Riders of the Storm...

The edges of hurricane Bonnie blew more than a thousand Xena fans into Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Starting the day before the convention, the hotel's lobby was full into the wee hours every night with people talking and laughing and comparing Xena stories and pictures.

Click on a scrapbook page to go to report pages on the stars and bigger versions of the pictures!

Sharon Delaney (Fan club president)


Danielle Cormack (Ephiny)


Hudson Leick (Callisto)


Karl Urban (Caesar, Cupid, Mael)


Alexandra Tydings (Aphrodite)


The guests of honor appeared at the end of each day. The time until then was filled with trivia contests, a costume contest, music videos, and blooper reels. Two of the blooper reels were the ones that came with the Hercules and Xena fan club kits, but a Xena season two blooper reel showed new bloopers, including some that will be in the second year's fan club kit. There were a bunch of new videos. "I'm Too Sexy" was filled with just about every clip you would predict. "Bad to the Bone" was an excellent choice for Ares' title song, and Joxer got a music video to the song "Everything I Do (I Do for You)", which was a pretty good video even if it was guilty of a bit of revisionist history of exactly when Joxer started getting sweet on Gabrielle.

All four guest stars hung around for a couple of hours at the end of the day to make sure that everyone who wanted an autograph got one. The autograph tables were set up strangely; they were on the stage, and the crowd lined up on the floor below to pass by, get the autograph, and say hi. It had the advantage of not making the stars crane their necks up to see the whole two or so hours that they signed, and allowed for some good photos to be taken during the autographs, but short ol' me felt about five years old trying to reach across the table to shake a hand. Ah, well. Feeling like a five-year-old was a minor concern in that great weekend.

My eternal admiration goes to the guys who presented Hudson with a huge road sign: CAUTION: BEWARE OF FALLING ROCK. People in the crowd were laughing hard enough to put tears in their eyes, and Hudson loved it so much she posed on the stage with it and the guys.

After all the autograph-signing was done, Hudson posed in the lobby for pictures with anyone who wanted one. She was surrounded by a crowd of photographers and gawkers five people deep the entire hour or so she was there as a line waited to take pictures - it looked like a press conference was going on in the corner of the hotel lobby. At least, it did until she took a deep breath and let loose with a Callisto scream that must have raised the roofs four stories above. I hope nobody panicked. All told, Hudson spent somewhere over three hours signing, posing, and saying hi to fans, and she was as accommodating and full of energy at the end as she had been at the beginning. That woman should be running marathons.

The second day crowd was a good deal smaller than the first, which surprised me since Alexandra Tydings and Karl Urban hadn't been seen much at all in this half of the country yet. I guess one should never underestimate the appeal of Hudson Leick. The twinkie element in the crowd was cranked up a bit, too, giving decalcifying squeals for every appearance or mention of Ares, Cupid, Joxer, Caesar, Hercules, Iolaus... OK, any young male. All right, folks, repeat after me: They're cute guys. If you must scream, get it done once, get it out of the way, let the rest of us hear. By the thirtieth scream we're talking justifiable homicide.

That's it! And if you've never been to one of these conventions, lemme tell you: one of the best parts is getting to meet and chat with the gobs of other nutballs, especially folks whose names you've seen on your favorite web sites, messages, and stories. I think Creation could bill the audience as one of the main convention attractions. Thanks again to Creation for a great weekend, and thanks to all the neat folks I got to meet, trade stories with, and share laughs with.

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