From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V7 #24 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Saturday, February 24 2007 Volume 07 : Number 024 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [chakram-refugees] Delightful Saturday surprise [KTL ] [chakram-refugees] Lucy at the Roxy. Part One: It's not the destination, it's the journey [KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Delightful Saturday surprise >KT wrote: > the CH sound. I guess an "X" just doesn't translate as an ex sound for > them. > > MD checked in with: > not so much odd. x is pronounced "ch" in some proper nouns and this > apparently one of them. Obviously. Grin. But I see I was editing the sentence and wound up saying the exact opposite of what I meant to say. I THOUGHT I had said that "an "X" just doesn't translate as a "zee" sound for them. Which is why I then brought in Zorro. Makes more sense now, right? Huh, right? And what I was trying to get at was that they DO have a zee sound in their language and certainly it's said as a zee is said in English and yet they went with the CH sound for Xena-I'm guessing because of the credits showing the written name with the X. it's most often pronounced kind of like "ks" as it > is in "exitos" [which translates as "success" or in re: latin music an album > labeled "Exitos" would be an album of "hits."] Or as in exquisitos (which is most often sold on the street from stands and is a hot dog wrapped in bacon.) I LOVE that name being used for a hot dog wrapped in bacon. but i digress. > Gee, there's something new. > x is also pronounced like the h in english, e.g. in the word mexico. > eggsackly > i have been spending way too much time trying to translate english into > spanish and wanted some place to show off. ;) Ah, well here's something we just discovered about Spanish--it appears to not use the letter "W". (In all three of our dictionaries, ALL of the words that start with W are "borrowed". Web, whiskey, water closet [which made us chuckle, being American English speakers ourselves] etc. Know why this is? Because their initial "W" sounding words start with the letters "Gu..." But actually is pronounced with just a teensy bit of a hacking sound like when you're gathering phlegm, so the sound comes out to our ears as if it should be written, "GWHY". As in Guaymas, which most gringoes pronounce as Why-mas but the Mexicans pronounce as GWHY-mas; y Guillermo (Espanol para William). i still can only say about 5 > things in spanish spontaneously but they're good things. oh, now it's 6 > 'cause i can say "xena rige" [xena rules] although, being literal, it's > undoubtedly nonsense in spanish. i was wondering the other day how "xena" > would translate into spanish and now i know. frescos frijoles! Don't eat too many of those--they'll make you GWH-indy. > > hasta la proxima, > > md > > Luego, chica! KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:03:50 -0900 (AKST) From: KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Con reports I thought that I had been sending my con reports to this list all along. I was informed that this is not true-that I only sent like two. So brace yourselves-here come some. KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:05:46 -0900 (AKST) From: KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Lucy at the Roxy. Part One: It's not the destination, it's the journey (Note: A few bits of this are from my already posted first report after seeing Lucy on her debut on Saturday night) Okay freefalling--no notes for this one. People were asking me if I was going to take notes at the concert--right--standing up in the unlit darkness, jammed in with 350 other fans with no physical boundaries (like the edges of the chair) to keep people separated, so therefore most likely being so wedged in that either your arms were up or they were down--no room for bent arms, no elbows poking out to the side like you do when you write-and I'm supposed to take notes. I suppose I COULD have put the pen in my mouth and my pad on the head of the person in front of me but I'm just too shy and retiring to do that. (And possibly too short.) Of course I was going to the con anyway. But it was particularly sweet this year since Lucy would be performing again as she did a couple of years ago in Seattle when she was in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". More Lucy time is always good. A nice little bonus for fans. We of course had tickets for both nights. But having been a little slow on the uptake for the first night (like not seeing that the ticket were available for purchase in the first TWENTY MINUTES or so that they went up on Creation's site), all the VIP sitting seats were sold out by the time we realized they were for sale. So the first night we had what we called the "standing" seats. i.e, standing room only. Our little group decided we would all take the bus to the show. It just sounded like that would a lot of fun. I was primed-I was sure the bus ride was going to be a blast. Indeed, I even figured I would take a bottle of Coke, drink some off and then top it up with Jack Daniels for the ride. But I forgot. When Bonnie comes to the cons with us, shes always the person who just loves to get on line early and stake out our claim for space. Without Bonnie, were totally hopeless. We were visiting friends, eating dinner, checking out the vendor tables, wandering around the hotel just la-dee-da-ing all over the place while the line for the bus grew steadily longer. By the time we decided wed better get on line, there were about 320 people ahead of us. BUT Creation was making announcements that if they filled up all the buses, they would call for town cars for transportation and would reimburse the people who had to use them. We werent quite far back enough to get a town car-we got on maybe the 7th, 8th or 9th bus. I found it amusing that the buses rolled along the surface streets when going from Burbank to Hollywood rather than using the freeways or highways. We did really well by not going anywhere near the hapless highways and so didnt wind up sitting stalled and cooling our wheels in gridlock. It was interesting to see the sights as we rolled through the towns-I have always enjoyed the funky look of Southern California. Except for right in the downtown sections and some outlying big chain hotels, much of the area has short buildings and eclectic architecture (including a few very whimsical structures). It's just got a very pleasing, practical, mostly old fashioned, working class look about it. We got downtown in plenty of time. But the line going into the club was moving fairly slowly, so we wound up having to stand outside for at least a half-an-hour. And it was cold. Aside from the temperatures being much lower than normal, the wind was also ripping along the streets. I almost never wear a jacket at the con. But we had been elsewhere before and were going elsewhere after the con so I did have some outerwear with me. I not only put on a fleece jacket-I actually zipped it up! BITTER! It was BITTER! One complication of dressing warmly was that since we were in the standing seats and since we'd heard there was no coat check, we were trying not to be burdened with big heavy coats. So many of us just about froze our heinies off. (The guys with not much hair-they also froze their heads off. Popsicles from one end to the other.) So there we were, a long snaky line, running along the avenue for a few blocks. And of course, our line was easily 90-95% women. And not your typical Hollywood type dressy, starched hair, slathered with make-up chicks either. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the faces in the cars that pulled up next to us as they waited for the light to change. The passenger would be glancing around and would see us and then without really specifically paying attention, mindlessly scan along our line. Then you could see their brows furrowing as they took all us tough grrls in and suddenly realized what they were seeing. And then they'd often turn and say something to the driver who would bend way down to get a peek at us. It was really funny. I thought it would be a great idea to moon those curious folks but got no cooperation from the group. All I got was a lot of "Are you nuts?! It's freaking COLD out here!" (To be honest, this was all talk on my side. I've never mooned anybody. Well, I have actually, but it was always inadvertent. I have however been an intentional moonee. My favorite moonee experience being when a guy mooned us from a helicoptor. I got pictures of that one. Nice a$$ dwindling up, up and away, into the sky.) Anyway, we finally got into the club. It was a small tight venue. Since every ticket was sold, we obviously maxed out the space of the place. On the right as you came in, there was a bar running along the whole back wall. The rest of the floor space was open with no furnishings. To the left was the rising platform three-tiered VIP seat section. And there was one small section in there of VVIP seats which were reserved with cards on the tables that said, "Lucy Lawless". The walls and ceiling were all black and there were neon signs glowing above the "FOOD/DRINK" and "MERCHANDISE" alcoves and there were old posters hung way up near the ceiling. Having had about 400 people enter the club ahead of us, we wound up near the back, near the bar. At the bar, I spotted the same folks that I'd been with at the meet-and-greet-the-stars after the last performance of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". (Including the woman who was so nervous to be meeting Lucy that she got totally bombed on the free wine and made a total spectacle of herself and sadly, me also. It was no surprise to me to find her hovering over the liquor again. However, the prices being what they were at the Roxy, she stayed perfectly sober.) Since she did, it was neat to be together with them for this follow up of Lucy-performing-in-another-venue-at-a-con event. The area in front of the bar was a little raised and the club being so small, there wasn't any problem with seeing the stage just fine. It was possible to move forward but it was just so crowded up there that we passed on that option. We hung around the bar where there was lots of open space and air. And of course, the ever gracious, kind and polite Xena fans tried to make sure that everyone could see. Many of the taller people migrated to the back or the sides so they wouldn't block other people's views. It was funny from the back-one person in front would move a bit and then you could watch the waves of people shifting in turn behind her, peeling off a bit to the left or the right, one behind the other to keep a clear eye line to the stage. Heh. I found a spot just behind 3 tall women who were very conscious of the fact that a shorter person was behind them. They offered to let me get in front of them, but I didn't feel the need to do that--I was happy in my open space. Then they were very careful to make sure that they kept my line of sight clear. Very generous and just not self-centered at all, observant of others and their needs. (Not ALL tall folks were so comrade friendly--I heard complaints on Sunday that a very few had inched up to the front and didn't give a damn about people behind them. Happily as I said, most were the more typical generous fans.) And now the show.. . KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:07:01 -0900 (AKST) From: KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Lucy at the Roxy Part 2: Plumbing Math We knew, I guess from Lucy's site that there would be an MC tonight and a comedian. These folks are mostly used to "warm the crowd up". Snort. If we were any more warm with desire to see Lucy, we'd have spontaneously combusted. For most of us, all we ever need is Lucy. But I guess the usual thing at a club is to have an MC and another performer. So there they were. The MC was a young woman friend of Lucy's. She came out and told us she never wears dresses. Then she said she'd been to the Pleasure Chest, an L.A. sex shop, with Lucy. She said some other things, but I can't remember what they were. The comedian came out. Her name was Tig something. She used to be I think it was a receptionist at Rennaissance Pictures--someone said that, I'm not sure now who it was--maybe Lucy at the con? And now Tig's a stand-up comic and I think someone said she has been on HBO? As I'm groping (mentally that is) to remember this stuff, it is painfully obvious to me that notes are indeed my friend--and I miss having them to read over. To overcome the elbow sticking out problem, I could have bent my arm in an up position, rather than a side position and written on the the front of my shirt. Or heck, on the back of the shirt of the person in front of me. They'd never notice in all that excitement of watching Lucy. And then I could get my friend with a picture cell phone to get a picture of her shirt for me to refer to. I'll keep that in mind for next time. Tig was funny. She had a quiet, wry, deadpan delivery. She was the type of comedian who makes droll commentary on daily life rather then doing a set of disconnected jokes. I took advantage of this time to walk around and keep the blood flowing in my legs. A lot of us um, more mature fans were concerned about having to stand up for 90 or more minutes. I wandered over and checked out the bathrooms. And the first thing I thought was, "Hmmm. 350 women. And three stalls. 116 and 2/3's women per toilet. Should be fun when the concert ends and we all try to hit the potty at the same time. We might well win the 'Most people stuffed in one toilet stall' award. And/or the Darwin award. I think that it was during Tig's performance that there was a flurry of excitement and thrilled applause. Someone in the crowd around me said, "Renee just came in." People had been taking pictures of the folks in the VVIP section all along. But when Renee arrived, so many cameras went off that the whole section suddenly lit up like London under the blitz. I wonder how long it took those guys to get their vision back after that barrage. Finally, the moment we all were waiting for--someone (maybe a disembodied voice over the PA system?) introduced Lucy. At first, the curtain remained closed and we just heard her singing from backstage. The instant the first note was caressed out, the entire crowd stilled. Many sucked in a little breath, producing teensy, quiet, air intake sounds for a nano-second. And then huge HUGE grins blossomed all over the hall. Followed by a nova of rapturous cheering and applause. Finally the curtains swung back and Lucy charged out into the welcoming roar, continuing her song. She was grinning hugely too, moving across the whole stage, looking around into every section of the audience. She was wearing jeans with black leather chaps over them and a white tee-shirt and I'm told boots--heads hid her feet from me. She had a small band and three back-up singers, two women and one man. Knowing now from what she said at the con that she planned these songs to celebrate the shared relationship between herself and her fans, the first song was very appropriately, "Jump Into My Fire". Now there are few people as lively as Lucy when Lucy is feeling lively. She was way up tonight, practically stratospheric. As she sang each song, she rocked and rolled, shook her shoulders, bucked her hips and shimmied her butt, moving across the entire stage area. She also jack-hammered into head banging, flinging her head around with such fierce abandon that I was just waiting for her hair extensions to go flying off into the wings. Or out into the audience-and wouldnt THAT be a real souvenir score? In between singing she talked and joked with us. Very early on, she looked down at the first few rows, pointed to a person and said something like, "She's wondering who the hell I am." She bent over a bit talking to the person. "I'm Xena." She looked up at us and said, "She doesn't recognize me." Lucy put her palm on her scalp with the fingers facing forward, draped over her forehead to imitate bangs, while saying something like, "See-it's me!" And then she straightened up, pushed her bottom lip out and blew her breath up her face. As she blew, she rippled her fingers one after the other, her fingers imitating bangs being blown off a forehead. I found that hilarious. (So THAT'S what those pictures of Lucy looking like she's wearing a squid on her head are all about.) The first night the band was overly loud as has been noted. But as long as I knew the song, I could still make out most of Lucy's singing, though I did miss some stuff. At one point she said that the band had played before many other peoples fans but she had told them that they hadnt seen anything yet, until they had played before us and saw us in full appreciative mode. And we heard later that she was right--they totally agreed with her. As did the staff at the club-they'd said they never seen anything like this. Their benchmark before was Bruce Springsteen's fans. And we left them in the dust. Lucy was a tornado of motion and sound.The grrl just never stopped moving. After a while, she introduced her main back-up singer, Sharlotte, whom she'd met during her stint on Celebrity Duets. As Sharlotte sang, Lucy stood to the side and raised her arm up in the air and kind of pointed down at Sharlotte grooving away, moving her hand in time with the music. (Like she did in Duets with I think it was Dionne Warwick.) After a number of songs and patter, Lucy went off to take a break while Sharlotte sang solo for us. She sang a song about Billy coming home and this guy in military fatigues came out and she gave him a kiss at the end. I couldn't hear too many of the words but it was fun to watch. Then Lucy came back out. She was wearing her white with silvery shimmers dress from Duets, which covered about a third or so of her body. She ramped right up into "What'd I Say?" And suddenly Renee came hurtling out onstage behind her, wearing a blue shimmery dress, gyrating and shimmying along with Luce. This was a really cool surprise. Again, cheers, screams and huge grins from the audience. Lucy thrust the mike at Renee to let her get in a one-syllable oooh and/or ahhh at the end of some of the sentences. Renee participated in one number and then, like a little Arctic blue fox in a snowy night, she disappeared,leaving the stage to Lucy again. (Purple prose--my stock in trade.) What a kewl surprise it was to have Renee participate--way sweet. Lucy sang a few more songs after Renee left. Then she left the stage while we all screamed and applauded and roared. Happily, she came back out for an encore. At the end of the show, she began to toss shirts and CDs out into the audience. And I heard the next day from a friend that at least one CD had landed up among the lights. And she added darkly, So, if the Roxy burns down during the night, well know why. On her site, Lucy had warned us that she might be throwing her own self into the audience also-so only people who could handle a 150 pound woman jumping onto them should be in front. She says lots of things on her site. Grin. We were ready though. I figured if she jumped into the audience, then she was ours to do what we wanted with. I thought that since she's so generous with giving us autographs, I'd return the favor. I was going to sign her rump. And heck, we could have easily carried her out to the bus and taken her home with us. There was plenty of room on the bus for a 150 pound woman. Man, it was a fabulous night. Lucy was incandescent. Her delight in what she was doing was a fire roaring through the club igniting us all. The excitement and the joy were palpable. Things were so hot at the club that a straight chick was hitting on me. No joke! Fat old broad that I am--can you tell things were WAY charged up? The walls practically vibrated right along with us. Talk about being in the present. If she and we were anymore present, wed still be there. We carried that excitement out into the night with us. We were way jazzed as we left the club, almost as up as Lucy had been. At first there was lots of loud excited talking on the bus as we got settled into our seats. Folks talked about how Daisy had been boogeying in the aisle while her mother was singing. A male friend of mine said he was in the bathroom when Rob Tapert was in there. (LOTS of empty space and unused stalls in the men's room I'm betting.) He said Rob had a huge grin on his face and just couldnt seem to stop smiling. From his description, I imagined the grin not going just from ear to ear but starting way at the back of his neck, totally circling his head and returning to the starting point. Liz Friedman had also been there. And of course, lots of folks were really jazzed that Renee had not only come to see Lucy but had been part of the show. However once the lights were out and we pulled away from the curb, the noise level fell quite a bit. It got quieter and quieter as folks began to just chat with their seat mates. Eventually, a number of us actually fell asleep on the way home. While visions of sugar plum warriors wearing white shimmy dresses danced in our heads. Damn, we ARE a lot older than we used to be! But I'm betting that even as old as some of us are, we wouldn't have fallen asleep if Lucy had dove into the crowd and we had hustled her on the bus with us. Unh-unh. Once things quieted down, as I sat and watched the quiet streets go by the window, it struck me that Lucy is like a comet, searing across the sky, trailing many of us in her wake, as we follow wherever she goes and performs. In whatever. We all woke up refreshed when we hit the hotel. And many of us immediately reclaimed our joy and excitement and stormed into the hotel. Where we "took the bar". KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:08:00 -0900 (AKST) From: KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Lucy at the Roxy Part Three: "I Love You Just The Way You Are" Sunday night was pretty much a replay of Saturday but without any surprises. Sunday, the MC was wearing a dress she said she'd gotten out of Lucy's closet. Tig did pretty much her same routine. This cracked me up--obviously many people go to see Lucy every time they can-folks who are accompanying her need to be aware of that. Of course Lucy did the same thing she'd done the night before also--but that was Lucy. Grin. Sunday night we had sitting seats. We were sitting slightly above and to the side of the VVip section. As we waited for the show to start, I saw Daisy standing up, turned around, kind of half facing us and talking to someone standing in front of her. I've never really seen much of a resemblence to Lucy in Daisy. But that night, her hair was pinned up on one side in a sophisticated do, with some of her hair spilling down along the side of her neck. She was standing tall and looking up at the person she was talking to with great delight in her face. It was dark in the hall but she was softly lit by spillover from the stage. And in that moment, in the way she was standing, the way she was smiling, the way she was paying absolute attention to the person she was talking to, the way the light from the stage lit up her excited, happy and twinkling eyes, she was pure Lucy redeux. There's no way in hell Lucy could ever claim that kid wasn't hers. The second night, people who were up near the front told me that the fans were packed in much more closely than the first night. One person said her impression was that the crowd wasn't any bigger, but that people wanted to be ever closer to Lucy. She said she literally couldn't shift her shoulders around. And once again, Lucy sizzled. Lucy growled. Lucy boogied. And once again she had us eating out of her palm. And you know what--on Sunday, sitting up above the crowd, I was startled to notice that once Luce was out, there were arms up in the air everywhere. Arms holding cameras or just arms thrust up into the air waving. I didn't notice that the first night. I bet there was even more shifting waves of fans trying to see the stage without their view being blocked by other folks' waving arms. As she did last night, Lucy once again pointed to the back of the hall and told everyone to turn around. Many did of course. Then she told us to tell the sound man that we had come to hear her, not the rock and roll band. She said, "There are 500 fans here-you dont want them mad at you. Youd be better off having Xena mad at you. SHE has some compassion. Now the first night I just let the experience wash over me. Then, as I wrote up my initial quick report later, I was surprised by how few of the songs I could remember. So I decided that on the second night, I would write up a list (especially since I was sitting down at a table the second night). Here is what I managed to write down Sunday night on a wet and crumpled bar napkin. I'm fairly certain this was pretty much the same as Saturday's set: "Jump Into My Fire" "Down On My Knees" (A Lucy composition that she sang partially from down on her knees) "Total Control" "Maxine" (One of Lucy's favorites--she's been singing this one for years.) "Don't Let Me Down" "Like The Way I Love You" (I think that was the title. It's a Melissa Etheridge Song that she called the angry lesbian song. She tossed the name "Gabrielle" into that one.) "Do You Wanna Dance" "Cowboy Song" (Another Lucy composition. This is a song inspired by Luce meeting Lyle Lovett and his girlfriend on a plane. This was the song she expropriated a cowboy hat from a fan for. Oddly enough, that same fan was wearing the same hat and standing in the same place the second night too! Grin.) "Something To Talk About" "Piece Of My Heart" (Sharlotte sang "When Billy Comes Home" as Lucy was backstage changing.) "Tell Momma" "What I'd Say" (with Renee dancing alongside her) "I'll Stand By You" (Lucy ended this with "Semper Fi" "Pull Up To My Bumper" And the encore: "Drive My Car" These things were also written on that napkin: Don't you hate it when you miss your mouth The finger for her yell. Take that Producers! Drunk as a lizard Relaxed Dancing From the Back Score one for the humans Only two of these six truncated notes trip off any memories for me. Lucy said when she first came out that tonight there were producers in the audience. She mentioned one (two?) of the Battlestar Galactica guys. During her set she said to us (as she had the night before, with the exact same results), "When I raise my finger, I want you all to give the Xena yell. And when I lower my finger, stop." She stuck her finger out and raised it slowly and yes, many folks in the audience ripped out the YI YI YI YI YI. (Or, as Luce says it is, "L L L L L".) Then she lowered her finger and as she did, the voices got softer and softer and then totally winked out. When she did this on Sunday, she finished it by looking into the crowd and saying, "Take THAT, producers!" I find "Don't you hate it when you miss your mouth?", "Drunk as a lizard", "Relaxed dancing" and "From the back" intriguing. Yet elusive. Elusive to this very day. "Score one for the humans" was a comment on her role as D'Anna in Battlestar, when the humans win an encounter with her. ************************************************************************ Addendum note: I have since been informed by someone else who was there that Lucy said, "Don't you hate it when you miss your mouth?" after she tried to squirt water into her mouth from her water bottle and apparenlty hit herself in the face instead. And that the phrase was, "Dry as a lizard", not "Drunk as a lizard". I was sorry to hear about that one actually-I was real intriqued at the thought of lizards being know as habitual drunkards. I thought it was some kind of Kiwi species. . . ************************************************************************* I hadn't really noticed that the songs were about our relationship with Lucy and her relationship with us. Renee said at the con on Sunday after watching Lucy Saturday night that she'd noticed a theme. Looking this list over, I can see threads about Lucy's career and our input into that career. And our steadfast commitment to and from us and Luce in "I'll stand by you", especially with Lucy ending it by saying, "Semper Fi". (Which as probably everyone does know, is short for the latin, Semper Fidelis-"Always faithful".) I would say there were some Xena themes too-speaking of subtext and Xena and her grrls, we got "Let's give them something to talk about", and "Pull Up To My Bumper" was obviously a reference to Borias. ;-> But "Baby You Can Drive My Car"-what's that got to do with us? At the end of the concert, Lucy talked to us, thanking us for still being around. She also as she always does, mentioned our charitable endeavors as being something that is deeply important and moving to her. She looked very earnest as she declared, "You've made my career worthwhile." What an extraordinary thing for an actor to say. As I've said before, I'm so grateful that it was Lucy who is the only actor I've ever been so intensely interested in and such a deeply committed fan of. I could have fallen for some twit, ya know? You know, no I couldn't. Because I fell hard for Xena the character. Enough that I got interested in the woman who had brought her to life. But it was watching the woman who had brought her to life on interviews being intelligent, witty, informed, being just so real and regular a human being that made me for the first time in my life become a hard core fan of an actor. So--no self-centered twits need apply--it won't do you any good. And, back to Lucy at the Roxy, what an extraordinary two performances this was. Both nights Lucy was on just a wild joyous tear. She was having a roaring good time and her fire, passion and extravagant joy ignited the whole hall along with her. Her joy in what she was doing was matched by our joy in watching her do it. It was a total BLAST! And it struck me this night that a lot of the folks here had worn their redial fingers to the bone voting for Lucy in Duets-and this was their reward. Because if Lucy hadn't gotten to return for so many weeks, if we hadn't endured all that dialing to keep her coming back, she would probably have not had the guts to do this show. But Duets gave her confidence. And that gave us this show. This event is the closest I will ever get to a Christian revivalist tent meeting. (At least I hope it is.) I'm betting we matched much of the same unbridled joy and love and glory revved up by those charismatic preachers. Gods help us if Lucy ever decides to start a religion. Some fans who had only been able to afford one night at the Roxy asked me, "If you can separate out the surprise of the first night, which night was better?" The show was pretty much the same each night. But I would have to say that the first night was pretty special. We were all just so up, just so primed and just so ready for this. Many of us had been hoping for this for years, for Lucy to sing for us at a con. To get not just a song or two but a full on performance with a full back-up band and singers was, aw hell, it was just magical. So to be there the first time this type of event ever happened was a really engaging experience. It was really special. But Sunday was also an excellent experience. Sunday was very close in excitement--I think obviously especially if you hadn't been there Saturday, after listening to everyone talking about what a great time they had had, the excitement level would probably be even higher than for the folks who went without knowing what was going to happen. So though I hate it when fans say things like, "I know I speak for everyone when I say that (fill in the blank)", I'm going to bet that "your" first night whether it was Saturday or Sunday was the best night in terms of enjoying the experience. People who only went Sunday had the advantage of getting all jazzed from hearing those who had gone on Saturday being so exhuberant about the show. Plus there was the advantage of Lucy having been onstage at the con and having talked about the show--why she picked those songs, where she met Sharlotte, Renee talking about how after being at the club, she understood how much we love Lucy and how much she loves us-and tearing up and crying just a little bit over it, Renee also saying she would try to work up some new moves for that night, lots of little details that I feel enhanced and deepend the experience at that evening's performance. For both nights, there was the reality that not many people have seen Lucy perform live. Also, this was a pure Lucy venue, unlike all the other times she's performed when she was sharing the show with others. Which made it really fun. We were more free to show our appreciation for Lucy than at any other show, since it was just us, just us Lucy fans, no other star's fans, no other performers to be aware of and respectful of, no oblivious season ticket holders mixed in the audience as we had at "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" who kept saying (even though Lucy was on stage the whole time), things like, "Where's that Xena woman? I thought she was going to be in this show?" Folks had asked Lucy at the con if she'd be appearing anywhere else. She has said that she's thinking of taking this show on the road. Or at least to New York City. Sunday night at the end of the show, Lucy said to us, "Don't worry. If this goes anywhere, I'm never going to forget you guys." She wanted to be sure we knew that we'd always be special to her. That she was deeply aware of and treasured the bond between her and her Xena fans. I found it just really sweet, that she'd care about how her next steps might impact us and wanted to reassure us about our "status" with her. What a mom! I felt like a kid going off to college but being told that there'd always be a room for me at home. (Of course, my parents moved while I was away at college-but I did eventually find them.) Back on the bus, back through the streets of Southern California, back to the hotel, back to the bar. And I didn't hear one person complain about aching feet or aching legs. We all left with happy faces, happy hearts and happy feet. KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:10:54 -0900 (AKST) From: KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Re: Lucy at the Roxy. Part One: It's not the destination, it's the journey > Having had about 400 people enter the club ahead of us, we wound up near the > back, near the bar. At the bar, I spotted the same folks that I'd been with > at the meet-and-greet-the-stars after the last performance of "Gentlemen > Prefer Blondes". (Including the woman who was so nervous to be meeting Lucy > that she got totally bombed on the free wine and made a total spectacle of > herself and sadly, me also. It was no surprise to me to find her hovering > over the liquor again. And of course, this woman is our own infamous Cheryl Ande. KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V7 #24 *************************************