TSIANINA JOELSON (Varia)

Varia

Tsianina

* Tsianina was the first guest. I read that this year you weren't supposed to leave your seats while picture taking. I thought that sucked since this was the smallest Xena convention in Cherry Hill yet and this was also the year they raised the admission five bucks for Preferred Seating and $7.50 for Gold. When Tsianina first came out on stage, I tried taking a few pictures from my seat, but I knew they wouldn't turn out that great, so I moved to the center isle. When I was there, a woman asked me if I wanted to go up closer to take a picture or two. "Can I?" I asked, figuring she knew something I didn't. "Yes," she replied. I crawled up to the front and there was this other woman sitting in the isle. I was trying aim my camera for a good picture, but the woman sitting there kept getting in my way, yelling to somebody behind me about something. Suddenly, I realized that she was talking to me.

"No pictures!" she kept saying in a forced whisper. "Go back to your seat!"
My mouth gaped. "But that other lady said..."
"Well, she was wrong. Go back to your seat!"

So I sighed and crawled back to my seat, telling the lady who said I could go up there that "she wouldn't let me take any pictures". A few minutes later, there was a line of people sitting in the center isle and they were letting them go up one at a time to take a few pictures. Okay, I thought, Let's try this again. I went back out in the center isle and waited in line until the lady -- the one who said I could go up in the first place -- again told me that I could go take "two pictures". When I got up there, I asked the lady who had told me to go back to my seat, "I can take pictures now?" "Yes," said replied like there was something wrong with me.

I just sorta shrugged it off. The main gripe I had about the whole thing was that in previous years, people would go up when the guest first came out, take a bunch of pictures, and then return to their seats. After the first five minutes or so, all the running and ducking was pretty much over. With this "one-at-a-time" bit this year, there was constantly some person ducking up and down the isles the entire time, which made it harder to see.

* Aside from that, Tsianina was really fun to watch. He favorite word seemed to be "funnest", though. She thought going to conventions and interacting with the fans was the "funnest".

* She said that growing up in southern California, she always wanted to be an actress. Ever since she was a little girl, she begged and begged her mother to let her try out for things until she finally gave in. So she told us a bit about a few commercials she did as a kid, but nothing ever really big.

* Then she told about one of her first big breaks in this dance competition (I think it was) held in Nashville, or someplace down south like that. She really didn't think she had much of a chance at winning. She even told her parents to not bother coming all that way for it. So she was amazed when she was one of the ten or so, finalists and when they annouced the winners, "They called third place, and I thought, this might be me, but it wasn't. Then they called second place and I thought it could be me, and it wasn't. Well by that time I was so sure that I didn't win that I turned to the girl next to me and said, 'Oh my God, you won! I'm so happy for you!'" The audience laughed. "Then they called first place and they couldn't pronouce my name and said something like 'Tasinaninina' and then somebody was talking right then and I couldn't hear the last name, 'Joelson'. So I was standing there, wondering if I should step forward or not because I'd look really stupid if I stepped forward and I didn't win!" The audience laughed. "Well... I won." Everybody laughed again. "And it was really sad because everybody in the competition had this huge section of the crowd cheering for them and I just had my husband in the back," she waved her hands in the air, "waving for me, because he's not really much of a cheerer. So then I had to call up my parents and tell them, 'Mom, guess what? I won!' and she's like, 'No, you didn't...' and I'm like, 'Yes, I did.' It took like ten minutes to convince her that I really did win and then she started crying, 'Oh you won and we we'ren't there for you!'"

Xena: Warrior Princess and all things Xena herein are (c) 1995-2001 Renaissance Pictures and MCA/Universal. No challenge of ownership to trademarked property is intended or implied.