I understand that my pals The Cardboard Troopers had a wild time this past weekend. They arrived in Atlanta for the 2009 edition of Dragon*Con, but they couldn’t actually seem to find a trace of the convention and the hotel people kept looking at them funny. I sure hope that they come back for the 10:00am parade on Saturday, they always seem to enjoy that.

Which reminds me that last month the Fall issue of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine hit the stands and I was simultaneously delighted (97%) and mortified (3%) to read the article about me that staff writer Van Jensen composed after we met prior to my surgery this summer. Entitled “How Did That NERD on the Left Become That PIRATE on the Right?“, the article does a really nice job of catching people up with the kid who won the Batman contest back in the 80s… and the second page features a certain cardboard trooper standing in front of a line of “real” troopers at Dragon*Con.

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Fox is about to release a remake of the Hollywood classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still” in a week or so and I realized that this is as good a time as any to tell you the story of my connection to the original 1951 version of that film. Be warned: it is a long and rambling story, filled with teenage nudity, a strip club, a Waffle House, Poppa Smurf, two famous science fiction actors and my own patented brand of cluelessness.

The story begins in my friend CeCe’s living room, poised moments from a teenage adventure to infinity and beyond… no, no… sadly, it was not nookie on our minds… well at least it wasn’t on my mind.

All I could think about was a science fiction convention…. Mister Sulu was there!!!

And we were late.

The only thing keeping us from departing for Geekville was CeCe’s Aunt Patricia, who had not traveled all the way out East just to miss visiting with one of her favorite nieces. So we were invited…. encouraged… um, well, pretty much forced to sit in the front room and visit with Aunt Patricia for a spell.

As we spoke she spotted an atlas on one of the nearby tables and pulled it into her lap to discuss places we’d been, things we’d seen… I must say that it wasn’t boring conversation, and I’m rarely at a loss to speak to people at length about anything under the sun…. but I was LATE for some serious nerd stuff that was going down, and it felt like Aunt Patricia was drawing this whole visiting thing out a bit.

Perhaps she suspected that CeCe and I might be dating and wanted to know more about me.

I mean, it wasn’t like CeCe and I had been intimate or anything… well, except for that one school trip when we lay naked together under the sheets in a low-rent motel in Nashville. That was our special moment together, our teenage ummmm…. I can’t, I can’t lie.

It was actually a game.

Naked CeCe and Naked Drew were just the earliest losers of a game of Strip Trivial Pursuit, part of the adventure and excitement that comes with being on a field trip with your classmates from the Yearbook Staff…. all of whom were making “woooooo” noises, now that CeCe and I were naked in bed together.

See, I knew that was exactly the sort of dirt Aunt Patricia was trying to get out of me.

Luckily, I didn’t tell Aunt Patricia that the very first person in Nashville to greet our high school tour group had been a dumpy balding man of indeterminate sobriety wearing a dingy short-sleeve dress shirt.

Let’s call him “Arnie”.

Our class had just started carrying our bags up the stairs to our motel room when our pal Arnie tumble-stepped out the back door of a seedy looking building on the other side of a chain-link fence which ran the entire length of our side of the motel property.

Arnie yelled up to us (well, mostly to the girls), “So you finally got here!!?? Come on over as soon as you can!!”

All of us kids froze on the stairs, looking at Arnie, trying to figure out what in the seven hells he was talking about, when one of the girls went “Oh wait, look… it’s a strip club.”

Oh… yeah. Neon silhouettes of nude women was a dead giveaway.

“We’ll be right over!!” sang our pal Angela in her most enticing fake lilt.

Arnie nodded in satisfaction, raised his arm in a half wave, and stumbled back inside the club.

Now that… THAT is the sort of story that dear old Aunt Patricia was probably looking for… but I wasn’t about to tell her that sort of thing because it wasn’t the sort of thing you tell a nice older lady who has a world atlas in her lap. I’m from the South, I know my manners.

I know that you don’t go and tell Aunt Patricia about how you and her dear Niece CeCe wandered into a Nashville Waffle House in search of your classmates. You know that old story, the one about how you find all the girls sitting at a table finishing up their midnight snack?

About how, as you’re all standing at the counter as the waitress rings up the bill, a strangely inbred looking fellow (whose face was seriously, absolutely and suffocatingly blue) declares something to your friend Angela. About how your friend Angela blanches, replies stiffly to the blue man, and drags everyone out into the parking lot and begins marching back to the motel room.

What did he say??
What did he say??

“He SAID,” replied Angela, her neck held haughtily, “he said: ‘Do you know who I am?’….”

Yeah??
Yeah??

“To which I said: ‘I have NO IDEA who you are.’ ”

Yeah??

“To which he said: ‘I’m Poppa Smurf’. ”

Adventure could certainly be described as an old blue guy trying to hit on high school girls, which are exactly the sorts of stories that Aunt Patricia was trying to pry out of me with all of her fancy atlas-talk. But, no dummy I, I was on to her game, and began giving CeCe the signal that perhaps it was time to get moving.

CeCe’s mom looked satisfied with the length of our “visit”, and Aunt Patricia seemed amused and content and in short order CeCe and I were on our way down the road to the Festival of Dorks.

On the way there we laughed about our “audience” with Aunt Patricia and probably discussed any number of postulations about all the cool stuff and famous TV actors with whom we’d soon be mingling. Maybe we talked about school, about college… I may have even been on a real date and was just too stupid to know it…. I mean, I usually am.

On this occasion my stupidity would be thrown into sharp relief, for, as we strode into the hotel, rife with the heady scents of alcohol and Trekkies in estrus, I was struck with a sudden realization.

Like a thunderbolt from the blue it hit me… I froze in my tracks and turned to look at CeCe.

“What?? What is it??” asked CeCe, alarmed by my behavior.

“Your Aunt Patricia….,” I began.

“Yeah? What?? What about her?”

I had forgotten one very important thing that CeCe had told me about her Aunt Patricia, several years before. Something that went in and was only just now emerging from the dark recesses of my brain….

“Didn’t you say that she was an actress one time?”

“Yeah. She did a lot of movies.”

Blam. It hit me.

I’d just spent the morning with one of the most accomplished actresses of American cinema, the heroine of the legendary film “The Fountainhead”, a recurring guest of “Playhouse 90″, the lead actress from “The Day the Earth Stood Still“…..

A woman so famous that they named a movie after her titled “The Patricia Neal Story”… an actress far more celebrated than any of the people I’d been so anxious to see at this Convention of Misfits.

I’d met Patricia Neal.

Holy Zarquon Singing Fish!!

The next day, when I went to pick up CeCe at her house, I found myself once again in front of Aunt Patricia, who was lounging in a bathrobe and nibbling the last bits of her toast. I seem to recall experiencing sudden pangs of shyness and an initial inability to make intelligent conversation…. but Aunt Patricia was Aunt Patricia and she put me at ease.

What wonderful perspective this experience ultimately gave me.

Whenever I find myself impatient to “get through” a visit with someone, I try my best to remember the lesson of Aunt Patricia. Sometimes there are important people right in front of you.

Sit down and visit with them.

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Related posts:

1. Where Is Dragon*Con?

Yes.
No best girls with us, only Fail.
Funny, funny, fail.

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Before we begin I need to review the rules of Cardboard Costuming, namely:

The Fundamental Rule of Cardboard Costumes
If your cardboard costume looks really nice, you’ve done it really wrong. Your costume must look as though it were ripped from the inside of a garbage compactor. It should have strange, upside down logos. It should be hastily taped together with obvious seams, obvious mends and similar errors of construction. Basically: it should look thrown away.

Kids, get your parents and/or legal guardians to help you make your Chewboxxa costume because you shouldn’t play with sharp box cutters without adult supervision.

The Body
To build your Chewboxxa costume you’re going to need a rather large box, preferably a tall appliance box (in relation to your own size). If your first thought is “I know! I’ll use a refrigerator box!” you’re on the right track, but stop and think for a second: surely your body isn’t wide enough for your arms to comfortably poke out of the sides of a refrigerator box. Imagine how uncomfortable that would be. Consider taking a box that’s tall then cutting it open along one side then refolding it so that it keeps the height but reduces the side-to-side, front-to-back width. Arm comfort is always paramount when you’re wearing cardboard.

The Head
Booxiees are really, really tall. It follows then that their heads should be really, really way up their body, near the top… probably higher up than your own head. But what makes Booxiees funny is the fact that their head is part of their body, they don’t have a neck!

The Face
All you need to do is worry about your Booxiee’s face so go ahead and cut out some good looking eye holes way up above where your head will actually be. Your Booxiee’s intelligence will be inferred by its eyes. If they’re really close together it will look stupid. If they’re far apart it will look creepy and slow. I recommend trying different sized eyes and you should never, ever make the eyes square and even. Asymmetry is the window to a cardboard costume’s soul! Have fun with the mouth, which should be drawn with a fat, black marker.

Operator’s Vision
For you to actually see out of your costume you’re going to need to cut out some “practical” eye holes at the level at which your eyes will actually be located inside the costume. Better yet, I recommend that you cut a thin horizontal slit all the way across the front of your box, that way you’ll have a really good view of everything in front of you and the line might be lost to casual viewers in the cuts and folds and patches that make up your costume.

The Legs
The box should come down so far over your legs that you only need to create cardboard “spats” that cover your legs from the knee to the ankle. This should simply be a square cardboard tube big enough to slide over your lower leg. Do it with your shoes off then put your shoes back on. This will “lock” the spats in place on your leg.

The Arms
I’m going to do a write-up about how to make good cardboard arms in a later post. For now take a look at the drawing and you’ll get the basic idea.

The Bandolier
For a really “showy” look you might consider using Chocolate Pop-Tart boxes taped into place. But if you’re in a pinch why not just bend and fold your own clips and tape them in place. Remember, nothing on your costume should be glued on. A good cardboard costumer will always have a roll of duct tape with them, ready to be patched at any time. If your costume begins this way you won’t be surprised when something falls off and you’ll be much better prepared to repair yourself when the time comes.

Remember the Point!!!
This is to have fun! If you’re busy worried about tearing or staining your costume then you can’t have fun. Go on, eat, drink and spill all over your Booxiee costume, it’ll only get better!!!

I’d love it if some of you would like to post your comments below suggesting other costumes you’d like me to illustrate in subsequent posts leading up to September. I feel that this provides a valuable service to the fan community.

* Cardboardish: a term first identified by Alfeo “Lightspeed” Dixon, the “caution tape” trooper from 2006.

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