Star Wars Celebration III: Sunday!

Sunday, 6:30am: I roll out of bed fairly exhausted, but forcing myself up. I knew that I had to get to the Celebration by 8am, to bypass the huge store line with my gifted Exhibitor's badge. I bundled up with all the layers of normal clothing that I had brought with me, since I packed for weather in the 70's, and it was still snowing outside. I have a grand plan to get inside without arousing rancor from the people who have been waiting outside all night for early entry into the convention: I will enter through the rear loading dock of the building, marching with a purpose and ready to sway anyone that attempts to confront me. My jedi outfit is still in the trunk, in case I want to change into more festive attire later in the afternoon.

7:55am: I couldn't have timed this better. I arrive at the convention, park, and walk up to the loading dock door. At this point, I am expecting get a shakedown of some sort as to who I am and what I am doing. No one is at the door, so I try it. Unlocked! I walk in, again expecting a discussion with someone. No one is directly around me. So, I just stroll in, walking briskly down the hallway in the empty convention center, and make my way to the front of the store. Unbelievable! No one gave me a second look. In the immortal words of Han Solo, "Back door, huh? Good idea!" If I'd known how easy it was to walk into the Celebration III convention center an hour early, it would have saved me a lot of line waiting grief! But then, of course, I wouldn't have met so many fans forced into the same vicinity as me for extended periods of time, and that would have been unfortunate.

So, I reached the front of the store, to find a line already existing of about 15 people. Most were holders of exhibitor and press badges, like myself, but there was in fact one guy that just had his regular four-day pass, and was waiting there with everyone else. I thought about asking him how he got in, but with the ease that I got in there, the question was really already answered. Curiously, however, the lineup of people at the store were actually not in the line cue for the store, but next to it. Inquiring about this, I was told by a guy in front that there have been people waiting for the store since last night at around midnight, and they waited out there all night in the snow. The security had told our mini line that those people were going to get first dibs at the store line, and that our line would be fed in afterwards. Now I felt for those people, but I had no idea how many of those folks there were, and I started to become concerned. How long will this wait become? Will it be back to four hours? That would be most distressing. Especially since I was supposed to get the exhibitor's badge back to Mark the exhibitor sometime in the morning. So we wait.

8:50: A HUGE stream of people come pouring in from the outside icy tundra. They are quite frozen and quite ornery. I do some quick calculating: it is one fabric line barrier and about 4 feet between me being in this line and me waiting for a few hours for the end of this line. It didn't take the use of my higher math brain cells to say, "Hey...idiot. Slide into this line while you can!" So, I did. At that point, I didn't really need the exhibitor's badge, and as a matter of fact, it would have worked to my detriment (the cantankerous folks were already grumbling about the small line of workers that had formed inside while they waited outside). So I swapped it for my 4 day pass, and quietly stood in line with these poor popsicles that decided that waiting in the snow overnight was worth some overpriced souveniers.

This is when things got interesting. There were a couple of kids about 15 years of age that decided that line cutting with these people might not be the worst mistake they could make. They, however, were wrong. They may have gotten away with it, had it not been for their adolescent minds not clearly thinking through the plan. See, they were dressed in what is commonly known as shorts and no coat, or what this line referred to as "Oh, I know you di'int wait outside in the snow all night in that attire, you line cutting little *#%&*s!!" While they tried to explain away their attire, and bluff their way into keeping their place in line, I sat back and watched the play unfold with some amusement (and with relief that I still had my layers on tight and coat firmly buttoned). These little kids almost got their rear ends handed to them on a plate by an unruly thawing mob. A security guard came along, and several of the crowd spoke up about the two lads. They were promptly escorted to the very back of the line, with much cheering and fanfare by the crowd. I remained utterly silent through the whole ordeal.

Shortly thereafter, the store doors opened, and we filed inside in an orderly mad dash. The wait for me was still around 35 minutes, but very reasonable for the Celebration III store. I was able to get my 3 bulky bags of exclusive Vader figures, and a cool light-up Celebration III hat. I was quite ecstatic, and now weighed down with baggage.

After being released from the store, I was a kind of confused on what I should do. With a backpack and three bags of stuff, I was limited on where I could go. I wasn't sure what to do with Mark's figures, since he wouldn't be back presumably till the afternoon. What I decided was that I would head upstairs to try and catch a presentation with Nick Gillard, the stunt coordinator for the prequel trilogy. He is a martial arts expert, and usually shows some behind the scenes fight sequences that are first rate. Walking the line in front of the Sagamore Ballroom, who do I spot but my gay friends from Friday. They invited me into line with them, bags and all, and we had a pleasant conversation about our Celebration experiences thus far. They were planning on catching all the shows in the Sagamore Ballroom Sunday, and invited me to hang out with them. I politely declined, mentioning that I had to offload the Vaders to the guy that owns them. We did get to see Gillard, however, and his presentation was very impressive. We saw some great choreography for the Anakin / Obi Wan battle, and that duel is going to be SWEET. After the show, I bid them adieu, and never did see them again for the rest of the convention.

I decided at this point that I would not lug these bags around all morning, waiting for Mark to show up. I went to his booth and dropped them off with the guy that was working there in his stead, then walked to my car to drop off my goodies. It was about noon, and I determined to end my Celebration experience the way I began: In full Jedi attire. So I suited up, and with my newfound freedom from my sacks of souveniers, went to find Mike at his Behind the Scenes room. His area was just finishing up a show with Timothy Zahn, the first and in my opinion the best Star Wars expanded universe writer out there. It was ironic...the two people that had the most influence on me becoming a Star Wars fan in the first place were Mike and Tim Zahn, and they were both in the room together! (As a backstory, I was a freshman in college, when Mike came into my room and said "Darb, you've got to read this new book that just came out. It's a Star Wars book! They are continuing the stories of the movie characters in this book!" After reading it, I was hooked.) I was able to get my picture taken with Zahn, which was a thrill, and then told Mike that the only other thing I really wanted to see at the convention was the "Bad Girls of Star Wars," a presentation with some of the actresses playing nefarious female background characters in the movies. He asked where it was playing, and I told him the Sagamore Ballroom. He then offered to get me back up to the A/V booth one last time! Hooray!

I waited around for him to get done in his room, then met up with him at about 2:40, shortly before the show. He took me down a side corridor, where I actually got to see Peter Mayhew, the 7 foot tall shaggy guy that played Chewbacca, walk past me. We went up the stairs (I was in full Jedi costume this time, I only tripped once) and I took my seat in the A/V booth for the duration. I finally had my camera, so I snapped as many pictures as I could. The four gals on the stage were the actresses that played Aurra Sing, Zam Wessel, one of the Tonnika sisters (from the original cantina bar), and Sly Moore, a bald chick who sinisterly hangs out with Palpatine in Episodes II and III. It was a great show. An overweight homely looking Star Wars fan actually asked one of the ladies to go out for dinner with him, much to the amusement of everyone present (and her embarrassment). Just as an FYI, she declined, saying she had someone back home that wouldn't appreciate that.

So, as that final panel drew to a close at 4pm, so did Celebration III. I stopped off in the pop culture room one more time, to watch the final dvd play until it too stopped for good. I melancholily drifted back to Mike's room, hanging out there while the ushers and crowd control hustled everyone else out of the building. I helped Mike break down his room a bit, then he let me come to a special presentation of the Star Wars Spectacular footage that was shown to the workers and volunteers. They actually showed it a couple times, so I got to experience it a wonderful three times during the weekend.

I then went back to Mike's room for a while, till boredom overtook me and I took that long last walk out of the building. I stopped in a few rooms, snapping some pictures of everything being torn down. I finally met up with Mark again as he was packing up, and he had had some plane problems in Chicago. I got some pictures of a half-deconstructed X-Wing that came from Colorado. And then I departed the Indianapolis Convention Center. For the last time.

I headed back to the hotel and got changed. Mike said he would give me a call after his duties were over at the convention, and that we would go out. As I relaxed on my bed, though, watching old movies on TV and periodically calling his phone at around 8pm and on, to no avail, I realized that this evening I would most likely be on my own. So I caught up on sleep.