The Official Star Wars Celebration IV Blog IV

Day 3

May 25, 2K7

May 25th is the official opening of the convention as well as the 30th anniversary of STAR WARS, so what better way to spend it than getting into yet another line up! Like Stacy says: “It ain’t a Star Wars Convention unless you’re in a line up!”
Getting off the hotel shuttle was one small step for Jaeger, and one GIANT LINE FOR ADMISSION!

Got in and spend a big part of the day in collecting panels learning about such things as Peruvian Star Wars toys, bootlegs, the Vintage Micro Collection, and Vintage store displays. They handed out special Commemorative Coins at a couple of the panels and I got my first taste of ASSHOLE SCALPER FANBOY SCUM that day. The organizers were passing out coins to each row of attendees, each row having about nine seats, the idea being to take ONE and pass the rest down. They passed out a HUGE BUTTLOAD (the technical term for the measurement) to the first person in the row, and he took one and passed them on, as did the second person, and the third, but the fourth guy, the ASSHOLE SCALPER FANBOY SCUM pocketed the remainder. I sat for a second, stunned, then leaned over and said something like: “rot in hell scalper scum,” which he chose to ignore, coward that he was. Luckily I was able to flag down one of the Swag Hootchies and get coins for the rest of our row, including myself of course.

Afterwards I hit the lunge for a five-dollar beer before heading down to watch the LIVE taping of the STAR WARS AT 30 ATTACK OF THE SHOW special. When I arrive, an hour before taping is to begin there are about a MILLION undeserving choads standing in front of me, wallowing in their own crapulence and B.O. I would not be taking this! Wasting no time, I began shoving them aside to get closer to the set. Eventually the show began and there was one row of choads left, blocking me. Good job for me they were all shorter than me so I was able to see quite clearly… mostly.

One moron in particular stood beside me yakking away on his mobile phone for the first half hour of the show, telling his choadbuddy: “Hey! Hey, you know what G4 is? They have a cable channel I think! You got it? If you do look it’s me!!” Then he proceeded to call all his other friends repeating the same message while at the same time waving a huge, bright blue poster tube in front of my face whenever the camera was pointed in our direction. Then he would yell: “See! It’s me! See, there I am! See!” After about the third or fourth time this blue tube came close to popping me in the grill I decided that Jaeger wasn’t going to play this game anymore so I grabbed it and told him: “Enough.” He gave me this look like I’d just caught him with his hands in the cookie jar, but the upside was that never again did that thing swing anywhere near me.

After the show was over I called out to Kevin and Olivia to gimmie a little love and pose for a photo, which they were more than happy to do. Thanks guys! When the hoard of choads began to get the same idea and descend upon them I took it as my cue to leave and headed over to the auditorium for the opening ceremonies. Before I could get anywhere near the door an orange vested Line Nazi stopped me and started screaming that “NOBODY IS ALLOWED INSIDE!!! THE LINE STARTS OUTSIDE THE MAIN ENTRANCE!!” I looked over her shoulder and could SEE that the auditorium was COMPLETELY SET UP so the only reason I can think of for why they weren’t letting anyone in is because they MUST appear in CONTROL, and forcing people to line up unnecessarily is a way to do that. Dog knows what kind of freaking ANARCHY would have ensued if they just let people casually walk in over the period of an hour and take their seats! The opening ceremonies event could have been dare I say it, FUN!!!!!!

I met up with Neil and Stacy and we got into yet another fucking unnecessarily line up, I tell you if I didn’t have these buddies to chat with, I would have gone BUSHIT with all the lining up I swear to Dog. Some time after 19:30 when the ceremonies were supposed to start, the Line Nazis began marching us towards the entrance on Pico. When we got within 30 feet of the entrance, the Kommandant starts screaming at us to “TURN AROUND!!! TURN AROUND!!!” and they then marched us back towards the main entrance on Figueroa.

Ein! Svie! Drei!

Stacy comment that we were all part of some sick psychological experiment George Lucas was conducting on us to se how much of this line business we would take before freaking snapping.
The opening ceremonies were long and included the Mayor of Los Angeles, and the Postmaster General as well as Steven Sansweet as the MC and a recorded message from The Maker himself. The whole thing finished around 22:00 and the group of us (Stacy, Ryan, Yrol, Kris, Dooks the younger, Neil and some other guy I can’t recall tried to get some food. Apparently this is an IMPOSSIBILITY in Downtown L.A. after 6pm on a Friday night. Eventually ending up at the IHOP, we waited 25 minutes for service and received nothing for our troubles but the pleasure of being ignored.

Dooks the Younger got up from our table and said he was hitting the Subway. We got up and walked the fuck out, grabbed our sandwiches, and strode past the IHOP about ten minutes later to see that Yrol, Kris, and Neil were just getting their drink orders.