Star Wars Celebration IV

THURSDAY
I belatedly realized sometime on Monday that I had to pick up Eleni at the airport on Thursday at 11pm, as well as make the Pirates 3 showing at midnight. I already had Pirates tickets by the time I realized, which meant that it was going to be a racy drive from LAX back to Westwood. Deciding to wait early in line, Jeremy and I headed down to the movie theatre where we met some random kids who were playing Taboo and Scrabble. I love meeting and socializing with random groups of people. I learned that I kind of suck at Taboo and that Jeremy is really good at Scrabble.

It was a pretty close all running down to LAX to pick up Eleni, and then making it back just in time for our seats. Thanks for saving them, Jeremy! The crowd was rowdy, the usual first-midnight-showing-on-a-Thursday-midnight sort of college crowd, which made it that much better. Unfortunately the movie was only so-so. My opinion of Pirates is that the first movie was good, the second movie tried to do more of what the first movie was and failed, and the third movie decided it needed to go above and beyond the scope of what Pirates was and stretched itself so far, thus making it completely over the top. :/ Oh well. Like "The Matrix," I think I'm going to pretend the sequels don't exist. Despite the fact that Chow Yun Fat is (briefly) in one of them.

Poor Eleni had been up for about 20 hours by the time we crashed, so we took our sweet time getting to the convention on...

FRIDAY
We woke up at around 11pm, showered, and hit the In 'N Out. It's one of those places that every non-Californian has to hit at some point in time so they can figure out what all the ruckus is about. By the time I looked up directions (both Mapquest and Google were entirely unhelpful), it was about 1pm, and we got to the con around 2pm (after getting lost a little in downtown. Stupid unhelpful directions). There was a brief faux pas where I curb hopped in my poor little car (Captain Usopp! ;___;) and scared the living daylights out of both me and Eleni (thanks stupidly signed parking non-entrance), but fortunately Captain Usopp is all right (not a scratch!) and we managed to get ourselves parked without further ado.

On the way to the convention center we came up with this great plan. Since I was cosplaying as Darth Skuld, we concocted this elaborate prank to pull on any fanboys who had the audacity to ask which character I was dressed as. We'd tell them I was Darth Skuld, one of the supporting characters in the Tales of the Jedi: Rise of the Shadows comic (something we completely made up), and see if we could get the stupid fanboy to admit that he'd heard of it, read it, or even read it and thought it was pretty cool. We even came up with a plot and a name for the main character, a Jedi by the name of "Dev Jenna" (after my friends, Dev and Jen). It was pretty grand. The only downer is that nobody actually asked. I got a lot of compliments on how it was pretty cool, but nobody asked, "So who are you, anyway?" Cause I was totally ready with my mouthful of delicious lies.

Anyways, Thursday was full of wandering around, seeing the Vader Helmet Project exhibit, visiting the Dealer's Room/Exhibit Hall and Celebration Store. In general, we decided to turn in early (for some odd reason we were tired as all hell) and abandoned the convention not too long after meeting up with Dev and Jen (thank you for everything! ;_;) in favor of having sushi at Sushi Mac. Oh, sweet sushi. Then we spent the rest of the night watching "Freaks and Geeks" and drinking stout before heading to bed at about midnight.

SATURDAY
We promised we'd get ourselves up nice and early for Saturday, so we did. We climbed into the car early and made it to the convention with more than an hour to spare. We actually spent most of the day doing connish things like actually going to panels (*gasp!*). We spent most of the morning and early afternoon going to things like the Robot Chicken and Family Guy Star Wars previews (Seth Green and Seth MacFarlane were in attendance for their respective shows). Unfortunately they made us all stand in line outside, and poor Eleni was burnt pretty red from the Southern California sun. :(

After Family Guy we wandered about the Exhibit Hall some more (I really should've tried to grab an autograph from Ray Park, but I never got around to it), hit up the 501st's Bounty Hunter costuming panel with Dev and Jen, and then later ran into Rich and Brooks, who we hung out with for the rest of the night. They were nice and carried all of our bulky bags for us, and we had a nice laugh over my Samurai Champloo Jin bag completing Brooks's emo fag look. (He had the converses, the tight jeans, and the long-sleeved shirt + T-shirt thing going on.) Apparently the bag so accentuated his emoness that he got hit on by a guy while standing in line for the Hasbro exclusive C4 figures. We told him to get a number, but he didn't show us one, which means he's either saving it for himself or he's got no guts.

We convinced Eleni to spend over $100 at the Celebration Store on a Chewbacca bomber jacket (it was actually really fuzzy and warm), sat around being jackasses, and then hit up the IHOP for dinner. Thankfully I wasn't the weirdest person there, as there was a Darth Talon cosplayer also sitting in the IHOP with her friends. Phew! I love it when I'm outfreaked by other freaks. Desmond, Dev, and Jen all showed up at the IHOP at some point in time, which was grand. Yay, all my geeky Star Wars friends!

When we were leaving, we had this great idea of driving over to The Daily Pint to hang out, drink stout, and play some pool and shuffleboard, but Eleni informed us (thankfully before we set out) that she's got less than half a year before she's 21, which meant that we had to change plans. Thankfully it was for the better, as we decided to head over to Rich's house, chill out there (it was a swanky, swanky, nice pad in a very, very, very nice and expensive building), drink beers, and watch Star Wars. Good times.

We went up to the roof of Rich's building and hung out on the helicopter landing pad, while taking in the nighttime Los Angeles scenery. Gorgeous, with the mountains on one side and the sea on another. We were up on the roof for quite a bit before heading back down to his place to open us some booze. While there, Eleni introduced us to the awesomeness of a BBC surrealist comedy called "The Mighty Boosh" which smacks a little of Monty Python on acid. Thanks Old Gregg, we'll never be the same again.

SUNDAY

I missed Ray Park! Gaaaah! He was scheduled at a bad time, namely the exact time that I have kung-fu classes. In favor of going to kung-fu, Eleni and I went, where there was much of the swording and the wailing on me and me wailing on others. It was good.

We headed over the last few events we were interested in, namely the History Channel Star Wars: the Legacy Revealed preview, the interview of all the actors who played Jango and Boba Fett (with Jay Laga'aia hosting, who was a great host), and lastly, the Fan Movie Awards.

Eleni and I rounded off the night by going to the Third Street Promenade and walking to the ocean, so we could watch the ocean at night. It was an amazing experience, gazing off into the black horizon, and watching the waves materialize out of nothingness. Totally breathtaking.

It was a good night, we watched more of "The Mighty Boosh" after that and some episodes of "Spaced" before heading off to bed.

So ends the adventures of Eleni, Skuld, and her bunch of friends Memorial Day weekend at Star Wars: Celebration IV. Shout outs to all the home crew (Rich and Brooks) and the Seattle home crew (Dev and Jen), and everybody else who went and made the awesome memories possible (Man Leia, the kid who fell in a heap on the stairs, the nice Darth Maul cosplayer who took pictures with me). It was pretty damn cool.

Pictures soon to come, it's 2am and I'm going to bed.