And the second half of the Big Damn¹ Shindig Post!

A few Saturday things I forgot to mention in last night’s post were the shirts and my fence exploits. One couple brought a bunch of shirts they had made up for the event, with Serenity line art and the text “1st Annual PA Shindig Under-the-Stars / Oct. 2004” on the front, and the Blue Sun logo and Mal’s Shindig quote, “Sounds like the finest party I can imagine getting paid to go to” on the back. Hahaha!

As for my fence exploits, because I carried quite a resemblance to River when seen from a great distance, a bunch of fans asked to get my picture replicating the “River communes with the cows” scene from Safe. Then, someone joked about me standing on the fence corner and recreating the “River eavesdrops, standing on the ship railing” from Objects in Space. The second time I fell off, I decided it wasn’t going to happen on the top rail, but one of the attendees got some nice shots of me standing on the second-highest rail. Hopefully, she’ll either send them to me or post them on the boards sometime soon.

Other amusing jokes:

Browncoats for Kerry

Niska/Crow 04 (Vote for a man with reputation. Are you solid?)

My perfect name for the Mal/Inara ‘ship: Spongebath Tightpants.

One of the day’s first activities was getting one of the attendee’s cars out of the mud. The front end was sunk in halfway up the wheels. As we strove to remove the car from the mud, one of the guys grabbed some mud balls and made a Mud Man (like a snowman, but with mud), in honor of Jayne. With “Hero of Canton” on the brain, a few of us more musically oriented started joking about what sort of songs could make up a Firefly musical. We went off on this tangent for a good long time, then a bunch of us just launched into the Buffy musical. Two girls, one guy, and I sang all the way through to “Standing.” We decided that for next year, we would actually arrange something in advance and either sing a series of Firefly filks or sing the Buffy musical broken into something beyond “girls sing the girl parts and the guy sings the guy parts, unless they feel like singing, like in ‘Rest in Peace’ or ‘Sweet’s Song’, and then they can just sing whenever they want,” which could have been marginally more sophisticated. :D

Next was one of the most crazy fun parts of the con: Charades. From the just plain silly (Wash describing what he loves about Zoe in “Bushwhacked”) to the mockingly pornographic (Kaylee eating strawberries)! I turned out to be eerily good at it, getting practically every third charade. Go me! Kristin handed out CDs with the gag reel and the teaser trailer burned on to them to the first bunch of people that guessed correctly, so I ended up with one as well.

Some of the funnier charades: Nathan Fillion filming the circle scene around Tracey’s coffin in the blooper reel, Jayne offering to trade Vera to Mal for Saffron, Rick’s moment of glory, Crow getting kicked into the engine (which I got before it was even acted out, due to the charadee’s complaint of having to throw herself on the ground–another of my River moments, I suppose), Alan Tudyk getting shot in the butt in the blooper reel, Saffron’s offer to wash Mal’s feet, Mal getting shot in “Out of Gas”, Mal showing “mercy” to Atherton Wing, Purple Bellies searching for Simon and River under the placemats, River eating Ice Planet, “It’s a cow fetus”, River killing people with math, Simon asking for a menu, Mal deciding to go to the Special Hell, “Sponge Bath” coming up for the third time (and performed by a guy, hah!), River terrified by Book’s hair (which also came up three times), Simon’s reaction when he sees the statue of Jayne, River’s jig, the Crazy Ivan, Jayne going crazy and falling asleep, and “I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!”

We quickly developed easy methods of identifying the characters: Jayne was either putting on a hat or an overly masculine pose with a massive gun (gesturing to the massive gun to indicate Vera), Book was the miming of exploded hair, Wash was pretending to fly the ship (or playing with dinosaurs), River was pointing at me, and Mal was implying that one’s pants were overly tight.

After over an hour, we started running out of ideas, so we decided to include the entire Whedonverse, such as the dusting of Vamp!Willow, a hilariously accurate portrayal of The Master prodding at the Hellmouth barrier, PuppetAngel’s detatchable nose, etc. During Charades, people started peeling off one by one and heading home, and as the game wound down, so did the Shindig. Kristin’s mother sent us home with bags of uneaten bagels and other snacky goodness, and we vowed to do it again next year.

Mighty fine Shindig!

¹Note to Parents: This is not me using profanity. “Big Damn _____” is a running joke among Firefly fans, stemming from the episode “Safe”, in which Zoe refers to herself and Mal as “Big Damn Heroes.” Therefore, the cast members are our “Big Damn Heroes”, the upcoming film is the “Big Damn Movie”, etc.