Tag: Mark Sheppard

Lucky Season 13 Kicks Off for Supernatural!

Lucky Season 13 Kicks Off for Supernatural!

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Supernatural season premiere days are special. There’s so much anticipation and excitement, I swear it must be visible from space! In the early years of the Show, there was a much smaller group of fans who squeed together on the internet, but even then we were all so passionate that the feeling was incredible. Now the rest of the world has caught up – now there’s a special issue of Entertainment Weekly, there’s Jensen on Live, there’s Jared on Kimmel, there are interviews and videos and even the network tweets about the show coming back! That excitement that has always been there is magnified, but the sense of shared passion that has always been there is just the same.

Not every season premiere has been one of my favorite episodes, but this one I loved. The opening montage was excellent, set to the melancholy ‘Nothing Else Matters’ by Metallica as we remember how desolate and alone the Winchesters are as the season begins. (Also, Metallica!) The new title card is equally awesome – I actually gasped out loud when I saw it. (I watched with two kids and a dog, all with strict instructions to be totally silent, so they all grumbled every time I made involuntary noises. Oh well.)

She’s totally a fan

We open on Dean standing over Cas’ body, and Sam trying to communicate with Jack. In other words, right where we left off. Which made me very happy indeed. The times when the season premiere has started with a time jump have never sat well with me. I want to see EVERYTHING, Show, I don’t want you to cut things out!

This should be a surprise to no one at this point, but the cinematography was gorgeous. An early shot of the boys racing down the road in the Impala is especially beautiful and probably as complex to film – the camera behind then beside then finally in front of the car. I’m sure that wasn’t easy to pull off, but it really really worked. Sometimes Supernatural looks more like a feature film than a television show on the CW, which is a credit to all the talented crew members who make that magic happen. And especially to Serge Ladouceur and director Phil Sgriccia, who I am beyond grateful to still have with the show after all these years.

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Toronto Con 2017!

Toronto Con 2017!

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It’s Supernatural premiere week, so this will be a drive by Toronto con write up. As in, I’m writing this at the con between panels since I’m not a vendor here. That’s my only hope of actually getting a con report posted before the season premiere. Squeeeee!!!

This was reputed to be the last Toronto con, though it looks like Creation might now be considering coming back in 2019. But the chance of it being the last one was enough to make it emotional for me – for anyone who was here the year that Rob Benedict had the stroke here at the con, or for anyone who was here the next year for his triumphant return. When I first read Rob’s intimate first person account of having the stroke that he wrote for Family Don’t End With Blood, I couldn’t make it through without reaching for the tissues – not many other people have told me they could either. All those emotions come up when I’m here in Toronto, but it makes this con a special one.

The other thing that made me emotional was having Rob and Rich back. I loved NJCon (as you know if you read my con report) and I think Jason Manns and company did a fabulous amazing job. But I just miss Rob and Rich when they’re not here. They’re part of the family, and not having them with us just feels wrong. Unfortunately I got here so late that I missed their intro and rushed to my seat just as Julian Richings was starting his panel.

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The #WoManns Con – Supernatural New Jersey!

The #WoManns Con – Supernatural New Jersey!

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New Jersey con holds a special place in my heart, simply because it’s the closest con to my hometown of Philly. That means I can actually drive there instead of flying, which makes being a vendor a bit easier. That also meant I could caption this con ‘Adventures in Vending’ because we definitely had some adventures – and some misadventures.

Being a Supernatural con vendor is like joining a tribe of frankly awesome people. For the SPN Creation cons, it’s mostly the same group of friendly, creative, resourceful folks at every convention – and because those cons happen a few times a month on average, the vendors get to know each other very well. They’re like a group of traveling carnies, moving their wares from one city to the next. They have each other’s backs just like the rest of the SPNFamily does, and I would trust any one of them if I was in a tight spot.

That doesn’t mean vending is easy. My friend Karen offered to help me out at NJCon, so we drove up together. The day before, the FedEx guy delivered my many many boxes of books, each of which weighs over 40 pounds. I bolted out the door as soon as he pulled up and asked what the policy was for leaving the books in my car instead of on my doorstep, and luckily the very nice FedEx man agreed. When Karen and I got in the car the next day, I swear it felt sort of like getting into a rocket ship – the boxes of books in the trunk and back seat made the front of the car point dangerously towards the sky.

With apologies to my poor overburdened Honda Civic, we started out, slowly making our way north to scenic Secaucus. The giant convention center had a back loading dock where we could unload the books, so we drove up there and asked where we could park to unload lots of boxes of books. The bored looking man waved us into a spot and said we could park there. Karen and I looked at the very long ramp across the lot where we would have to enter the convention center and exchanged a look of dismay. That was a steep ramp and a long way with forty pound boxes of books!

True to my always-frantically-busy-and-not-quite-prepared state, I hadn’t been able to find an actual hand cart but I’d brought along my green and white striped beach chair on wheels that doubles as a transport cart. You know, for taking your cooler to the beach or whatever. If it can transport a cooler, I thought, why not a box of books? So Karen and I heaved a box out of the trunk and onto the beach chair. The canvas sagged but didn’t break, so we counted that as a win. Then we began the trek up the long steep ramp. After a few minutes of struggling, we finally got up and into the convention center, wheeled the books and the chair down the hall and found our vendor table. One box down, ten to go!

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Lynn and Kim do PittCon – Part 1, Friday and Saturday

Lynn and Kim do PittCon – Part 1, Friday and Saturday

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Lynn didn’t make it to the Supernatural con in Pittsburgh until Saturday, thanks to having to work all day on Friday (boo!!), so this first part about Friday is all Kim.

Kim:

Conventions are always super busy, jam-packed weekends. Panels. Photo ops. Autographs. Sometimes I do meet & greets. Hanging out with old friends. Meeting new friends. It is a full schedule, to say the least. For the convention in Pittsburgh, I added another thing… I helped Lynn with her book sales (Family Don’t End With Blood) at her table in the vendor area. How many ways can I spell exhausted? I have newly found respect for vendors, for Lynn. Working in the vendor area and trying to do all the convention things is beyond exhausting. And for the record – I would totally do it all again. And again.

Lynn: I have that in writing now. Excellent… *evil cackle*

Kim: Thank Chuck for my dear friends Kim and Stacy, for helping me set up Thursday night, for sitting with me at the table all weekend, for giving me the time I needed for photo ops and autographs (and a meet & greet with Kim & Briana). Thank Chuck they were there to make sure I had water and food, and a few stolen moments to breathe and pull myself together for photo ops.

That said, entering the airplane hangar – at least that’s what the theater feels like – to sit down for a panel was a like entering my zone… sitting down, taking out the camera, watching the panels through the comfort of my lens… yes, this is where I belong.

Rob could not be there on Friday, so we had just Richa…

No.

That is one million percent Inaccurate. Wrong.

When did the word ‘just’ become an adjective? When did it begin to carry that negativity? Every day of my life, I have to tell people that, no, I don’t have a job, that I’m ‘just’ a mom… as if being ‘just’ a mom is somehow less, somehow unworthy. Sure, the popular phrase “Just Do it” implies a positive message of strength and endurance, but usually adding the word ‘just’ to describe anything is somehow, less. So can we stop saying that? I’ll stop using the word to describe myself, and ya’ll stop using the word to describe yourselves, and let’s just simply stop using the word as an adjective of negativity, ok?

So starting over…

Rob could not be there on Friday because he was attending a film festival. As a result, we were treated to the impeccable hosts of the utter effervescence that is Richard Speight, Jr, along with the always delightful Jason Manns, and the incredibly talented Louden Swain band members Billy Moran, Michael Borja, and Stephen Norton. We were given witty banter, and fabulous music, and as Richard put it, we were in the “warehouse of fun” and it was awesome.

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Behind the Scenes of Supernatural with Robbie Thompson

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One of the absolute highlights of this year’s Comic Con for me was sitting down to chat with Robbie Thompson, gifted comic writer and screenwriter who wrote some of my very favorite episodes of my very favorite show. That would be Supernatural, in case you didn’t know. Which is pretty much impossible unless you’ve just stumbled over this blog for the first time.

I attended Robbie’s panel on Intersectional Feminism in Comics, which was awesome and entirely inspiring, so we were all in a good mood afterwards. We decided to try to find a room where there weren’t a million people around, and took a bunch of friends with us – Laurena, Candice, Anne and Kamila – who were down with listening in to our epic interview. They will henceforth be referred to as the Peanut Gallery (‘PG’). For the most part, they were PG. The most part. Just sayin.

After several false starts traversing the ginormous convention center, including being barred from using the press room for our interview, we found an empty room with lots of empty round tables. Robbie, ever the intrepid one, shrugged and said, ‘how about this one?’

Occasionally a Comic Con staffer would come in, take a look at our oh-so-professional interview in progress, and quietly back out. Score!

I start the interview by tossing my handwritten notes about what I’m dying to ask and my little vintage audio recorder on the table.

R: (points to Lois Lane like tape recorder) Look at this, so professional..

L: Hey, it’s ancient, it’s done a million Supernatural interviews.

R: Uh oh, look at this, guys…(points to what appears to be a big stack of questions, a la Inside the Actor’s Studio)  There’s going to be some Bernard Pivot in there. There may be some things I say off the record…

L: Of course, you know I’m good with that. (but honestly? There weren’t many!)

R: Okay let’s do this!

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Supernatural Minncon Friday and Saturday – Misha, SNS and More!

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The Supernatural convention in Minneapolis is notable for a couple of things. First, it’s in the grandest theater on the whole tour – an actual slanted floor tilted and cushioned seated amphitheater style theater with two clamshell balconies that open up like magic on Sunday for J2 Day. The stage is so big that some of the guests aren’t quite sure what to do with it and it makes the Saturday Night Special seem like a rock show in a bona fide concert hall – and Louden Swain and guests know exactly what to do with that!

The convention center, and the city itself actually, is also notable for being connected by a series of hamster trail elevated tunnels that allow you to make your way from the hotels to the convention center without being pelted by the inevitable wind and rain. My hotel was also playing host to a furry convention, so we had furries and Supernatural tee-shirted fans sharing space and high fiving in the hallways. I was struggling to transport my hundreds of copies of Family Don’t End With Blood the mile and a half (okay okay, exaggeration, but it felt like that…) of hamster trails to the convention center when a very nice young man at the furry convention offered to help. He pushed the overloaded handcart the entire way to the convention center, while we chatted about what our two fandoms had in common and why nobody should be ashamed of what they’re passionate about.

I was in the vendor room throughout the con, and was so honored to meet many people who had read Family Don’t End With Blood and been inspired by what the actors and the fans shared in their personal essays. I also was thrilled to collaborate with Jodi from Eldwenne’s Fantasy – she created an original Women of SPN – FDEWB necklace that I adore, and was kind enough to give one to me. The necklace symbolizes that for the women of Supernatural, family means more than just blood – there’s a blue backdrop that matches the cover of the book, hugged tight by silver to symbolize the found family that surrounds the Winchesters, and black for Baby. And of course the drop of blood red. Gorgeous. Jodi is giving $5 off the necklace to anyone who purchases the book, or $10 at a con!

The con kicked off on Friday with Rob and Rich a bit overwhelmed by the amount of greenery onstage – not just the usual couple of dead trees, but a whole forest of them, along with some equally-dead potted plants.

Rob and Rich rearranged them, made a makeshift Supernatural Christmas tree, and generally had way too much fun with inanimate things. They even had a Christmas story, with Richard sitting crosslegged on the stage.

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Return to Mecca – Supernatural Vancouver Con (Part One)

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I’ve been too busy to post con reports this year for the most part, but I’m trying to change that – at least for one con! Vancon, as it was called for almost a decade and will still always be called in my head, is a special con. It takes place in mecca for Supernatural fans, where the show is filmed, and that means that lots of other Vancouver-based Supernatural alums and crew members often come by to say hi to the fans. It’s also the place where some of the best days of my life have taken place, and where many of my SPNFamily friends come to congregate, so that makes it a special con for me. This year was no exception.

I didn’t have any extra time to take in location filming or revisit some of my favorite Vancouver restaurants and sights, and I’m still grieving that the con is no longer at the beautiful Sheraton Wall Centre, but the Westin Bayshore is also quite nice. It’s also way above my budget at the non-con rate, and thanks to my aforementioned busy, I neglected to book it early enough to get that. So my friend Alicia and I spent the first two nights up the hill at the Coast, a European flavored hotel with an international bunch of patrons and a portable AC machine that served as possibly the best white noise I’ve ever experienced. I totally wanted to bring the giant thing with me! I then cashed in every single Starwood point I’ve ever accumulated to move over to the Westin, which rewarded us with an amazing view of this amazing city. I love you, Vancouver!

I mean, look at it! That’s the view from my window once I finally got to the Westin Bayshore.

I had a lovely seafood dinner out on the water on Friday night and a few good meals at the hotel restaurant too – I wasn’t in the vendor room, so I had a lot more time to hang out and have some good conversation. I was also very honored to sign copies of Family Don’t End With Blood for lots of people who had read it and been inspired by it, which totally made my weekend. If you came up to me and asked for my ‘autograph’, I’m thrilled that you enjoyed the book and that I got to meet you. And I hope you all told the actors what a fantastic job they did writing their chapters!

I had very little internet reception on Friday and especially Saturday, so I tried to make up for the lack of tweets by taking pictures. Thus this is Part One of my Vancon post, since wordpress was a wee bit upset with how many photos I was trying to cram into a single post. Part Two (SNS continued and Sunday) up shortly!

There were lots of SPN alums on hand for karaoke and during the con, most of which I forgot to take photos of, but I had to have a picture of the lovely Kuma, star of television commercials, and his owners Kevin and Jill Parks. Kevin has been with Supernatural as a First Assistant Director ever since I can remember, and is instrumental in making the show the high quality tv that it is. In fact, he’s joking referred to as “Parkasapedia” for his encyclopedic knowledge of SPN canon! Kuma has appeared on the show too, as well as in that Flonase commercial you see all the time.

Adam Williams, who supervises all that amazing VFX wizardry on Supernatural, was also on hand – along with the always awesome Lucy. Together, Adam and Lucy wrote a chapter in Family Don’t End With Blood about how the show changed their lives completely – by bringing them together! Talk about life changing.

Friday kicked off with Alaina Huffman (filling in for the busy-filming-Supernatural Kim Rhodes) and Gil McKinney.

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Turning up the Heat at #Supernatural Phoenix Con!

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Phoenix Con was the first con after a bit of a break, for those of us who weren’t lucky enough to go to any of the non-US cons, so it was great to see everyone again. The cast of course, but also my vendors room buddies and fellow fans and friends new and old. My old friend CB, from my very first job as an ‘adult’, now lives in Phoenix, so she came to the con to keep me company in the vendor’s room for part of the time. For another part of the time, she was sick with a nasty stomach flu, which left me on my own in the vendor’s room – which makes it very difficult to get any food or drink or even to run to the bathroom! But never underestimate the kindness of the SPNFamily. There were several contributors to Family Don’t End With Blood there, and they took turns checking on me and bringing me food and drink – so did several fellow fans and fellow vendors.

Padalecki books! With the awesome Megan Padalecki and Little Moon

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All Along The Watchtower – Supernatural’s Season 12 Finale

All Along The Watchtower – Supernatural’s Season 12 Finale

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I was so exuberant over Supernatural’s penultimate episode of the season that I went into the finale episode already an emotional wreck – in the very best of ways. I honestly sort of wanted a while to just savor all those wonderful warm feelings, but of course Show just couldn’t let me do that. I barely had time to grab another glass of wine before the familiar notes of Carry On Wayward Son were making me even MORE emotional. There are so many things that happen that are special when a television show has been on this long and had this much impact – even the band Kansas, who recorded that classic, tweeted about the season finale, knowing that every single fan was going to go nuts when Supernatural’s unofficial theme song was played.

The recap took us through a season of ups and downs, through a lot of episodes that were painful to watch and a few story lines that didn’t work for me like I think the show intended, and ultimately ended up where the last episode left off – a Winchester family hug.

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Wait, Is That Eileen?? Supernatural 12.21

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The past week has been a whirlwind, much of it Supernatural-related, and now I’m writing this from family vacation, so my review of last week’s episode is influenced by the context in which I watched the show and the fact that right now my feet are up and it’s a sunny spring day in San Francisco. And that’s probably a good thing, because – like the majority of Supernatural fans – I had a lot of issues with last week’s episode.

I did, however, have a good time the night I watched it anyway. That’s because the book release party for my new book, Family Don’t End With Blood: Cast and Fans on How Supernatural Has Changed Lives, happened the night before at The Study Hollywood in LA. It was an amazing, inspiring, emotional night, where actors and writers and producers and fans all came together to celebrate this amazing show that we all love. The next night, a group of us gathered in our hotel room to watch the episode together. It was the first time most of us had watched together an episode of the show that made us friends, so it felt very special. We ordered Grub Hub, shared some delicious nachos, and waited with a mix of anticipation and trepidation for the show to begin. Literally sitting on the edge of our seats (on the hotel beds…)

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