Con 04 Lucy’s “Welcome to the Con”

by KT
fsktl@uaf.edu

This is also out of order, but it’s something else I felt like writing down now.

Sharon told us that just before the con started, they realized they hadn’t taped a welcome message like they usually show at cons, done by Lucy or Lucy and Renee or more rarely just Renee.

So Sharon called Lucy at 10:30 one night and Lucy said she’d just do it right then.

So Lucy is in a room, sitting in a chair and she starts off by saying hello. It is immediately apparent that her hair is a standout. (Or more literally a standup.) She has tugged her bangs over to the left side of her head and tucked them into a rubber band with some of her longer side hair to keep them over there. They stand up on the side of her head like a little tiny feather duster.

She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, I think.

She starts welcoming us to the con and suddenly Judah walks by in the background. Lucy holds up a lime and explains that tomorrow at school, the kids will be studying words beginning with the letter L. So, she says, we have a lime. We have… (and she pulls a little bucket over and rummages in it) legs. (I THINK she said “legs” but she doesn’t pull any out.)  Judah walks over and peeks in the bucket. Lucy pulls out something and says, “What’s this Jude?” He says, “Duh”. “Yes”, she says, “We have ‘Duh’. No, it’s lips! Luscious lips!” And she holds up this small kind of round clear plastic thing that has a pair of bright red lips either painted on it or embedded in it.

Judah walks out of the frame and Lucy goes, “Oh yeah” as she remembers that she’s supposed to be welcoming us to the con. She suddenly looks off screen and the camera swings around and we see Judah drinking something from a glass. Lucy makes a joke about hoping that it’s not her wine and then laughs about having to child proof everything—having to put everything “UP, up high on a shelf.” Judah walks back over to Lucy’s side, glass in hand. He picks a piece of ice out of the glass and puts it in his mouth. Then he gives a little shudder. Lucy laughs and puts her hand out and he spits the ice cube into her hand. Then he says something. She (as mother’s do) knows that he is saying the ice is cold. She smiles down at him, saying, “Yes, it’s cold, isn’t it?” as he touches the ice in her hand and shudders again. Then he puts it back in his mouth. Then he spits it back in her hand.

Then she starts to talk again, again welcoming us to the con. But then something Judah does makes her suddenly lean over to talk to him again. He looks up at her and her face just transforms into this adoring momma mask of love. She’s radiating joy and talking with a very loving voice and with a very rich tone, asking him (hmmm—does she ask him what he’s doing? Maybe). He just falls right into her love in return and gives her back smiling satisfaction and total adoration of his own. It’s a lovely moment.

Then she straightens up, almost starts to talk again and once again he leans over and spits an ice cube into her hand.

She says, “He’s hell on wheels.  And he never sleeps.”

Then Sharon mentions her lovely hairdo. And she says, “My best friend when I was five years old, Michelle (somebody) always used to wear her hair this way. And I’d always ask her why. And now I know—it keeps your hair off your face and out of your way.” She was quite thrilled that she had finally figured it out. And totally comfortable with how it looked, apparently. Even on a public video.  Grin.

She then once again starts to welcome us to the con. She thanks us for our continued support and love and how much it means to them that we continue to show up every year. And she laments that she won’t be able to be there with us this time. But that we will be seeing Renee.

Then she says goodbye, then begins to wave goodbye and tells Jude that he should wave and say bye-bye. She waves for a bit, says, “Bye-bye!” for a bit and finally Judah also waves and says bye-bye. Close up on him waving as the scene ends.

Very sweet, very cute.

Sharon told us that she asked Lucy if she wanted to do it again so that Judah wouldn’t be in it. And Lucy said no. She said, “These are good people.” That she knew that we wouldn’t be posting on the internet a pirated picture of Judah from this clip. I suspect that because Judah is on it, it will probably not be part of the con tape.

It was a charming piece. I’ve always seen Xena as very maternal and I think now that that came very much from Lucy, rather than from the scripts. I think she’s got that momma bear protective streak in her that she just didn’t tamp down fully when she played Xena. Well, when she played reforming Xena. Evil Xena was never very maternal. Now when playing her, Lucy did tamp the momma out of her soul. Except for when she gave up Solon.

It also never ceases to amaze me how that woman has absolutely no ego over her looks or rather over her sometimes ecletic appearance before her public.  My favorite look so far is her in the old, faded, tightly stretched out green Chimpanzee T-shirt from the second coffee talk video. But the hair do in this bit runs a close second for sumptuous chic.

KT

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