CC @ C3 Spectacular - Part 1
Posted by: Bill Cable 04.27.05 12:01am
Oh man... where to begin? Well, as you already know, I went to C3 last week. The nice folks at GenCon gave me a press pass to the event, so I figure I owe them a write-up. I took well over 100 photos at C3, so I'm gonna do this as a photo diary of sorts. All the images are thumbnails, so click away.

So, in addition to covering the event for CC.com, or perhaps I should say in spite of that endeavor, I was there to pimp out PSWCS. And the first thing I did after arriving was set up the PSWCS booth. I'm not gonna go into that much here, but you can see it all on the PSWCS Celebration3 events page. The booth turned out fantastic. We gave out our swank PSWCS/DCSWCC/OSWCC exclusive C3 patch (the most limited LFL licensed exclusive available at C3!!!), raffled off a carded figure and recruited all sorts of people. It was great. But that's neither here nor there... just figured I'd plug the PSWCS one more time...

Now for my CC C3 write up. And now we face the dilemma. Do I post the sexy babe photos now, save them to the end to make everybody read through the whole thing, or scatter them throughout? Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages... Ah well, I like to be nice to my readers, so here you go...

One of the first photos I took was of this very attractive female Jedi. I don't know what it is about her, but she just really does it for me. Pretty face. Smoking body. I saw her three different days, and each day she had a different Jedi outfit on. Unfortunately, I only had my camera out for this one. But it does a good job showing what I'm talking about.

Now, I really can't go on writing an entire paragraph for each and every photo like that. Hell, 80% of the photos require no explanation whatsoever. And I guess the babes would be among those. So here's a gallery of some of the women of Thursday and Friday...

You're welcome. Moving on with business... I guess it was Wednesday night that I went to Hooters for the first time, for the JediDefender "get-together." I really only popped in and out... after having had a few too many at dinner... but I did have the time to get a nice shot of some of the JD staff, including the MAC daddy...

Even though no one offered to buy me a drink... well, not that I can recall... I did have fun and it was nice to put some names to faces.

Then came Thursday. Opening day. And who wouldn't be blown away by the incredible costumes. Whether it was standing in the store line waiting for Obi-Wan to direct me to the appropriate queue, or roaming the halls, they were everywhere. And actually, the store line ended up being a particularly productive place to snap some costume photos. Aside from Obi, I ended up being about 6 or 7 people back from the most esoteric costume of the Con - ICMG!! And I ended up right next to a fantastic Dengar. And a few lines over I saw... well... you may want to avert your eyes.

Even outside the line, there was a good assortment of costumes. My favorite - Grizzly Obi-Wan!!

Then there was Thursday night... the "Star Wars Collectors Social." Before the thing even started, I got two of my coolest photos. The first is of the best shirt in the show. It was a "Hooters" style T-shirt that read "FemtrOOpers" - with appropriately-placed Os. It was just... fantastic. You can't read it too well in the photo, but you get the idea. And I also stole a shot of Nick Gillard as he was getting mobbed.

Then the social began. It was a blast. Vintage collectors EVERYWHERE. And Ewoks animation cels. You should have seen the chaos. I was handing out the cels in my role as an official "Collecting Track Volunteer," and a couple of the times when I extended my hand with a nice cel I wondered if it'd come back with all five fingers. YOU GUYS WERE SAVAGES!! The funniest part is that even the nicest cel I handed out at the social wasn't a shadow of the coolness we found the next day. But that's another story... Here's some of the collectors. Don't ask me how Jeff got in just about every photo...

And it wouldn't be a party without the CreatureCantina.com SUCKS sign. I conned a few suckers into mugging for the CC.com camera. These are, from left to right, Steve "pr0n King" York, Lisa "more money than God" Stevens, Tattoo "The Pose" Shane and Ron "not the one that killed Chewbacca" Salvatore.

Thursday night wrapped up with a little soiree in a local collector's abode. In attendance was the esteemed collector and author John Kellerman, whose book if you haven't purchased you should go over and pick one up RIGHT NOW!! It's hands-down the single most comprehensive and spectacular guide to Vintage Star Wars action figure collecting ever written in the history of mankind. Besides John and a couple dozen dedicated collectors, I also saw this nice set of Glasslite Droids cardback negs. These were made to manufacture the Glasslite cardbacks in Brazil. Very cool prototype pieces. But I had to see where else my money might end up going before committing to anything.

Friday was the first BIG day for CC.com. Because that was the day I decided to run over to the Autograph Hall and take my celebrity photos. And that task ended up being a HUGE success!! Every celebrity I went to was happy to cooperate. And some even took the opportunity to ham it up. Now, I still need to go through and format them all for the Cantina Celebrities gallery, so I'm just going to splash them all here for now.

Tim Rose	Nalini Krishan	Bodie Taylor	Ralph Brown
Bai Ling	Sandi Finlay	Zack Jensen	Jesse Jensen
Sean Crawford	Alan Ruscoe	Mary Oyaya	Toby Philpott
Simon Williamson	Caroline Blakiston	Paul Blake

Now... my only mistake here was that I didn't take photos of Gerald Home or Femi Taylor. I already have both of them and I usually only take one per celeb, but I found myself breaking that rule on Mary and Nalini. Granted, who wouldn't want to take as many photos as possible of either of them... but that's another issue. I still should have taken photos of everyone I could... and especially Gerald Home! I mean... I'm his favorite artist and everything now. I should have asked someone to take a pic of us together. Damn my 20/20 hindsight!!

Anyway... there were more costumes on Friday. Some great... even prize-winning. And some that were comprised solely of fez hats with Darth Maul horns on them. The Biker chick scout in hot pants was a particular treat.

For lunch I treated the CC.com staff... those who weren't too busy to attend... to lunch. This was my second trip to Hooters! And boy, do those Hooter Girls love Star Wars!! I had a blast talking to Tronzo and Sandy for an hour and downing a couple brews. The company was well worth the price of admission. And of course, I got the critical photos...

Oh yeah... they were all over us at that place. Hooters LOVES CreatureCantina.com. On the way back from lunch, I came across yet another photo opportunity. And what can I say... sometimes you just need to take one for the team...

Friday wrapped up with the now legendary "room sales," where Vintage prototypes flowed like wine. I walked away with a hand-painted internal first shot Droids C-3PO... my FIRST 4" Vintage figure prototype. I saw it in Andy Loney's display case Friday afternoon, and immediately knew that it had to be mine. And I cut a great deal for it. I was just glowing the rest of the night. I'll take some photos to share when I get the chance.

The halls of the hotel were chaos... packed shoulder-to-shoulder. And the booze was flowing almost as freely as the cash. The people were BSing as much as they were dealing, and I met a lot of great people, and ran in to a number of old friends I hadn't seen since C2. Here are a few shots of the festivities...

Around 1am I hit the hay, knowing I had big things ahead Saturday morning. My Press pass promised wonderful things early the next day, and I wanted to make sure I was awake for it. Tune in next week as I explore the rest of Celebration 3 when CC @ C3 concludes!!!