So, today was the last day of the Celebration, and none of us had murdered each other yet. But the day was young.
We cleared out our motel room, and I discovered that Marshal had left some of his stuff in a drawer, so I grabbed it. He had also forgotten a stack of cash on the dresser where someone from Housekeeping could've found it, so I grabbed that too. We loaded up in my cousin's mini-van and we left for the last time.
I also liked watching Michelle Ang on the panel, since her wacky Kiwi accent has provided me with more joy in the past year than chocolate, exercise, and friendship combined.
There were other panels we went to, stuff we saw, and friendly folks we spent time in line with. But the last thing I'm going to talk about was when Marshal and I went our separate ways because he had a panel about RETURN OF THE JEDI he wanted to go to, and I had a "Clone Wars" panel I wanted to go to. You heard right, folks, in some Mirror Universe Me Am Bizarro #1 Multiverse of Sadness, this would be completely at home.
But I had already seen that JEDI presentation a year or two ago, and Marshal had already seen the last four episodes of TCW, so we decided to go separately and report back later, and since we were driving home right after, we'd have plenty of time to chat about it.
The final arc of the series was called "The Siege of Mandalore," and we got to see it up on the big screen. It's about Ahsoka Tano finally capturing Darth Maul, and then her battalion of clones turning against her when Order 66 is put into being.
I really enjoyed the four episodes we watched, and there were moments when I felt a connection to the world in a way I haven't since 2003 or so (maybe 2005, at the Celebration then). I really, really dislike the Prequel era, and most of the characters from those three movies, and I'm unable to get past it.* You have no idea how many times I've been told that "The Clone Wars" is really excellent, and that it redeems the Prequels (or, as some have put it, prove that I was wrong about them all along), and there were moments while watching it that I felt that.
Of course, there was a guy three or four rows behind me who was REALLY enjoying it, and screamed "AHSOOOOOOOKA!!!!!!!!!!!!"** in an anguished and/or orgasmic way at various points (think of how Mel Gibson shouted "FREEEEDOM!" as he was being disemboweled in BRAVEHEART for how he was doing it), and that did make me question whether I should've been in that room.
He did it a couple of times during the show, and I'll tell you, it lessened my enjoyment of the film, much as how when you're on a date, and the couple across from you are so sloppily in love that it sort of ruins your date.
Am I missing out because I so dislike Anakin and Mace Windu and Prequel Yoda and Prequel Obi-Wan and Dooku and Darth Sidious and Jar Jar and battle droids? Maybe. Of course, you're missing out with how much you hate THE LAST JEDI, and I'd never call you an asshole for that.
Dave Filoni came out after the screening and talked about how they finally got to where they set out on the series back in 2008, implementing the things they'd learned and the best the animation could be. That made me like him even more, since the only episodes of "Clone Wars" I've seen were the four best ones.
My cousin and I then met up with Marshal in the main vendor floor, and I was surprised that people weren't absolutely giving their stuff away on the last day, like they do at San Diego Comic-Con. Still, the last day was the least crowded, with a bunch of people having gone home (but not as many as would've left had Monday not been Memorial Day).
And then, we started for home too. I had a conversation years ago with Big Anklevich, where he decreed that the job of the person in the passenger seat on a roadtrip is to entertain and/or keep the driver awake, and I've lived by its precept ever since.*** So I got it into my head to play this game using Box Office Mojo to quiz Ryan and Marshal on the movies on their lists, such as most successful Prequels, Remakes, Basketball Movies, Book Adaptations, Swashbucklers, Vampire Films, Zombie Films, Alien Invasion Films, Live-Action Remakes of Animated Films, and Movies Where A Kidnapper Delights In Making Their Victims Soil Themselves.
This may sound like a death sentence to you, but it kept my cousin awake during the long drive northeast (alas poor Marshal did lose consciousness for a couple of hours there), and what's worse . . . I've played it before.
As we left the major metropolitan area, my cousin told me to let him know when we neared Barstow, because he didn't want to get stuck in Death Valley with no gas . . . but Barstow never came. Finally, Marshal asked his phone how far it was to Barstow, and it told him it was sixty-four miles BEHIND us. Somehow, we had missed it, and then some.
Sadly, we had no choice but to stop in Baker (home of the world's most painful butt thermometer) and get enough gas to take us to Vegas, and they were charging $6.79 a gallon. As we drove off, we could hear the native Bakerites on their porch swings laughing fit to bust.
Hours later, we stopped at a service station in the middle of nowhere so I could use the bathroom, and when I got out in the forty degree weather, my body started to shake in a way it usually only does when I think about Brie Larsen and Amber Heard falling in love. It was really strange--my hand was incapable of stillness, no matter how much I tried to keep it steady. But again, we got into the car and kept driving north.
Through the night we drove, and even though Marshal had bought a special adapter for his microphone, we didn't think to record until we were an hour from Ryan's house (and daylight). We pulled into Ryan's garage, got all of our stuff out of the mini-van, so Marshal could drive me home and head back to Idaho, where every potato has a name (at least that's what Yoda says).
And Marshal couldn't find his car keys. They had been in his backpack, but they weren't there now. So he checked his suitcase, he checked the pockets of the backpack and the suitcase, he checked his laptop case, he checked the pants he had worn on that first day, and nothing.
Despair is felt most palpably at four-thirty in the morning.
Finally, he went back to the backpack, the first place he had checked . . . and there they were. Incontrovertible proof that God's a football fan, and is rooting for the other team.
Poor, poor, poor Marshal had to drive me to my house, drop me off, and then drive off for several more hours, without a wingman whose job it was to keep him
Writing or Exercise:
Writing
*Similar
to how, if there's an actor I really despise (a Vin Diesel or a Miles
Teller, for example), I find it incredibly difficult to see past that
and just enjoy the movie.
**As though climaxing so hard that his heart gave out. Not the worst way to go, I suppose.
***The man's wife VEHEMENTLY disagrees, claiming (infuriatingly) that it's the passenger's job to get as much sleep as they can so that they can take over driving duties right before the driver plunges them off an overpass.
No comments:
Post a Comment