t's now time for the Vulkon Costume Contest & Carmen is judging. The announcer makes an interesting decision - who ever the biggest fan is gets to be the Con Attendee Judge. Pretty much you have to be the noisiest fan.

Naturally, we nominate Claire to represent the group. We instruct her to use the Power of The Stuffed Selmak to help her. She jumps up and down, she waves Selmak and then the Tall Guy next to her tries to outdo her. Claire will not accept defeat easily & she proceeds to stand on her chair & Jump UP AND DOWN waving the Stuffed Selmak.

Kids - listen to me when I tell you not to try that at home unless you're a trained professional ~ but Claire does the group proud! She wins! She's the Judge! It's a rather .... interesting... Costume Contest. We have a Green Orion Slave Girl [Who no mortal man can resist - to quote ST:TOS] who is belly dancing with finger cymbals. I worry that we're going to have a Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, but fortunately it doesn't happen.

There's a few other entries including a funny SG-7 one in which they've gotten lost & can't find the Stargate [DAN!] plus a gentleman that is wearing a ST:TOS uniform and who is channeling Kirk, Spock, Sulu & Scotty. It's probably the worst case of multiple personalities that I've ever seen.

Unfortunately the lighting in the ballroom was really bad so the only way the pic of Claire & Carmen could be salvaged was by turning it B&W. In this shot, my sister and I are cat-calling Claire because she seems entirely too happy to be standing next to Carmen. Claire's laughing.

The winners are announced and we razz Claire as apparently she's getting a rep as Carmen's No. 1 Fan. Not bad for some girl that was indoctrinated in six weeks using Stargate DVDs, the Carmen Yahoo Group and Selmak.org. [Just imagine what she could have been like if she hadn't been influenced by the Evil that is Selmak.Org, eh?]

Then Carmen does his presentation at 2:30 PM.

Here's some of the comments he made over the weekend.

"Papa dies, everyone goes fishing."

"Not sure why they killed me off. Maybe I was too much money..." Pauses... "Naaah... not compared to what some of them were making..."

Carmen explained that he grew up in the area, about ninety minutes away. Then when he was eighteen he moved to New York City (Around the time of the Industrial Revolution he explained) then moved to California. He mentioned that he didn't get married until he was 50 - that he has a couple of kids but since he married late, he's a bachelor at heart. He says in real life, he's a Mr. Mom. Yesterday, he cleaned and cooked for his family and today he's riding in a limo from the airport - so he says being an actor is rather schizoid at times.

Apparently he and Herbert Jefferson Junior (VERY NICE GUY BTW) trained at the same theater place in NYC - they were playfully arguing who was older.

On Saturday afternoon they introduce him saying that he'll be singing that hot tune, "Snakes in my head" - and they butcher his last name so we booed (grin).

When he first became an actor his father thought he was a sissy, but before his dad died, he had done a bunch of movies and all that, so his dad was proud of him, so he can say that he was a successful actor.

Carmen researched Huntington's disease on the internet for "The District" plus one of the behind the scenes people's family member had it, so they worked on it to make it realistic.

He considers himself a journeyman actor - for every ten roles he attempts, he gets one - but he can make a living on that.

When he watched Babylon 5 - Knives -where he portrayed Urza Jaddo, his character died, upsetting his three year old son, because "DADDY'S DEAD!"

He had a senior moment regarding all this roles (after reminding us that he's done a lot of them), so someone ran up to him with a list of all his roles - looks like it was from IMDB.COM or TVTOME.com so he read off the list after promising the lady that he'd autograph it for her...

"Chicago Hope - portrayed a guy who took Viagra - Type Casting"

"Hill Street Blues - portrayed a Gay Hair Dresser - Close to me also"

He mentioned that when he was in the Godfather Part II - he was in Reno >???< for a couple months and that the women would line up in the hotel lobby to date actors from the Godfather series.

He also mentioned Blue Streak - apparently he thinks the rash scene is funny <cringes> and he waved his hand in the general area of his rash.

Asked if anyone saw Bella Mafia - claims that he did the worst death scene ever - he was poisoned. Took forever to die and then he did the CLAW (Carmen grasps at the air like he's dying) when his character was dying - he shook his head in disbelief remembering that scene.

Said the next worst death scene was Red Scorpion - where he was wearing a prosthetic arm and they had taped his real arm back. So they machine gun the prosthetic off and then he has to crawl on the floor toward the grenade that was in his detached arm which naturally had rolled down the hallway - so he had to crawl on the floor one handed, trying to reach the grenade before he blew up - and then it did.

He portrayed Liberace's father.

He was excited about The Accused and Stand & Deliver - as that had gotten him his first starring role in a TV series - Heartbeat (Kate Mulgrew) about a female run obs/gyn clinic. Then that show got canned and he got booked on BOOKER.

Favorite role (Naturally) Jacob Carter. You know the spiel - originally he was supposed to die in Secrets but they liked him so much that they kept him on.

It got funny after a while, he'd draw a blank and Susan (one of the group members) would shout out the name of whatever movie or TV show he was discussing. Finally he looked at her and asked, "Do you want to be my agent?"

After a while, I got a little punchy from lack of sleep, so whenever he mentioned a role, my sister and I would shout out, "You died in that one too!" When he mentioned "Warm Blooded Killers" he asked, did anyone see that ~ I waved my hands. Carmen shook his head and sighed, "No wonder you're a friend of Claire's."

Fortunately Carmen now seems less afraid of the group and more resignedly amused. As in, "When I go home and tell my wife, she's not going to believe me."

The Chevron guy enters the stage humming. To our amazement, he is humming the theme from Stargate SG-1 - complete with sound effects. Thanks to Gary, I hum that darn theme from Stargate:SG-1 all weekend long.

His presentation is very funny. Unfortunately I was laughing so hard that I couldn't write anything down.

Now that's a great presentation!

Claire demonstrating how she became the Con Attendee
Guest Judge in the Costume Contest.