A European Journey...

Ok, well, to start with I'll give the update on my grandad. For those of you who don't know
he actually passed away early Wednesday morning (19th).
RIP Grandad, you shall be missed.


Of course with this happening it did put a massive debation on whether I would be attending Asylum Europe. After much thought and many a discussion with my Mum it was decided that I should attend. I spent wednesday with her before going to catch the train up to London for the long journey ahead. I won't deny that as I left my mum I got upset and a wave of guilt swept over me as I travelled up, but alas, not much I could do by this point. It was late in the day, and I was already on my way so. She was looking after my cat anyway so its not like she didn't have part of me there.

ok so the journey up went with no problems at all, and the journey to Europe began with me and Paul loading the van. Grabbing our breakfast (some banana's) and heading on our way! started down towards Dover and for anyone that know's me and Paul when we travel the status updates via Facebook happen and of course we have been nicknamed the chuckle brothers....charming!
Anyway, to cut a long story short, we left at 10.30pm UK time, and arrived in Bad Neu...thingy at around 10.30am Thursday German time! I did have to stop twice on the way down to stop myself dozing off! Not because I was tired, but because Pauls conversation was that bad it drove me to sleep...

I should explain the Banana thing before continuing, as said earlier me n Paul took a banana each in the van as food for the journey on the way down. When he was asleep in the van I was getting sleepy whilst driving and I'd already eaten mine. I needed some natural sugar to pick me up so whilst he was asleep I reached over, stole it, ate it without him knowing about it. It wern't until a few hours after he woke that he realised that I'd eaten it. Then on saturday morning I stole another of his banana's when he was in the reg room! This lead to him making 'Wanted' posters for stealing banana's....so thats the banana story.

Anyway, settled into the hotel fine, Thursday I just kinda chilled, me and Paul took a stroll into the town. I wanted to throw him in the stream near the hotel but for some reason he wouldn't let me! Can't think why? anyway we were searching for somewhere to eat, ended up in Kamps and just had to point to the food we wanted cos noone spoke english in there! the nerve! anyway the sarny I had was pretty gross so I only ate some of it. That was pretty much thursday for me n Paul, catch up on sleep and be ready for everything starting Friday. Friday went without a hitch, registration went smoothly, the guests arrived pretty much without a hitch, Jim was out on his balcony talking to other attendee's before attending the MnG. Meet and Greet went ahead without any problems, although when the guests went out onto the roof garden all the attendee's that wern't at the MnG were taking photo's from the balconies! although Misha protested by throwing nuts at them! least I assume it was a protest, it may have been just purely for his own entertainment!
After all the guests retired from the Meet n Greet, myself, Chad, Jim and Jason retired to the bar downstairs and all ended up having a few too many drinkies! Chad and Jim ended up dancing, I on the other hand, don't dance, I just drink! lol Chad was on White Russians, myself JD and coke and Jim I can't even remember the name of his drink! but we mixed it with Sambuca's anyway! needless to say he was abit worse for wear the next morning lol Mine caught up with me sunday!


Saturday:
The day started off well, Misha was on top form on stage as usual giving out his usual amount of casual banter with the audience. And the day got off to a good start, Chad, Traci and Sam's panel went down well, as did Mark's. Once again I joined him on stage however I wasn't his sweet transvestite this time round. Just general banter but I think we can still happily say that I was still his bitch lol. Jim's panel also went down well, wearing one of his usual T-shirts! He must get them specially made! The evening entertainment came round in the form of 1 Jason Manns, he as usual was on top form and gave a brilliantly enjoyable perfomance. Perfect way to wind down the day. Misha, his wife, and Traci D joined the gig for a while, whilst Chad and his delightful girlfriend stayed for the whole set. Mark and his wife unfort missed it but I spent a fair few hours just relaxing and chatting in the bar with them. Was pleasant :)

Sunday:
Sunday got off to a good start with the Mark and Misha Panel opening the day, at one point there was almost a political debate going on to try win 'voters' over for the legions and Minions! was highly amusing, fortunatly I wasn't really envolved with this panel so the beating that everyone expected didn't happen. However, my banana was brought up...
Chad's panel was interesting, found out a few things about him that I didn't previously know, plus he'd defo be interested in webisodes featuring Ash if the oppurtunity ever arose!
Sam's panel got crashed twice, once by Chad then later on by Misha putting on a what I thought was a german accent but actually apparently sounded more Russian! he did a similar get up like he did at A3 as in hiding and asking the question! Sam took it in good humour though. I know theres some blog's out there detailing what was said so I won't go into detail about that. Jim & Traci's panel was interesting, Traci again demonstrating her energising routine and this time taking Jim with her! I don't think he really knew what was going on! lol Bless.
The day came to a close, and the closing ceremony even took me by surprise! (and it takes a great deal to surprise me!) as usual I got up on stage and asked everyone if they had had a good time! to which everyone started cheering, the cheering turned to clapping, then the 2nd role from the front (my right) stood up, followed by some more, then the whole room just rose to a standing ovation! I was taken aback, and naturally very flattered! but also slightly nervous! cos I was about to announce that we were returning to Germany the following year!
Crazy excitement is something short of an understatement. Folks were hugging, cheering, clapping at the loudest they possibly could! I was in shock! I'd never seen a group of people so appreciative of what we do. So it was very flattering.

After the main event finished, the majority of the guests were whisked off to the station and it actually felt like I was saying goodbye to friends now rather than just folk I work with on stage.

However this was not the end of the weekend for me. Jim had an audition to record, and during the weekend I sourced a camera for us to be able to record on. Then going on to assist Jim with some rehersing and recording it with him. I then edited it down for him, packed it nicely and handed it over to him to send off to the bigwigs to reveiw his performance.
My understanding is that 'they loved it'. So fingers crossed he gets the part!


Alas, I'm getting very tired now as I'm still recovering from the lengthy driving and stress over the weeks that were the Asylum tour. To sign off I'll just say its been fun, and thankyou to anyone who may be reading this, that attended over those weekends that made it so enjoyable for me.


Doug.

A weekend of Supernatural spendidness....but all did not end well!

For me at least anyway, for when I returned from the now well established Asylum convention I came back to sad news...but I will detail this later in the blog.

For now I will retell my weekend, a view from the MC's eyes as it were. For those of you that have me on Facebook, you will obviously know that me and one Mr Paul Taylor travelled up together. This trip alone being quite eventful and by the time we'd been in the van for an hour I was all set to give him a rolling start on the hard shoulder.

Upon arriving and getting everything set up, everything was happening stress free and ticking over. Friday registration went without a hitch, anyone with any slight issues were dealt with swiftly although I'm pleased to say there was never anything major. So this naturally gave us a good start! Group photos went well aswell, and generally the weekend started with a very positive feel. I can honestly say I didn't do any preperation guest wise for this convention, I've come to find that this actually works better for me, because the questions I ask (as and when I do) are genuine rather than written from a piece of paper!

The opening video went down well, getting the reaction i was hoping 'stunned silence is it the last etc etc etc' however, the AV cut the video slighly short, and my intro on stage was abit of a mess up lol nevermind! I can live with that. I'd forgotten about it by sunday anyways. The panels went without a hitch too, Jim being first on to a ruptuous applause. All was going amazingly well with the further panels until Mark Pelligrino's panel. Don't get me wrong, his panel went amazingly well too but mainly at my expense! lol it was all in jest though and we kissed and made up afterwards (seeing as though I'm such a 'sweet transvestite!'). To follow the kissing theme, Jim got jiggy with the lovely Traci Dinwiddie onstage which I have to say I'm quite proud to have a part to play in. Upon Traci informing the crowd that she would choose Jim over Jared and Jensen, I nipped out to the bar to inform Jim of this to which he got up walked down to back stage, came straight out, picked Traci out of the chair n snogged her face off! Hilarious!

Saturday night disco went ahead, I didn't stay for a great deal of time due to being exhausted from the previous days events but from what I saw everyone was enjoying themselves and the costumes were pretty amazing if not sureal...i refer to a zombie Peter Pan...

Sunday again another great day of panels, the continuing theme of my transvestism went through Mark's stage panel again, and I believe it was even brought into his coffee lounge at some point...interesting. I was going to put Chris Gaultier on stage again with Todd Stashwick however Chris had to leave abit earlier on the sunday due to the flight disruptions so unfortunatly was unable to do this. However everything went well, Jim did the final panel of the day - quite fitting that he opened to convention and then closed it - and the major buzz with the closing ceremony, with the lights going round, the music playing, the guests getting into the groove as I brought them out on stage - loved every single minute of it. I was on a major high when I came off that stage as anyone who spoke to me will tell you I was stuggling to stop talking lol.

So that was that, the end of the con. I will have to say, for anyone that reads this blog (seeing as though its my first one) a big and heartfelt thankyou to everyone who wrote in the book I left on the stage on the sunday, the comments and messages that were left were really nice and I can honestly say I was surprised by the response to everyone wanting to put a comment in it. So for that I thankyou.

Going back to what I was originally saying at the beginning of this blog, on my way back to Dorset from dropping Paul in Essex (thats right, I didn't actually leave him on the hard shoulder of the M1. As tempting as it was) I sent my mum the usual text of 'put the kettle on' so that a cuppa would be ready for me when I get to hers. Standard precedure for us.

To my surprise this followed with a phone call from her informing me that Grandad had been taken into hospital and to cut a long and emotional story short, he's got probably little over a week if he makes it that long to live. I'm not the best in situations like this but naturally I tried to offer the best support I could to my mum, but having gone through a similar situation in the last few years it wasn't particularly something I'd wanted to experience so soon.
I just hope my grandad, who at 78 in his own words has had a good life, knows that the family he's had around him for so long love him deeply and he will be greatly missed.

A sad ending to what would have been a perfect weekend.