Frozen in carbonite

On November 23rd, 2005 I was pulled over after a premiere party and arrested for drunk driving. After spending the night in jail, I was charged with driving under the influence, fined $1500, and required to complete a mandatory DUI course which included mandatory AA meetings. My license was suspended for 6 months and I began riding my bike to work shortly after the new year. The whole process set me back about $2500-3000 depending on if you count rising insurance rates.

With my mind dealing with all the things I had to get done by certain dates or face jail time and my Han pants hanging in a closet with a busted zipper, I kind of forgot about Captain Solo for a time. Understandable as it is.

In February I was made aware, by my boss, that the show that I primarily do effects for at Nick was running a heavy risk of being cancelled. Thus, layoffs were a real risk on the horizon. Not knowing when, as it could have been anywhere from March to August, I decided to start saving money and living as if I would be laid off anytime. I began cutting my spending, which was easy due to my lack of automobile mobility, and selling off random crap I had laying around on eBay.

I spent most of the winter and spring slowly selling off parts of my Anakin costume as well as other costume and props stuff I had lying around that I had bought up in the frenzy that was fall 2005. I didn’t give a thought to fixing my Han pants for quite a while. It wasn’t until sometime in April, when I started giving serious thought to attending San Diego Comicon. I had been to Comicon a year before; for one day. I wanted to go for more and get a hotel room. eventually I bit the bullet in late April and snagged a room, through Nickelodeon, at the Hyatt.

With that decision made, it opened up another can of worms. Did I want to go and where my costume? If I decided to take that plunge from normal Con-goer to costumed Con-goer, I had to fix my pants. I wasn’t even sure if they were able to be repaired. I don’t know much about sewing, seamstressing, tailoring, or garment construction. Could a zipper be easily removed from some cheap decades-old pants and replaced with a heavy duty metal one? Was it worth it? Should I just find a new pair of pants at the thrift stores and swap the stripes? I really wasn’t sure how to approach it. And the lack of a car for transportation made it tough. At the time I was stuck walking to the supermarket if no one could drive me.

An answer would come via the Replica Props Forum. A member there was selling his Han pants. ESB style for pretty cheap. I decided to buy them and see if I could alter them to fit. They arrived a few weeks later and much to my surprise fit great! To be honest, I had dropped nearly 15 lbs at this point from my bike riding shenanigans. The stripes on the sides were inaccurate, as most are, and I had them replaced with my stripe patches.

The costume was now complete again and need only wait for July and Comicon International.