The Hub Productions Presents: OMGSTARGATE

One day while browsing in one of my favorite comic book shops, I noticed a flyer with the indubitable Chris Judge on it. Enough to get anybody's attention. Whilst I'd never heard of the company involved, they were claiming that CHRISTOPHER JUDGE and CORIN NEMEC were coming to PERTH in AUGUST.

That also got my attention.

So on Sunday, armed with GPS (to not get lost) and DVDs (to maybe get signed) my boyfriend and I trundled down to The Hub's location to see the shiny people. If you have not been introduced to the Stargate franchise yet... well, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that you're not into scifi. It's a staple of the geek diet. It contains lasers, mythology, hot aliens, weird aliens, explosions, a bit of romance, a lot of humour, and it boasts the badge of "longest running sci-fi series" (the Star Trek franchise doesn't really count because each series was seperate). There's a reason it went on for 10 seasons and the spawned two spin-offs and a plethora of movies, people!

My camera being what it is (crappy and broken), and me still getting used to my new Blackberry, I did not manage to get any decent photos :( sorry dudes! If you're curious for a more informal blow-by-blow, I tweeted frantically during the actual event. Most of it went to the con feed which can be found at #sg1ozcon.

I was totally unfamiliar with the location that the con was being held at, so I had no idea what to expect when, thermos flask of coffee in hand, I threw myself into my boyfriend's car at 11am on Sunday morning. It was being held at a small conference center near Curtin Uni - small being the operative word. Where we were in row E, I found it hard to see the speakers onstage over the tops of people's heads. I felt really sorry for people sitting in the back, espeically the few kids that I saw around.

The event was nowhere near as militantly organised as Supanova was. We wandered around for a bit, before I finally found an event staff member to ask where we should pick up our tickets (we paid online and because we only bought them the weekend before, it wasn't enough time for them to be posted out). There was really not a lot of signage around the foyer - when I say 'not a lot', I actually mean 'there wasn't any'. We milled around and looked at all the merch while we waited for the official start time. They had some really great stuff - I so wished I had saved more money as there were signed shirts, signed FIREFLY photos and a really awesome photo from the 200th episode, of Vala, Daniel, Mitchell and Teal'c in the Wizard of Oz costumes, and signed by all four of them. I can't remember how much it went for exactly, but it would have definitely been around $200.

The staff are at the event were quite friendly, though disorganised. During the welcome speech, Corin Nemec came out to say hi. He said we had a great city which I giggled at because Perth is so small and boring! Because the photo sessions were estimated to take a while, they put on a Stargate episode - one of my faaavourites, Window of Opportunity.

We were told that, while we were discouraged from asking any 'inappropriate questions'during the Q&A sessions, "Chris Judge will answer anything." Boy, they weren't wrong! Literally the first thing Chris said was about farting. Anyway, I'm getting off-track!

Basically, the way the day went was:

1. Photo session with Corin Nemec ($40).

2. Duo photo session ($80).

3. Photo session with Chris Judge ($40).

4. Q&A with Corin.

5. Auctioning off a date with Corin. This was a half-hour, chaperoned drinks affair. All proceeds to the Starlight Foundation.

6. Short break for lunch.

7. Q&A with Chris (which ran 20 mins overtime, he is SUCH a character).

8. Auctioning off a date with Chris, which did NOT happen in Adelaide, hahaha!

9. Charity auction of signed photos and various props, again all proceeds to Starlight. 

10. Raffle draw.

During the photo sessions they played some fan-favourite Stargate SG-1 episodes, which I thought was a good idea, buuuut they still could have handled things a little better there. I mean... these tickets were $75, and we were sitting watching old episodes?! It could have at least been, I dunno, some interviews with Corin and Chris, some behind-the-scenes stuff, even some footage from the Adelaide con? 

Corin's Q&A was pretty good, he is very funny. I did get the feeling that not a lot of people knew much about his work outside of Stargate and Parker Lewis. I'll admit I'm one of them! So the questions were mostly Stargate-related. There was one about Supernatural, and a few generic sort of ones. 

Highlights of Corin's session, as briefly mentioned in my twitter feed:

*The most bizzare rumour Corin's ever heard about himself is that he loves laser tag. He's had it mentioned several times and he has no idea where it comes from, because he actually doesn't like laser tag!

*"Life is a mystery sandwich - and I'm hungry!"

*It was actually Corin's idea to bring a banana on the ship in "that" scene with Teal'c! Hahaha.

*Jonas was going to be on Atlantis :( hearing that made me a bit sad. How awesome would interactions between Jonas and McKay have been?!

*He wouldn't say no to a guest  spot on Sanctuary.

*"Which character on Stargate would you have liked to play, besides Jonas?" [immediate reply] "Teal'c! I'd be a skinny, white Teal'c."

*Corin likes to paint! I wanted to ask him if he'd ever had his paintings in an exhibition, or wanted to, but unfortunately I didn't get time.

Corin went for $316 - there was this fairly young teenage girl who kept increasing the bid by .50c increments once it passed $200, it was hilarious. Eventually the auctioneer and the other bidders just let her have him. It went for ages!

Chris Judge. Oh my. He is a dirty, dirty man! Fart jokes, penis references, joking about Bra'tac hooking up! I tweeted the most during his session, there were all these quotes and moments I wanted to capture.

*Chris actually changed his diet to be able to 'fart better'... and as such, one day of shooting they had to clear out the control room. For half an hour. The crew got in trouble from MGM because it delayed shooting!

*Chris re: his new show Rage of Angels, "I'm gonna be naked all the time!" [I do not know how accurate that link is, but if it is accurate, I am beyond excited because Michael, Jay and and Alexis are three of my favourite Stargate men. Ok, well, they're all my favourite, but this looks like such a cool concept!]

*Discussion on the evolution of Teal'c speaking voice.

*Imitation of Amanda Tapping. Hilarious. Example of how he would drag out two lines so he had more to do ("The birds..." "What birds?" "Exactly. There are no sounds whatsoever"). Witnessing the change back and forth from Teal'c to Chris Judge was absolutely amazing.

*Chris, um, likes codpieces. 'Nuff said!

*A fan asks a question from his brother. Chris sees that he has a page of questions with him. Chris brings the fan onstage and  starts to read out and answer the questions. Chris sees that the fan has been taking notes (presumably for his brother) and starts to read them out. Chris is laughing and compliments the boy on his note-taking, "You better be doing well in school!"

*Chris tells us a story about being surrounded by reporters, all asking him generic 'actor's questions', and then suddenly a female reporter asked him what the size of his... [audience erupts into laughter]. "Kids, my shoe size." Fan's note about this story? "Reporter asks him the size of his dot dot dot!"

*The Jaffa armour could only be washed once a year. EWWW!

*Someone's phone rang. Chris answered it and wished the guy on the other end good luck on his test!

*On voice-acting: "It's great because you don't have to shower, or shave, and you can just be fat... and your voice still sounds exactly the same!"

Chris did talk for about five minutes about the utter lack of roles for black men in Hollywood, hence his reaction: "I decided to write my own", hence Rage of Angels [some much more accurate and recent info there]. Chris said that he was quite offended to hear that 2010 was apparently 'the most diverse' year for movies and TV pilots. Chris said out of 200 pilot episodes he'd read, only 4 had significant roles for black men. He said any scripts he sees have "already gone by Denzel, and Will, Samuel L. and Larry Fishburne, and have been scrapped but my agent thinks he should send me the script anyway!"

There was lots more, but you had to be there, and some of it was really quite dirty!

Chris Judge had apparently decided he was feeling left out and wanted to be auctioned off too. About $350 into the auction, he took his shirt off. He actually ran down our row and did a G-rated lapdance for the lady who had just bid - so I can tell you that not only was I about 5 metres from a shirtless Chris Judge, but he has a pierced navel! Chris went for $500. Lucky, lucky woman. My boyfriend had actually told me he was going to bid, but our collective limit was about $300 since he paid for tickets and I'd bought him a good-quality leather wallet (it was our four year anniversary on Wednesday). We were sad.

The merch auction was pretty fierce, with costume pieces, signed scripts and awesome signed photos. We didn't stay for the raffle as we hadn't bought a ticket and it was 5pm. 

Tl;dr

Chris and Corin totally made the con. Compared to Supanova... well, honestly I was a little bit disappointed with this con. At Supanova, you didn't have to pay loads to come away with a great experience. The Hub Productions chose a really bad location with negligible facilities (all we had for refreshments were two vending machines and a coffee van). I did pay the $40 for a photo with Chris. A signed photo with both actors would have cost me $160, and I wasn't really keen on paying that. Supanova was much, much better organised, had a way better location, and had much more to it. This con was more of an "I have lots of money to throw around" sort of thing, as I noted to my boyfriend in the car. 

I did have a good time at the con, but unless they get really great stars back (and I have a lot of time to save up for it), I'd rather wait for Supanova next year, and if there's a good line-up, (*coughFeliciaDaycough*) get VIP tickets, than attend another Hub Production event.