Claudia Christian (Commander Ivanova, Babylon 5) and me
[December 31, 2010 – Rosemont, IL, US] Well, this was the 26th Annual New Year’s Party and the last one I am hosting. So if you missed it, sorry… The party was at the Westin O’Hare hotel in Rosemont, Illinois.
I decided that I wanted to do something beyond anything else I ever did since it was going to be my last NYEP. Well, here is the assorted details: So on a lark I thought I’ll try to contact a celebrity. What? Hey, all they can say is “no”. So, I contacted who I thought was Claudia Christian’s manager. It turned out to be her ex-manager but she forwarded my message to Ms. Christian. So Claudia e-mails me back personally while I am at San Diego ComicCon! Like this is totally cool. I asked her if she can make it to my New Year’s Eve Party and she said, sure why not, we can work out the details later. Woot!
I then went to one of those screenplay pitch fests in Los Angeles to pitch Dreadnought: Invasion Six again and… One of the execs said it would make a great game. I said yes, I heard that before, you interested? No? Gee, thanks.
Well, on a lark, when I left San Diego, I popped up Google and typed in “who is looking for new games”. I mean what the heck, right? Believe it or not, a game company popped up. In London. And their name is “Dreadnought-Design”. I am like “No way.” So I send an email out and I said something wacky like “It would be a nice play on words with your company”. I mean I didn’t even expect an answer. They replied! Very formal, “We can take a look at it and see if it fits in our plans, etc. etc.” It sounded better than a big fat “NO!!!” but not much better. I replied and said thank you! They replied and asked if I was willing to help make this into a game and I said yes, of course. So it was looking better. A bit.
So while we are ironing out details, I had a brilliant idea. I asked Claudia if she would like to do voice over work and she said “I’m sure we can work something out.” Like wow! As Mr. Burns says, and using his voice I said “Eeeexxxcelent!”. So I email the game company back and said I got Claudia Christian to do the voice over for the female protagonist, Lady Alianna Broxton. I could almost see them reading the email and going, “What!!!” Because the next email I got was about 1000% more positive, like “Bloody hell we are going to do you game!” Of course not in those words.
Moving along. I went to Halcon in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and met Denise Crosby and got her contact info. Denise says, “Oh, I know Claudia. That would be great to work with her.” Cool beans!
So the top main characters will all be sci-fi personalities! Well that was about the best year in my life. So instead of “just another General’s party”, I made this into a pre-launch party for Dreadnought: Invasion Six. Wow, cooler than anything on earth I have done so far 🙂 I also flew in Mike and Melissa from New York. And Devin and Adam from Huntsville, AL – but they had to cancel at the last minute, which was a big bummer. My friend Robin flew in from Austin. (Thanks!!!) I thought I was going to have too many people so I even turned away a few of my late responding friends. (Sorry!!!!!)
As it turns out, bunch of people who said they were coming didn’t show up and didn’t bother to tell me they won’t be coming, so that was annoying. I feel bad that I turned the last few away.
Day of the party – as always, I was running around in warp speed getting things ready up to the last micro-second. I just got the (new) web cam working with (new) downloaded software hours before the party. The music videos weren’t even ready, and I ran out of time so I decided to just let it play on random. I even bought an inkjet printer to print out the photos we took so Claudia can sign them on the spot and I only had time to get the thing out of the box, no time to test. And the printer was not cooperating. Aaargh! Oh well. Still flustered, I made it to dinner which started at 6:30pm.
Dinner was nice and relaxed so I caught a few whiffs of my breath. Then to the party. I had my one laptop running the music videos via projector and also the webcam and it worked without a glitch. Amazing. I roamed around and talked to Claudia for a few minutes and roamed around between my friends. I still had to make sure everything was fine, make sure the food is being brought out, etc. And I had John Yost and Kim do two drum circle sessions so that was cool. Almost everyone participated. John even got the bartenders to drum. So that was cool. Looks like everything went well. The rating of the party is a 10 out of 10.