So anyway. The other cool part of my trip was Star Wars Weekends at MGM. I was officially "checking it out" for my "job" but it was really pretty fun. Lando, aka Billy Dee Williams, walked right past me and I got a couple of photos. There were costumed characters wandering around anywhere and some cute low-grade stage shows, including one where a Jedi master picks 10 kids from the audience, gives them padawan robes and plastic lightsabers, and has them practice some moves. After he goes through the routine with them, the music turns ominous and out trots a couple of Stormtroopers and then Darth Vader himself. Then one by one the kids, some of them no more than 3 or 4 years old, go through the routine with Darth, who does a good job of putting his light saber in the correct position for the kid to hit with his own. It was pretty adorable and funny. My one complaint was that there was only one girl in the group, and there were definitely other girls in the crowd who wanted to be picked. Very lame. At the end the Jedi tells the audience that Darth knows he can't defeat the Jedi trainees, so Darth stalks off.

I was impressed with the breadth of characters they had. The emperor and three red-robed guards, a not-very-close likeness of Han Solo, Luke, and Leia; a very very bad likeness of Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), of whom I can only assume they just found the one bald black guy who worked at the park and forced him to do it; the entire Mos Eisley cantina band; a Gamorrean Guard; a couple of ewoks; more stormtroopers; Greedo; Chewbacca; and I think there was a Princess Natalie Portman (whatever her character was) in there but my eyes skipped over the new trilogy people. I was geeking out, and surrounded by others doing the same, which is always fun. Among the mostly-30-something crowd there were a couple of punks dressed up in long black robes for the event, and it was brutally hot out, so that's serious dedication.

Pictures tk. [tk= to come, in editor-speak]