My geekosity has been on the wane as of late. I hated Spider-Man 3, was bored by the Heroes season finale and I didn’t even bother seeing Grindhouse. I was truly starting to wonder if the next time I accidentally caught a bit of an Everybody Loves Raymond rerun on TBS, I would start inexplicably laughing (and holy jeebus would that send me to Promises in Malibu faster than a 5am car crash with useable amounts of cocaine in my sky blue 2007 Honda CRV.). In fact, for the better part of the year I’ve been mulling the notion that I was no longer a geek at all. I didn’t dig Battlestar: Galactica when I caught up on the DVD’s. I actually became invested in Grey’s Anatomy. And I don’t think I’ve turned to the Cartoon Network in a calendar year. Could it be that I’m just a normal kid who happens to occasionally like geeky pieces of pop culture? It was a definite possibility. That is, of course, until last weekend, when I did the one thing possible on this earth that could immediately put my geek-o-meter back to 11.

I attended Star Wars Celebration IV.

You want to renew your faith in the geek religion? Spend a day with ten thousand people dressed as space aliens in homage to a sci-fi film franchise that peaked more two decades ago. Take a day of your three-day weekend to bask at the altar of a man so appreciative of fan support that he didn’t even bother to show up to his own celebration. Immerse yourself so fully into a piece of pop culture that by the end of it you’re questioning why Jar Jar Binks wasn’t in MORE of the prequels. Get down with the group living a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

And like that, I felt like socially awkward again.

It was a truly great day. I spoke to artists who spend their days drawing pictures of inane space aliens. I watched a 60 year-old man chain smoke while sculpting a bust of Obi-Wan Kenbobi (Alec Guinness-style, of course.). I saw Veronica Mars herself; rocking a Chewbacca t-shirt and making every geek pulse in the building shoot up by a measure of ten. I saw babies dressed in slave Leia costumes. I rubbed the belly of a 25 foot Jabba the Hut figure. I watched an early glimpse at what will be the best season premiere of the fall (Family Guy retelling the story of Star Wars: Episode 4 – A New Hope, with Stewie as Darth Vader, natch). I basked in the glow of thousands upon thousands of geeks, from all walks of like, from all ages, and from all races and creeds, converging upon the Downtown LA Convention Center to celebrate something special.

I suddenly have the undeniable urge to make fighting sounds with my mouth while twirling around a plastic light up stick.

Here’s how my day went down:

To get an idea of how epic this event was, you have to understand how big the convention center truly is. The Staples Center, home of the soon-to-be Kobe less Lakers, and the Duck-jealous Kings, sits next to the Convention Center, and at max capacity can seat about 18,000 people. The Convention Center is more than twice the size of the Staples. And every inch was filled with Star Wars. The lobby has a glass ceiling that’s more than eight stories tall. It was big enough to put a 30 foot Death Star replica in the middle of the lobby floor, and still make the thing look small! The e-ticket panels were held in conference rooms that dwarfed the biggest lectures halls I encountered I college (so they filled at least a thousand people). The main show floor that held all the sellers booths and the autograph area was like the biggest state fair in the country. There were toys as far as the eye could see. In fact, there was just so bloody much to take in that I became dizzy trying to plan it all out. You can do the entirety of Disneyland and California Adventure in one day, if you map it out correctly (start with Adventureland and go clockwise). There wasn’t anyway to do Star Wars Celebration in one day. I pulled it off by cutting my schedule in half, but I can see why so many people purchased four day passes. And if there’s anything a geek would want to spend four days doing (other than Natalie Portman), it would be this.

I caught the big Irvin Kershner panel. My media pass got me second row seats, which was fortunate, as there were near geek riots trying to get close enough to take a picture of the octogenarian filmmaker. And while most of the panel was a rehash of old stories long since heard in the millions of Star Wars documentaries out there, Kershner still held the room in rapt attention. He is at 84 a more commanding, eloquent and lively public speaker than our current President is at 60. And a hell of a lot smarter. His short answers were recycled pap, but when moderator Jay Laga’aia let him go, he crackled with nostalgic bite. His memories of shooting in the ice cold of Norway are as vivid as if the film was made last year. And his take on the mood of the set of The Empire Strikes Back is the kind of information Star Wars fans live for. He spoke of the turmoil surrounding the infamous Han Solo “I love you” adlib. How he was unhappy with the line as scripted, didn’t know what he wanted instead, and the crew was itching to go to lunch so that they could drink beer. That he only shot one take of the adlib, and Harrison was so tired of the scene that he barely got the line out (giving him two of the most famous improvs in movie history. Not bad for a cranky actor not known for his comedic chops.).

We learned that Lucas was only on set for a handful of Empire shooting days, as he was holed up in Marin County setting up ILM. That the actor playing Vader had to be directed rhythmically during the epic “I am your father” scene because he didn’t know the real dialogue of the scene. That in the test screenings it was revealed that everyone under the age of ten thought Vader was lying about being Luke’s father, while everyone older than ten accepted the Skywalker family dysfunction. Kershner praised Lucas, calling him “the best Producer I have ever worked with”, as well as thanking the bearded master for not cramping his vision of the film. He was told by Lucas just before the start of principal photography, “If you think of it, ILM will figure out how to do it”. That’s a nice line, but Lucas failed to add “and if I don’t like it, I’ll just wait twenty years and CGI the shit without your permission”. Kershner said he has done more than 150 Star Wars panels, but from the energy he brought to the room, I would have believed it was his first time.

I caught the panel for the upcoming “kids break into Skywalker Ranch and steal a print of Episode One flick”, Fanboys, not because I’m that stoked about the movie (I’m not), but because Kristen Bell was scheduled to attend. She, and the panel, did not disappoint. Joining the dearly departed Ms. Mars on stage were here co-stars Sam Worthington and a bearded Jay Baruchel (in a futile effort to look older). The director, writers and producers were also there, but I didn’t pay much attention to them as hello, Kristen Bell was sitting twenty feet away from me rocking a Chewbacca shirt and black Chuck Taylors. I am happy to report she is as hot, if not more, than she appears on TV, smiles easily, looks great in Star Wars gear and is honored to have donned the slave Leia costume in the flick (which is probably good for an extra 5-6 million at the box office). We got to see various scenes from the movie, for about 15 total minutes. I laughed, the crowd laughed, the scenes were cool, but now I feel like I don’t need to see the movie. It’s a one-note premise that can easily be played out in a two-minute trailer. Let’s just say that even with Kristen Bell in a gold bikini I doubt any die-hard Star Wars fan will be camping out for this one. One last thing about the panel, literally milliseconds after it was over Kristen bolted from the stage, so intent she was on not being hassled by an auditorium full of geeks. I understand her predicament, but I was bummed all the same I couldn’t get a closer (or in focus) picture of her.

Oh, and a fun quote from Baruchel, who claims he did the movie for two reasons “I get to wear the Vader costume and because there’s a scene in the movie where Harry Knowles beats [him] up”. Fair enough. But he also revealed himself to be a lifelong Star Trek fan, so even though I loved him in Undeclared, he is now officially dead to me.

Not much to say about the Family Guy panel other than to reiterate my earlier claim that their Star Wars-focused season premiere is off the chains funny. For example, Peter plays Solo and Chris plays Luke. In the scene where they’re in the gun turrets shooting TIE fighters and Luke says “Got em! I got him!”, Peter as Han Solo’s response is “Great kid, don’t get penis-y”. That equals hilarious. As was their mock of the opening crawl which took liberal bashes at Angelina Jolie and her creepy brother love, relative to the potential ickiness of a Luke / Leia love match. Seriously, how did she get America to forget that her Oscar acceptance speech was a love letter to her brother? I know she’s hot and all, but damn is that girl fucked up! We need to really reconsider Brad Pitt’s judgment on this one (but then again he did once date Juliette Lewis, so maybe his compass is just naturally skewed towards the crazies).

Other cool stuff at the Celebration was the Archive room, where I got to see many of the original costumes and models. As well as an awesome model of Luke’s head in the open Vader mask from Empire. I missed out on Star Wars Laser Tag so I could spend more time at the Darth Vader Helmet Exhibit, and boy was that the right choice. Artists from across the country were given Vader heads and told to do whatever they wanted with them, and the results were stellar. I’m going to devote a whole post to the picture I took of the heads. Truly one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. I got to see a full-scale working R2D2 as well as a full-size replica of Anakin’s podracer. I took in a small exhibition of the new R2D2 LCD wall projection, where R2 becomes your DVD player AND your screen, just like in the movies. The image is about six feet across and fairly clean. For $2500 it’s way out of my price range, but well worth it if you are so inclined. The artists area was fun to walk through as most of them were doing paintings on demand, so you could watch how they work in real time. Grant Gould did a killer Jedi picture while we talked and I got some pics of his other work (he does a wide-range of pop culture work, from BSG to Heroes to famous comic book heroes. I was dying for his drawing of the cast of Lost, which by the way, awesome season finale.). I met the artist behind the Snake Plissken comic book series, and got him to autograph each of the comics in the four book set (and paid only ten dollars for the books and the graphs. Not too shabby).

The Ralph McQuarrie booth was the cream of the crop though, and I couldn’t resist picking up a few of his lesser known, non-Star Wars prints. I may be the only person at the Celebration that left without buying any actual Star Wars items, not that I mind to terribly. There’s only so many four-inch Boba Fett figures you can look at before your eyes glaze over. The brand new “Art of Star Wars” book was being pimped out like crazy, but I didn’t bite on that either. I love the look of the Star Wars world, but I’m just not geeky enough to put that on my coffee table. I don’t need George Lucas staring at me every time I grab my TiVo remote. Though I think it’s every geek’s dream to bloop bloop George Lucas.

The autograph lines were forever long, but had no one that interesting in them. How many people could possibly want Jake Lloyd’s signature? I imagine he gets a lot of slushies thrown at him on the street, Weather Man-style (“I heard you talking about midi-chlorians. So I was wondering what are midi-chlorians?” Swoosh! Red Slurpee right in his face!).

And I’m 2200 words in before I’ve even said a thing about all the great costumes. Everyone was decked out. And I’m pretty sure every person who had even a moment of screen time in the series was represented at the event (except Jar Jar, of course). I saw all manner of costume craziness, from a V For Vendetta Darth Vader to a Nacho Libre Stormtrooper. Indiana Jones was walking around, as was The Joker for some strange reason. I saw a shirtless Anakin, though I’m not sure why. And I saw countless Princess Leia’s in the gold bikini. And let me just say that like spandex the gold bikini is a privilege, not a right. Maybe consider a sit-up or two next time you know you’re gonna wear that thing. Just saying…

All in all I spend just over eight hours at the Celebration, took in the three big panels, walked the entire show floor, took more than 200 pictures, bought some goodies, FINALLY peeped the infinitely cool R2D2 mailbox, saw some great art, ate some surprisingly good food and revitalized my love for all things Star Wars. And most of all, I feel like a geek again. I can’t believe I’m actually going to say this, but thank you George Lucas. You may have raped my teen movie-going years, but you sure know how to rescue a floundering guy in a geek-life crisis. Now don’t fuck up Indy 4.

Several picture posts devoted to the Vader Helmets, the Star Wars signing wall, and the people in costumes coming up. But until then…

Bangarang!

For more great coverage of this event, check out Blogging LA, Defamer, PopCandy, or the Official Star Wars Celebration Blog.