Lost Written Relics of Star Wars Geekiness Unearthed

It's been a month and a half since I wrote jack-spit here on my Blog of Geekdom. There's just nothing that's really been hapnin' since I saw Watchmen.

Let's see. I finished Fable II (review pending). I completed watching every episode of Robin of Sherwood on DVD. The winter is ever so slowly letting go of it's evil grip (It was actually 80 degrees here today, making it a 2 cigar day!). We celebrated a very good friend's 40th B-Day (Iris!). I'm VERY much looking forward to the big Star Trek reboot film from J.J. Abrams. That's about it. Not much else at all.

So feeling uninspired to blog about any current hapenings, I found myself trolling around in some very old files here on my computer. I came across an article I wrote for a very small, very short lived, local independent paper I wrote for about 5 years ago. The subject matter was about waiting in line for Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Since the springtime hearkens back memories of waiting in line to see the prequels and springtime is trying to break through, I thought I'd post the article here. I don't think it ever got published. And if it was, the owner/publisher A. wont care and B. won't find out since he never checks out this blog.

So without much further adieu, here it is in it's original form and entirety.....

The Last of the Lines

Where plastic light sabers blaze, Jedi and Sith lords rule and that gallon cup of soda shoots right through me, all while in line for “Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith”.

The final puzzle piece of the George Lucas created movie series juggernaut known as Star Wars was finally laid into place with “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” earlier this spring. You can bet your strap-on Yoda ears that myself and many other geeks were there en force at the Ultrascreen’s midnight showing to reign in the end of the uber-space opera era.

Come with me now and let’s travel back in time to help me relive the experience that is… waiting in line for a Star Wars movie.

First we must designate a time to meet up at the theater. A good eight hours before showtime seems pretty reasonable. We’ll feel sorry for the idiots who will show up only a mere four hours before the doors open. They’ll miss out on the previous 6 hours of getting to stare at people dressed as Jedi and Sith lords.

Next we’re going to converge and meet up with our group at the Ultrascreen and hope to get a good enough place in line so we can weasel ourselves a nice seat in the theater. As we all meet in the parking lot we make our way to the side of the theater where the employees have designated a roped off area for those of us with tickets to the midnight showing. We already see a good gathering of fellow Star Wars fans, some of which have popped tents that they’ve spent the previous night. I’ll bet they’re laughing at us idiots who showed up a mere eight hours before the show and missed the previous 18 hours of… staring at each other in a tent.

After we get our tickets redeemed for wristbands, we get ourselves situated in line sitting in our fold-out chairs. We then notice a five year old girl having a plastic light saber battle with her father. How cute. We also notice two thirty year old men dressed in Jedi robes wacking at each other with similar toys. Not as cute, but still amusing. It makes me feel better about myself in the fact that I have an Aalya Secura (cute, blue, female Jedi knight) action figure tucked away in my coat pocket. She will love me someday… SHE WILL LOVE ME!!! .…ahem.

Now we start to get hungry and decide to break from the pack to go on a recon mission and obtain some food. The nearby McDonald’s will suffice and we return with edibles for the group and 2 quarter pounders that will hopefully sit nicely in my stomach for the duration of the evening. I‘ll wash them down with a big-ass soda from a cup with Obi-Wan Kenobi’s likeness on it while hoping that Ewan McGreggor got a real good deal by marketing his likeness to the Lucasfilm folks in the “Episode III” merchandising onslaught.

As the evening grows on and the anticipation rises, we notice more and more people crowd into the line creating even more plastic light saber battles, more Jedi and storm troopers join the fray and more news reporters and news trucks start appearing at an alarming rate. Things are getting exciting, but slightly dampened for me as I must get up out of line about once an hour and make a pilgrimage over to the nearby Target store’s men’s room as the previous mentioned Tub of Kenobi soda starts to take effect upon my bladder.

We’re closing in at the point of the Ultrasceen opening its doors and allowing the stampede of us dorks to invade the theater. People in line are cleaning up their messes, folding up their tables and chairs, taking down their tents and whipping out their lap tops to watch a few episodes of the animated Star Wars shorts “Clone Wars” or to view the trailer to “Episode III” for the thirty billionth time.

Suddenly we notice that there is movement at the head of the line! People start rustling through the roped off line toward the doors! The time is finally here! We wave our wristbands in front of the face of the theater usher and move as quickly as we can to decent enough area of the theater and plop our junk food filled, Jedi lovin’ asses in our seat.

The rest of the evening is pure magic as we guess this will probably be the last time we’ll be able to join together and enjoy a film that is Star Wars Valhalla. Now it’s only four and a half months until “Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith” is out on DVD. When do you think we should start to line up for that?

That's all I got for today. Perhaps more old relics will be posted soon. Until next time, stay vertical!

Zangz.