*UPDATE* ok, I got rid of the Toronto Star newspaper article and have instead added my very own article I wrote for teeny tiny robots #8, which has yet to come out. so yay! you get to read this before it comes out. aren't you lucky! enjoy!!
My love for the TV show Degrassi Jr High/High seems to be an on going article for Teeny Tiny Robots. As cheesy as it might sound, the show has really influenced me in my teenage years. It's the only school based show that deals with real topics, has real actors (not models) and I can relate to. Although this show was made in the 80's, their wardrobe seems to be the only thing that could make the TV show different from the 90's. Being a Canadian show, filmed in Toronto, I am able to spot Degrassi landmarks every trip I take to Toronto. And this is when my love for Degrassi became an obsession! It was the summer of 98, when I realized that the actors in Degrassi, even as good as they were, have not really made much of their acting careers after the Degrassi series ended in ‘91. This also made me come to the realization that most of them probably still live in Toronto and with some investigating through some phone books and what not, I could probably get in contact with a few and you know...stalk them! Well, I don't know if "stalk" would be the best term. Maybe just phone them up, hope that they aren't too freaked out, and maybe go and visit them. That's what I had in mind for the trip to Toronto that I would take this summer. It would be strictly a Degrassi investigating trip. The plans for this trip suddenly became a lot easier when I joined the Degrassi Digest emailing list. On this mailing list were people who were more obsessed with Degrassi then myself (if you could believe that). Any sort of question I posted onto this list, could be answered by Mark Polger, the creator of the Degrassi Digest and the most obsessed Degrassi fan out there! Now Mark had the same idea as myself about getting to meet Degrassi actors, except he took it a step further. No, he didn't stalk these actors, he found a nice safe, fun way to meet some Degrassi actors and get a whole bunch of Degrassi fans together. Yes, Mark decided to create the first ever Degrassi Convention. You wouldn't believe the joy I felt when I first heard about this convention. I knew exactly who to invite to come with me on my Degrassi adventure. My sister, Erin, and our friend Roseanne. Because of them, I decided to give Degrassi a chance. And my friend Sonia, because both her and I are obsessive about Degrassi. We compare everyone in our school to Degrassi characters, we take every situation between our group of friends and compare them to situations in Degrassi and we like to call the courtyard in our school "the Quad" - which annoys the hell out of everyone! Haha! So, without a wink of sleep the night before, on the 21st of August, we headed for Toronto - Via Rail of coarse. On our way to the train station we tried to guess the actors who would show up. We had it pegged that Arthur, Joey, Snake and at least one of the twins would come. We also warned Roseanne to keep her big mouth shut unless she wanted to get her ass kicked in Toronto. Roseanne is very loud, blunt and always lets her feelings be known. So we knew that the trip would either be totally hilarious, or totally terrifying. When we got to the station, Erin saw a man that looked an awful lot like our old principal from elementary school. Erin said "Hey, isn't that Mr. Nathan?", to which Roseanne yelled back "maybe if he HAD NO ARMS!" in a very loud voice. Loud enough for the armless, Mr. Nathan look-a-like to hear. After that I gave Roseanne a huge lecture about saying things like that. Did Roseanne listen? Of coarse not! No sooner then when the train arrived did Roseanne start up again. We were on the train when we all heard this horrible repetitive weezing sound. At first we thought it was the train itself, but we then found out it was the lady sitting a few seats behind us. She was a really large lady wearing a blue army tank top with no bra, which was rather disgusting. But every time she breathed, she made this horrible weezing sound, probably because she was so large. That of coarse, is nothing to make fun of, but to Roseanne, it is. She was getting so annoyed by the weezing that she decided the only thing to do was to imitate it. How mean! Well, the train ride had ended, but the weezing hadn't. We all got out of our seats to exit the train, when Roseanne got the privilege of standing by Weezer. Of coarse, Roseanne had her loud Irish whisper in Sonia's ear saying "Weezer smells really bad, pass it on!". I think the whole train knew who we were talking about. Roseanne said that she smelled like a horrible combination of B.O. and hair that hadn't been washed in at least a couple of weeks. Fortunetly, the weezer wasn't on the train ride home like Roseanne had hoped, but a co-worker at Erin's pool said that he rode the train coming from Toronto to St. Cathrines with the exact same weezing lady. What a coincidence! Our afternoon consisted of just shopping around down town Toronto, getting photo stickers done and counting down the hours till the convention came! Finally an hour before the convention came, we took our Skippy peanut butter & Dips and headed down to Centennial College, the actual school where Degrassi was filmed. We were an hour early, which ended up being a very good thing because Roseanne and I need some time to calm ourselves down. We were going literally nuts at the sight of the Degrassi High School. But what made it worse was the fact that Roseanne was POSITIVE that she saw "Simon" and "Diane" inside the building through the window. When Sonia and myself finally composed ourselves enough to enter, we then found out that "Simon" and "Diane" were just the people running the convention. Then we saw Mark Polger, who dressed himself like a rainbow for the occasion. We asked him what exactly we would be doing at the convention and if any actors were going to come. He answered "We'll probably just sit around, get to know one another, watch Degrassi and maybe some actors will come. I've memoed quite a few of them. It's just weather or not they show up." First of all, I watched every Degrassi episode between the time span of the moment I first heard about the convention and the day before we came, so I didn't care to see anymore episodes at this convention. I didn't really care THAT much to know Degrassi fans. Now, not to sound like a total snob, but it isn't like it's terribly hard to find Degrassi fans or something. Though, according to some people I guess it is. When Sonia and myself were inside the building and Erin and Roseanne were sitting outside on a bench (the same bench that Michelle and her mom sat on when Michelle's mom breaks the news of the affair) when a really nerdy man went up to Erin and Roseanne and said "I never knew that there were people who actually liked Degrassi". Uh duh, it's on TV - someone has to watch it! This man then proceeded to follow us all through the rest of the night. Well that was just weird, that's all I'll say about that guy. When Sonia and I came back out and talked to Erin and Roseanne about what we were going to do at the convention according to Mark and Erin and Roseanne shared there story about the weird Degrassi fan, we started to wonder if this trip was all that we were making it out to be. Erin actually wanted to leave and go back to our uncle house because it was 6:30, and only us and the weird fan were there. No other kids, and no actors. But I convinced Erin that it couldn't get much worse. We'd stay for a while and see what happened and if it sucked any more, we could leave. It's a good thing we didn't leave, because from then on, the fun began! We all went inside Degrassi High and Natalie, a co-host of the convention and the girl Roseanne thought was "Diane", explained about how she wants to make a series much like Degrassi in the future decade and handed us a survey to fill out about what we would like to see in a show of this type. It was quite an intensive survey (felt more like an exam), but we stopped the survey when we caught our first glimpse of a Degrassi actress. Ms. Avery (the grade 7 teacher and librarian in the High School years) arrived. We were all nervous to go and talk to her, but after waiting for about 10 minutes, we couldn't contain ourselves any longer. We went up and asked to get our picture taken with her, which she was so sweet about, and then got into to talking to her about Degrassi and what she was doing now. Ms. Avery looked so good, like she hadn't aged at all in the decade that had gone by from when the series ended. She wore her blue football Degrassi jacket that the show had given her and she told us about the series that her and Caitlin from Degrassi were making together called "Flights with Mom". We later got to see the pilot of their first episode and Roseanne has now given it the title of "Flights with...that's not gonna sell!!!". haha! Well, both Ms. Avery and Caitlin are great actors in it, but the story needs some work. Soon after we talked to Ms. Avery, our next Degrassi actress showed up. One which we really didn't think would. Liz (or to many people who aren't so familiar with Degrassi, the girl who was best friends with Spike and had a shaved head with bangs)! She was looking really good. She still looked like Liz from Degrassi, but had a nice 90's style of coarse. After Liz arrived, Roseanne needed have a cigarette. While outside, she saw a man pull up in front of the school in a nice red convertible, which he accidently crashed while parrel parking. Out step a short man, who walked an awful lot a like the high school bully - DWAYNE!!! Roseanne started to totally hyperventilate and practically have a heart attack, then Dwayne walked up to Roseanne, took her hand and said "It'll be ok dear. You'll be ok!" - hahahaha! I died when I heard that. The party just went on from there. More Degrassi fans came, Scott (Kathleen's beating boyfriend) arrived and so did the Toronto Star. I was just standing there, starring that the Degrassi actors, waiting for the right time to go and talk to my second favourite Degrassi actor (my favourite is Claude) Dwayne, when I got a tap on the shoulder from a journalist at the Toronto Star. He asked Sonia, Erin, Roseanne and I about the TV series since he didn't have a clue about the show (which is evident from the article which appeared in Monday's paper). I became so excited that I was going to be in the Toronto Star, that I just began babbling about Degrassi, not realizing how stupid I sounded. The photographer from the Toronto Star then asked to take our pictures with the actors! How cool is that?! So we got many pictures taken with the Degrassi actors, which most of the other fans didn't. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah! After the Toronto Star excitement, Dwayne then proceeded to take all of us fans on a tour of the school to show us exactly where Joey got beat up, Claude committed suicide and where every Degrassi actor had their locker! He was so informative and so funny! He's got the best sense of humour and totally doesn't act mean like a bully. Not that I expected him to or anything. I think I just expect Liz to be really scary and intimidating like in the TV show and Scott to be really mean. Scott was actually really shy. I think that a lot of the Degrassi fans there didn't recognize him, or just didn't care to talk to him. I felt kind of sorry because he was getting so neglected that I went up and talked to him, but kind of made a fool or myself. I said something like: "I remember you from the show. Um, but I can't remember your name in the show. But you beat up Kathleen, eh?". He was like, "I was Scott. Yeah, I was the one who beat up Kathleen.". Then I was just like "Oh. Um...hehehe.", and couldn't think of anything else to say. Later on that night I found out that he got his role in the Degrassi series because it was his community service for beating up his girlfriend in real life. Eek! Well, I just basically felt dorky for that. I don't know. :oP As the tour finished, Mr. Garcia (the grade 8 teacher in the Jr High episodes) arrived and we then watched "Flights with Mom" and the Degrassi Yearbook video, which was never shown on TV or sold, but just given to the actors one year. It was so cool! We got to see all the behind the scene fun they had and what the actors were like in real life. As we watched the video, in came Mr. Radich (the grade 8 teacher, turned principal in later episodes)!!! He came with his two kids who were sooo cute. They took all the helium balloons in the room and practically became airborne! Mr. Radich, Mr. Garcia and Ms. Avery then stood up and had a question session with all of us long time fans who definetly had some questions to be answered. They said lots of interesting things, but the only thing I can really remember was that Caitlin was suppose to have the role that was given to Shannon Doraghty in Mallrats. That's so sad! She would have totally suited the character better then stupid Shannon Doraghty, that bitch! Arg! Mr Radich also told us that he gave Kevin Smith his Degrassi watch in return for a role in one of his movies, which he has yet to receive. Maybe we'll see Mr. Radich in a later Kevin Smith movie. He could become a friend of Jay and Silent Bob! After the question and answer session, everyone started to leave, as well as ourselves. We wanted to get an early start the next morning for our next Degrassi adventure...Degrassi St!!! Sunday afternoon we went to Degrassi St. and to the Degrassi grocery often seen in Degrassi episodes. We got pictures taken by the great landmarks and we were going to buy souvenirs from the store, but didn't find anything that wasn't over it's expiree date! Haha. Actually Erin said that she saw them selling Old Milwaukee in there. That's weird. I highly doubt that they have a liquor licence! Sunday evening we took the train home and that's just another long story that I won't get into. Monday morning however, I woke up at 6:00 am. to get the Toronto Star. I was so excited! All of my really stupid quotes were in it. The world now knows how I almost failed grade 10 math, and if that doesn't make me sound stupid, the fact that I said "me and Sonia" instead of "Sonia and I", sure does! Oh well, the picture rocked! It was of us doing the can-can with Liz!! I hope that next year there will be a Degrassi convention. Maybe this one they could try to publicize not only on the Internet and through email since the turn out was so small. Hopefully even more Degrassi actors and fans come and of coarse we'll be there again! Note: I do realize that I didn't use any of the actors real names. I can't remember them of hand. But to me, they were "Ms. Avery", "Liz", "Dwayne", ect. and they always will be!
this is a picture of quite a few of the people who attended the convention. I'm in the bottom right corner.
this is us with scott, dwayne, liz and miss avery!