Saturday, May 9, 2009

Why Counselor Troi is my BFF and How I almost got punched by a Geek.....


In honor of the new Trek (which rocks btw, yes I do have an inner geek I am proud to say) I thought I'd dust off some Trek related gems from my past. Sit back and enjoy...


So I went to Iowa State which is a huge Sci Fi town, geeks under every rock and in every basement. And again, let me be clear in expressing my deep love for the geeks of the world. I thought geeks were chic loooong before that show with that dude from Rosanne and the chick from the John Ritter show came on....(ok, not a fan of that show but geeks in general, yes). And my first "real" job was I was the Manager of Suncoast which was a video store (sold not rented). Just to date myself my store was one of the top sellers in the region for laser discs....(hello early 90's! Glad to hear from ya again!!)


So it being a college town and a geek ridden college town my position as manager of a video store kinda put me in a position to be queen of the geeks. I sold alllll kinds of toys and movie related crap, errr, merchandise. Every see a guy blow a whole paycheck in Star Wars and Star Trek micro machines? I have.....2 of everything. One to display and one to horde for the never to come day when they would sell it cuz at some point in the future little plastic replicas of spaceships (that were mass produced) are gonna BE WORTH SOMETHING. I did try to educate the geeks that they only way their toys would be worth something is if a)someone geekier then them wanted it and didn't already buy their own 2 copies and b) -and this is the kicker- if they were ever willing to SELL IT, which most aren't. Anyways.....


Come to think of it I actually won a contest of two for my Trek Displays, wonder if I still have my collectible crap I got as a prize -it might be worth something now! hehe


Ok so how did I almost get punched by a geek? Don't get me wrong...even if he had punched me I totally could have taken him down but at the time it was kind of a scene cuz it got to be quite a yelling match on his end. I was giggling to wildly to scream back. This was one of my best customers, one of the ones who bribed me to hold stuff back for him and make sure all the stuff he got was in "mint" condition and edges weren't torn and things weren't scratched. Yeah -that- guy....he spent a ton of his pizza boy salary with me so I was willing to do what he asked. So he comes in all geeked out about whatever it was I had stashed for him and I make some kind of off hand remark (who me?) about how much I love my Trekkies.....


:::cue the sound of the apocalypse coming::::


He FLIPPED the fuck out....seriously went OFF on me for like 10 minutes.


ahem, as it turns out.....and this is VERY helpful and timely knowledge considering the hordes of Trekksters out there RIGHT NOW....its almost like this story found a wormhole and is being telecast from the past to save the present....I just got geek chills!


It turns out that TrekkIE is a derogatory term and is VERY insulting! The CORRECT term is TrekkER.....


don't get it twisted ::geeksnap:::


As I mentioned his carotid artery was nearly bursting and I was snorting into my elbow....all in a days work in my little red store.


Is that lesson learned? Cool....let us turn out attention to How Counselor DeAnna Troi became my BFF.


Clearly I am a fan of sci fi, inner geek fully present and accounted for...so it is natural that I was curious about Trek conventions? Who isn't? You walk by the freak show you feel compelled to walk in the tent right? So there was a Trek convention in Des Moines and one of my little geeks had given me some tickets. I grabbed my stoner roomate at that the time (Jeff for those who remember cuz stoner doesn't exactly narrow anything down when describing my list of roomies....have I ever told THOSE stories? remind me...) and we went to Des Moines. I remember the theme was "The Trouble with Tribbles" and everyone was holding what looked like furballs that giant alien cats hacked up and cooing for them....(insert eyeroll).


I was a bit disappointed in that there wasn't the full costumed parade of geeks that I was expecting. I guess Iowa geeks don't have the budget for full on Klingon battle gear. Disappointing....


The keynote speaker was Marina Sirtis who played Counselor DeAnna Troi in the tv series ST-Next Generation. I am a particular fan of this series so I was happy to see and meet her. She did this thing where she told everyone she didn't like to be blinded by flashes while she spoke so she invited everyone who wanted to take any pics to come down right at the top of her speech and snap all the pics they wanted. She vogued and preened and totally diva-ed it up for them. It was cute and fun and she had the gratuitous gag reel and there ya go.....


:::::side note about Trek conventions- if you think it is all geek stuff think again. Jeff and I walked away with a dozen copies of bootleg movies that hadn't even been released yet. Those geeks got all the good stuff!::::::


So where you might ask is the part where we become Best friend FOREVER? I just met her for a few seconds and she wouldn't be able to pick me out of a gang of Ferengi!


Cut to a few years later....


I made the grave mistake of when I moved out of my mother's home I left things there thinking the Mother Storage Unit would be open to me forever. Wrong wrong wrong....once I moved out I would randomly have boxes appear on my doorstep of my stuff which my stepdad would drop off as he passed by my house on his way to work everyday.


My mother is a big scrapbooker.


Huge....


And some of the thing I left behind were photo albums.


Like my other stuff these too were returned to me but in a slightly different way than I left them. Pretty much every picture I ever took now has a scalloped edge and a border and some very colorful sticker and word bubbles around them.


It's not that I don't appreciate the effort put into it all.....good god all those star shaped paper punches alone take hours. But what is difficult is when you are scrap booking someone else's life you might not get the details right.


So I am flipping through my mother's interpretation of my life- which in and of itself is fascinating- and I come to a double page spread with all these random pictures of people that is covered with stickers that read "friends forever" and "best pals". The title of the spread is "BEST FRIENDS FOREVER" in gianormus letters. Most of them are school pics (the kind you wrote LYLAS for love ya like a sis on the back of....) but some were not.....


Like, for instance, the pic a penpal sent me of Lori from Gimme Break with Linda Evans and Tutti from the Facts of Life. They are my "best buds" according to my mother.


And there.....in the lower left hand corner I see her. The pic of DeAnna Troi doing a diva pose and the sticker beneath reads...."Best Friend Forever."


So I got -that- going for me.....which is nice.


Live long and Prosper and may the force be with you.....

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