Star Wars Celebration IV

I missed the previous 3 Celebrations. Mostly because I had no idea such a thing existed. 2 took place when I was effectively still in college and locked into finishing projects and drinking beer. The last one was on my side radar but took place in Indianapolis and I had no want to travel to such a place for a convention. I had no costumes at the time and no links to the Star Wars community; not to mention no one to go with me.

It was announced last year that the fourth Celebration would take place on the weekend of the 30th Anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars. It was rumored to be moving to Los Angeles. This excited me to no end as I now had a costume and links to the Star Wars community; not to mention I live in Los Angeles.

Soon after the dates and location were finalized: the convention would take place over Memorial Day weekend 2007 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The first official day of the convention would fall on Friday, May 25th 2007. 30 years from when all this madness was started.

I immediately began planning.

The first hurdle was getting tickets. Luckily the start time was Pacific Standard Time so I could get on it at work instead of losing 3 hours of lead time to people on the East Coast.

The second hurdle was whether or not to stay in a hotel. I originally decided to commute over the hill into downtown LA from Burbank. It would save money and I am close enough that it wouldn’t be too bad. I would pay for parking at the LACC and pay for gas and brave the morning commute. As I started researching what parking would cost and how long it can take to get to downtown from the valley in traffic and how much was going on at night and I quickly realized I needed to consider staying downtown.

However by this time most people I know had already booked hotel rooms with friends. I was lucky enough that an awesome couple I know, Paul and Lesley Farquar, had an open bed at the Wilshire Grand and offered it up to me for whatever I could afford to pay.

With everything set for the stay I could now look to getting my costumes ready.

By running away, Rebels finally get their due

Starting February 11th and running until the end of April, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination is showing at the California Science Center.

This is a science center event featuring scientific explanations of real-world technology appearing in the Star Wars universe combined with props, costumes, and models from the films.

I was lucky enough to be included in the events scheduled around this event as a costumed volunteer. The first being the museum’s annual Discovery Ball. This is their big fundraising event centered around their largest exhibit; which this year happened to be Star Wars. I was also lucky enough to be portraying a face character so I used for some special stuff over the rest of my fellow volunteers. I able to hang out in the Cantina early in the night with the infamous Marie Prestin in her ANH Leia costume; chatting and taking pictures with the attendees. I also used in a staged firefight between Rebel troopers, Han, and Leia and Stormtroopers on scaffolds. Beside being waaayyy too long at 3 minutes it was fun. At the end I was required by Lucasfilm to grab Leia and run out as Darth Vader shows up. Apparently, LFL doesn’t want any hero characters to be captured. Instead we do the courageous thing and run away.

This nice thing about running out was that Marie and I got a jump on eating. Which was good because we were quickly grabbed to take pictures with the VIP guests. These tables were purchased for $25,000 or more so the diners were given the opportunity to take professional photos with the face characters from the Original Trilogy. Marie (as Leia) and myself (as Han) were joined by Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Old Ben, and Luke Skywalker as we went from table to table taking pictures.

It was a fun night despite being work and we were very proud to say we helped the museum raise over a million dollars. The first time they had ever done so.

All it took was Star Wars.