(no subject)
Oh man, I have never been so tired in my life. So first of all, I lost my camera at Celebration (I FEEL YOUR PAIN DERIN D:) So I personally don't have any pictures, but I'm doing my best to find pictures of me, and a couple friends have some stuff, so there will probably be some links in here, but mostly me rambling.
Wednesday and Thursday
Soooo we moved Sam into his new apartment on Tuesday, and drove down to Durham that evening so we could all leave together. We woke up pretty early on Thursday and got going at about 10. Sam, Neil, Logan and I were in the car, with Sam driving (he drove both ways all by himself, so impressive) and it was a good car indeed. We left Lucas' house to the main Star Wars theme blasting out of the windows, it was epic. The drive down was pretty uneventful, we just took 40 to 95, and drove straight. Seriously, we kept laughing about the GPS because it was literally just a straight line most of the way. We discussed the crayon color "Burnt Sienna" at large. Pocahontas from the Disney movie is burnt sienna, in case you wondered.
We got there at around 9, only stopping for lunch, and then headed over to the Hoolihan's like 3 feet away. By that point, I was not feeling very well. I was kind of nauseous, dehydrated, that sort of thing, I think at that point I was mostly just super nervous.
The costume contest was the next day, so I woke up at like 9 in the vain hopes of being there at 10 to be judged and get the hell out. But I didn't count on THE FIRST LINE. I'm still not entirely sure why this line existed, as we already had our badges, and basically just had to get lanyards and schedules, but I guess they just wanted less of a mass rush into the con.
Best moment for me of the entire weekend though, was this little girl we met in line. She was maybe 3 or 4, and she was dressed up as Yoda, and her name was legitimately Leia and her dad asked for a picture of us together. She was sooo cute and very shy, it was pretty much the best thing ever.
So most of what I did Thursday was costume contest stuff. It was pretty damn poorly organized, especially compared to how well organized things like lines and buses to Disney were. The first problem I found was that when I went to sign in, you had to fill out a little form. There were different sections of the contest, but what was supposed to be labeled as "Queens and Princesses" was just labeled "Queens", so we ended up with 14 Padmes and one lone Leia in our group, and bunch of Leia's in the "Heroes" group, which was confusing. The sheets also didn't give any room to provide a little blurb for Jay Laga'aia to say about you, so if you were a walk-in, he pretty much had to figure something out on the spot.
The judging itself was terrifying. It was basically the three judges (I still have no idea who they were, noone ever told us, they didn't introduce themselves, and we couldn't see the intros from back stage) and you, and they seemed pretty grumpy. They didn't ask to see my reference, they just asked me what I made basically. And I was like "...everything?" and so they they asked if I had used any commercial patterns, which I did, the reaction I got was pretty chilly to that. They asked me to tell them how I made things, so explained some stuff to them, and then they had me do a couple of turns and sent me on my way.
After that, I went down to meet up with Sam and Kori, eat some food, and get the hell out of my cape. It weighed six pounds, and I was wearing it all day Thursday, my shoulders are still damn sore. From there we walked around a bit, a bunch of people took my picture, and then I headed over to get ready for the contest. They changed the time on us before hand, so we had to be there at 3 and the contest didn't even start until 4:30. The minute I got there I realized that they again weren't paying attention. There were 4 of us in the same Padme costume. I believe two of them were walk-ons, but they could have at least scheduled us for different competitions, there was one on Sunday as well. They were lovely people, but that seemed like a terrible idea, with 4 of us in the competition there was no way any of us would win because they would have to arbitrarily decide between us.
A lady went around and checked to see if everyone was there. One girl was missing, as someone who knew her pointed out. This would become very important later, as they gave Jay her blurb anyway, and he therefore read it for the wrong girl. Lovely. They put everyone in line except for our group? The heroes, villains, kids, and outer rim people were all lined up to my knowledge and they didn't even line us up before we went on stage, so we had to figure it out ourselves by the stickers on our badges. So after waiting around for an hour, we got to go backstage and wait around for another hour. However, there were only 4 dressing rooms. So they gave them to the other 4 groups, rather than the group entirely composed of girls, most of which who had face paint on. Lolwut. We had to sit in a hall, which was much less air-conditioned than the rest of the building, but greatfully had chairs. From there, we waited and chatted amongst ourselves, which was pretty nice. It was cool to see how the other girls made the same costume, and talk about which costumes everyone was most impressed with.
We finally got 4 minutes in a dressing room while the heroes were out, and then we were shepherded over to directly backstage. We waited in line, and they said we had like a minute and a half to pose, and there was a timer by the lights on the floor we could look at for reference. Weeeell without my glasses that didn't do me much good, but it's cool. So here's a shot of me on stage:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4889329377/in/set-72157624365192239/
And here's a face shot someone got earlier (and apparently didn't warn me enough to have me take off my glasses):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4887107166/in/set-72157624365192239/
They also got a detail shot, which is pretty cool:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4887107080/in/set-72157624365192239/
Well after I got off, we went back to the hall and waited for probably another hour until a girl came running by. She came back like 10 minutes later with her hands full of papers. They had FORGOT the judging sheets in the office apparently, so I have no idea what the judges were doing while all of us were on stage. They grabbed this Padme: http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4889924000/in/set-72157624365192239/ from our group about 20 minutes later, so we all just sat there for a while in case, judge's choice or whatever needed to be pulled later on. Then a group of people from other sections came out through the hall and told us all that they were told everyone could go. Note, no one actually came to tell us that. Nice. So most of us just filed out. Apparently, judges choice was pulled from the winners of each group? Which doesn't make much sense to me. But the girl who won the whole competition totally deserved it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4889330743/in/set-72157624365192239/
It was very, very disorganized, and while I enjoyed meeting people, I didn't enjoy the actual process and I don't know that I'd do it again.
Also this picture of me: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/g/a/2010/08/12/Stars_Wars_Celebration_V.DTL&object=%2Fc%2Fpictures%2F2010%2F08%2F12%2Fba-US_NEWS_STARW_0502086844.jpg has been all over, because the photographer put it up for purchase on Gettyimages hahahaha.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28362930@N07/4894657936/ Is is really that hard to take the 10 seconds to ask me for a photo so I can put away my phone and take my glasses off? I THINK NOT. I got more of this at Celebration than at any other convention, which was frustrating. One dude was video taping me without asking as I was clearly grumpy, sweating, and dying slowly on the way to the convention. I'm sure that footage is just lovely.
Wednesday and Thursday
Soooo we moved Sam into his new apartment on Tuesday, and drove down to Durham that evening so we could all leave together. We woke up pretty early on Thursday and got going at about 10. Sam, Neil, Logan and I were in the car, with Sam driving (he drove both ways all by himself, so impressive) and it was a good car indeed. We left Lucas' house to the main Star Wars theme blasting out of the windows, it was epic. The drive down was pretty uneventful, we just took 40 to 95, and drove straight. Seriously, we kept laughing about the GPS because it was literally just a straight line most of the way. We discussed the crayon color "Burnt Sienna" at large. Pocahontas from the Disney movie is burnt sienna, in case you wondered.
We got there at around 9, only stopping for lunch, and then headed over to the Hoolihan's like 3 feet away. By that point, I was not feeling very well. I was kind of nauseous, dehydrated, that sort of thing, I think at that point I was mostly just super nervous.
The costume contest was the next day, so I woke up at like 9 in the vain hopes of being there at 10 to be judged and get the hell out. But I didn't count on THE FIRST LINE. I'm still not entirely sure why this line existed, as we already had our badges, and basically just had to get lanyards and schedules, but I guess they just wanted less of a mass rush into the con.
Best moment for me of the entire weekend though, was this little girl we met in line. She was maybe 3 or 4, and she was dressed up as Yoda, and her name was legitimately Leia and her dad asked for a picture of us together. She was sooo cute and very shy, it was pretty much the best thing ever.
So most of what I did Thursday was costume contest stuff. It was pretty damn poorly organized, especially compared to how well organized things like lines and buses to Disney were. The first problem I found was that when I went to sign in, you had to fill out a little form. There were different sections of the contest, but what was supposed to be labeled as "Queens and Princesses" was just labeled "Queens", so we ended up with 14 Padmes and one lone Leia in our group, and bunch of Leia's in the "Heroes" group, which was confusing. The sheets also didn't give any room to provide a little blurb for Jay Laga'aia to say about you, so if you were a walk-in, he pretty much had to figure something out on the spot.
The judging itself was terrifying. It was basically the three judges (I still have no idea who they were, noone ever told us, they didn't introduce themselves, and we couldn't see the intros from back stage) and you, and they seemed pretty grumpy. They didn't ask to see my reference, they just asked me what I made basically. And I was like "...everything?" and so they they asked if I had used any commercial patterns, which I did, the reaction I got was pretty chilly to that. They asked me to tell them how I made things, so explained some stuff to them, and then they had me do a couple of turns and sent me on my way.
After that, I went down to meet up with Sam and Kori, eat some food, and get the hell out of my cape. It weighed six pounds, and I was wearing it all day Thursday, my shoulders are still damn sore. From there we walked around a bit, a bunch of people took my picture, and then I headed over to get ready for the contest. They changed the time on us before hand, so we had to be there at 3 and the contest didn't even start until 4:30. The minute I got there I realized that they again weren't paying attention. There were 4 of us in the same Padme costume. I believe two of them were walk-ons, but they could have at least scheduled us for different competitions, there was one on Sunday as well. They were lovely people, but that seemed like a terrible idea, with 4 of us in the competition there was no way any of us would win because they would have to arbitrarily decide between us.
A lady went around and checked to see if everyone was there. One girl was missing, as someone who knew her pointed out. This would become very important later, as they gave Jay her blurb anyway, and he therefore read it for the wrong girl. Lovely. They put everyone in line except for our group? The heroes, villains, kids, and outer rim people were all lined up to my knowledge and they didn't even line us up before we went on stage, so we had to figure it out ourselves by the stickers on our badges. So after waiting around for an hour, we got to go backstage and wait around for another hour. However, there were only 4 dressing rooms. So they gave them to the other 4 groups, rather than the group entirely composed of girls, most of which who had face paint on. Lolwut. We had to sit in a hall, which was much less air-conditioned than the rest of the building, but greatfully had chairs. From there, we waited and chatted amongst ourselves, which was pretty nice. It was cool to see how the other girls made the same costume, and talk about which costumes everyone was most impressed with.
We finally got 4 minutes in a dressing room while the heroes were out, and then we were shepherded over to directly backstage. We waited in line, and they said we had like a minute and a half to pose, and there was a timer by the lights on the floor we could look at for reference. Weeeell without my glasses that didn't do me much good, but it's cool. So here's a shot of me on stage:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4889329377/in/set-72157624365192239/
And here's a face shot someone got earlier (and apparently didn't warn me enough to have me take off my glasses):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4887107166/in/set-72157624365192239/
They also got a detail shot, which is pretty cool:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4887107080/in/set-72157624365192239/
Well after I got off, we went back to the hall and waited for probably another hour until a girl came running by. She came back like 10 minutes later with her hands full of papers. They had FORGOT the judging sheets in the office apparently, so I have no idea what the judges were doing while all of us were on stage. They grabbed this Padme: http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4889924000/in/set-72157624365192239/ from our group about 20 minutes later, so we all just sat there for a while in case, judge's choice or whatever needed to be pulled later on. Then a group of people from other sections came out through the hall and told us all that they were told everyone could go. Note, no one actually came to tell us that. Nice. So most of us just filed out. Apparently, judges choice was pulled from the winners of each group? Which doesn't make much sense to me. But the girl who won the whole competition totally deserved it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/starwarsblog/4889330743/in/set-72157624365192239/
It was very, very disorganized, and while I enjoyed meeting people, I didn't enjoy the actual process and I don't know that I'd do it again.
Also this picture of me: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/g/a/2010/08/12/Stars_Wars_Celebration_V.DTL&object=%2Fc%2Fpictures%2F2010%2F08%2F12%2Fba-US_NEWS_STARW_0502086844.jpg has been all over, because the photographer put it up for purchase on Gettyimages hahahaha.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28362930@N07/4894657936/ Is is really that hard to take the 10 seconds to ask me for a photo so I can put away my phone and take my glasses off? I THINK NOT. I got more of this at Celebration than at any other convention, which was frustrating. One dude was video taping me without asking as I was clearly grumpy, sweating, and dying slowly on the way to the convention. I'm sure that footage is just lovely.