geekchick1013 (geekchick1013) wrote in gool_awz, @ 2010-04-03 23:06:00 |
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Current location: | The Basement |
Current mood: | nostalgic |
Current music: | Unzertrennlich, stuck in my head |
Entry tags: | dero, eskimos rock my world, gool, nyc, omg, yes i would marry dennis grabosch |
The Sparkliest Weekend
I have a feeling this isn't all going to fit in one post, because it's insanely long, but I'll give it a try and see what happens.
Woke up at 3:30am to get to 6:00am flight. Said goodbye to cats and laptop. *sniff!* Trip uneventful, with the exception of a confusing delayed-undelayed situation at the Milwaukee airport, which has the best sign EVAR just past the security check area:
Arrived in New York amazingly awake for only three hours of sleep. Took a cab to the hotel, then waited around for the lovely tree1970 to show up. Let the sparkle begin! After a lot of chatting and nervous debating about outfits and my backpack exploding all over my bed, we were finally ready to brave the subway. It was confusing as hell, as expected, but we managed to find Madame X about two hours before start of registration. Excited? Who, us? We ate at a pizza place about three doors down (New York pizza experience? Check!), and I spent most of the time not eating cutting apart the OH HAI! name tags.
We then loitered outside with some other GOOLers waiting to be let in. We were checked off, given a gift bag with wrist bands and other goodies, and let loose in the upstairs lounge. There we mostly waited nervously, eyeing each other and asking usernames.
At some point I met aldiara , and all I remember was HAIR and SQUISHING and OMG YAY! I soon found lilithilien as well, and there was more SQUISHING and EEEEE! and it was a big ole love fest that I can’t even describe. Then there were Eskimos and more Eskimos and lots more hugging and rushed, nervous chatting. Then there was suddenly a lot of cheering and screaming and someone bumped into me and I turned around to find that it was Thore Schölermann. HOLY CRAP. I scurried back to my spot on the Red Couch (yeah, that’s right) and watched he and Jo Weil being all adorable and nervous as they introduced themselves. Each actor/couple had a clip from their show, and Thore & Jo’s clip was the infamous “Breathe Me” scene. It was sort of hilarious to watch them get all uncomfortable watching themselves make out on a giant screen. Hee. Then they introduced the other actors with accompanying clips. Showing what would prove to be consistently fortuitous timing, during the AWZ clip (the “Unzertrennlich” reunion scene, naturally), our boys appeared to a cacophony of screaming. I’m going to slow things down a bit here, because it’s pretty indelibly marked in my memory.
Dennis, Igor, and Felix entered in a line, in that order. I barely got a glimpse of Dennis grinning that cheekbone-tastic grin of his as he was led through the crowd before I saw Igor clinging to Dennis. He was looking around at all of us and he did this massive grin and laugh thing and I swear, I thought I’d just crawled into my laptop. OMG, ROMAN AND DENIZ ARE TWO FEET FROM ME. I tried to collect myself as they walked onstage, and also remember that they’re DENNIS AND IGOR, hallo! They were even more adorable and nervous than Thore & Jo (who?). Well, Dennis was nervous anyway. Igor just bounced around a lot and yelled into the mic and was pretty much as adorkable as I’d imagined.
Our boys wandered off to the bar as Jo & Thore continued the intros (they took quite a while). If I remember correctly (and I might not be, most of the weekend was a blur), Gregory Michael and Scott Evans both appeared at some point during the intros and said HAI to everyone. Last to arrive was Hal Sparks, who immediately went up on stage and started riffing. OMG COULD JUST ONE OF YOU TRY TO BE UGLY, PLZ?
So began the “mingling” portion of the evening, which mostly involved attempting to squeeze through the 80-odd other people trying to get at the actors. I dragged Tree outside for a smoke, then on our way back in we ran into Hal Sparks on the stairs (as you do). We were about to settle in again when I spotted Igor making the universal “let’s go have a smoke” gesture to someone nearby. I immediately grabbed Tree and dragged her along behind them. That was how Tree & I ended up outside smoking with Igor and a lovely British gentleman who turned out to be Dennis’ husband, Brent. Again, everything is pretty blurry, but what I do remember is Igor literally bouncing around. Also, yelling at passersby in a loud New York accent (which was quite surprisingly good), and laughing that total-body laugh of his, and then suddenly coming to a complete stop for about three seconds to make a point while looking you straight in the eye. Guh. Tree and I stayed outside for a moment after he’d gone back in and let ourselves be all wibbly-kneed before pulling ourselves together and heading back in.
This is where things are going to get REALLY incoherent, because… well, again with the blur. We chatted with Felix for a bit, and then we chatted with Gregory Michael for a bit too.
As an aside, can I just say that Gregory Michael is apparently so beautiful that he actually spreads it to people close to him. I mean, I look AWESOME in that picture, and I’m pretty sure it’s the magical influence of Gregory Michael. Anyway, we tried to get in to Thore & Jo (who had sort of taken over a back-room area), and over their shoulders I spotted a window looking out over a patio, where I could see a certain gay German not-figure-skater smoking outside. Yet again I grabbed Tree and dragged her out there, thus proving the reason that I didn’t bother to quit smoking before this weekend. We didn’t really chat much with Dennis, mostly just lurked near him, and other actors circulated through as well (Felix, Jo, and GM-who I accused of stalking us). I managed to pin down one of them for a photo:
Then the actors were wrangled back inside to help out with the fanvid awards. Before they got onstage I got my first real introduction to Dennis, who gave me this huge hug and smooch; and so began the falling head-over-heels in love with Dennis Grabosch portion of the weekend. The winners of the YT vidding contest were announced, and CONGRATS, sdk !!! After that there was more mingling out on the back patio, and we managed to snag some more pictures:
And my favorite of the evening:
That was more or less the end of the evening’s events, and the crowd began to VEEEEEERY slowly make its way out of the building. Like, so slowly that it took a good 45 minutes. During that time we snagged Thore and got pictures:
At some point, Tree and I shuffled off to the subway, squeeing most of the way. On a whim we decided to check out Times Square, since it was only one train stop up from the hotel. We ended up wandering around like typical tourists, snapping pictures of buildings and signs and meandering through the 3-FRICKEN-STORY M&M store. Sore feet and sleep deprivation finally got the better of us and we stumbled back to the hotel and straight to bed.
Day Two – Saturday
We got up bright and early at about 10:00, then headed out to brunch at the Stonewall Inn. Or, tried to, because apparently the subway changes routes during the weekends. Subway FAIL! After ending up in Times Square again (the opposite direction of the Stonewall), we opted to get a taxi and not risk getting there late. Our cab pulled up in front of the Inn, and who should be smoking outside but our boys. We all but flew out of the taxi and streaked straight over to Dennis and Brent, who were being all adorably coupley. The next 20 minutes or so were spent chatting with Dennis, Brent, Igor, and Felix while smoking. Dennis and Brent are basically hilarious, and super sweet. Dennis accidentally spoiled us a bit (won’t mention details), and complained about Igor (facetiously, of course) and how the Eskimos were all anti-Deniz until Igor squeezed out one measly tear and suddenly we’re all squishing him and giving Roman dirty looks for being so mean. GOD I LOVE THAT HE READS THE COMMENTS, HEE! He also mentioned how he tried to make sure that the actress who plays Stella NEVER EVER finds out about the EKP site for fear of crushing her soul. Dennis is so full of WIN it’s not even funny. As is Brent. Igor is just full of crazy infectious energy… I felt like I was regressing back to teenagerdom just being near him (which was fun as hell).
They finally let us into the Stonewall and we all trooped upstairs, where it was packed and hard to find seating. We spotted the Sparkle Section near the front and immediately squeezed in. This was when Denniz the Lambie entered my life as a gift from spaghettitoes , and immediately bounced around and squeeed and generally acted like a big dork. Igor & Dennis posed for some pictures to send to ktbob , and one of those was… hold on, I’m getting light-headed remembering… for one of them they posed mid-kiss. And yes, I’m not afraid to admit, I totally became a puddle of goo at that point, seeing them kiss RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. Whew. Ok. I’m good. Almost better than the kissing was Brent teasing Igor, who actually looked slightly mortified to be making out with Brent's hubby right in front of him. HEE!
Tree & I played placeholder as the interviewer from RTL swept our Eskimos off to ask them strange questions about their sexuality and marrying Dennis and I don’t even know what else. When they got back we all squished in and waited for the first panel to start. Since it was the German invasion panel, we all sat up and paid attention, dammit. I don’t even remember much, besides Hal Sparks (who was MCing) talking a lot. I think Igor got a bit annoyed with him at one point, because there was a bit of passive-aggressive teasing going on, and secretly I LOVED EVERY BITCHY MOMENT OF IT. Oh, and of course the only person who talked as much as Hal was our darling Dennis. *air kisses to DG*
The panel ended all-too-soon, and I snuck out for another smoke (I think there was more actor interaction, but honestly I can’t remember… the smoke breaks outside Stonewall were so frequent and most of them were really awesome in some way or another, so I can’t remember what happened when). There were many more panels, some of them amazing, others a little awkward, others hilarious, others quite thought-provoking. During one smoke break we happened upon an all-actor photo shoot, and Tree took advantage of the moment and got an amazing picture of all eight of the guys, every one of them looking hideous *eyeroll*
On another smoke break there was some sort of strange occurrence with one of the non-EKP participants during which Dennis basically proved he’s the most amazing sweet and lovely human being on the planet. Not to mention caring and kind and selfless and GAH I could go on and on but I won’t because I’m already more or less stalking him. Once the panels wrapped up we all bounced and headed off to doll ourselves up for the evening’s party.
Ok, I’d like to preface this part by saying that I really thought people were planning to camp it up on Saturday night. There was much talk of feather boas and tiaras and such, so I sort of assumed that was going to be the idea. Which is why I ended up buying the feather boa and some angel wings, only to find they wouldn’t fit in my luggage (wah!). However, during our back-and-forth texts, Tree did mention that she had two pairs of fairy wings left over from Halloween, and that they would fit in her suitcase. Because SHE IS AWESOME, she brought them along and let me select from black ‘n’ glitter or pink-orange-gold ‘n’ glitter. Yeah, you can guess which one I picked. I also had a pair of knee-high rainbow socks, a pink plastic rhinestone tiara, and pigtails. A couple of AIDS-awareness ribbons attached to the wings, and I was officially a Soap Fairy.
And, as it turned out when I arrived, THE ONLY PERSON TO CAMP IT UP. Instead of *facepalm*ing my way through the evening, I embraced the sparkle and bounced around the place poking people with my wings and getting lots of strange looks. I LOVE GETTING STRANGE LOOKS! *cough* Ahem, anywho, some of the actors looked a bit confused by my getup, although Scott Evans seemed relatively unfazed (wonder why?):
When Dennis & Igor finally arrived (during, I kid you not, the song “Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night,” again showing their ridiculously amazing timing), I bounced right over and basically SQUEEed at Dennis about how I was a Soap Fairy and the look was inspired by his t-shirt design. He totally *squished* me, which made me very happy.
I also got a picture with Dennis' AMAZING SWEET FUNNY AWESOME hubby, Brent:
Then Tree and I bounced off and danced and ran outside any time it seemed like someone interesting (read: Dennis or Igor) might be going out to smoke (yes, I know, it’s a little pathetic, but it was REALLY FUN dammit) and cuddled with the Eskimos, and somewhere in there I finally snagged Igor and got a picture with him:
OMG that kid is gorgeous, and no that picture is not my lappie wallpaper at all *ahem* Oh, and Andreas Jancke (who plays Gregor on VL) showed up at one point and spent the entire night hiding out in the DJ booth looking insanely hot and unapproachable.
I collected my last one-on-one (Hal Sparks):
Then we danced a whole lot before finally dragging ourselves out to a cab. Soap Fairy was very sleepy by then, so we crashed more or less immediately upon arrival at the hotel.
Day Three – Sunday
Tree and I packed up and left our heavy bags in the dungeon-esque basement luggage/storage room in the hotel, then walked the two blocks to Mustang Harry’s for the farewell brunch. The Eskimos more or less claimed a section of tables, and the fans/ reporters managed to leave Dennis & Igor alone long to enough to eat approximately three forkfuls before pulling them off for various things. I have to admit, I barely even noticed when Thore sat at a table five feet from me to eat, ‘cause I was too busy chatting with the Eskimos and exchanging noserubs with everyone.
We managed to wrangle our boys outside for some… not privacy, exactly, just to get them away from the craziness so we could present them with the AMAZINGLY GORGEOUS scrapbooks that amilee123 put together. That’s when things started to get quite woobie, as everyone thanked everyone else for coming and the boys were SO gracious and lovely and Dennis got woobie up which made everyone else get woobie. There was then much hugging and picture-taking and I had NOTHING to do with suggesting this picture *looks innocent*:
I also wanted an excuse to snuggle with Igor again, so got this one:
And when Dennis complained that there hadn’t been enough noserubbing amongst the Eskimos, I grabbed him and gave him a noserub. I know, it was a sacrifice, but I felt it was important to take one for the team. Also? SQUEE!
So the brunch finally came to a close, and Tree & I reluctantly moped back to the hotel. But we’d gotten wind of something happening in Times Square, and although it was only a few hours until my flight and Tree had to catch a shuttle to the airport, we scuttled over to Times Square anyway to have one last go at hugs with everyone. It was getting down to the wire by the time everyone got there, and we never did see Igor (who was apparently busy with Male Function stuff, like WOAH), but we did get one last chat and hug-fest with Dennis and the Eskimos, which was so worth having to rush off. And may I reiterate, Dennis is the loveliest person ever… I can’t imagine any other actor taking the time to give each fan hugs and smooches and just really connect as opposed to just posing for a picture or signing something (which he also did in abundance, mind you). I think Igor is just as sweet and approachable, just a little more distractible ;D
Also, the Eskimos? O. M. G. I simply COULD NOT love you guys more. Even though I was feeling very shy and being my usual “oh, they don't actually want to hang out with me” paranoid self that I always am, they totally made me feel so welcome and so included and so a part of the family. Snuggles and hugs and noserubs were given at every possible moment and I just fell in love with each and every one of them. aldiara and lilithilien , in spite of being so busy with organizing duties, always found time to give me a hug or play with my hair – tree1970 , who was my roommate, seriously became a life-long friend. Love you, hon! spaghettitoes , wildepet , amyriadfthings , redcouchaddict , antiteb , amilee123 and every other Eskimo I had the EXTREME pleasure of giggling and cuddling and rubbing noses with over the weekend were so SOSOSOSOSO lovely and amazing. I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH and my only real regret for the weekend was not spending more time with you guys. *glomps*
So off I went in my cab, and the driver was AWESOME and got me to the airport with enough time to get through security and get to my flight. I was doing pretty well until we started to taxi away from the terminal, and suddenly my eyes were watering and my nose was stuffy and I was having a hard time breathing around the massive lump in my throat. This persisted all the way home, and into the next day.
After
Possibly the thing that struck me the most in terms of the actors was how insanely gracious they all were. Not only were they infinitely patient with all the people crowding them constantly for pictures and autographs, most of them were actually really touched by all the fuss (especially the German actors, and most especially our boys). Because I’d be eating up every little detail if I hadn’t been able to be there, I’ll throw in some thoughts on each of them. If this is already getting too long (and HOLY CRAP is it), please feel free to skip over it.
Scott Evans: How adorable is he?! He attended with a small posse of gays and didn’t mingle as much as some of the others seemed to (or it’s possible he did and I just didn’t notice because I was hyperfocused on some of the other actors). During the panels he was funny and sweet, even when people were attempting to bash ABC and the show for the douchbaggery surrounding his being let go. Although I’ve never been a Kish fan, I seriously wish this boy nothing but WORK WORK and more WORK. And yes, I'm hagging him more than a little from now on.
Gregory Michael: I’ve never really watched anything he’s been in, so he was a bit of a surprise to me. He ended up MCing some of the panels when Hal Sparks disappeared to do his livestream, and he did an AMAZING job, y’all. He’s not only really funny and sweet, he’s also shockingly up on fandom, talking a lot about fanfiction and fanvids and being really cool with the other actors. I think he made me laugh more than anyone else during the panels, and there was a lot of laughing going on. Also? This man is insanely gorgeous. And I now will be finding and watching Greek and Dante’s Cove, because he rocks.
Hal Sparks: I was SUPER excited to meet Hal, because not only does he play my favorite character on Queer as Folk, he’s also someone I’ve been following for years on things like “I Love the 70’s/80’s/90’s,” Twitter, and anything else he does, really. He’s really funny and cute. He’s also insanely intelligent. Sadly, he was definitely the diva of the event, which means not only did he become a bit annoying by taking over the panels he was hosting, I also didn't get a chance to actually talk to him at all since he was either doing his livestream or hiding out with his posse at the back of the bar. Ah well.
Felix Isenbügel: Oddly enough, I was probably around Felix more than any of the other actors during this event. Mostly, when we chatted, it was about what he’s going to be doing after he leaves GSZS. He seems to be more of a theater actor than movies or TV, which sounds interesting. He was as gracious and lovely as everyone else, although he seemed a bit shy (except on the dancefloor). Maybe just overwhelmed by all the craziness that was GOOL. He is really quite gorgeous as well, by the way. More than once I got a little melty during eye contact.
Thore Schölermann: Dimples. OMG the dimples. In a lot of ways he’s nearly as adorakable as Igor, which wasn’t really a surprise to me since I did eat up any behind-the-scenes VL stuff in the past. Silly karate poses abounded (especially when the Japanese ladies gifted him with some traditional Japanese clothing and one of those headband things and please forgive my ignorance of what all those are really called), and he has a great dry sense of humor. If not for our boys, he’s probably the one I would have been following around (read: stalking) the entire weekend.
Jo Weil: MORE DIMPLES! What is with the German boys and the dimples?? I want to mate with a German so I’ll have a kid with dimples. Yeesh. Anyway, Jo was really cool on the few occasions I was close enough to him to make a judgment call. Really, he and Thore were kind of wrapped up with the more hardcore VL fans, so I didn’t spend as much time with them as with our boys (because we were totally bogarting Dennis & Igor hee). He was extremely approachable and sweet when I did see him tho, and I wish I’d gotten a little more time with him.
OK, be warned: this is where I’m going to go on and on and on.
Igor Dolgatschew: Most of my interaction with Igor took place during cigarette breaks, which was exactly why I was very glad to be a smoker this weekend. Igor has this energy about him that is very abrupt and kinetic and spastic (but not in a bad way). He really is like a puppy, constantly being distracted by shiny things and bouncing around and laughing. It’s quite infectious, as I found myself also being quite bouncy and distractible around him. He shifts gears so fast it’s sometimes hard to keep up, and when he suddenly stops and does this intense focus thing, it sort of takes your breath away. Ok, going to try to reign in the fangirl a bit here, sorry. Friday night I mostly saw him outside smoking, then Saturday during the panels he was continuing to be very Igor. At one point Dennis was on a panel while Igor wasn’t, and Igor sort of crept in and watched around a corner, making faces at Dennis while he was talking, and it was so fricken cute I wanted to stuff him in my backpack and bring him back to MN with me. Ok, reigning in the fangirl again, sorry. Saturday night at the dance party he was bouncing around and dancing with everyone and I didn’t see as much of him. Except for outside smoking, of course. I was starting to think he can’t possibly be this manic and high-energy all the time, especially since Deniz is generally a pretty mellow, quiet character (in comparison, at least). I thought maybe he was just super-excited to be in New York and the US, but after a chat with Brent, I’m pretty well convinced that this is how he is all the time. He did seemed to have calmed down a bit by the brunch on Sunday. During the gifting of the scrapbooks and Sparkle Sisters t-shirts, he looked like he might have been getting a little choked up himself. It was all really sweet and made me want to squish he and Dennis together into a big hug and never let go. I wish I’d gotten a chance to see him again in Times Square, but oh well. I got a picture of the two of us on my phone, and you better believe it’s my wallpaper. And I don’t spend minutes at a time staring at it, because the phone backlight turns off after 30 seconds and I can’t. ;D
Dennis Grabosch: Seriously y’all, I am in love with this guy. I didn’t get much of a chance to interact with him Friday night, because he was mobbed of course, but when we met he wanted to know my name, and he gave me a hug and a smooch, and it’s safe to say my knees were more than a little weak when I wobbled back to the Red Couch. I talked to him more on Saturday, and yes, he does talk that much. AND IT ROCKS. It’s not like he’s one of those talkers who gets annoying after a while; everything he says is really interesting (and he wins for best accent too, since it’s this lovely mix of German and British). He’s really forthright and honest about how he feels, which is super cool coming from the whole PR-can’t-talk-about-stuff world that he clearly eschews. He made me laugh a lot, sometimes with opinions, sometimes with stories about life at AWZ, sometimes with observations about the world. I had a chance to ask him a question during a panel, and I kind of grilled him a bit requesting more clarification and such, and in retrospect I worry that I got a little pushy and annoyed either he or the audience (my sincere apologies if that’s the case), but I just loved how honest and fabs he was being whilst answering the question (going on and on, as he does) and most of it he was directing right at me, which made it really hard to concentrate on what he was actually SAYING, but it was really a highlight of the panel session for me. He also seemed honestly delighted by my Soap Fairy outfit on Saturday night, unlike some of the others who just seemed a little confused or worried by it. Oh, and then Sunday brunch came, and that’s when I fell totally in love with this boy. He was pretty honest about how much it touched him that we lavish so much love on him and on Show and the rest of the actors (but mostly on him), and how thrilled he was to meet some of us over the weekend. Eskimos, you should know that he appreciates us A LOT. Sometimes we fans don’t get to hear that enough, and I don’t know if he’s aware of that deficit, but either way he was really profuse with his love and how grateful he is to us fans (as was Igor, I should mention). When Tree & I scrambled to Times Square in spite of the potential for being late for shuttle/flight, I basically walked up to Dennis and told him that I only had about 3 minutes before I had to leave, and demanded his full attention for those 3 minutes. His response? He grabbed me and hugged me for 3 minutes. And yeah, I AM IN LOVE.
OK, I think I’ve gotten most of the story out. I’m sure some more will occur to me, and if it does I’ll post it straightaway. Like I said, if I was in the shoes of the people who weren’t able to attend, I’d want to hear every last detail, and I’ll probably be reading everyone else’s blow-by-blow accounts as well just to see what interesting experiences they had that I didn’t, or to add squees to the shared experiences.