Saturday, November 05, 2016

On Stage with Weird Al at Blizzcon 2016

Tonight R2 and members of the 501st were invited to join Weird Al Yankovic on stage, as he gave a concert to attendees of Blizzard Entertainment's Blizzcon 2016. Matthew Henricks joined me as the backup Vader and droid wrangler.



Matthew and I carpooled, and arrived around 4:30pm at the Anaheim Convention Center, where Blizzcon was taking place. I unloaded and we went to the Star Wars characters' green room, where they had changing space and food for us.



With a few hours to spare, Matthew and I decided to roam the convention floor. Neither of us are gamers, so this world was new to us. It was a bit like looking into a funhouse mirror of ourselves as Star Wars fans, as we were visiting a convention with costumers and characters with which we were pretty unfamiliar. There were also hundreds, if not thousands, of PCs set up for people to play games.





Around 6:15pm we headed back to get R2 staged for the 8:30pm encore. We could see and hear the show from the green room thanks to the projection screen and speakers.



The 501st crew members went through their rehearsals and then suited up.




A little before 8:30pm we made our way to the stage, to await our cue to go on.




And there's our cue, out we go! Stage manager Hawkeye asked me to keep R2 on the near side of the cord on the stage, so I did. That placed R2 a little bit distant from the other characters, but that was fine.




The characters danced to Al's song, "The Saga Begins." At one point early in the song, Al came up to R2 for a serenade.





Matthew took pictures through the small opening we made so that I could see and operate R2.





After the song ended we went back to our green room, and a short time later Al came in for photos and autographs (his, not ours).




And then we were done! Well, there's always that One Last Picture...



We had a great time, and thank you to Matthew for taking/supplying many of the pictures. The full photoset is here.

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