IXL Major Kavura vestai-K’cep and Phoenix Rising Quadrant Commander N’ayr sutai-K’cep attended Louisville Supercon on November 30-December 2, 2018. This was the first time for this con in Louisville, KY, and it was a total blast! They had guest actors such as Linda Blair and Barry Bostwick. Rock star Alice Cooper. Anime and animation guests such as Kevin Conroy and Alan Oppenheimer. Wrestling stars such as Kane and Sergeant Slaughter. Cosplay guests such as Stella Chu and 501st Legion. There were way too many guests to list here.
We wore our Mego Klingon costumes and were a big hit with Mego owner Marty Abrams. Mr. Abrams was there as a vendor and a panelist. At his vendor table he had the newest Mego brand dolls for sale, which he kindly pre-autographed. He told us about the history of the company. It has always been a family business, and Marty took over from his father. The dolls sold for eighty-eight cents in the beginning. When they started making deals to make action figures of pop culture icons, there was no way to tell what would be successful and what wouldn’t. It turned out that Joe Namath was a flop, and Star Trek was a hit. We also got to talk to Mego President Joel Rosenzweig (Abram’s son-in-law) and Paul Clarke (Dr. Mego). They were very enthusiastic and excited to see so many fans.
Henry Winkler, whom we all know as the guy who played Fonzie on Happy Days, was very exciting to see on stage for his Q&A panel. He has a show on HBO called Barry. His parents are German. He was dyslexic as a kid, and his parents had no trouble calling him stupid. But he did wind up going to Yale. One thing he has learned since Happy Days is “don’t snap your fingers at women.” Obviously, Fonzie was the only person who could ever get away with that. Believe it or not, Henry doesn’t like motorcycles and never actually rode one on Happy Days. The expression “jump the shark”, meaning the defining moment when a TV show starts to decline, came from the Happy Days episode when Fonzie was water skiing and jumped over a shark. They put that scene in the show because Henry can water ski. He said the show didn’t really “jump the shark” at that time. It remained the number one show for another five years. He has done two seasons so far of the TV show Better Late than Never with William Shatner, who was also a guest at this con. The two of them did photo ops together at the con, which you could get if you were willing to pay an arm and a leg.
William Shatner, or Captain Kirk as we like to call him, is still doing well at 87 years of age. He was recently inducted into the Quarter Horse Hall of Fame. He’s very proud of the horse-breeding hobby that he’s been doing for most of his life. He is a big country music fan and even recorded a country music album in Nashville, TN. Someone asked if Kirk was a Casanova. Shatner politely answered that he doesn’t kiss and tell! He was asked what was a show that not many know about that he wants us to know about. He said he did a show called Raw Nerve years ago. It was a talk show where he interviewed celebrities and got them to say things they wouldn’t normally tell people. Shatner realized that’s a quality he has, drawing people out.
The con also had fan panels and other auxiliary panels. These smaller panels were in an area that was hard to find in the big convention center. And we had to ask several people where to find them before someone could actually tell us. At least the con was spread out enough that it wasn’t too crowded.
We missed the Q&A panels of Walter Koenig, John de Lancie, and Jonathan Frakes, but we did get to speak to them at their autograph tables. When we told Frakes that Kavura has pictures of him all over their home, Frakes blew her a kiss. He was delighted! What a handsome, charming guy! We spoke with Jim Cornette, former wrestling announcer, and he surprised us by telling us he had just watched Star Trek the night before. We knew wearing our Star Trek t-shirts, after changing out of the hot Mego costumes, would draw out the fans! We also saw Kane, the former pro-wrestler and now Mayor of Knoxville, TN.
Lever Burton has stayed busy as a director since his days playing LaForge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He recently directed an episode of NCIS: New Orleans, an NCIS spinoff starring Star Trek alum Scott Bakula. Burton will also be a guest star on NCIS: New Orleans as a naval intelligence officer. His first book that made him really enjoy books was Captains Courageous. Roots was his first acting job and TV’s first mini series. It was Jonathan Frakes who got him into directing, and Star Trek was the first series he directed. He has his own podcast called Levar Burton Reads.
Femi Taylor played the green Twi’lek dancer in Return of the Jedi. She already had a regular part in the Broadway show Cats when she got the part in Jedi. She’s the only live action Twi’lek that was green-skinned. She said they painted her body by dabbing a sponge all over her, which was very time-consuming. And the headpiece she had to wear was very heavy, which must have made it extra hard to dance.
We got several comic book artists to record bumpers for our podcasts, StarPodLog and StarPodTrek.
And we also got them to sign some of our comic books. This was our 20th con for the year. Tune in next year to see what other cons we attend. To hear more about this and other con exploits of Nayr and Kavura, tune in to StarPodTrek, available now on Blogspot and iTunes, and join our Facebook group StarPodLog.
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