Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Episode III: Revenge of the Nerds

A new Star Wars release brings out two kinds of people: 1) the steadfast nerds who even though they clearly bought their tickets on fandango.com, feel the need to wait in line for hours to get the best seats and 2) the brave souls who love to make fun of them. I am the latter. My mission this morning was to venture to the Uptown Theater in Cleveland Park to check out the nerds in line for the 12:00 showing of Star Wars: Episode III and document them.

At about 11 am, I walked over to Cleveland Park to see what was going on outside the theater. I already heard on tv that there was a line, so I knew I would not be wasting my time. Plus, I could grab a bacon, egg, and cheese at Whatsa Bagel.

I got to the theater about 15 minutes later, not sure what to expect. Unfortunately, the line was not nearly as long as I expected, but it was still pretty good. There were probably about 30 people there already and definitely more on the way. I mean, the show starts at midnight. What self-respecting nerd wouldn't skip work (or crawl out of mom's basement) to stand in line for 13 hours?

As you can see by the pictures, there were quite the collection of fans there. Nobody was in costume yet, but I have faith that if I go back later (and I probably will) there will be some full-fledged light saber battles going on. I also noticed that some of the nerds brought their tvs (probably to watch the other Star Wars movies) and Trivial Pursuit (the Star Wars edition) to pass the time.

There was not much else to report at this early hour. You can pretty much see everything that was going on in the pictures. I'll go back there around 5 to see how the line has progressed. I wish I could get a "Boba Fett is Gay" shirt to piss them off, but I don't have the time to do that. Until later...