Parasite Host
or
The Puzzling Story of Jennifer Patrick S. Tomlinson at the 2017 "25Strong" Event
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What are the Canopus Awards?
The Canopus Awards for Excellence in Interstellar Writing “recognize the finest fiction and non-fiction works that expand our understanding of the challenges, opportunities, pitfalls, and rewards of interstellar space exploration.” They are awarded by the 100 Year Starship organization. (
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What is the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) Organization?
“Led by former astronaut, engineer, physician, and entrepreneur, Dr. Mae Jemison, together with advocates, researchers, industry experts and everyday people from all walks of life is building a global community capable of realizing this audacious journey.” (
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100YSS was launched by NASA and DARPA in 2011 to advance the goal of humanity traveling beyond our solar system within 100 years. Additional funding comes from the private sector (e.g., Ford and Bayer). 100YSS is based in Houston, TX, which becomes important later.
The 100 Year Starship Nexus
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100YSS announced the 4-day Nexus event featuring a reception, workshops, symposia, speeches, a watch party for the last moments of the Cassini spacecraft (before burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere), the 2nd Canopus Awards, and more. (
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Example Events:
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Canopus Nominations
There were six award categories: Previously Published Long-Form Fiction (40,000+ words); Previously Published Short-Form Fiction (1,000-40,000 words); Previously Published Non-Fiction (1,000-40,000 words); Original Fiction (1,000-5,000 words); Original Non-Fiction (1,000-5000 words); and Original College Writing (1,000-5,000 words).
Works were nominated by the public using an open online form. From there they were narrowed down to finalists and winners by a panel of 100YSS judges.
Patrick pleaded with his Twitter followers to nominate his books.
And on his site:
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Patrick did receive a nomination, meaning someone put his name in a form submitted it, but he was not selected to be a finalist by the judging panel. The finalists were announced on April 11th, 2017.
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Presumably leveraging his long history of hosting terrible, nearly always unpaid open-mic comedy shows, Patrick was named the host of the upcoming Canopus Awards, initially to be held August 12th, 2017, but ultimately rescheduled to mid-September because of Hurricane Harvey and resulting flooding, which devastated Houston and the surrounding area.
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Later the same day as Patrick’s announcement, the 4-day Nexus was canceled:
However, a single, 3.5-hour Nexus event would still be held:
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Patrick had stated he would be a speaker, panelist, and Canopus host, but made no mention of the 25Strong event prior to the Nexus cancellation. It seems that they rolled him (literally?) into the sole surviving event as a “special guest,” since he was already available, and, likely, because it was too late to refund his travel and accommodations.
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Patrick claims to be the host of the event.
Be sure to expect lots and lots of pics and videos from the event!
Patrick even got a slick haircut before his trip to California, seen in this very necessary Twitter squabble:
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Note that he considered this important enough to warrant uploading a selfie.
Patrick arrives in Santa Monica late afternoon of the day of the event and immediately begins filling up on complimentary (
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Patrick’s original Nexus duties were all to take place in the Le Meridien Delfina, where he was staying (
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Impressively, Patrick manages to arrive at the venue on time:
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Brace yourself for his “insufferable” timeline! It must be packed full of updates and pics from the event!
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Huh? That’s odd…nothing on the Facebook or Instagram, either. The guy who posts his bad haircuts, burnt scrambled eggs, stupid t-shirts, every “hand sell,” and other mundane nothings posted zero pics from the $300-$2000 per ticket (
A) black-tie event attended by numerous politicians, business leaders, astronauts, and celebrities beneath the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
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Unlike a Like from Samantha Bee, did the notoriously modest Patrick S. Tomlinson change his mind and not find his hosting gig worthy of bragging?
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Several Years Later:
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"hosted"
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"co-hosted"
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"co-hosted"
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"hosted"
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Sadly, I could not find a full recording of the event, nor any mention of one having ever existed. Patrick posted no pictures or videos of the event, but the entertainers and attendees posted hundreds across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. I had been (autistically) downloading them until I realized how many there are.
Patrick didn’t even pose in the special spacesuit area, unlike almost everyone else:
Yes.
Nah.
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Quantity and Quality
Oddly, there seems to be almost no video or pictures that contain Patrick at all, and none that focus on him. Based on the photos and videos available (or lack thereof, in Patrick’s case), one might wonder how much Patrick actually hosted, and how good it was.
The same cannot be said for the other two co-hosts: Mae Jemison herself and Linda Lorelle:
There are hundreds of pictures of Mae Jemison on stage, of course, dozens of Linda Lorelle, and only three pictures that have Patrick in them at all, all with Linda Lorelle:
Patrick and Linda:
There are many videos of Mae Jemison and Linda Lorelle from the roughly 50 minutes of footage I managed to scrounge up, but I could only find snippets of Patrick in 2 videos:
Doing his gross earlobe tic in the background by himself:
Enhance...
And very briefly with Linda Lorelle in this promotional video from the company that put on the event (Zynger Events):
He did manage to make it into Mae Jemison’s dozens of thank you’s at the beginning of her final speech:
The Three Hosts
Again, based on the material available, it seemed that the event had three hosts: Mae Jemison, Linda Lorelle, and Patrick Tomlinson.
Mae Jemison was listed as the host of the event both before (
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The winner of over 35 broadcasting awards, including 2 Emmy’s, Linda Lorelle anchored the Houston news for 17 years, and currently hosts an award-winning podcast. If Patrick’s daughter Annabelle, a heavily disadvantaged youth who has received $0 in support from her biological father, lived in the Houston area, she would qualify for the Linda Lorelle Scholarship, which has given out over 4.5 million dollars.
Linda and Mae have been friends since their days sharing a dorm room at Stanford (
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Not only are Mae and Loretta on attendee’s recordings introducing other guests, they also make references to their introductions of guests that did not get recorded. There is no recording of Patrick doing any hosting, or any reference to having done any that I could turn up. I didn’t want to risk “cow-tipping” by contacting any of the attendees for comment.
It seems to me the most likely scenario is that Patrick did little hosting and was so awful that even he knew it, and beat a hasty retreat from the venue. Perhaps he was supposed to sprinkle jokes in, making him more of an entertainer? The other entertainers all have numerous pics and clips of them: the juggler on stilts, the magician, the dancing girl, the Cyr-wheel dancer guy, Aloe Blacc, Rickey Davis the Sinatra tribute artist, Bella Gaia, and the mime.
The fact that Host Pat took zero pictures or videos over the 3.5-hour event, despite plainly stating that he would be spamming his feed, and he waited years before ever bringing it up again, is reminiscent of other conveniently unverifiable “Pats,” such as College Pat, Trained Martial Artist (armed and unarmed) Pat, Certified Self-Defense Instructor Pat, Old Testament Sex God Pat, Fatherhood Pat, etc.
You just realized your “cohost” is an unfunny, overconfident, dead-weight cornball rube who stinks of free booze.
Edit: I think I gathered up as much material as I could without going anywhere near even indirect cowtipping. There may be more media out there, but I have no idea how you'd get it without contacting someone who was there.
The only thing I can think of that might turn up more is if you know how to get posts from the California Science Center location tag on Instagram specifically from September 15th, 2017 and a few days after.
I tried scrolling all the way down, but it eventually returned a "Failed to Load" error after loading thousands of images on both browsers I used. It's a very popular site and you're trying to go back to 2017.
