geeking out: an amazing weekend
so, celebration iii. i'm not sure how to start this, but if you're a veteran reader of my blog, you're sure to know that there's no way this can be brief. so hang on, and get ready for the best weekend ever.
thursday i went to school knowing that it was going to be impossibly hard to make it through the day with the anticipation of being in indianapolis that night. even with only three classes, the day seemed to drag into infinity. that is, until i devised a plan worthy of a jedi - tell my calculus teacher i was going to dual credit (an un-arguable excuse) and then go home instead. it was pure genius and worked like a charm. having escaped, i hurried home to do a final bit of packing and then eventually to accompany mom to pick megan up at school. off we were!
two hours and one plane ride later, we touched down in indy. we took a shuttle to the rent-a-car place (whereupon we were endowed with a pt cruiser, hyuck) and then drove to our hotel. i finally started to geek out in the car as we passed place after place that i had heard mentioned as we had endlessly planned on nightly: steak 'n' shake (naught to be found in houston), circle centre mall, buca di beppo, and finally, we drove right past the convention center complete with thousands of people lined up outside.
our hotel turned out to be a beautiful spacious two-room suite, and i ended up getting my own bed and tv! i was especially impressed by the star wars celebration hotel keycards that had been provided by target to all of the convention hotels (i immediately decided to steal mine, of course). we got all settled in and smitha called me to tell me she, nanci, and emily were just leaving the airport and we planned to meet up for dinner. we met in front of the convention center and then walked to steak 'n' shake. there we were shortly joined by em and bryan, who put our group at a number higher than was considered tolerable by the hostess, apparently. :op eventually enough tables were cleared and we ordered and started getting to know each other the real way. at some point, the conversation turned to randy and anne, and how we couldn't wait to meet them. lo and behold, nanci spots them at the door. flagging them down enthusiastically, we alerted them to our presence and they came to join us. all in all, it was a great start to the convention and it was especially fun watching the "star wars on may 19" marquee go up on the movie theater across the street as we ate.
after dinner we decided to go to the showing of a new hope at the convention. people parted ways with the promise to meet back up, but in the end mom, megan, and i were the only ones who made it back in time to get in. everyone else was refused entrance because the outside doors had already been locked. it was fun, nonetheless, because the movie is just a completely different experience with a thousand other people who know every line as well as you do, and to hear them cheer, boo, and laugh at even the dorkiest nuance. needless to say, we were quite exhausted when we returned to the hotel, and we slept quite soundly.
at the moment, i have to wake up early for school and don't have the time to finish working on this. but tomorrow i'll try to get everything written up and hopefully will snag some pictures to illustrate. :o) stay tuned.
tuesday, april 26th, 2005 at 12:37 am • permalink • comment
celebration: day the second
thursday we awoke to rain and more rain. finding the lines to the convention were long and wet, we decided we'd rather just go get some breakfast and then wait for them to open the doors. we found a small coffee shop across the street (where we waited in a long line, of course, but at least it was indoors) and sat down to some delicious cinnamon rolls. they were giving out free "thank the maker!" buttons, so of course i got one. by the time we'd finished, they still hadn't begun letting people into the convention center, but we went to wait in line anyway, getting fairly soaked. mom detached to go retrieve her and megan's lightsabers from randy, who they had mailed them to. bryan and em found us in line and nonchalantly slipped in, offering the use of their umbrellas. once in the convention, they decided to try to get into the store (more on that later!) and mom, megan, and i set off to find nanci, emily, and smitha.
we assumed they would be in the "hayden, live from italy!" line, but we were unable to find them there. we inquired and found out that it had been pushed back and that the presentation would be audio only. makes sense that without the eye candy, nanci would have little interest. ;o) we decided we would go to the "star wars musical edition" instead, even though we didn't know what it was. finally finding a place in the convention center with any kind of cell phone reception, i called smitha and emily to let them know where i was going to be. just as the show was about to start, nanci and smitha unexpectedly joined us, much to my happiness. the show turned out to be really entertaining. it was basically a new hope, with songs stolen from other musicals (les mis, west side story, phantom, evita, you name it) and given star wars lyrics. "don't cry for me, princess leia" and "music of the knight" were just a few. when it was over, we discovered that emily, bryan, and em had been in the back of the audience the entire time. they informed us that the store had hit capacity and been capped and closed for the entire day. we wondered how they could close for an entire day when it was barely noon, but apparently the way they were running it was beyond the reach of logic.
mom and megan split off for lunch, and we decided to head back to the girls' hotel room to plan and get some food. when we got there, we just decided to eat what they had (namely, sugarfree wafers and peanut butter and honey sandwiches) and head back to catch some more shows. emily and i decided on the "costume pageant." it was enjoyable at first, and some of the costumes were really awesome, but we realized about halfway through that the decision to let each of the 50 costume entries have a page of description for poor warwick davis to read aloud became tedious and long. about halfway through the padmés section, we couldn't take it any longer and made our escape, only to find that mom and megan had done the same.
we ran into colleen also, but anticipating that i may be in line all night to see george lucas the next morning, i thought it wise to catch up on some sleep before the big nightly dinner get-together. i went back to the hotel and got about two and a half hours of rest before mom woke me up and told me it was time to get going. we got all bundled up, but realized that even though buca di beppo was right across the street from the hotel, we were going to get quite wet on our way over. so after returning to the hotel room and scrounging up our ponchos, we ran across to the restaurant, staying mostly dry.
when i first walked into the room, i was immediately weirded out by all the faces i had never seen in real life before, but which were at the same time eerily familiar. one by one, i began picking out screennames and personalities, trying to match faces with names. we were the last ones there, and i feared being sent to another table, but everyone was nice enough to squash in and get cozy so we could all be together. i ended up between my sister and stephanie (sigh snootles) from canada, who i had never really talked to one-on-one on the message boards, but who turned out to be way cool.
introductions got started as everyone awkwardly said their screenname and where they were from (but not what they did over their summer vacation!). the conversation started out awkwardly, too, but in almost no time everyone had gotten to know everyone around them and was having a great time. much attention was given to darth tater and the pope head in the middle of the table (we were, after all, in the pope room), as well as to the over-endowed cherubs on the ceiling. the food was great, and it was made even better by the fact that it was all on nightly's tab. :od eighteen empty meretti bottles in front of nathan later, we decided it was time to snap some pictures and start thinking about heading out.
nanci informed us that the convention was going to be handing out 10,000 wristbands (3 shows seating 3,300) in the morning to see george lucas, and that the current projection was that all 10,000 of those would be campers. despite the weather, the five of us (me, emily, smitha, nanci, and em) decided we would rough it and try to make the first show. we knew that they weren't allowing anyone to line up until midnight anyway, so we killed time by taking a ride in ryan's car back to the girls' room, where we got all the materials we would need to spend six hours in the freezing rain. around 12:30 we set out for the line.
again, i have an early morning tomorrow and the whole line ordeal is a whole story in itself, which will have to wait for another time. stay tuned!
tuesday, april 26th, 2005 at 11:58 pm • permalink • comment
celebration iii, part iii: roughin' it
having borrowed a tarp(-aulin... more on that later) from ryan and being bogged down with emily's sleeping bags and blankets, we made our way out to the line. when we got there, i estimated that 1000 people or so were ahead of us - maybe fewer, but in any case we'd still make it into the first show. we began to set up camp in the light rain, but no sooner had we unfolded the tarp than we were told we'd all have to move "to the other side of the bar." a ten-foot move wasn't so bad, but it was only a hint of the night to come. getting everything settled, smitha and i departed from the group to go pick up some supplies from my hotel room. i changed into dry clothes (4 layers), picked up a poncho, some cheez-its, a trivia book, and my backpack and we were off again. on the return journey, we got a call from emily telling us that they'd been moved again and they weren't even sure we'd be able to get back in line. smitha and i hurried back to find they'd been spirited away to beneath a distant train bridge. i started to get worried, thinking that the morning would come around and the wristband people would forget they had put us over there entirely.
we fairly quickly picked the rest of our group out in the line, but as we went to join them, we were stopped by possibly the world's most power-hungry rent-a-cop. smitha and i basically tried to explain to him how we'd been in the line earlier, but he was impossibly stubborn. there were like 20 people behind our group in line by that point, and not one of them seemed to care if we cut back in. just as we were going to try to work our way up person-by-person, sob-story-by-sob-story from the back of the line, ass!guard left us unattended and we quickly ducked into the line. then we hid from him in plain view. maybe he was blind.
we anticipated that we'd be spending a considerable amount of time next to the turnstyle we were seated beside, we (minus nanci, who had gone into some kind of cold-induced coma) pulled out my trivia book and proceeded to answer every question (mostly about james bond, for some reason) with "susan sarandon" and "the death star." at 2 in the morning, that gets to be mind-numbingly hilarious. especially when the frostbite starts to set in.
in any case, just as we were starting to get delirious, around 3 a.m., some guard or employee or something gave the announcement to a hushed audience that we would be moving inside. hushed, that is, until the applause and cheering broke out. every belonging was quickly gathered up refugee-style and we all started the mad dash to shelter. along the way, we all managed to fall down at least once, and i got stuck carrying the tarp. we were seriously overloaded and needed extra hands to help carry things. on cue, nathan stumbled out of the bar caped in the union jack, offering to help carry the "tarpaulin." those crazy brits. no sooner had he gathered it up than he began trying to sell it, in his loud drunken british voice, for five hundred dollars and a free case of beer. no takers.
it was at this point that we realized "inside" meant "outside in the valet drivethrough of the hyatt." they formed us into several parallel lines, and from our vantage point we could see people being led through the skywalk(er) across the street. we gave up even trying to comprehend where we were in line ("are those people across the street ahead of us in line or not??") or if we would make it into the first show. we settled into nightly camp location #4. camp #4 was fairly unenjoyable due to the idiots in the campsite directly behind us. namely, the ones who thought it'd be cool to urinate on our stuff. we all started to feel the toll of the late hour, except emily, who got her second wind just as the rest of us began to doze. that's not to say she wasn't a little loopy, though, as at some point she began to feed her peanut butter sandwich to the darth maul head on the back of someone's jacket.
about 5 a.m., the 501st legion showed up and formed a protective barrier around line 1 (represent!). we took it as a good sign that someone might potentially envy our spot in line. however, when we inquired about going inside, the wristbands, etc., the stormtroopers were polite but as uninformed as we were. with both a sigh and a feeling of accomplishment, we watched the sun rise. not too much later, about 6:30 i'd say, they finally began to move people inside, instead of "inside." the most miserable part of the whole evening was having to come into the open for 45 seconds as we crossed the street, past the informative "6:43 a.m. - 35°" marquee) to the convention center. but it was all made better by seeing a stormtrooper directing traffic. :od
getting inside was one of the best feelings in the world. we all cheered as we walked through the doors, into the heat, and were directed into the 500 ballroom queue. i didn't waste any time in sitting down on the (relatively) comfortable carpet floor, but it wasn't long before they moved us again, this time to a huge, empty convention hall. the floors were concrete, but it just felt great to be inside. knowing we had made it, i finally fell asleep for the first time. when i woke up, it was to the sound of a gencon employee handing out yellow wristbands. excitedly, nanci and i pestered him until he told us that yellow meant we'd made it into the first show!! we had done it! finally, around 8:00, they started moving all 3,300 of us yellow-banders into the sagamore ballroom.
this one's going to have to be a cliffhanger, because once again, i have a date with my comfy bed. (after this story, would you believe i still haven't properly caught up on my sleep?)
thursday, april 28th, 2005 at 12:31 am • permalink • comment
© 2001-2008 Andrew C. Ewert.
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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.
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