Charity Breakfast with the Guest Stars

(no spoilers)

Creation tried something new at Cherry Hill: they offered a charity Breakfast with the Stars on Sunday morning. The breakfast was announced at the very last minute, so there was no information at all about the format or how much of the "portion" of the breakfast fee was going to the charities, but I decided to give it a try and see how it would go. I ended up having a great time and I hope that they keep up the idea.

First off, to clear up the issue about charity: I spoke with a Creation person and with one of the representatives of one of the charities receiving money. The breakfast cost $30, plus a $5 handling fee. Both people I talked to said that half of the cost went to the cost of the meal, and the other half was split between the two charities - an AIDS and a cancer charity. No one mentioned the $5 fee, which I think Creation probably pocketed, but I that was enough of a charity donation for my ticket money to suit me.

(On the flip side of the coin, of what I saw of the auction this year, very few items were auctioned for charity, and they were mostly the piddly stuff. What happened to the show-donated items going to charity?)

At 9:30, we were allowed into the dining room to eat. The room was full of large tables that each seated about eight people. It was first come, first serve, as everyone settled at tables with their friends. To me, this part was almost worth the cost of the breakfast alone: we got to eat from a decent breakfast (all kinds of food, from melons to cereal to eggs and french toast) and laugh it up with convention pals.

At around 10 o'clock, the guest stars started arriving. True to Creation's word (although they had made no promises), all the guest stars came to the breakfast. Claire and Robert did the expected thing: they filled their plates and headed to the reserved tables to eat before they started mingling with the guests. Bruce got his plate and then joined the first table of fans with an empty chair that he found, much to their delight. Jacqueline Kim didn't eat at all, but just walked from table to table, greeting everyone in the room.

My biggest fear was, given the hands-off policy Creation has had in the past between fans and guests, that we would never get a chance to actually talk to any stars. But I was too much of a pessimist; each guest visited all the tables, giving everyone a chance to chat and snap a picture if they wanted. Claire and Bruce took the most time joking around with each group, but even they worked their way around the whole room. Some people, like me, had to leave early enough to make hotel check-out times (the breakfast ended up lasting until about noon), but the format was relaxed enough that we could wander over to another part of the room to listen in on a guest star.

Robert Trebor was the first to arrive at our table. He mostly just asked us if we were fans of Missy Good and would be watching the Tropical Storm movie he was in, and made sure we knew his book was coming out in October, before he was off again. I heard he chatted more with other tables, but it didn't make the best impression on me.

Jacqueline Kim got a trial by fire for her introduction to the fans: unlike everyone else, who had done the convention on Saturday, the breakfast was her first encounter with us. She kept her hands behind her back and spoke very quietly as she walked from table to table, and I was afraid we had scared her to death, but she was very nice. At our table, she was mostly curious about how many conventions we had all been to, and guessed that we must all have as much fun being together as we did watching the stars on the stage. We congratulated her on her perception. (ha ha)

Claire took forever and a day to make her way over to us, but it was worth the wait. She sat in an empty chair at our table, and we had a ball joking around with her, telling her to feel free to use whatever language at our table that she had been censored from in the convention (which she took advantage of gleefully). She told us that she and Sharon were supposed to pick up Bruce on their way down to breakfast, so she told Sharon to step back and called Bruce with "Hello, did you order a girl?" We all roared to think what stories Claire could have had for us if he reacted with anything other than total bafflement - which of course was what he did.

When Claire left, the checkout deadline for the hotel was fast approaching, and Bruce was still working the other side of the room, so I packed off to leave, but stopped briefly over at Bruce's side (people from that side of the room had been doing the same with Claire - we had quite an audience around our table) to join the fun with him for a little while. He was regaling tables with stories about each person's hometown. Every once in a while he shouted jokes across the room, usually to needle Robert Trebor. His suspicious/frightened reaction to the oatmeal goop in the buffet line was priceless.

Bruce's finest moment: a girl in a Gab-ish skirt apparently asked Bruce to pose for a picture with her a la The Quest - with his arms around her and his hands on her butt. It was one of the only out-of-line fan moments I saw, and she chose Bruce to pull it on, who had no problems dealing with it. Bruce's response was to loudly proclaim to the room "Listen up, everybody! This girl wants me to put my hands on her butt! like that one episode... what was it called? that's right." Bruce made sure the person taking the picture was ready, then fulfilled the girl's request: by ducking behind her and slapping one hand about three inches away from her rear end. Way to go, Bruce!

My only suggestion to Creation would be to get to the mingling part of the breakfast quicker, either by having the guests eat at the same time as everyone else, or by giving them a breakfast before they come down to join the fans. I felt sorry for the guests, who had to eat while everyone else, already done, stared at them and wondered when they'd get to talk to them. But other than that, the breakfast idea seemed to work great - I sure enjoyed myself, and the stars didn't get too mobbed. I hope Creation holds more of these chances to rub elbows with the guests.

Return to the Cherry Hill Report.

	Web www.bethgriese.com