ocon saga

The Final Pieces to the Puzzle: Steve Whitmire’s OCon Q&A

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

I originally drafted this back in August but held off posting it in hopes that the OCon organizers would post video of the Q&A. They have yet to do so, but I revisited this entry and discovered that it is as complete as it can be under the circumstances, so I’m posting it now. 

When I first met Steve on that Sunday morning in Omaha Council Bluffs, one of the first things we talked about was the Q&A that he was scheduled to do at noon that day. I told him that I intended to take notes at the Q&A so I could write about it on my blog later. I also pointed out that I’d never really done anything like that before, so I wasn’t sure how it was going to go.

If I’d been more savvy and better organized, I would have tried to record it rather than taking notes. That way, even if I wasn’t able to post the video online, I would still have it as a reference and memory aid to help me write it.

Nevertheless, my notes of the Q&A probably would have been sufficient if I hadn’t spent the day at Steve’s booth and then devoted most of my mental energy towards remembering everything else that happened there. I should have reviewed my notes a few times in the immediate aftermath to encode those memories properly. Alas, I did not.

All of which is just to say that even with the benefit of notes, my memory of the Q&A is woefully incomplete. There are multiple phrases included in them that I have no idea what they mean. So unfortunately, (and ironically) my account of the Q&A is going to be less detailed than those of the rest of my day. I apologize. I’ll know better next time.

Continue reading →

CF3 Podcast on YouTube

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

Hi, all! Happy New Year. Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet lately. Life is crazy. I’ve got a lot to say, and a lot of it is kind of cranky, and I don’t know when I will have time to get it all out of my system.

But in the meantime, I wanted to start off with something positive, and I’ve got something cool to show you. Remember last year when I went to OCon and I met Steve in the midst of his CF3 Podcast interview, and they recorded part of it? Well, they put that episode up on YouTube:

And because it is on YouTube, I can link specifically to certain parts of it, so here’s the start of Steve’s interview, and then about 30-35 seconds after that you can hear me getting all nervous and giggly. And then here’s the part where they ask him specifically about The Dark Crystal.

I want to say a thank you to Ethan, aka Captain Vegetable, who got in contact with me to tell me that this was on YouTube. I actually knew it already because I follow CF3 on Twitter, but I’m always, ALWAYS grateful for tips, so thank you so much for that.

Continue reading →

Brief Footage of Steve Whitmire’s OCon Q&A

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

If the pattern holds true, it looks like the full video of Steve’s OCon Q&A may be going up within a few weeks. I don’t know for sure that that is the case, but they have full panels from last year that went up in early September, so that’s reason to hope. 

Because my memories of the Q&A are so sketchy, even with my notes, I’m going to hold off publishing my impressions of it for now. 

To tide us all over in the meantime, I found this highlight reel of the days’ events. A few moments of Steve’s Q&A, sans audio, are shown at about 43 seconds in: 

I looked to see if I could see myself in the background of any of these clips, but I didn’t, not at the Q&A or in any of the other footage.

Continue reading →

Emphasis

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , 1 Comment

Today I received a comment on my previous entry from Dane Mychal, one of the hosts of the CF3 podcast. I want to pull out a quote from that comment for emphasis:

“Steve, as you know much more than I, is an incredible talent and wonderful human being, but I wanted to give this specific anecdote for perspective: This was early Sunday morning on the last day of a 3-day convention. Media guests tend to get burned out by Day 3 and 4 of these things and start to just mail it in. The MAC had been open for an hour that day by the time we came up to see Steve. Out of the 10 or so celebrities in Media Guest Row, he was the ONLY one there promptly at the prescribed time and remained the only one there for quite a long time. It was just about the first thing we discussed with him before we had even turned the recorders on. This man is a professional and puts his best effort into everything he does. We also requested to pay him for his time because we believe in compensating talent for such things. He was floored and insisted that we take autographed photos with us, which I am happy to have!”

This was the first convention of this kind that I’ve ever attended, so I don’t know what the norms are, but I can confirm that Steve was the first media guest on the floor that morning, the only one on the floor for some time thereafter, and although I wasn’t paying a lot of attention at the end of the day, I know that there were several who left before he did. 

Thank you, Dane, for the benefit of your perspective!

CF3 Podcast Interviews Steve Whitmire (and I WAS THERE!)

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 8 Comments

In the first part of my OCon “saga,” I talked about how Steve was in the midst of a podcast interview when I met him. The podcast is called CF3 (Cult Fans, Films & Finds), and the episode just went up. In addition to Steve’s interview, it also includes an interview with Gigi Edgley, a review of The Dark Crystal, and some other stuff.

A word of caution before I post a link to the content: while the interview segments are safe and appropriate for everyone, the rest of the episode contains some explicit language. I don’t think I’m able to link right to one particular segment, unfortunately.

Oh, and by the way…I’M IN THIS PODCAST! They paused it briefly so Steve could talk to me but resumed it when they realized that we were acquainted. So you can hear me say hi to him (which I have NO MEMORY of doing, by the way), and then you can hear me getting giggly from nerves when Steve compliments my blog.

For some reason, the embed function isn’t working, so here’s the web address:

http://cf3pod.com/022-the-dark-crystal-1982-w-steve-whitmire-gigi-edgley

I’ve been told that it is also available through the various podcast apps, if that’s more convenient. 

I wanted to give you timestamps to help you find the most relevant content on your own, but for some inexplicable reason, the points where I’m finding the content are different every time I try to seek them out, so I can only give you approximate time stamps:

  • Start of Steve’s interview: Approximately 5 minutes (plus or minus 15 seconds)
  • My brief contribution: Approximately 6 minutes (plus or minus 40 seconds)
  • Steve’s rating of The Dark Crystal: Approximately 1 hour (plus or minus 6 minutes)

It’s not ideal, but that’s the best I can do.

Continue reading →

Meeting Steve Whitmire, Part 3: Basking in Reflected Glory

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

I took notes at the Q&A so I could talk about it in detail regardless of whether or not any video of it shows up online. I intend to do that in a separate post, but here I’d like to give just a brief overview and mention the parts that are relevant to the rest of my story.

Before I talk about Steve’s Q&A, I need to back up a bit to talk about one of his visitors from the morning. I mentioned her briefly in one of my other posts. She was the lady who was part of her church’s puppet troupe, and she brought along a Whatnot for him to sign (one of those ones that Disney marketed and sold for a while). She was accompanied by two teenage kids, but of the three of them it was pretty clear that she was the one most excited to meet Steve (not that the teenagers were entirely disinterested). Her Whatnot was one that they allowed new puppeteers in their group to practice on and learn with, so Steve not only signed it across the back of its head, he also wrote a short message of encouragement.

The autographed Whatnot was one of several puppets present at the Q&A. Scrubby was there with Ethan, and the lady and the baby were there with their Wembley, and there was also a guy there with a Kermit. I’m not sure if it was a fan-made Kermit or a toy that he’d bought, but they appear briefly in the following video alongside Steve (and Mitzi):

Also, it wasn’t a puppet per se, but there was someone there with a very detailed plush toy of Rizzo. I meant to ask the guy where he acquired such a thing, but then I didn’t get around to it.

Continue reading →

Meeting Steve Whitmire, Part 2: “Nice” Is Not the Word I’m Looking For

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

This is Part 2 of a series of at least three. Click here for Part 1.

Steve’s booth was next to Gigi Edgley’s, who was also making an appearance at OCon. I had seen that that was the plan and wondered if that was going to be awkward, given her close association with Brian Henson. But I didn’t want to ask Steve if it was awkward, because I thought that that somehow might make it more awkward. However, Steve brought up the subject of her appearance, asking me if I was familiar with her work. I told him that I’d never seen Farscape but that I had watched Creature Shop Challenge. He said that he hadn’t met her before this convention and wasn’t familiar with her work, but that he’d gotten acquainted with her over the course of the convention.

Clearly there’s no bad blood there.

Continue reading →

Men in a Tub Interview Steve Whitmire

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

But first the bad news: I’m having some sort of issue with my left wrist, so trying to lay off typing for a while, which means a delay in the rest of my OCon saga. 

And now the good news: Whatever was going on with my wrist last week seems to have resolved, so I can now talk a little bit about this interview, although I don’t have that much to say about it.

I really appreciate that this interviewer purposely tries to delve into the more obscure stuff. I mean, I knew that Dreamchild exists, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about it before. 

However, I don’t like the fact that, when searching for stock Kermit images, they decided on a screen grab from the first Vogel!Kermit video. I imagine that it wasn’t intentional, but now it seems like Simula-Kerm is looking over Steve’s shoulder and mocking him. I wonder if Steve noticed what graphic they were using at the time. 

Meanwhile, I’m continuing to scour YouTube for more videos or other content from OCon. If anyone has any or knows of any, please let me know. Thanks. 

Meeting Steve Whitmire, Part 1: An Old Friend I’ve Just Met

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Before you begin reading, I should warn you: This is an extensive, detailed, impressionistic, lengthy, and potentially incoherent account of my trip to Omaha Comic Con to meet Steve Whitmire. I’m writing it in such great detail not because I think it will be interesting to you (although I hope it will be!) but mostly to fix my own memories of it as firmly in my mind as possible.

If you want the tl;dr version, the entire experience can basically be summed up in five emojis:

😱🤩🤗😊😂

I knew that meeting Steve at OCon was going to be an emotional experience. I anticipated that, as a result, I was going to have difficulty controlling my tears, that all the feels were going to turn my brain into guacamole, and that I was going to have a hard time talking to him as a result.

I tried to prepare myself beforehand to counteract these effects. I made notes about what I wanted to say, and I tried to imagine what would happen when I met him. When it happened for real, I was successful in the former regard (controlling my tears) but had less success in the latter (communicating articulately). All things considered, I think I did pretty well, because there was NO WAY I could ever have predicted or prepared for what actually happened.

Continue reading →

Observed Interactions Between Steve Whitmire and Fans at OCon

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 6 Comments

Before I get into my immersive, detailed, and probably incoherent description of hanging out with Steve Whitmire at Omaha Comic Con, I want to talk specifically about the interactions I observed between him and the fans. I was at Steve’s booth most of the day, and so I got to witness the interactions firsthand. 

Continue reading →

Back From OCon–BEST DAY EVER!!!

Mary A. Uncategorized Tags: , , 4 Comments

Right now I don’t have a lot of time to describe my experience at OCon, but I wanted to say that I went there, and I met Steve, and IT WAS AWESOME!!!

I could tell you that Steve was nice to me, but “nice” doesn’t really do it justice. Take everything you’ve ever heard about how nice Steve Whitmire is and multiply it seven times seven times. That’s how nice he was to me.

He literally treated me like a VIP. He gave me a hug when he met me, he let me hang out at his table, he gave me an autograph for free, and he recommended my blog to a whole room full of people. 

Speaking of which, if anyone who also attended OCon is reading this and has/finds pictures or video of the event related to Steve’s appearance, I’d love to share that stuff here. You can use the “Contact” link to send me an email, or you can tag me on Twitter (@frogoflamancha) or Instagram (@mary_arlene_flm)

Thanks, everybody. I’ll post about the rest of it as soon as I can. Watch this space.