star wars celebration: episode iv - day iii
as we sat down in the ballroom, the projection screens read "george lucas, writer/director" in a decidedly underwhelming font (i believe it was times new roman) and of course smitha and i had to go on about how the maker deserved a much better font than that. the host and moderator, jay laga'aia, was introduced and everyone greeted him warmly. jay introduced rick mccallum onto the stage and he was met with some polite applause. and then george lucas's kids came out on stage to introduce him. a short video was shown detailing his career as a star wars filmmaker, from episode iv to the present. at the end, he came onto the stage to a standing ovation.
once the applause died down and all 3,300 people had taken the requisite 35 digital camera pictures, they opened up the floor to questions for george. the first question was whether there were plans for the young indiana jones series to be packaged up into a boxed set. he said that they were working on that, but of course star wars was the most consuming thing for him at the moment. the next question was about the rumors that a star wars tv show was in the works. i'm pretty sure the person asking the question was a plant, because george gave an extremely well-prepared and straightforward answer. plus, the question got asked in all three shows during the morning. the reply was that they were indeed working on not one, but two!, tv shows. one is an extension of the clone wars cartoons currently airing on cartoon network, and it will be 3d animated. the other one is live action! it will take place between episodes iii and iv and will actually have some of the minor actors from the movies in it. of course, everyone erupted in cheers at the news. the third question was whether george lucas was satisfied with episode iii as a finished product. of course, he said that he was completely satisfied and that he felt it would change the way that people looked at the other five because it would become one long movie instead of six individual ones. at that point, a little kid (possibly in a little jedi outfit, i don't remember) came to the mic and told george "thank you." he got invited up to the stage to shake george's hand and it made for a convenient photo-op. amidst the sleep deprivation, everyone almost started crying. at that point, the half-hour show was over and we were escorted out by some friendly stormtroopers.
everyone in the group was in such a great mood after having reaped the benefits of our toil (and it was so worth it!) all i wanted to do was collapse on the floor and go to sleep right then and there, but we had to move as far away from the ballroom as possible, to keep us from re-entering, i guess. i made plans to meet nanci at 3:30 for a showing of star wars in 30 minutes, and headed straight for my hotel room, tarpaulin in tow (and that thing was heavy). when i got to the hotel, i threw all my stuff down and called mom to find out where she was. turns out they had been waiting in line to get into the store for over four hours and still had quite a long way to go. i asked her to buy me the yoda hoodie that i'd been wanting for the entire convention, hung up, and passed out.
i woke up at 3:27 to find that the alarm i had set for myself hadn't gone off (stupid hotel alarms, they should be easier to work). i called nanci to tell her i obviously wouldn't be making it in time to see the show with her, but she didn't pick up and i just left a message. i decided to just walk to the convention center and mill around in the exhibit hall or watch fan films until i got a hold of someone. when i got there, i tried waiting outside the door to sw in 30 minutes, but i never saw nanci come out. she must have slipped past me with her cloaking device or something. i went into the fan films room, just to have a place to sit down. most of the ones i saw sucked, so i left. eventually nanci called me back to tell me she had just met up with anaklone again, and was on her way to meet emily, who was in line for the store, so i made my way over to meet her. emily had only just gotten in line, and by this point mom hadn't even made it out yet. in fact, nanci called her and told her to order her a yoda hoodie too. emily pretty quickly gave up on the store, and in an effort to send lots of money, we all decided to spend some time in the exhibit hall.
detour #1: anaklone. this guy was amazing. he looked almost exactly like hayden christensen, and went around the entire convention in costume, and in character. nanci has wanted to have hayden's babies for quite some time now, so the first time she saw him she about peed her pants in sheer excitement. we were all made to take many, many pictures of her with him, and it was her goal to find and maul him at every possible time throughout the convention. she even made him wear her burger king hat once.
detour #2: okay, so the way they ran the celebration store was quite possibly the dumbest thing ever conceived by man. first you waited in a huge line just to get into the convention hall where the store was set up. this line got capped at like 8:00 every morning. capped for the entire day. this got to be such an issue that there were people camping out overnight in a line next to us just to get into the store. after you actually got in, you got divided up into one of four back-and-forth queues that ran the whole length of the hall. from one end to the other was an hour's worth of time. finally you would get up to the counters to be able to order what you wanted. the whole process took about seven hours on average and i couldn't have come up with something so inefficient if i had tried. i've never seen it be so hard to give an evil corporation my money.
anyway, we messed around in the exhibit hall for a bit, and then decided to grab some lunch at the circle centre mall food court. when i got there, mom called to say she was almost out of the store and wanted me to get her some food. so i bought a ton of chick-fil-a (or "chick-filla," as it would have been if tia were there) and we waited around for megan and mom to get there. eventually they arrived and we caught up on how they had spent their morning (entirely in line, of course). when we were finished, we split up, and smitha and i went to go get in line for the 5:00 star wars in 30 minutes. mom and megan went to sit in on some fan films, and emily and nanci went back to the exhibit hall. right when the doors for sw30 were about to open, the four of them joined us again and we all got to see it together.
lemme tell you, this was the best thing i saw the entire weekend. the whole time, i was laughing so hard i could barely breathe and nanci, who had already seen it 1.5 times before, was doing the same thing next to me. the impersonations were dead on, and i was in geek heaven. admiral ackbar, man. "it's a traaaap!" i wish i could have seen it over and over again. the x-wings were just chairs they put over their heads, and the four legs had lights on them like wings. then they could put r2 (who was just a trash can) in between the legs for when he went flying with them. it was priceless.
after we got out of that, i think we went back to the exhibit hall yet again (i don't remember) but at some point i made it back to my hotel room to await a call from smitha about dinner plans. eventually she called and said that everyone was going to steak 'n' shake again. i was admittedly unenthused, because i wasn't all that impressed the first time and i was kinda hoping we could go somewhere new. but i decided that the whole point was to spend time with friends, so i went (mom and megan decided to stay behind and find their own dinner). when i got there, the tables were split between guys and girls, so i sat with matt, philip, and nathan. it turned out to be pretty cool because it was the first time during the convention that i actually got to sit down and discuss star wars like the total nerd that i am. philip and nathan even started a bet on how long the span of revenge of the sith would be.
afterwards, nathan wanted to get drunk (surprise) so we tried to find like a sports bar that would let me in (i should have had a giant sign pasted to my head that said "under 21" the entire night, because that's how i felt). luckily, nanci told me she'd stick with me if everyone else decided to leave me behind. we put ourselves on the list for a table at champions (which is the same restaurant that i saw a klingon doing karaoke in two years ago at dragon*con) but nathan was pretty obviously disappointed. he tried to casually get rid of me and smitha by offering us two tickets to "celebration at celebration iii!", a party for the fans that was going on at the same time. but ditching us wasn't that easy, and after we'd waited half an hour and we still hadn't been called for our table, we decided to just go hang out in the hyatt lobby (which also had a bar in it, conveniently). there was a piano there, and i finally got to play amélie for smitha! some drunk people heckled me and i played them the only elton john song i know to appease them. nathan decided to go find a real bar on his own.
then, as philip, stephanie, mindy, philip, smitha, nanci, and i were just sitting there having a good conversation, i spotted richard leparmentier, who played admiral motti in a new hope. for those of you who don't know, he's the guy with the "this station is now the ultimate power in the universe!" line, and the one who gets force-choked by vader. anyway, so he walks up to this twenty-something attractive woman, whips out a card that says "richard leparmentier - admiral motti" with his picture on it, and gives it to her. she flips, and asks him to sign her shirt. so he does. right on the boob. for like ten minutes. then when he was finished, he gave her boob a little squeeze and said, "now this is the ultimate power in the universe." i about choked, and everyone at my table gave each other the same "did that really just happen?" look. he then proceeded to hit up every table in the bar in the same fashion, but everyone else was considerably less receptive. :op smitha and nanci decided they were going to call it a night, so i left with them. when we walked out, it was snowing!! we played around in the snow for only a minute, but then we called a cab so we wouldn't have to walk to our hotels in the cold. all in all, a great day.
sunday, may 8th, 2005 at 11:20 pm • permalink • comment
celebration part v: wrappin' up
sunday was pretty low-key, as shows started to close and people started to catch flights back home. we woke up and walked over to the hyatt lobby for breakfast since it has a mcdonald's in it. i took a risk and ordered a sausage mcgriddle and realized how much i'd been missing by never having tried them before. afterwards we called and met up with the amazing nansmithily trio at the exhibit hall for one last look around. i found the alienware booth, which was raffling a computer with the sweetest star wars case art i've ever seen. i also at this point tried to stand in line to buy kat a gift from the dark horse booth, but that didn't pan out. after that, we walked over to the fan fair hall, which had been open and available the entire con, but which we somehow never bothered to go to. megan stuck with us while mom went to go save us seat for the one man star wars trilogy. the fan fair hall was pretty neat, and we got to take a picture with jorg sacul (a rather well-known george lucas look-alike) in front of a life-sized x-wing. there wasn't a whole lot to do, though, so we decided to grab an early lunch. megan and i had just eaten so we shared an order of french fries.
eventually, it got to be time to go meet up with mom for the show. knowing that it would be the last time we saw each other (at least for a few years), we said all of our goodbyes and took some parting photos. megan and i then sprinted to the one man star wars trilogy with almost no time to spare. i really enjoyed the show. parts of it were hilarious, but then again, some of the repeated soundtrack and sound effects got annoying after a while. basically it's one guy, who depicts the entire original trilogy, including music, sound effects, dialogue, etc., with no props or anything but his voice. it's pretty amazing. apparently he also does a one man lord of the rings trilogy, so i really want to see that now too.
afterwards we headed to the star wars spectacular just in time for the last showing. it was a two-part preview of revenge of the sith, and included about 20 minutes worth of clips and behind the scenes type stuff. from what i saw of the finished movie, it looks like it's going to be awesome. the actual texture and feel of this one is different from the other two prequel films, but it's not really moving in the direction of the original trilogy, either. so, while i was hoping for some continuity (and i guess they give a good effort - there's some transition happening in the ship design and stuff), i have to say i'm extremely excited.
and after that, we had to leave. we piled back into our ridiculous rental pt cruiser and headed back to the airport. the entire weekend was awesome from start to finish and it was definitely one of the best experiences of my life. apparently they're organizing a celebration iv for 2007 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the a new hope. i really hope i'll be able to make it to that one, if indeed it does happen. i can't wait to meet up with the awesome people i got to spend time with this go-'round. i didn't believe i'd ever be this excited about star wars again.
monday, may 9th, 2005 at 6:55 pm • permalink • comment
© 2001-2008 Andrew C. Ewert.
|
navigation
• home
• about
• rss 2.0 feed 
about
this part-blog, part-phlog is an unreliably updated account of my adventures and misadventures. it has no real cohesive theme, but i'm apt at any moment to digress into rants on language, politics, film, and technology, or anything else that interests me at the time. for more about me and this blog, click here.
currently...
• reading: the big u - neal stephenson
• watching: veronica mars season 1
• listening: black holes and revelations - muse
me, elsewhere
• visual portfolio
• the instant ancestors project
• flickr
latest entries
• in the city of angels
• so at least my elbow isn't bro...
• my body fails me, once again
• moving to l.a.
• 25 things meme
• cave without a name
• happy 2009!
• two weeks to go...
• a tale of two cities, part i
• things that are ridiculous: do...
recommended reading
• alex in samoa
• engadget
• homesick texan
• iambic pentameter
• let's try this again...
• spaceflight now
• zax off-world colony
hilarity
• cake wrecks
• fail blog
• people of walmart
• xkcd
archive
|
