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Alexandra Tydings
and
Claire Stansfield
at Toronto Trek,
July 15, 2000

[Transcribed by Karen Bennett. Photos taken by Sharon Lowachee are available offsite.]

Alexandra Tydings: Hi, guys.

Claire Stansfield: Hi, guys. I’m from Toronto, so this is home.

Alex: And she knows all the bars downtown.

Claire: It is so intensely bright, I can’t see. You could all leave and we would never know it.

I play the evil Alti on Xena: Warrior Princess. I was also the Jersey Devil, for The X-Files fans. I'll do a little bit of a talk about how I got my part on Xena and a little bit of how I got my X-Files part, and then Alex will talk and we'll take questions.

X-Files happened first. I was good friends with David Duchovny. We did some commercials together. His brother’s a pretty big commercial director. We were both out-of-work actors and hanging out. He was doing some films and went up to Toronto to do this new series which nobody really knew much about. My agent called me and said, "They want to offer you the part of this beast-woman on this show called The X-Files." I wasn't sure if this was something I wanted to do, especially because she's naked. But David was a good friend and he assured me that the show was going to be something really different and new. I'm so grateful and glad now that I did it.

I went up to Vancouver, where my mother now lives, and met with the costume people, who handed me my little thong. Then, thankfully, they gave me a ton of hair, which they taped to my breasts when my head was down so that when I lifted my head up, I had kind of a hair bra. I was covered in dirt, hair bra, thong, scrambling around in the forest in Canada. My mother thought I had really made it to the big time: "That's my daughter!"

I had a scene where I had to crawl over a fence and I'm scrounging around in the garbage dumpster. They don't like actors to get hurt on the set because then they can't replace you once they've established you, so they tried to find a stunt woman. But there was no stunt woman in Vancouver who would wear the thong and hair bra on a show nobody had heard of, so they hired a stripper. There’s a lot of hot strippers in Canada, I hear.

I'm on the set with my robe, and of course the stripper doesn't want to wear her robe. Probably my funniest story was, I went up to Chris Carter and David and I said, "Get that bitch off the set now. She looks better in the thong and hair bra, so I'll go over the fence. Trust me; I can do it."

Cut to three or four years later. I read for Hercules; didn't get that part, but I guess I must have done something in the room that Rob Tapert, one of the creators, liked, and they offered me a two-parter on Xena, "[Adventures in the] Sin Trade" I and II. I read the script and I loved it and I thought it was great. But they didn't tell me which part was mine. I read the script and I see the part of evil old hag Alti and I'm thinking, "I wonder who’s playing that part?" I get to the part of Cyane, the Queen of the Amazons, and I think, "Great! Perfect. I'd love to play the Queen of the Amazons, a big tall woman; I'll do it." When they called me and they said that Rob Tapert wanted to sit and talk about what I was planning on doing with Alti, I got a bit of a shock. I said to my agent, "It says 'evil hag.'" They said, "They're going to take the 'old' part out, but she's still an evil hag."

I don't know if you guys are familiar with Alti, but she has a great, raspy, haggy voice. I stole that from the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz, the scariest voice I could come up with. I went over to New Zealand and did "Sin Trade" I and II and had the best time flying around in the sky. I loved it, and then I died. I figured, "That was the end of that." Lucy was like, "Are you kidding me? That's how come you get to come back. You die, you come back." "Okay." So I was impaled on a tree for "Sin Trade." Then I came back for "Between the Lines," which was my favourite episode, where we're in India and there’s all this yoga and beautiful silk costumes. I explode from my multi-chakrams into millions of pieces. I figure, "I'm dead now for sure."

But no. The last one I did was called "Them Bones [, Them Bones]." Somebody pours some Kryptonite stuff on me and I come out of the ashes and give her one last run for her money. I steal the soul of her baby, thrusting my hand into her belly—she was pregnant at the time so that was a little awkward—and saying a very subliminal line: "I've always wanted to be inside you, Xena." You can take from that what you want. I waltzed around for most of the episode with nothing [on my palm], but the guys later on in computer put a little glowing orb, so I have the soul of her baby for most of that episode. Then she gets it back. We have this amazing fight where we're skeletons, which was really fun. Then they poured some more Kryptonite or whatever, and now I'm just a pile of ash.

This is the last season and I've died three times, so I don't know if I'm coming back. But there's talk of her coming out of the ashes.

That's pretty much all the background information. I'll pass it over to Aphrodite, who's still alive.

Alex: It's true; I'm still alive. I guess that means I'm not coming back, right?

I never want to say that I'm doing anything until I'm actually doing it because things always change, but yes, Aphrodite got to live. I couldn't believe it. I got that script ["Motherhood"] and I kept hearing about The Twilight of the Gods and people kept e-mailing me, "What's going to happen to Aphrodite? Is she going to live?" I love it when people ask me these questions, but I don't know. I find out when I get to New Zealand and they hand me the script, and even then, half the time they give you rewrites the day that you're shooting the scene and you have to relearn all these new lines while you're sitting in the makeup chair. I got the script and I read it and I see that Discord gets beheaded and Hephaestus gets killed and Ares loses his power, and Aphrodite just goes away. I kept waiting for the pages to come: "Oh, here's the scene where she's going to get split into a million little pieces," but it didn't happen.

So she's still alive. Love lives on. From what I hear, I’m going back.

I got the part—I did a show called Vanishing Son, which three of you saw. [Applause] Really? Wow. You guys watch too much television.

Claire: It's in Canada. You guys get some really cool stuff that you don't see—Canadians will buy it.

Alex: That's wild.

Claire: Old sci-fi: Yeah, they'll buy it.

Alex: "We don't want it in America. Just give it to the Canadians." Not very nice.

Anyway, I did that show. I knew the casting director, who was later to do Hercules. I had never seen the show; I just knew that it was a one-hour; Hercules in some leather stuff running around saving people. I got the script ["The Apple"] and I read it and, "Aphrodite wind-surfs on a clamshell and she steps off and she says, 'Tubular.'" What the hell is going on here? I called my agent and said, "Is this a comedy?" This was four years ago, when in Hollywood it wasn’t very cool to be watching these shows. It was considered kid stuff. Quietly my agent comes out of the closet to me and says, "Alex, I actually watch Hercules every Saturday. I'm cleaning my house, but I put the TV on. It's a really cool show. It's funny and it's campy. So whatever you're thinking of doing, if you're thinking it's funny it probably is. Just go for it and do whatever you're going to to do."

I got to the audition. It says, "Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, skimpy little outfit," so I wear my shortest skirt and my tightest shirt, and I get there and there are all these girls sitting around in leather pants and leather bustiers. I go, "What’s going on? Did they get the same script that I got?"

The casting director came up to me and said, "I just want you to know, before you go in, that she's not stupid." I know that's completely confused: She’s ditzy, for sure, and she's vain as hell, but I never thought she was stupid, because she's masterminding all these wars and pitting people against each other. She's definitely blonde, but I didn't think she was stupid. I thought, "Okay, in one ear and out the other." I went in and did what I was going to do anyway. They laughed and said, "You didn't have too much fun with that, did you?" I said, "No." Then they called and said, "You're going to New Zealand," which was really the only reason I wanted to do the show anyway. I could give a shit about Hercules; I just wanted to go to New Zealand. That's not true any more, but at that point I had never even seen the show.

I met Kevin Sorbo, who was directing, which was fabulous. He was such a sweetheart. Yes, he's cute too. We shot at the beach for a week in the middle of January, which is summer there. It was so beautiful. At the end of the day they take off your wig, they take off your makeup—which they don't do in America—which is a really nice little touch, and then I would go throw on my bathing suit and the whole crew and the cast would go run in the water and go swimming, at the end of the day's work. It was so cool.

It was just supposed to be for one episode. I signed a contract for one episode, and that was four years ago. Since then I've gone back and I’ve been a pig and I’ve been an evil stepmother and I've been a buttoned-up, alternate-universe Aphrodite who's like a virgin or something. It's been super, super fun.

I'm so grateful to you guys for watching so that we get to keep doing the show.

Claire: Let’s hear some questions from the audience.

Have you heard news of a spinoff on Xena?

Alex: There's always talk about spinoffs. There was talk about an Aphrodite spinoff about two episodes into it for me, and they even cut a little trailer, which was hysterical. There was talk about a Joxer spinoff, like a kids' show, kind of like Peewee Herman. There was talk about a modern-day Aphrodite show, like Bewitched. Talk, talk, talk. Show me the contract and I'll tell you what I'm doing.

So who knows? You guys all have fabulous ideas. You should write to the producers and tell them, as far as I'm concerned.

Claire: I know one of the original fans is now writing Xena, is that right? Missy [Good]? So if you're a real fan of something, go for it because it seems like you can make that stuff happen, especially with the Internet. They take a lot of notice. I know Danielle Cormack, who plays Ephiny on both shows—they told her she came back because all the fans had gone on-line and said, "We need her back." So they definitely pay attention to you. I think it's great that you guys can have a voice now. We can interact at these conventions, but you can always go on-line. I know Lucy skulks around on-line. I don't know what she goes under, but I know she goes.

I went to the Palace once and I tried to go incognito. People are talking to each other and I'm checking to see that nobody in the house is watching and I sneak into the Palace under some funny name. Then a voice comes, "I know you're here." There’s an amazing software you can download. You can put an Alti voice in or have your own avatar and character. It's really fun for me to have Xena and the whole experience make my Internet life come to life, basically.

Alex: Tell them about your Internet life.

Claire: I created a bunch of shows for the Internet. Lucy Lawless did the voiceover for the trailer. It's a live-action chick show. It’s called Chickmate, and it's kind of like Cleopatra 2525 a little bit. We shot it on digital video, FireWire it into the computer, edited it on a Final Cut Pro, which is a great Mac software—stolen. Just don't register it. Since then I've had to bite the bullet and buy them, but there seemed to be a cool little network out there for a while. "You're buying your software? What do you mean?"

If anybody's interested, please come and talk to me about it. If you want to make a little movie, with a digital video camera and a computer you can do it. Show your stuff on-line. I'm so excited about it. When Lucy was just in town I was telling her what I was doing, and she said, "Let me be involved." For the Xena fans, check it out, because Lucy's doing a funny voiceover throughout the whole show. It's on my site, clairestansfield.net. It's all free, and it's just fun. There's a link to Alex’s site.

Then Alex and I are thinking of putting together a funny little convention show called Con Artists, where if you can't make it to a convention, Alex and I will interview and have funny little outtakes from conventions and kind of make it a little bit more interactive. That'll come soon. We're little entrepreneurs now.

Alex: It sounds really cool. She's got some really cool little ideas out. Our point of view of this whole experience is pretty different from your point of view, because we get to see what actors are coming out of whose rooms at 3 o'clock in the morning. We will show you.

What cons are you going to start shooting at?

Claire: Alex is going to be at Comic Con in San Diego. Fandom, the site that's going to host the show, will be there, but the site won't be ready. We want it to constantly be new. So either Chicago or the big Xena Creation Con that Lucy and Renée are going to be at will cover that.

You guys had better be there.

Claire: Yes, if they don't invite me as a guest I'm coming as a filmmaker. I'm sure I can run across the stage: [in Alti’s voice] "Xena!" Alti's here, and she has a camera strapped to her back now.

Alex: An evil camera.

Claire: "I'm going to shoot you."

This question's for Alex. As Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, you're probably the only one who truly and absolutely knows the answer to the single most pressing question that has ever arisen in Xena: Does the word "subtext" mean anything to you?

Alex: What subtext?

How about the Gabrielle/Xena relationship?

Alex: You want my personal opinion?

No. Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, would know all the secrets.

Alex: She would. She knows everything. But she's only going to sell it to Entertainment Tonight for a lot of money.

There was always such a crossover in the cast between Hercules and Xena. I would imagine the closing down of Hercules would affect a lot of actors and anybody else working on both shows. There must have been a lot of jobs that were probably lost to that. How was the feeling on both sets when they announced that Hercules was definitely going to be closing down?

Alex: It's always sad when a show ends. Most shows fizzle out, whereas Hercules went down in flames. They were just rocking right through to the end. So it was kind of sad. People bailed a little bit early, like the local cast. Luckily, New Zealand is just rocking right now. There's so much talent there. There's so many amazing crew people and actors. Frankly, a lot of the crew went to do The Lord of the Rings. Hercules had two shooting units; Lord of the Rings has 12. So there's plenty of jobs in New Zealand right now. Karl Urban, who plays Cupid and Caesar, is doing a part. He’ll be working on it for the rest of the year. My best friend, who did my makeup on Xena, went to do special effects. She's putting little Hobbit feet on Tobey Maguire every day; little ears on Ian McKellen. I wouldn't worry about them too much.

[To Claire] Do you have another point of view on that?

Claire: I guess, aside from going over on Lord of the Rings, I was there when Hercules was just closing down. I remember, they took a lot of the crew and put them on Cleopatra and other shows. They just move them around.

Alex: It's a big corporation.

One question for clarification: One of you said this is the last season of Xena, this year? Is that it, or did I hear you wrong?

Alex: Like I said, I never like to say something's happening until it happens, but that's what I've been told, yeah.

The other question was: Claire, I heard you say you have this film in the works. What future projects do both of you have on the go right now?

Alex: I just did a movie with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau and Famke Janssen called Made. If you guys saw Swingers, it's the same guys who wrote and produced that puppy. I had a little part in that which was so much fun. These guys are my age. They wrote and produced and directed their first little tiny movie—that's how they became stars—and now they're doing it again for the second time. On the set there were two monitors, which is where the the directors and producers sit, watching whatever the camera's filming. One monitor had the camera's footage and the other had a Lakers game going all day. It was a totally fun gig to do.

I'm doing a Fandom show with Claire. I'm going to try my hand at a little hosting and a little comedy and stuff like that.

I'm really excited about this: I have a flyer on my table for this radio play [Anne Manx and the Ring of the Minotaur] that I'm doing with Patricia Tallman, who’s here right now, with Claudia Christian. Pat and Claudia did one already [Lives of the Cat], which is out in stores and on the Internet now. It's like an old-school, 1940s radio play, with sound effects and music and different actors playing different parts. Now we're going to record the sequel in two weeks. I'm so excited about that. At Dragon*Con last week, Ted Raimi, who plays Joxer, and Claire and I did a live radio play at the convention. It was so fun. It was really cool.

Claire: I just did a pilot for MTV called The Sausage Factory, which is like Freaks and Geeks meets American Pie; lots of dildo humour. I play Ms. Bronson. She's kind of like Mrs. Robinson. She's a librarian, seducing 14-year-old boys. I've always loved Anne Bancroft and that character. They even did the cliché shot between the legs, with the little kid cowering in his tiny whities. That, if it gets picked up, will be on MTV.

I've really been focusing on filmmaking and directing and producing stuff, which is where I'd like to end up.

I feel like I'd like to have some closure on Xena somehow. That should be in the works.

Alex: Yes, I think we’ll both probably be doing more of that too.

You both look really fabulous. Actresses like you probably don't have to work hard to keep in shape, but what is it you've found that really works to keep yourself in shape?

Claire: First of all, thank you for the huge compliment. I do a ton of yoga and I work out. It was a lot easier for me, because I'm really tall, when I was younger. Now that I'm in my thirties, I have to work at it. It's just part of the job. It's hard to be really tall and big. You have to be really careful about—you get typecast if you get too big or too small. It's a lot about how you look, which is really sometimes uncomfortable. But it pushes you to take care and eat well and work out. Yoga has been really great for me.

Alex probably doesn't need to do anything: "I smoke cigarettes."

Alex: And I drink a lot of alcohol. Actually, the convention diet works really well—the bad hotel food. You stay up really late so in the morning you barely have time to get a cup of coffee before you have to start signing. There's too much adrenaline and too many people to talk to. It's pretty much 9:30 at night before you get to eat. That's what I do during the summer.

I do think of it as part of my job. I grew up dancing, so I always fall back on that.

Claire: She's a professional Irish jigger, right?

Alex: "Hi, I'm Alex. I'm an Irish jigger."

Claire: Do you want to do some jigging?

Alex: No, I don't. If Claire does it, I'll do it.

Claire: But I don't know how. You're a trained professional.

Alex: Like 20 years ago.

Show her the basic steps.

Claire: Okay, I'll go along. I have to take off my shoes, though. Okay, this is Irish Jigging 101 with Alex Tydings.

[Alex shows a basic one-one-two-three.]

Claire: Okay. Shit, I forgot already. Okay, now you do it properly.

[Alex does several basic steps in a row.]

Claire: For "Sin Trade," it says, "Alti dances around the fire," and I am not a dancer, as you can all see. I was really afraid. All the girls and Amazons and Lucy got to dance together. They had all this tribal stuff. I'm thinking, "Great. There’s 20 of you. Tomorrow it's me, by myself, around the fire." I'm pulling all these evil spirits out, and there's nothing [to see]; later on, they're going to put it in. I remember being completely flipped about having to dance in front of everybody. I saw a show like Lonely Planet or one of those great travel shows, and they had an actual ceremony where women were trying to get rid of evil spirits. I just watched some of that.

Alex: Could we see this?

Claire: No. Oh, my God. She got me back. All right, but then you have to do the Evil Spirit Dance. Let's pull some evil spirits out of Aphrodite's ass. Stand and I'll do it, and then you have to do it to me. You're just standing there cowering, 'cause you’re afraid and I'm Alti.

[The Evil Spirit Dance follows.]

Claire: Alti is not very sexy. She's just sort of nasty.

Claire, you wrote the script for Chickmate. Can you describe the way you write? You said that you might write a script for—

Claire: I love the hero's journey, and I think that's why a lot of science fiction and Xena and a lot of the shows—that's why we love them so much, because we relate to certain archetypes and we like to see them succeed and then fall. There's almost a formula for writing of the hero's journey, and I followed it to a T. It's a bunch of girls running around in latex, so it's not so deep, but I tried to—and they were not very good actors, but that's okay. They're models. They didn't give me very much money. I hired three beautiful models. One of them has a thick German accent, and it was so funny because you couldn't get a lot of her lines, so we just made her outfit smaller and I kept giving all the dialogue to the other girl.

Alex: It's an actress's worst nightmare.

Claire: Really just following the archetypes in the hero's journey. If you watch any great film, like Rocky or Star Wars, you can pretty much map out what happens. It's always the same. It's a formula, and it works.

Out of all the parts you played during your whole acting career, what has been the most rewarding?

Claire: I can't think of one. I had an idea about how my career was going to go, and it went in a whole other direction, and I'm so grateful. The parts just get better and better as I go along because I'm much more open to knowing that I don't have a hand in what's going to happen in my career. I'm not driving the car; I'm in the passenger seat. I never imagined that I would be working on a show like Xena or The X-Files or some other things that I've been fortunate enough to do, and I'm so grateful now for every one of those experiences. It's like layers on top of the next. Right now, it's the last thing I've done, because it has all these new layers. Now I have this new-found openness about my acting career, whereas before you have these set ideas: "I want to be an A-movie actress or a thespian or a this or that." Thank God I've done some of the things I've done. I think they’re much more fun than being on a show like ER or some of the other shows. I don't see an ER convention.

Alex: I'm drawing a total blank. I'm going to have to say Aphrodite, because it's the only thing I can remember.

I sort of feel like conventions are the most interesting role at this point. It's really an interesting experience. That is completely something I never imagined I would be doing. I didn't even know what conventions were when I started acting. Thank you guys for showing up and making it happen.

It sounds so kiss-ass. Sorry, but I actually really mean it.

Claire: We were just in this meeting with Fandom.com pitching the show, and they were loving some of our ideas because they are going to start hosting conventions. They said, and we both smiled when they said it, that they want to try to make conventions really cool again, and not that sort of Galaxy Quest cliché. There's always that, because it's funny. I think they should be cooler. Having been to Dragon*Con and now this one, I'm getting a sense of how cool it really is, in being able to come together and have a common denominator and make friends and just interact.

Alex: The first convention I ever did, I thought that every one of you was a stalker and wanted to kill me. Now I know that that's mostly not true.

This is a question for Alexandra but you can both do it. I heard that you liked to sing, and I wanted to know if you wanted to sing a little bit.

Claire: I cannot sing. I'll do some backup dancing for you.

Alex: Is anybody celebrating a birthday today? What's her name? Alice? [singing] Happy birthday to—

Claire: You are not singing "Happy Birthday"! Come on. Alex was in a rock band. She's Rock Chick. Let's hear the rock version of "Happy Birthday."

Alex: Did you bring your guitar?

Claire: I can air-guitar. Watch me.

Alex: It was really fun, actually. I was in this all-girl band called "She's Seen You Naked." We did all these punk-rock covers of old songs you would know, like [in a shrill, harsh voice] "These boots were made for walking."

Claire, I wanted to know about the shooting of "Sin Trade," especially with the high-wire on.

Claire: Shooting "Sin Trade" was just amazing because New Zealand is the most beautiful place I've even been. They had us up on these huge cranes. Each of us had a little crane with a landing and there was a cable from one crane to the next, and we're harnessed to it. So you're standing on your landing, and Lucy is a ways away on her landing, and you have to take off. You're just whizzing along on your cable and she's [ululating] coming at you, and you're [quaking]. The cables are separated so you're supposed to miss each other, but at this point—and you can see it in "Sin Trade"—Alti's just spinning. She's this big blob of raccoon pelts. Of course, Lucy's got the whole Xena thing down and looking foxy whatever she's doing, and I'm in raccoon spin, trying to growl.

A lot of times when they shoot outside they have to hurry up because it gets dark. They shoot Lucy and Renée first and then they do you, and there's 20 minutes of sunlight left. So you have to do all your dialogue and all your acting—"Hurry. Go. Lucy's gone home, so do it to the X on the wall. This tape is Xena. Go." She hadn't gone home that day, and there's a bunch of really great stuff where we're fighting and I'm choking her and we're spinning. It's hard to tell how they did it, but the cameras are on weights. So when you see a camera up in the air and it's turning, they put us on the other end so we were the weight. We were on this see-saw, so the camera would go up and we'd go down. It was this makeshift thing that somebody had fashioned: "It'll be fine, girls." We're on this teeny little hobby-horse. They strapped us to it, and we're spinning. You look down and—even Lucy was like, "I think we need to do this tomorrow."

The next day it was a little bit better, but that's the kind of stuff that happens. You're hanging from the tree, and it's raining and you have an umbrella. "Can you get me down? I have to go to the bathroom."

"Sin Trade" was a really wonderful experience.

[Alex,] you said you sing. Are you in a band right now?

Alex: I'm not in a band.

You were in a band.

Alex: I was in a band.

How come you haven't been used in "The Bitter Suite" or "Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire"?

Alex: Write them and ask them. I don't know.

I was in a couple of bands and I do sing, but I dance a lot more than that. Why don't I dance in these things? Aphrodite doesn't end up in the musicals or the modern-day shows. I would love to do both of those.

Claire, if you could write your own role on Xena, what would you do?

Claire: I think I would want Alti to come back and die once and for all, but—you're not sad. There was something about the Jersey Devil [that] you're sad that she's been killed, because she shouldn't have been. Nobody knew, and it's not her fault that she was what she was, and there she's dead. Even though it's a tiny little part, when you're seeing her lying there dead, you feel for that character.

You love it when Alti dies. I've been around watching it with friends, and they're like, "Yeah!" I'm looking at them going, "Hel-lo?"

I wish that I could write a little backstory for Alti so that when she finally dies—even the Wicked Witch, when she's melting, there's something about it—"I'm melting!" Alti should go out with a little more of—that dual, bittersweet ending for Alti, I think I'd write.

Alex: I'd like to make out—

Claire: With Xena?

Alex: With whoever. Whoever's available is fine. And I'd like to fight. Really, I would like to write a modern-day show in which Aphrodite's a rock star.

Aphrodite does have some of the best lines. The only other one who comes close is Ares, for the good lines. What is it like working with the God of War?

Claire: I haven't had the opportunity to work with Kevin Smith, but I've done conventions with him, and ladies, he is so hot and so sweet and so much fun and just one of the greatest guys I have ever been near. Alex can tell you what it's like to work with him, but I’ve been working him, so—

Alex: You can ask her more about that when she has a few pints of Guinness. He's lovely; he's gorgeous; he's married, unfortunately.

It's funny, because he's such a rock star. He's in a band. He goes out late at night and they play and get drunk, and the next morning he's in the makeup chair next to me and he's talking about how Jimmy woke up at four o'clock in the morning crying and wouldn't go back to sleep, so he didn't get much sleep last night. He's a real dad. He's a really cool guy.

He's also funny as hell. We've started this little tradition where he teaches me new Kiwi phrases, new phrases from New Zealand, every time I go down there. Let me tell you, they're really weird. The most recent one he taught me—and he doesn't really know what it means, and maybe you guys can figure it out—is, "A joke is a joke, but to stick a straight stick up a crooked man's ass is quite another thing."

On that note—thank you, guys, so much for being here. I know that a lot of you guys were waiting today in line to get signatures and that you couldn't because we had to come and do this, so we're going to go back now for the next hour until dinner. We'll be there as long as you are.

Claire: Toronto rocks!


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