Today was fairly busy, starting off with the Del Rey panel. It was also the first official reveal of Detours, which I chose not to attend in order to write up Del Rey. This one goes a little beyond just the stuff I was able to attend, if only because of the sheer overlapping amount of big things going on. (Yes: Still exhausting!)
Oh, and apparently The Clone Wars is moving to a Saturday morning debut? Alrighty then. Bryan Young went to the S5 premiere tonight and has posted a review and recap.
Some quick thoughts on Del Rey, Detours, cupcakes, the Essential Reader’s Companion, Mark Hamill and more below the cut.
Del Rey
There was no way I was going to skip this, not after I had to work during the CV version. This was a great panel, with nice reveals you’ve all heard about already. Even the Q&A was, for the most part, painless, and there was a nice energy and lots of great costumers. Editor and panelist Jennifer Heddle blogged it for StarWars.com.
I got to meet Erich from Del Rey. (James didn’t even have to drag me,) and we caught a few great costumes. They’re on James’ camera, so they should be up… Soon?
Going on at the same time was Leland Chee’s panel about the Holocron. Alas, Club Jade has yet to issue me a time-turner, so check out Leland’s own recap of his panel in the Star Wars University room.
I’m also hearing from my Not-Bothan Spies that Hasbro, prompted by a fan in the Q&A, seemed quite interested in doing a Luke/Mara Union comic pack. I’m pretty sure that if they go with the Jedi robe wedding it could be entirely done with repaints!
Detours.
Yeah, I didn’t go. Years of volunteering have left me with a strong distaste for lines, and I had stuff to do blogging. Still, I’ve seen the trailer twice now: Once while we were waiting for Mark Hamill, and again before I wrote this. You know what? I think it’s cute. The more parody, the merrier. And, yeah, I might actually watch it. We’ll see.
Cupcakes!
After my exciting hour or so of EXTREME CON BLOGGING, I headed over to the VIP Lounge where Her Universe and Food Network’s Cupcake Wars had set up a spread of delicious goodness. I talked to some of the Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights, who were wonderful and thankfully did not call for me and my dreadfully common Media badge to take a hike.
When I made it over to cupcakes, I tried the double chocolate Death Star, which may be the best cupcake I’ve ever had. James tried all four varieties, though I only got pics of three. Team Cake? Never again. Team Cupcake? Sure, why not?
Yes, embarrassing photos were taken. No, you won’t be seeing the worst of them. We all needed new blackmail material.
The episode will air sometime next month, we were told, and we all signed releases so you might see us. Might. The whole thing was jam-packed, with Dave Filoni and James Arnold Taylor making appearances in addition to Ashley Eckstein and the HU crew.
The hall!
Got back into the exhibit hall for a bit, picked up a few things at Her Universe and stopped by the Del Rey booth. Erich let me page through the proof of Pablo’s Essential Reader’s Companion, and it is FANTASTIC. We mostly looked at the art, because that’s what I always do with new Essential Guides and I don’t think the Del Rey folks would have appreciated me camping out all day in their booth to actually read the thing. (IT’S HUGE.) There is some amazing stuff in there, and Erich will be showing more of it at the Essential panel on Sunday, so be sure to show up for that. For those playing at home, look for the tweets, but you’ll certainly want to pick up this up come October because iPhone photos taken off a screen do the art no justice.
The Tosche Station folks showed up with pals Shannon and Amanda in tow – Nanci in her Mirax costume – and they also got to look through the book. Nanci found a new costuming idea!
We wandered over to the other side of the floor, running into perhaps my favorite costume of the con thus far – the Burger King Trooper. I love him, and his squeaky burger. He was completely in character, and when not being stopped for photos would sneak up on people and scare them with squeaking. I’m sorry, but I got a huge kick out of this. I may be a horrible person.
We also saw an impressive trio of Mara Jades, which you saw at the top of the post. They were not running around with squeaky burgers and scaring people, which is probably for the best as that would just be weird.
The Mark Hamill line.
It’s not a line, it’s an experience. Okay, truthfully, it was pretty standard as these things go, at least until we reached capacity and they locked us in. Okay, maybe not actually locked, but no bathroom breaks were allowed. Wouldn’t some sort of hand-stamping or wristband method be easier than denying us bathrooms? BLADDERS DEMAND FREEDOM!
But! The time was used wisely: Nanci and Brian recorded their podcast LIVE FROM THE LINE. I made my podcast debut with a not-so-delicious NJO/food analogy and we talked about the morning’s Del Rey revelations, so look for that.
Mark Hamill.
We entered the hall to a group sing-a-long of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin,’ because why not. Everyone was great, even the warm-up act (who were unbelievably annoying before Kevin Smith last night) and of course James Arnold Taylor was wonderful.
Then Mark showed up, and it’s a miracle that Brian and I are not deaf in in our right ears from all screaming. Mark was great, of course. He talked about his first acting jobs, including a stint on General Hospital, which he highly recommends for all actors for, believe it or not, educational purposes. Other highlights included him doing impressions of George Lucas and Harrison Ford as he talked about the Star Wars audition process, performing a Batman eulogy as the Joker, and some from-the-set stories about Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing. Was it worth the lines? The full nearly-full bladers? Yes!
Jennifer Landa blogged the event for StarWars.com, in much more detail!
All-in-all, another great day! Tomorrow will actually be a bit chiller for me – nothing that will need blogging NOW NOW NOW – so hopefully I’ll be able to get out and about and take – tweet! – more pictures. I expect there’ll be some truly spectacular costumes out and about.
there is counter blackmail material. Dunc with cupcake. don’t start a photo arms race with your photographer, especially one with less shame than you when it comes to cupcakes.
Who told you I have shame? It’s not like I didn’t know you were there.