traci Dinwiddie who had the room below us *gg*!!
And guess who lived right next to her? :D
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I probably came across like a total creep taking a picture right then, but Jesus Christ, I couldn't help myself lol. We met him on the balcony again the next day though and got a chance to talk to him a bit more. He's planning on taking a road trip to Barcelona (to the next con) and we gave him advice on driving *g*. He didn't know there's no turn on red here, so maybe I saved him from getting a ticket lolol.
He also speaks some German, which I didn't know. On Saturday, to his first stage talk, he wore a t-shirt that said "Bobby Singer will Ihnen zeigen seine Panikraum. In privaten.", which is (slightly false ^^) german for "Bobby Singer wants to show you his panic room. In private." I laughed so hard XD.
Unfortunately I can't give you guys pics from the panels. But iolandasblog took some *really* awesome ones (Though I think they will be flocked).
ETA: She posted some that are flocked, but the pics from the stage talks won't be. So go check them out later!!
Another perk of our room was that we had a great view of the terrace of the room where the "meet and greet" for the diamond ticket holders was held on Friday night. So I got to take stalkery pics of the guests talking to the fans ;). There were several other people watching from balconies and when Misha noticed he started throwing peanuts and stuff up to us :D.
Here's the best pic I got of him in full swing - note that my zoom is pretty crap, too...
(There were rooms on two sides of the terrace, but when he was throwing to our side my photo came out really blurry)
The guy in the blue shirt in the front is Jason Manns btw.
Here's another one of Misha. Traci is standing at the table in the back (with the orange cap), but unfortunaly you can't really see her.
Here's one where she's at the front table and Jim at the one in the back:
And here we have Mark Pellegrino and Chad Lindberg (who's looking the other way):
Unfortunately the sun went down shortly after that and it got dark fast. So the pics with Chad and Samantha are even more blurry.
Anyhow, yeah, that was Friday evening. We went downstairs afterwards and saw all of the guests again shortly at the little bar right in front of the hall where the panels were held, which caused fangirls to form a slightly awkward, staring crowd around them taking pics like crazy. That was a bit uncomfortable. But I guess since most of them probably saw the guests the first time irl everybody can be forgiven their lack of social skills and going crazy for a bit.
The guests went to another hotel bar shortly afterwards and me and some other girls kinda wandered into that one by accident a while later (the hotel really wasn't *that* big!). We didn't know they had gone there (or at least I didn't) but when we went in we were politely thrown out again by con personel telling us to give them some space in their down time. Well - we probably weren't the only ones coming in there, whether by accident or on purpose.
Apparently later that night - when yours truly was already in bed - Chad was dancing down there with some fans who went back later. lol.
Poor Chad was totally hung over the next day during his panel which Sam and Traci mocked him for endlessly :D (The three of them had their first panel together).
I didn't take notes during the panels, so I forgot a lot... but here are the highlights I do remember:
(This is a mish-mash of boths days, I'm not necessarily recounting this chronologically...)
Misha told us about a prank Jared and Jensen played on him during "My bloody Valentine". It was during the scene where Sam and Dean inspect
organs of the victims in the morgue and Castiel comes to talk to them. He had to walk up to the table and every time he did so Jared would raise his leg under it so his foot would land in Misha's crotch when he came close enough XD. That went on for several takes and Misha said he cracked up every single time. It got later and later, so he finally complained about it and Jared was told to stop (or maybe he just did it on his own, not sure anymore) so they could get this wrapped up.
But then instead of the foot thing Jared would pull this really funny face every time Misha had to talk. He'd open his mouth really wide and lick his lips exaggerately *g*. Which of course caused Misha to crack up again. And again.
So finally Jensen stepped in and told Misha to just ignore Jared and to focus on him instead when he had to deliver his line. Which Misha thought to be great advice and did so the next take.
... Only to have Jensen do the exaggerated lip-licking thing to him. :D
I swear it was a lot funnier when he told us cause he immitated the faces they were making. I laughed so hard XD.
Apparently it was pretty late by the time they finally got to go home that night lol.
Also, one time they were shooting in a really shady part of Vacouver that you really don't want to spend more time in than necessary, and Jared let all the air out of Misha's tires. Misha tried to retaliate by having Jared's truck towed, but Jared showed up at the same time as the tow truck *g*. So he said he still owes Jared one and he'd get him back for that later...
...
Jim Beaver was mock complaining about the kiss from Crowley during his panel lolol. He was all "five seasons of hot female cross road demons, and what do I get??". And he said Mark Sheppard (Crowley) wanted the kiss to be more, but he didn't *g*.
He also talked about Bobby getting out of the wheelchair, and how, on the one hand, he was really glad about it, cause it was very hard to hit your marks exactly in that thing and also because he simply likes to "kick some demon butt" instead of just sitting at home and answer the phone when Sam and Dean call. But on the other hand he said he sort of regretted that the writers went this route because in real life people don't just get out of wheelchairs again, and he took it very seriously for how he played Bobby. But he admitted that SN is not exactly a show that works like real life, so... whatever ;).
At some point he told us that he learned German in school and in college cause his great grandfather was from Germany and he wanted to be able to talk to him. It was really cute when he talked to us in German *g*.
The second day he had a panel together with Traci Dinwiddie and someone asked Traci about her yoga and if she'd do something for us on stage and "teach Jim". Jim replied very indignantly that he'd done yoga before, thank you very much lol. So Traci did something (forgot the name) where she was bending down to the floor and basically presented her butt to Jim, which he made a show of looking at *g*. Then Jim did this move where you reach over your right shoulder with your right arm and up your back with your left (or the other way around) and clasp your hands behind your back. When he sat back down again afterwards he was all "OUCH!".
Traci was also asked about a thing called "Organic Movement" (I think lol) that she advocates and whether she could demonstrate it. So she called up a few volunteers and coerced Jim into going along with her, too. He was a bit grumpy about it :D. It basically consisted of one person (Traci) starting the movement by striking some pose and the others going along with it - moving whatever way felt right to them. Thus the term "organic movement". It was really weird but also really funny, mainly because of Jim, who was all WTF?? (just for fun of course) but went along with it anyway.
...
Samantha Ferris told us a really funny story about "Abandon all hope", where she "finally got to handle a sawed off shotgun!". Apparently she always wanted to shoot one during an ep and be all bad-ass, so they finally gave her one. She then played around with it all the time by cocking it (that chi-ching sound) cause it was so much fun. You know how when they shoot a scene, someone (the director??) will call "rolling" and then everyone will go quiet before someone else calls "action"? She said she waited until "rolling" was called and then cocked the shotgun in the quiet so they had to start over...
Anyhow, they were finally shooting the scene where she got to fire it, the one where they're all running away from the hell hounds in the street before one of them gets Jo.
Every scene that has guns in it gets handled very seriously, even though there isn't real ammunition in them and there's extra security close by. Under no cicumstances are the actors ever supposed (or allowed) to point their guns at another person.
So during the scene when Sam was supposed to fire her shotgun it kept jamming and she said she got REALLY frustrated, and finally she turned around and told them something like "guys, this is not working!" and EVERYBODY was suddenly ducking away from her and shouting. Even Jared, who she described as "6 feet 20 or something" was cowering and she didn't know what was wrong and kept turning around all confused, until finally some security guy ran up to her and slapped the shotgun out of her hand ;). She said she was SO embarrased because first she had whined about never getting to use a shotgun, and then told everybody time and again that she could handle one. lol. Poor Sam!
At the end of her panel I had finally talked myself into going up to the mic to ask something. So I was standing there at the mic, waiting for her to finish answering the question of the person before me (on the mic aross the room), when one of the guys from Rogue Events came up to me and told me to not ask my quetion yet, they'd got "something planned". I was right next to the side door where the guests came through to go to the stage and I saw him taking another mic out that door.
Then Sam told me to go ahead with my question and I was all "er..." and looking around me, when suddenly there came a voice with a really thick german accent through the speakers. A guy's voice who asked Sam how she liked working with Jensen and Jared and especially with that handsome Misha guy lol. You can probably guess who it was. By then Sam and the audience had also caught on and she was all "Oh, Jared and Jesen - they are awesome. But who's Misha? Oh, him... Eh... you know."
lol, so funny.
...
When Misha and Mark Pellegrino were on stage together one girl asked if she could pour a salt circle around them. lol, so random. But after a bit of making fun of her they agreed and for the rest of their shared panel they were trying to each keep one foot inside of the salt circle. Mark also did this really funny jiggly dance in and out of it *g*. They REALLY enjoyed torturing the audience btw. At one point they got the tech guys to play a part of a German dubbed SN episode. The whole audience was groaning and covering their ears, begging them to stop lol. (The dubbing is really horrible! It ruins the whole thing, I swear.) But they let it play for like 5 minutes and making a show of analyzing it. ^^
Oh, and Misha an Mark started a war lol. Mark founded "Lucifer's Legion" to counter "Misha's Minions" and was trying to get us to join him instead. Mark claimed that "Minion" sounds like something a doctor would "scrape of your testicles" XD. Like "Can, you help me? I think I've got a Minion". And Misha would counter with something similar about "Legion". Unfortunately I can't recall what exactly they said anymore. I hope someone managed to film it - it was pretty hilarious!
...
I bought a "Coffe Lounge" ticket for Sam on Sunday, and apparently neither hers nor Chad's was sold out so they put the two together, which was awesome for me since I got to talk to both of them :D. They're both so genuinely nice people! It was a real treat to be able to chat with them. Well, there were around 15 people, so it wasn't really chatting, but most of them apparently didn't want to ask anything or were too shy, so me and like 3 other people asked most stuff. Chad told us about his paranormal experiences (he's seen a freaky lot of ghosts... o.O) and they both talked about getting recognized on the street. Sam said most people recognized her by her voice and that no one in her family was able to talk in a quiet voice or whisper lol.
We also somehow ended up talking about crossing the border between Canada and the US vs. coming into the US by plane. We all agreed that US custom officials are scary as hell. Chad told us how they pulled him aside once and questioned him for a long time about the drugs they were sure he must be hiding somewhere in his car. Was not a good experience apparently...
I'd have loved to do a "coffe lounge" thingy with Jim or Misha, but they were both sort of expensive, and Misha's was sold out before I could make up my mind about it in any case.
Well, as I said I had a really great time, all in all. Can't wait for next year :D.
ETA: My room mate iolandasblog just posted her pics from Saturday. They are amazing!