NYLine Days 14, 15, & 16 - Adventure? Excitement?? This Jedi Does Crave These Things...
Posted by Amit on
Number of people currently in line: 20
I must say that most of the time I see myself as not much more than an interpreter, and not very good at telling stories (not at making them interesting anyway). Nevertheless, I relish my opportunities to relay and relive the highlights of what has already been an eventful couple of weeks on the line. But then something like last weekend happens, and puts the fear of the maker in me - the thing is, how could I possibly translate some of the coolness of the past few days into words?? Everybody has been coming up to me and saying "boy I can't wait to read your update about THIS!", and I don't know if I can handle the pressure. I've said over the past few months that George Lucas had better invent a few more adjectives in Episode II, because the effect of "wizard" is starting to diminish a little with time. But that's not going to stop me I guess....
On Friday, Line Mom was back in action as only she could be, racing around the city at speeds up to 50 mph. Not only did she bring us the bread and pastries from Au Bon Pain, but she also charmed a nice gentleman named Edner at Gristedes into giving us a whole lot of cold cuts, much more than we paid for. To top it all off, the lady made us sandwiches. She MADE US sandwiches!!! That was so wizard.
With Saturday came a visit by our friends at Forbidden Planet, who hosted a Trading Card Tournament, which you can read about in Steve's post. But if you thought card games were as exhilirating as it got, hold on to your pyramidal Watto hats. Later in the day we were dropped in on by the Conan O'Brien show, and more specifically a correspondent of theirs who you might have heard of named Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. If you know me, and by now I would guess that you do, you know that I've been a fan of the show since it began, and so this encounter pretty much completed my goals and fulfilled my destiny for life. It's a good thing I still have Episode III to look forward to, otherwise after May 16th I may have been content in just holding my lightsaber upright, closing my eyes, and letting somebody strike me down. If you're not aware of Triumph's work, I'll give you a quick rundown: he's a puppet dog who basically makes fun of everything and everyone, humping whatever he finds interesting along the way. Here's an example that he laid on one of our line members, on the subject of spoilers: "I have a spoiler for you - YOU WILL DIE ALONE." And so forth - It's all really rather funny, I can promise you that. And it only got better when we were visited by a fellow dressed as some sort of wizard, who was checking in to wish us luck (and perchance to let us take a bite out of his McChicken sandwich). Triumph also had some choice words for the animatronic dinosaur that decided to stop by to promote Dinatopia on ABC. And I can only hope to hear what he was saying during the wedding we held. Suffice to say, it was really wizard. But it only got wizarder, when out of the NBC truck hopped out what may be the second favorite character on the Late Night program, The Mastur - umm - The Bear who likes to do what Itchy does during the Holiday Special. My friends, remember to shake the hand of JediRob when you see him next, for he had to opportunity to touch the bear's nether- regions. I can't tell you how wizard it was. Therewere so many other details that I just can't go in to for time constraints, hopefully they'll show up when the show airs. But just in case you forgot, the key word so far is wizard.
As alluded to earlier, we also had our wedding ceremony on Saturday, which went off without a hitch - except for the one where the bride and groom got hitched, bwahahahahhahahaha. Brian, who was decked out as Darth Maul (that's a character from the Star Wars series of pictures in case you didn't know), and Diana walked under a line of crossed lightsabers, and Darth Vader announced the union with a stirring speech. The Imperial March brought the couple down the aisle, and the Throne Room and Finale saw them off. Justen Michael Bennett-Maccubbin was the lucky recipient of the bouquet, his future looks bright!! Cake was served, and maybe some Corellian Ale was too, because before long Vader and the Stormtroopers were kicking it old-academy, dancing up a storm. And just because fate is fate, right as we started it all we were visited by a couple of "normal" weddings driving down 54th Street, and so even more wackiness ensued, with the picture taking and whatnot. All in all, it turned out to be totally wizard, but of course a little bittersweet like all weddings - I mean, always a handmaiden, never the queen...
In the evening we celebrated the love of Suzanne's belated birthday, with cupcakes, a truly wizard cheesecake baked by our own Dave Creighton, and the finest gift of them all - The Star Wars Holiday Special. It's a tradition on the line, we have to go through it once, and so we did, despite the cries of anguish, despite the threats of suicide, despite David Liebowitz repeatedly pointing his lightsaber at the screen and pretending to fire it like a blaster. It hurt, but it's over now. Or at least it is when I'm awake, because when I'm asleep I can still hear Jefferson Starship.
The rest of the overnight included viewings of the Star Wars Muppet Show episode, some choice foreign coverage of our line up in '99 (boy Karen and Suzanne are both baritones when they talk in Japanese!), the discovery by Tom Weppler of a bootleg AOTC video and the subsequent mass hysteria when somebody tried to put it on the television. Several line members constructed some technological terror of tarps to brace ourselves for the approaching storm, I'm quite interested to see if it's still standing when I get back there in a few minutes.
Sunday was Mother's Day, and to celebrate we began handing out tickets for Episode II. The connection must be in there somewhere. It was cold and ugly, and I had to go home so my Mom could receive the best gift possible - the chance to see me get home and promptly fall asleep after all of the weekend's excitement had overrun my circuits. That's about it, I suppose! I hope I did it some semblance of justice!! Oh yeah, and after all that, I think there's still a movie to watch in a couple of days!