Wrapping the Con and Moving Ahead

Posted by Bob Greenberger on July 14, 2009

I meant to post yesterday, but for whatever reason, I seemingly got slammed with extra, unexpected stuff all requiring immediate attention.

OK, to wrap up the con, we closed the show with Mystery Trekkie Theater. Our opening skit has been getting longer and more elaborate at the request of the committee. This year, we opened with a video of Mike Friedman floating in the hotel pool, fully dressed. Yes, our skit was a take on Sunset Boulevard. The wonderful Alan Chafin was William Shatner in the part of Nora Desmond. Mike was the writer sucked into his mad world to help bring the 900 page script of Star Trek: The Return of James Kirk – The Musical. I was Max and had something like six lines and still muffed one.

The skit ended with us mocking Alan and him getting mad at us. Just when he reached a fever pitch it appeared he was having a heart attack and collapsed. We crowded him and Peter yelled, “Is there a doctor in the house?” Out from behind the curtain stepped Robert Picardo, uttering the immortal, “Please state the nature of the medical emergency.” The audience went nuts.

We then skewered the Voyager episode “Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy” and for the first time we worked behind the video screen and it worked very well. We’ve been doing this 1992 and frankly it was probably not our best job of mocking but the audience was pleased and the con ended on a positive note.

The drive home was lovely and uneventful Monday morning. Once we got the house squared away, I returned to my desk and since then have been trying to work through the last phase of the research project so I can begin sorting my data. Some work had to be done on the Howard Chaykin Retrospective yesterday that couldn’t wait. Then I got an urgent e-mail about the project that appeared out of the blue last week. They loved the outline I submitted on Thursday and they now want a sample chapter this week while the current Microsoft project has heated up, requiring my attention. I’m also supposed to speak today with the editor of my media tie-in comic and hopefully he has good news from the licensee.

With the San Diego convention next week, I’m feeling the pressure to produce.