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Star Wars Celebration II: The 10 Year Anniversary

Posted in movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags , , , , , , , , , on May 3, 2012 by Paxton

Star Wars Roadtrip

This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of Star Wars Celebration II.  The event started on May 3, 2002 and went until May 5, 2002.

SWC2 autographed card

I was there with my friend Jason Collier.  Above is a card advertising the event.  It’s autographed by Daniel Logan, the kid who played Boba Fett, and RA Salvatore who wrote the novelization.

Jason and I also attended Star Wars Celebration I in Denver.  I talked about Celebration I on it’s 10th anniversary in 2009.

So Celebration I was held in Denver. The powers-that-be decided to move it to what they thought was a more “central” location. It was announced that Celebration II would be held at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, IN. Honestly, I was a bit excited about the announcement. I’d never been to Indianapolis and I heard it was a really nice city. So with my wife’s blessings Jason and I planned our second trip to a Star Wars Celebration.

Right away, this convention proved that it was going to be a lot more “formal” than the last convention. There was going to be a proper “Autograph Alley” where fans could get autographs of their favorite stars which Celebration I didn’t have. And there were going to be really big stars putting in appearances like Hayden Christensen, the newly minted Anakin Skywalker, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams and the return of Anthony Daniels as emcee of the festivities. Also, there was going to be a LOT more convention merchandise as well as an exclusive action figure developed to be sold only at Celebration. This Celebration was shaping up to be a “real” convention as opposed to the loose “gathering” of Celebration I.

Jason and I bought three days passes, which had a picture of Hayden as Anakin.

SWC2 3 day passes

Celebration I had Darth Maul on the three day pass.

I took off work on Thursday and Friday and we arrived in Indianapolis on Thursday night and showed up at the convention several hours early on Friday morning.  Here’s the front of the RCA Dome. I was able to catch it when the sign flashed up Star Wars.

SWC2 RCA Dome

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5 Awesome pop culture vehicles I’d love to drive in real life

Posted in Back to the Future, movies, pop culture with tags , , , , , on May 2, 2012 by Paxton

LEB

New assignment for the League this week. This week Brian wants to hear what pop culture vehicles do you personally want to drive?

Right off the bat, Brian took the Batmobile off the table, so I can’t include it here. For grins and giggles, though, my favorite version of the Batmobile? The one from Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns.  However, it wouldn’t have been my #1 pick, but it would have made the top 5.  Possibly even top 3.

So let’s take a look at the 5 pop culture vehicles I’d personally like to own and drive. And yes, these are in order of preference.

BTTF Delorean
BTTF time traveling Delorean – Hands down, this is my number one.  And that should be obvious if you’ve read my blog for longer than 15 minutes.  Not only does it look bad ass but it TRAVELS THROUGH TIME.  And obviously I want the one from the end of the first movie with the Mr Fusion (so I don’t need Plutonium) and the 2015 hover conversion (so the thing can FLY).

KITT
KITT – KITT is a very close second. Why is it second to the Delorean? Because it doesn’t come with the ability to TRAVEL THROUGH TIME. Time Travel trumps pretty much anything else.  However, having a talking bad ass car that can almost fly is pretty awesome, so I would want it next.  Btw, I want the classic Pontiac Trans-Am version, not the crappy Ford Mustang version.

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Nerd Lunch Episode 35: When Real Life Ruins the Stuff We Love

Posted in movies, pop culture with tags , , , , on May 1, 2012 by Paxton

Nerd Lunch Podcast

Episode 35 has gone live. And yes, it is the triumphant return of CT!  This week we are also joined again by Robert Zerbe from To The Escape Hatch. This week, we talk about when “real life” ruins the stuff we love.

Real Life
(Via Oprah.com)

We talk about actor meltdowns like Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin.  We also discuss movie trailers and movie promotions and if studios put too much information out there for big tent pole movies like The Avengers as well as some of our worst experiences in a theater due to disrespectful jack-holes.  It’s a lot of info plus CT’s return from his spirit walk.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner. And yes, we are still on the Zune Marketplace.

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Review of The Woggle-Bug Book by L Frank Baum (1905)

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, reviews, Wizard of Oz with tags , , , , , on April 30, 2012 by Paxton

Following the Yellow Brick Road

Baum wrote a short book published in 1905 right before the third Oz book; Ozma of Oz.  It featured a character that was introduced in the Marvelous Land of Oz, the Woggle-Bug.  It’s not an “official” Oz book, however, since L Frank Baum wrote it and it features a character from the Oz series, I’m going to include it as part of my ancillary Oz materials reviews.  It was called The Woggle-Bug Book.

Woggle-Bug book

“Sire, I am a Woggle-Bug, highly magnified and thoroughly educated. It is no exaggeration to say I am the greatest Woggle-Bug on Earth” – HM Woggle-Bug, TE

The book takes the Woggle-Bug character out of Oz and transplants him into a nameless city in America. We aren’t told how he got there and not too many people seem distressed that a giant talking bug in a top hat is walking around the city streets in broad daylight.  The bug falls in love with this crazy colored plaid dress, follows it around as it’s passed from person to person and falls in love with whomever has the dress at the time he sees them.  After falling in love with a Chinaman wearing the dress as a Chinese robe, the Woggle-Bug mistakenly gets onto a balloon that carries him to Africa where he barely escapes vicious Arabs that want to kill him.  He then wanders into a hidden forest with talking animals that feel more like an Oz book than the events in the rest of the book.  This hidden animal kingdom is guarded by a group of bears with guns that are awesomely called a “bearicade”.  The story really is weird.  It’s funny and strange in some ways, but overall, it’s weird.  Plus, there’s a lot of ethnic humor which, I guess, was popular at the time.  However, it’s rather jarring today.

This book evolved from a series of Oz comic strips called The Queer Visitors from Oz that were used to promote the second Oz book (I’m trying to get a hold of a copy of these strips for review).  The strips took popular Oz characters and transplanted them into America for various adventures.  Those strips were popular enough that Baum thought that formula would work again.  It wasn’t completely out of left field, the Woggle-Bug had become sort of a national fad at the time.  There were Woggle-Bug postcards and board games (today, he even has his own Facebook page).  Also at this time, Baum was trying to mount a stage musical about the Woggle-Bug to recreate the smash hit 1902 stage version of Wizard of Oz.  This book was adapted from that stage play.  Unfortunately, the fad died and the Woggle-Bug play and book flopped.

Now, this book is sort of a one-off curiosity.  It is not considered Oz canon.

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Countdown to Avengers: A look at The Avengers collectible soda cans

Posted in comic books, Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew, movies, soda with tags , , , , , , on April 25, 2012 by Paxton

The Avengers Countdown to Avengers is a blog crossover between Nerd Lunch, To The Escape Hatch and the Cavalcade of Awesome. Together we are reviewing all of the solo Avengers movies as well as some of the comics and cartoons. It’s all leading up to the release of The Avengers on May 4 where we will all review the new movie.

So, by this point we have talked about our thoughts on most, if not all, of the movies that lead up to The Avengers.  Now,  I want to look at some of the ancillary promotions for The Avengers.  I’m “the soda guy” of the group so I’m a complete sucker for any big pop culture movie/soda promotion (see my write ups on Star Wars soda promotions here, here and here).  So today, I’m going to discuss the big Marvel soda promotions that have happened from all of the Marvel movies including Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America and the upcoming The Avengers.  Unfortunately, there were no soda promotions for the original Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk in 2008.  So, let’s start with the current Avengers promotion going on with Dr Pepper.

Dr Pepper Avengers 24 pack Dr Pepper Assemble the Team promotion

Currently, Dr Pepper has a promotion called “Assemble the Team”.  The promotional packaging is starting to show up en mass at retail locations everywhere.  The promotion consists of 8 collector cans featuring the principles of The Avengers (Nick Fury, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Hulk) as well as one can featuring the film’s villain (Loki).  Here’s an official picture of the set.

Avengers can set

The promotion is spread among the four main Dr Pepper brands.  The character/brand breakdown (as shown in the right image above, click to make bigger) looks like this:

Dr Pepper – Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor
Diet Dr Pepper – Hawkeye, Black Widow
Dr Pepper Cherry – Nick Fury
Diet Dr Pepper Cherry – Loki

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