Grand Slam: Just Desserts

We met Sylvia tonight at the Grand Slam dessert party. As we were waiting for the Smallville stars to come to our table, she told us about her stint at the Ambassador Hotel. She met Rudy Vallee there and Robert Young. She was wearing the yellow plastic wristband of the gold ticket for the convention, and the talkative man next to her was her son.

The woman next to her was dressed all in red, which I thought was a bit unusual because of the setting, and, if I may dare say, her age. She went on and on to me, in a conspiratorial tone, about how her mother turned nasty when she came down with Alzheimer’s. I found it a very personal conversation for someone I had just met.

Both of these women seemed to enjoy meeting the celebrities. They weren’t concerned with what roles they played, or their past projects. They just wanted to chat about where the actor grew up, apparently wanting to share their own history in that conversation.

I have to say quite selfishly that I was much more interested in hearing about Phil Morris, who plays the Martian Manhunter on Smallville, than I was about hearing that Sylvia used to live in Toronto.

As it turns out, I met Phil’s father once, Greg Morris. When I was a Customs Senior Inspector at Air France, Greg imported some expensive watches through cargo. He came down to clear them personally. In spite the fact that we were quite busy, he came into our office, sat down and chatted with us a good half an hour. Hey, he was a celebrity, having played for many years on the original Mission: Impossible. It seemed that he was much in awe of us as law enforcement officers. As he was about to leave, he quietly asked me how he could get one of those shiny Customs badges, like the one I was wearing. “You can’t, “ I replied. That was the last I saw of him.

These dessert parties are hit-and-miss. Hit-and-miss for the desserts, although most of the time they do it right. And hit-and-miss as far as the celebrities go. We all lined up in the narrow hallways of the remodeling Marriott, and came in promptly at 10 am. Valerie, Creation's long-time security person, motioned us towards the ice cream and cake, and said, "Have at it!" The spread wasn't as good as most of their dessert parties, but good enough. And then the celebrities came in, and marched to the front of the room for our photo op: Michael Hurst from Hercules, David Palffy from Stargate SG-1, and Aaron Ashmore, Laura Vandervoort and Phil Morris from Smallville.

After the brief photo op, we all put our cameras away and took our seats. And waited. Each celebrity would be escorted to the table by their herder, who would keep a stopwatch on them: about 3 minutes would be allowed for each table. Except that at our table, Laura, our first visitor got about 1 minute, and our second visitor, David, got at least 10 minutes.
I don't remember what Laura said, except for something about where do you live (which is always a safe question for them to ask), and I know too much about David. I don't watch Stargate and don't know his character. However, I learned plenty about why he shaved his head, and why it's still shaved.

But it was a better time with Aaron and Phil. Aaron Ashmore, who plays Jimmy Olsen on Smallville, has a twin brother who is mostly in movies. Aaron and he have appeared once or twice in their early careers together, but mostly Aaron keeps to T.V. and Shawn is in movies (e.g., X-Men).

This is a great opportunity to sit down with the stars, even briefly, and just chat. I usually sit back and just listen. I was a bit amazed, however, at some of the questions asked by our table. And the fact that one or two of them kept asking questions even when they were being dragged away by their handlers.

It was an hour well spent.