Rish Outcast 270: Have Toys Will Travel 4

Rish gets together with Cousin Ryan to talk about toy-selling . . . for the last time?

Spoiler: Maybe.

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Logo by Gino "Have Toys, Will Unravel" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 266: Con Artist

Rish talks about the recent comic convention he went to with his nephew and Cousin Ryan.  

Warning: He could not come up with a better episode title.

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&!@* it, the logo was created by Gino "Leprechaun Artist" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 254: Have Toys, Will Travel 2

Rish tells more toy selling war stories, and is later joined by Cousin Ryan, who has even more.

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To support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Have Yots" Moretto.

(no, "yots" aren't anything.  It's a made up word)

Rish Outcast 252: Have Toys - Will Travel

Rish talks (at length) about being a vendor at a recent toy show.  

With way more to come.

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Logo by Gino "Have Henry - Will Cavill" Moretto.

Star Wars Celebration Blog 5/29

So, today was the last day of the Celebration, and none of us had murdered each other yet.  But the day was young.

Separated at birth?

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.

First up, we went to a "Bad Batch" season two panel, and I really liked watching Dee Bradley Baker do the various clone voices, how he changes his body language and the tilt of his head, depending on who he's voicing.  Since I'm something of a voice actor myself, it was cool to see.

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.

The world's largest Jawa.

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.

Star Wars Celebration Blog 5/28

The parking situation on the first day was the worst one we had, not because it was far away, but because it was so expensive.  But the folks on Facebook said that parking at the actual convention center, while expensive, was cheaper, and you only had to walk another two blocks or so* more than the first day.  We couldn't find the car that night, though, when trying to leave, and discovered that we were in the wrong parking garage (the convention center has two), and had to spend nearly an hour waiting to get out of the building (the line was hundreds of cars long), but each day got a little better, as we figured out where the entrance was, and how we SHOULDN'T have approached it (the last day, we entered from the west, and eliminated ten or fifteen minutes of waiting we had put up with the other two days).

This was the day of the big "Mandalorian" Season 3 panel, so we went over as soon as we could, and didn't even try to get into the main stage where it was presented, but into one of the other two rooms to watch it there.  While the big lowpoint of the weekend was not getting into the Lucasfilm panel on the first day (despite having won the lottery for it), this was another lowpoint, as there was a young man (also named Ryan) at the end of the line who told us not to bother getting in the line, that the people at the back had "a zero chance of getting in.  In fact, you have a LESS than zero chance of getting in."  I didn't understand how you could have less than a zero chance, but he shrugged and said, "If you want to waste your time, go right ahead," but we were not getting in.

So (Cousin) Ryan and I went downstairs to tell Marshal the bad news (he had gone to the Twin Suns Stage to see if that line had been capped yet or not).  After an hour or so, the panel started, and I was disappointed to miss it (despite my reservations about the last episode, it has been a pretty excellent show).  Still am, but ah well.

On our way in, we saw a guy putting together what looked like a white Hulkbuster Iron Man costume (it took two other guys to assemble around him), and when we saw him walking around later, had to get a picture (or video) of him.  He had done an R2-D2 in Hulkbuster armor cosplay, and it was unbelievably impressive (heck, just a Hulkbuster alone would've been amazing).

We lined up to go to another panel in the same room as before, and I saw Ryan the Line Guy.  "Hey, I was one of the guys you told this morning had a less than zero chance of getting in," I said, "did any of those people end up getting into the panel?"  His face darkened and he said that ALL of the people in the line got in, and they let another hundred people go in after that.  He apologized profusely and said that he hadn't known how full it was, but had just been repeating what he was being told.

It taught me a lesson: just like the first panel of the first day (where Marshal saved seats for us, but they wouldn't let us in), there are spots available for the persistent, for those who wait by the doors even after the lines have been capped.  We didn't miss a single panel we wanted to go to after that conversation with Line Ryan.

We got to hear Doug Chang do his Powerpoint presentation, and even though I'm not a Prequels guy, I recognize how immensely talented the dude is, and enjoyed hearing him talk about designing various ships and environments, and how they were instructed to make Grogu smack in the middle between adorable and repugnant (what Jon Favreau had described as "Uglycute").  It's always a blast to look at the process behind design, and there were plenty of pictures.

When we were in the line for the Rancho Obi-Wan presentation, Marshal chatted with a middle-aged dude that was a huge collector of action figures, and boasted that he had over a thousand of what he called the ninety-five Star Wars figures, still in their original packages, which absolutely amazed me . . . until I realized that he wasn't referring to the original Kenner figures (sometimes counted as 91, sometimes as 92), but the 1995 Power of the Force figures.  Suddenly, his collection went from invaluable to pretty close to worthless.  But to each their own.

We had no problem getting in to see "I Am C-3PO" with Anthony Daniels.  Tony Daniels is an old school, vaudeville-type ham, putting on a performance just as big as any character in a space opera.  It was almost like a one man show (except he had a young guy that he played off, that would insult him and ask him questions and bicker with him in a way that wasn't quite natural but also didn't quite feel scripted), and he's gotten quite old somehow (I mean, jeez, STAR WARS only came out forty-five years ago, right?), but is still slim and so totally See Threepio.

We went to a presentation of "Tales of the Jedi," a new Dave Filoni animated series about past adventures of Prequel-era Jedi.  They showed the first episode, about the birth of Ahsoka Tano, and how her village discovered she had the Force, and it was pretty good stuff.  They also showed a bit of one they're doing about Count Dooku when he was younger, with Qui-Gon as his apprentice.  I felt some interest there, despite not being a fan of Dooku, but the thing that was surprising was the huge reaction the audience had when they showed Yaddle, a terribly-designed do-nothing character from PHANTOM MENACE, who was basically a female Yoda with no lines who disappeared after that first movie.  So weird.

As usual, there were people in amazing costumes walking around, and I took pictures of several of them, but there were plenty I didn't get photos of.  I neglected to mention that on the first morning, I saw a dude dressed in Padme's white outfit from EPISODE II, complete with the torn-out midriff.  But now that I'm typing this, it's coming back to me why I didn't mention it then.  Whoops.

They may have done this all four days, but on this particular day, out in front of the convention center, they had group photos taken of all the fans dressed as certain themes (such as Stormtroopers, X-wing Pilots, Fetts, Jedi, or Cindall Towanis).  We watched them line up while eating from the food trucks, and it was quite impressive.

I wanted a photo in front of a garrison of Snowtroopers, but I was too timid.  One lady, dressed as either Hoth Leia or Flo from the Awful Progressive Commercials, did get in with them and I took their picture.

The first day at the Kotobukiya booth, Ryan and I bought a Boba Fett statue, and a Chewbacca pin.  But every day after that, when we went there, they were sold out of the statue, and by Saturday, they were out of pins too.  They had a drawing to win the chance to buy a Yoda statue that was extraordinarily rare (only four were available, one for each day of the convention).**  We didn't enter the first couple of days, but I bugged the guys to enter today, even though Ryan said he doubted he'd buy it if he won, and Marshal said he'd rather smash the Yoda statue than pay money for it (apparently, Yoda's been known to say that "Idaho is just Alabama if you swap out burning crosses for potatoes," even though he claims that statement had been off the record).

You had to go back to the booth by 6:30pm with the winning ticket in order to "claim" your "prize" (ultimately, I decided both words merited quotation marks), and when we got there, it was 6:38, but sure enough, it was my number written on the board.  The girl in charge of the booth was a lovely Japanese girl, and she took my picture with the statue (after I'd paid for it) as though I'd won it.  I'm not going to complain about it (I COULD have chosen not to buy it), but I'm not sure what I'll do with the statue, and it does strike me as pretty irresponsible to have bought it when I did.  Maybe I'll mail it to Marshal as a mean prank.

Health-wise, this was the worst day for me, because I accidentally (no, that's not true, I CHOSE to eat them) ate a salad with carrots in it, and my food allergy combined with my head cold, and I felt pretty damned bad in the evening, my eyes turning red and my head quadrupling in weight.

Luckily, I always have allergy pills in my backpack, and I gobbled them down at an astonishing rate.  I didn't get much writing done at the end of the day, but having exercised or written every day this month, I wasn't about to let feeling like utter crap defeat me this close to the finish line.  I took both Sudafed and NyQuil before going to sleep, and felt quite a bit better when I awoke the next morning.

Writing or Exercise: Writing

*We did so much walking this weekend that, despite how much junkfood I ate, I actually weighed four pounds less than I had before we left.

**I'm not going to go into whether a contest where the winner gets to blow three hundred dollars on a statue is a valid contest or not, but I'm leaning toward not really.

Star Wars Celebration Blog 5/27

The Unholy Trinity

I had wanted to talk about the coolest thing we saw the day before, but the entry was already getting unwieldy.  Marshal had mentioned that Jon Favreau said that everyone should check out "The Mandalorian Experience" while they were there, and we tried to find it, not knowing what it was.

Turns out, it's a museum-type collection of costumes, props, and animatronics used on "The Mandalorian" and "The Book of Boba Fett," which you could look at up close.  They recommended you make an appointment, but that system wasn't working yet, but there was a stand-by line.  The sign in front of the entrance said the wait was forty-five minutes, so we went for it.  A little over two hours later, we got to go inside.

I'm not really complaining.  We sat on the floor and talked about, I dunno, "Space: 1999" and "Logan's Run: The Series" or something, and the time went by fine.  

"The Mandalorian Experience" was pretty spectacular, and I'd say that if they wanted to have it be a touring attraction, Star Wars fans would be happy to pay to walk through it and see the cockpit to the Razor Crest, the costumes Greef Carga, Cara Dune, Cad Bane, Moff Gideon, Garza Thwip, Fennec Shand, the Client, Black Krssantan, and all the Mandalorians wore, the modified N-1 starfighter, and props, weapons, decorations, droids, jawas, and the animatronic bantha, Grogu, and full-sized rancor head used in the various episodes.  

I walked around there for a good while, taking dozens of photos, but I could've spent another hour there, no problem.

We went to the "Light and Magic" panel, where various effects artists looked back at their time with ILM, part of an upcoming miniseries on Disney+ I will watch the crap out of.  Dude, it was like it was made for me.

Joe Johnston was among them, and speaking of him, there was another retrospective you could tour solely dedicated to Boba Fett, his history, and the various offshoots (like Jango Fett, Pre Vizla, Bo-Katan, and Sabine Wren).  That was much smaller, and it included items from various collectors, such as Steve Sansweet.  Once again, I was reminded that while I consider myself a Star Wars fan, I'm far from the biggest Star Wars fan.

We also went to the Hasbro panel, but I felt bad for Marshal, since it was about upcoming toys, and was (literally) the most skippable panel we went to.

There was also the "Star Wars Trilogy In 30 Minutes" panel I first saw in Indianapolis decades ago.  It was so full that it was standing room only, but I found it very worth it (Ryan and I both stood the whole time), and was as close to a religious experience as I had that weekend.  It reminded me of going to Nativity plays or midnight mass or some other ritualized religious service, except with more laughs.*

Look, I'd like to go into more of all this stuff, but I'm now literally two weeks behind on my blog (I've got a dozen posts ready to go but they're waiting for the Celebration stuff to go up first), so I'll leave you with this:

I wasn't nearly as tired tonight (at the end of the day) as I was yesterday, probably because Marshal allowed me to sleep in until eight.  But I still took a few minutes to work on "Balms & Sears" before allowing myself to sleep.  Actually, both Ryan and Marshal were very encouraging with my writing this weekend, even if it meant that I was still up when both of them were sleeping (or trying to sleep).

Writing or Exercise: Writing

*Of course, a young couple HAD brought their newborn with them, and it began to wail halfway through and they didn't hurry the childe out into the hall, dying with embarrassment.  Instead, they passed the baby back and forth, walked around with it, and tried to feed it while still staying in the room.  

Star Wars Celebration Blog 5/26

The logo's a bit outdated, but then, so am I.

When you're as tired as I am right now, having gotten up around six-thirty and walked for miles in and around a convention hall, it's less than desirous to have to write fiction at the end of the day.  Normally, I wouldn't even care whether I wrote or not, considering walking around could totally count as exercise (Marshal remarked that with is Stepcounter app, he could find out exactly how far he walked today, and I told him, "Oh, I bet it's miles and miles."

Marshal had this idea to get up at six, which is actually sleeping in for that guy, but Ryan and I are night owls (maybe fruit bats), and I wasn't looking forward to it.  But I'd awakened so many times in the night coughing that I welcomed the dawn.  We got out of the room before seven, and headed over to Anaheim.  

The first place we parked was free for the first twenty minutes, but anything past twenty-one and it was thirty-five dollars, which was worse than finding out you're adopted.  We'd stopped to get our wristbands and Ryan's pass from Will-Call, but couldn't quite make it out before the deadline, so that's where we were stuck.*

Because of COVID, they had this deal where every attendee had to either show proof of vaccination or a negative test, and you got a wristband when you showed that.  The wristbands had a long tightening end, and could not be removed.  But both Ryan and I pulled on that end the first day, making it insanely tight, so you could go back there and they'd slice yours off and give you a new one, then remove the tightening end (they'd realized the problem after hundreds of children had cut off their circulation that first day).

I'd never been to the Anaheim Convention Center, and it was huge and clean, with plenty of picturesque spots for photos, including a tiered section out in front where various costumed folk gathered throughout the weekend for pictures with their groups.  Honestly, if you had missed out on tickets for one of the days (as many folks did), you could hang out there and see thousands of cosplayers for free.

Because we were hours early, we got the idea to walk to the local Denny's, but we took a wrong turn and walked--no exaggeration--more than a mile out of our way.  To his credit, Marshal didn't complain about my brilliant idea to take the convention center's rear entrance, rather than walk all the way back to the street (which would've saved us, oh, five or six days' walking - whoops).  At Denny's, I was pretty ravenous, figuring it might be my only meal of the day.  It shocked me how much it was, though, unless I was paying for all three of us, and I pouted for a while about that (especially when Ryan said he was starving two hours later**).

They'd had a lottery system set up for the most popular panels, and Marshal had won the lottery for the first one, and since my pass was linked with his (I had done it before entering the lottery), I knew I'd get in too.  But I didn't.  They said only Marshal had won, despite him being able to get in four additional guests with his lottery ticket*** and Ryan and I got in the Stand-by line.  Eventually, Marshal's group was let in, and our line was told we would not get in, despite Marshal texting that there were tons of available seats.  In retrospect, we should've gone to one of the other rooms showing the same panel, or hung out by the doors, saying "Our friend's in there and has empty seats next to him."  But we didn't understand how clueless the line-managing volunteers would be.

I pouted for a few hours.  Ryan and I walked around the vendor floor, which was unimpressive (that's not true, there were various artists there showing off their work, and one flat-out changed the subject when I told him I wanted to buy one of his prints ("Yeah, I brought a few of those, but let me tell you what they did to me . . .").  I'd have blown a hundred dollars on it, but he didn't want my money (my nose is pretty big, I get that), and I bought another expensive print from a different (less-talented) artist.

One of the booths, Dorkside Toys, was selling action figures for retail price (and actually selling a couple of them for less than retail).  But that was because they are a store that gets them at a wholesale price . . . but it still doesn't explain why they wouldn't mark them way the hell up to sell to collectors.  I spoke to Robo, an online personality I follow, and asked him if they'd be even cheaper on Sunday, and he said his boss wanted to get rid of everything, so as not to have to pack it all up again, but I still bought four figures from him then.****

They had a cool photo-op section with various costumes on display, as well as a full-scale TIE Fighter.  It had a line to take pictures in front of, but as I waited, two costumed girls stood under it and began to tongue-wrestle.  That was good enough for me.  Is ANYTHING good enough for you?

Almost all the vendors had overpriced Star Wars junk, but it was selling like crazy, which is to be expected*****, but only the Dorkside booth was selling stuff for fairly cheap, and they probably made five times what the other booths made.  The Kotobukiya booth had a great white costume Boba Fett statue that I bought one of (it was one per customer per day), but was never able to get a second one to resell (I'll probably sell off the one I got, since I never do anything with them). 

There was also a new toyline on display of Star Wars ships, which will be in scale with each other (for the first time), and seem pretty cool, but also aimed at children (which is probably smart), and my cousin vowed to buy most of them (we'll see what he says this fall when they're in stores).

Eventually, Marshal came out and I stood in line with him, talking about what he had seen.  He'd gotten a free poster (for the Cassian Andor show), and talked about seeing John Williams and Harrison Ford, and held up a sparkly wristband that meant he was invited to see the first two episodes of "Obi-Wan Kenobi" that night in an exclusive screening.  I was happy for him, but not really.

There was a mask policy in force the whole time, and while it was a pain, I understood (and it would've been more bearable had I not been coughing and blowing my nose half the day).  But there were also attendees that not only took their masks down, but didn't seem to have any with them, and I think I remember only twice hearing employees tell people to get their masks back on.  Of course, literally a quarter of the attendees had Mandalorian, Clone, or Stormtrooper masks on, which I suppose makes it easier.

Wow, the cosplay was more impressive than anything I've ever seen before, including San Diego Comic Con (although in its defense, you see a lot more hot chicks walking around in sexy outfits, probably because they're paid to do that), with entire legions of the Emperor's best troops marching around with their fans.  I took pictures of a few of the most elaborate ones, but there were hundreds I never saw which were probably just as cool.

Eventually, the guys got hungry again, and I kicked myself for not bringing a soda along in my backpack, like I try to do every time I go to a convention, conference, or movie shoot.  That afternoon, Ryan and I went to a Target down the road and bought some Diet Doctor Pepper, which I made last the rest of the weekend.

I'm going to skip ahead and mention that we got in a slow-moving line to see the efforts of various droid designers from across the country, and I was impressed by all the variations you could make of Artoos and BB-8s.  This is something that Marshal has wanted to do for years, but alas, he was unwilling to sell his youngest child on the black market to be able to afford to pursue the hobby.

You weren't supposed to touch anything in any of the exhibits, but this one was so unguarded that, yes, I took the opportunity to lick a Gonk Droid.

There was a fully animatronic C-3PO that I could've stared at for hours, and fans' self-made mouse droids, astromechs, treadwells, BB-units, and an EV-9D9.

Dude.

K-2So what?

Of the four days, this was the one where I went to the fewest panels, but that was mostly because I wanted to look around and, let's face it, they wouldn't let me into any.

My favorite costume of the day was a guy who looked like a better-than-screen-accurate Bossk, and we got a photo of him putting me in a headlock.  I would LOVE to have a costume just like that, as the Bossk mask and gloves I currently own are made for fans seven feet tall and above.

I mean, check out his feet!

Eventually, it was time for Marshal to get in line to watch "Obi-Wan," and though the volunteer I asked said no one without sparkly wristbands would be allowed in, I suspect I could've gotten in to see it, if I'd really, really tried.

Regardless, Disney+ decided to release "Obi-Wan Kenobi" a couple of hours early, so we sat down to watch it just as Marshal was being let out of his screening.  We told him we'd pick him up, but he was going to walk back to Denny's, eat, and we'd get him there (he was going to take an Uber, but his phone was dying, and we were willing to get him anyway).  That gave us time to watch most of the first episode, leave, pick him up, and come back to the show before it got too late.  

We finished both episodes "Obi-wan Kenobi" tonight, despite my insistence hours earlier that I was NEVER going to watch it, as an eff you to the Star Wars Celebration.  The show wasn't bad, but didn't really speak to me, except for the scenes with Bail Organa and ten year old Princess Leia.  I'll probably talk about that later, but boy, this blog post is getting out of hand, and will probably get published a full week late (or worse).

I was worried that my legs would cramp during the night, so I took some painkillers in addition to NyQuil, and being exhausted helped me sleep the best of all the nights, not moving until the next morning.

Writing or Exercise: Writing

*There had been a Facebook group you could join of convention attendees, and it turned out to be a lifesaver, as other fans explained how to get certain things, where to find the panels, and where the cheapest place to park was (it was twenty dollars a day, and only slightly less convenient than where we'd paid $35).

**And two hours after that.  And two hours later.

***Some poor bastard online had said, "I have FIVE children, what the spank am I supposed to do?!?"  To which, naturally, the answer was, "Give your wife a break and wear a condom, you randy bastard."

****And on Sunday, the prices were actually the same (and two of the figures that had been $15 on Thursday were now $20), so I'm glad I did.

*****Being around people who love (and are talking constantly) about Star Wars is infectious, and you end up wanting to buy stuff that you'd never want on your own.  I imagine it's how mobs are formed.