Tomorrow.
That's tomorrow, May 16, 1999 at the Cinerama Theater in Seattle Washington (4th and Lenora). I even know where I'm sitting: six rows from the screen in right about the middle.
-- May 15, 1999
But first, let's go back three years, to May 16 1999, when I first saw Episode I. Remember, this was the height of the dot-com boom and as I was working at Amazon.com at the time, I felt I was rolling in virtual cash. So two of my co-workers and I sold some of our Amazon stock options and plunked down $1000 each to see the film three days before its official opening. No waiting, no lines, and a champagne brunch to boot! We decided for the premium tickets rather than the $500 ones, because of the special "goodie bag." See, we figured that for an extra 500 clams there had better be some primo stuff in the goodie. An autographed picture, perhaps? A limited-edition action figure? A solid gold bust of Jar Jar Binks? The mind boggled.
First lesson learned: Do not assume anything when it comes to Lucasfilm. The best thing in the gift bag was a cheap plastic Darth Maul watch, which I wore for a few months before it broke. Other items included a VHS copy of the Jedi Special Edition (already had it), and a bunch of useless swag from various sponsors of the event--the usual Seattle suspects like Starbucks, mixed with doomed dot-com startups like Mercata. In protest of the lame "goodies," I swiped an extra bag and sold it on eBay for $60. Ha HA.
OK, so we did get to go to the champagne brunch, and the food was pretty good, and it was fun to see uppa crust society folk mixing uncomfortably with the computer/comic/Star Wars geek crowd (which, like me, had unexpectedly profited from Seattle's tech boom). We even saw Bill Gates. Heck, we practically sat next to Bill Gates.
Then we went to the movie.
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