Stacey's GH Weekend Recap (1998)

I had an absolute blast! I've been attending for the past three years and this was the best! First of all, we had last two years, she came in and we hung out for a couple of days then went up to LA.

We stopped at the Beverly Hills Television and Radio Museum - it is awesome! There aren't exhibits but for $6 you have two hours to watch any of their classic tapes, they had some very early GH, AMC, OLTL - I could have spent days in there! We watched the 96 GH event held there, great clips and was fun to see some of my GH favs at an event - set the tone for the weekend to come.

Met up with Joan Thursday night and the three of us poured over pictures, scrapbooks, and yacked!

Friday am we went down to the soap boutique which is held every year in one of the pool side rooms. Great time to pick up GH merchanidse and buy fan pictures, I got a lot of great ones there! Around 3:00 Nolan (Chris Ramsey, PC and Marshall, ex-GL) were by the pool. Nolan was wonderful, he was very very funny, very warm and charmed everyone! Marshall had pics that he autographed and handed out. I didn't know who he was but he is gorgeous and also very nice.

Friday night we attended the first every PC event. It was only 200 people and in a smaller more intimate room than the GH luncheon. The actors were all very warm, Julie, Lisa, and Jay especially so! Lisa is very charismatic and was wonderful, found out we are from the same town and chatted for a moment.

Jay was there last, was wonderful, he was very warm and approachable. They seemed very interested in meeting the fans. Ron Hale is always a joy, he is a very classy guy - signed my Nurse's Ball shirt (while on my back!). Cari was also very kind - and it was very warm in this room.

Saturday we went to our annual pilgrimage to the Hollywood Book and Poster shop on Hollywood Blvd, few blocks down from Grauman's Chinese Theatre. They have slides of old GH on the set shots of Robert, Anna, Luke, Sean, ect. They have some OLTL, and AMC, and shots from shows like Full House, Melrose Place, movies, ect.

We attended Vanessa's TVC charity event to raise money for Sojourn (which provides services to battered woman and children). This event was very well done. Over $15,000 was raised for this organization. The food was excellent, pasta cooked for individual orders, Q&A with Vanessa & Tyler, there was a professional photographer who took 5x7 pictures of the fans with V&T for a $5 donation to Sojourn. Having a professional take the pictures was an especially nice touch - anyone who has attended a fan event knows what it is like to hand your camera to the person behind you and then find your head cut off!

Vanessa was very gracious, very warm towards her fans, she was very appreciative. This was the first time I had met her and she was very kind. Originally autographs were not going to given due to time constraints. A beautiful autographed picture of Vanessa was included in the packets given out which was a nice touch - great idea to have it already autographed. A friend really really wanted to get an S&B jacket signed so she offered a $100 donation! I guess this brought out the "fish bowl" and from then on autographs were provided for a contribution to the fish bowl to benefit Sojourn (I heard that the fish bowl contained $5,000 by the end of the evening!).

The tape package with a set of 20 S&B tapes, 3 Brenda tapes, with the beautiful 88 page book of S&B's history donated by Tammie Solar (worked on by Beth, Denise and Tammie) brought $600 in the silent auction! A special thanks to Dawn Magula for the beautiful tape labels that she provided. And a special thanks to Beth Guaura who spent hours doing extensive tape descriptions over the past couple of years, scoured mags for pics on S&B, scanned them and sent them to Tammie to choose the best ones to go with each tape description. To Jennifer Chamber and Denise La Rosa my appreciation for their assistance with the tape descriptions.

The tape package with the V&M tapes, GH video music tapes, High Incident, To Love, Honor & Decieve (donated by Ana Melo) and the description book with pictures (again created and donated by Tammie) raised $250 at auction. Again thanks to Dawn for the donation of the labels!

Tammie also printed a cover page for the Cassidine Return tapes, combined with Sheri Evener's Tyler tapes raised $50. Tammie also did a description page for the GH Anniversary tape and this anniversary package (with 35th anniversary mag and t-shirt) raised $75 (I think?). So this large group effort raised between $900-1000! You guys are awesome! But I digress, I left to travel back to the Sportsman's Lodge for the Wally & Rena event but heard that V&T stayed much longer than the scheduled 5:30-8:30.

I had given Vanessa the V&M #2 tape, Joan had given her S&B 4 & 5 - Vanessa said how much she enjoyed the tapes! I told her how fans from all over the US and Canada had contributed clips to the interview tapes.

I know many many people worked on the event and I'm not familiar with all of them, Kathy Fisher the president of the TVC (The Vanessa Connnection) organized the event and did a great job, everything ran amazingly smooth - this was the first major event done by the TVC. Other people who contributed Lynn Younger - treasurer, Amy Coles, Laura....I know I'm missing many many names but to all of those TVC committee members you rock! I had a great time, and even won a Nurse's Ball t-shirt! So fans had a chance to meet Vanessa, take pictures of Vanessa, obtain autographs and everything was handle in a non-rushed atmosphere. The fans were split up into three different groups for photographs which kept the lines to a minimum (so not all 200 people where in line at once!). Kathy was considerate to place people who had informed her there would be attending the W&R event in the first photo group. There was great food, a desert table, coffee, yum! There were tables and tables full of stuff for the silent auctions items - plenty to look at while the photo sessions were going on. The time really flew by! V&T did the raffle themselves, Vanessa was very sweet about giving the winner the choice of items in the raffle basket.

The TVC had collected money from fans to give V&T a beautiful housewarming basket - it was HUGE, chock full of stuff! It has so heavy Tyler couldn't carry it out (or so I heard!).

I heard many glowing reports of this event, fans seemed very pleased. There was one fan in particular that came to my attention at Maurice's event. This young woman was in a wheelchair and told Maurice that she had saved for two years to come out to California. That every time she wanted to buy something she would hold off so she could save her money for this trip, and with tears in her eyes she commented on how it was worth every penny to meet him - then he came down and kissed her! And Michael Sutton did the same! Jim Warren actually took a picture of her with them - I know I had tears in my eyes! She also was able to meet Vanessa and Vanessa was wonderful with her as well. Its so nice to see that these actors are so kind and considerate, so willing to go out of their way. There was a dry eye in the room at the MB event when he kissed her!

I hate to know scoops up front, and don't like to know or reveal the ending of a movie, in fact I won't even tell my friends too much detail about a film just whether I recommend or whether it is good. So, I've made a choice not to reveal too much about scoops that I heard privately - figure they will come out soon enough. But there are a couple of minor storyline items below but nothing that I don't think has already been widely reported.

Lets see, I left off after Vanessa's event on Saturday. I forgot to mention that Michael Logan attended the V&T event! His wife is evidentally very involved in Sojourn so he was there on her behalf, Michael is also a renowned "Brenda Barrett" fan. At one point when most of the fan attention was on Vanessa I noticed that Michael didn't seem to mind when a fan went up to speak with him. So I introduced myself and told him how much I had enjoyed and missed Pure Soap (the show all about soaps that he used to do on E! with Shelly Taylor Morgan). I asked if I could have my picture taken with him and this was great fun! He was very charming. I told Michael that his on line chats were missed and that I really missed his TV Guide column, that as soon as I got it I opened to his page to see his scoops! (and I don't read scoops!). He assured me he had been on a month vacation but was back (hence his article in this week's TV Guide), he also said hinted that he had a story coming up on Vanessa/Brenda in an upcoming issue!

I asked whether there was any chance Maurice would be able to return to whisk S&B off for a happy ever after. He too lamented that there just wasn't time to write that story as GH had spent the past year sending Brenda into Jax's arms. We concurred that she will die with no body to be found keeping open a future possibility for Vanessa to return. (this also makes sense as then if Maurice is available he could return at any time and not be tied to Brenda's storyline, would get complex where he to return while she was still committed to 90210). So doesn't look like a happy ever after for S&B right now, Maurice said the same thing at his event on Sunday.

From Vanessa & Tyler's event we were off to see Wally & Rena back at the Sportsman's. This was a great event, it was wonderful to see Rena again! She reported being in contract negotiations for a role (just announced that it is Melrose Place) - she said it was not daytime but assured the audience that should she ever choose to daytime again she wouldn't go anywhere outside of GH!

They were warm and funny, Rosabel's nanny - Paul was there and there was a lot of interaction between him and W&R. Rena laughed and said Rosabel calls him "Paula"!. When someone from the audience asked if they would have more children and they answered that they would like to have another child at some point, Paul responded by asking for a raise!

Rena noticed the "Ride of a Lifetime" tickets being sported in the front couple of rows by fans - supplied by the never tiring Amanda & Lauren. She commented how much she appreciated the continuing support and was amazed that fans were still asking about Lois 2 years later! But she did say that she has no plans to return to GH at this time. Wally was asked about his lack of storyline, he believes one of the reasons that N&A haven't caught on more is that there has been a lack of commitment to the storyline by the writer's/producer (I'm paraphrasing here). Seems that all the support for a N&L reunion may have Wendy doubting whether fans will accept Ned with someone besides Lois. The audience assured Wally that we were ready for Ned to move on (even though Lois will come first in our hearts!). One audience member pointed out that she was having difficulty accepting N&A as Nancy Lee looks older than Wally does. W&R pointed out that they are near the same age (that is NGL and Wally) but that youthful looks runs in Wally's family - evidently his father is 80 but you would never know it. So while he may look younger they are near the same age. Rena took great joy in sharing that Wally is going to be 40 on his birthday this month!

(I was also sure to stop by Wendy Riche's table on Sunday and assure her that I was indeed ready for Wally to have a storyline - read romance! Many N&L fans are interested in seeing what chemistry will occur with V. Many of us liked his storyline with Lois due to the quirkiness of this character which lightened Ned - he can get rather stuffy and heavy with all the Q drama. But I digress...)

When asked about his staying on the show given his lack of an interesting challenging storyline, he reported that someone in the family had to pay the bills! He also assured the audience that most likely he would be staying till sometime till year 2000 (only a year and a half but sounds like quite awhile!). He also reported that when Sarah Brown returns from her maternity leave that some interesting storyline will occur that Ned and AJ will be involved in (there was a slight scoop revealed which I will keep to myself but as Wendy says keep watching! Sounds like fun!).

The audience also lamented that what was missing in Ned's storyline is missing in much of the show, the humor, romance, and fantasy that was there during early N&L, S&B, R&S, and K&L in 94. I've heard audiences make similar comments at other fan events over the last couple of years.

Stacey : )