Oh man, I can’t believe I’ve made it this far into the afternoon without crashing. As you probably noticed from the timestamp on my last post, last night was very late. But back to yesterday afternoon…

We heard from feren that his Evil Employer the resides in The Penis on the Prairie was once again usurping his life and he was going to have to bow out from last night’s sneak preview of Serenity. Dan posted in his LJ that we had a ticket available and it was immediately claimed by woodychitwn (which is good, since that was who we were going to offer it to but we couldn’t find his contact info anywhere). I headed home, and eventually through the stupidly slow traffic, Dan, linnaeus, and datahawk arrived as well. Paul had a very short time to recover from his near-two-hour commute (sorry, man!) before we had to rush out the door again. We grabbed a very quick dinner at McBlargh’s and then headed down Lakeshore Drive to the River East Theatre. Parking was reasonably simple, and we arrived at 7:49 PM, well in time for our 8 PM meetup. Woody was right on time, and it was a pleasure to finally meet him. I hope he had a good time and didn’t think we were too strange. roho and genet arrived shortly after, and posicat showed up about 30 minutes later, after getting rather lost along the way.

I’d guess that there were about 200 people there for the sneak preview and it was a fun, fannish gathering – numerous people in costumes (I liked the guys in suits with blue rubber gloves – it makes sense if you’ve seen “Firefly”), full-size standups with prototypes for a (fan-imagined?) animated Firefly series, and “Cappie Heads” (cutouts of Captain Mal Reynolds’s face attached to a stick) that people were having fun taking pictures of. There was some nice chatting back and forth with the people around us, and the 90-minute wait passed surprisingly quickly. At about 9:30 PM, after distributing surveys about the movie to everyone in line, the staff let everyone into the theater. We secured good seats for all eight of our group and passed the time chatting and people-watching.

Right before the movie, Joss Whedon (the creator/writer/director of Firefly and Serenity) addressed us, the fans, in short film recorded expressly for the sneak preview. It was typical Joss – funny, and poignant. He told us that this film wouldn’t have been made if it hadn’t been for us, the fans – it’s whole existence was due to us. Conversely, if it sucks, it’s all our faults 🙂 That got a good laugh.

Then it was into the movie. No, there’ll be no spoilers here. Maybe I’m just pissy and tired, but I have to admit that all of the people shouting “NO SPOILERS!” is starting to get annoying. Do you really think so little of your friends that you assume they take away the thrill of discovery, the shared excitement of seeing something really great for the first time? Have a little faith, people.

The movie itself? It was excellent. It had all of the hallmarks of Joss Whedon – humor, drama, plot twists, and some of the best dialogue I’ve heard in a long, long time. The movie was incomplete in that some of the music and effects were missing, or had placeholders in for them, but it didn’t detract from the plot. Roho did make an excellent point about how the background music (or lack thereof) plays such a huge part of the overall experience, and I can see that it will be interesting to see how that affects the final release of the movie. Great effects, lots of action, too. And some genuine surprises. In short, we’ll be going to see this movie again come September.

The movie ended at 12:04 AM. It was about 12:10 by the time I got to the parking payment machine. I figured, it’s $10 for four hours’ parking, I’m a little over that so I’d just have to pay a little extra for the extra few minutes we were there. Nope. It cost $26 for parking. Ow, just ow. Ah well. We took our leave of our group and headed home, getting home a little before 1 AM. And at 5:30 AM, the alarm went off and I got up for work.

Today hasn’t been too bad, actually. I had a huge breakfast, big enough that I skipped lunch, and that helped me through the day, along with two cans of Monster energy drink. Tonight, though, it’s going to be a nice night of hanging out at home, watching stuff off the Tivo, and going to bed early.

By the way, something that no one in our group has mentioned: As we were lining up a representative for Universal Studios was giving out passes for other sneak previews coming up. We declined tickets for a Monday-morning showing of The Longest Yard, but snapped up invitations to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at 6:30 PM on Saturday, May 14 (it doesn’t open nationwide until July). The trick is that each person can get up to four tickets, so if anyone in the Chicago area is interested in joining us, let me know and we can probably get you in.

And now, I’m heading home. Y’all have a great weekend!