Star Wars Fan Puts Himself in Carbonite

sneezesteve writes "How do you secure your nerd-cred for eternity? By acquiring a life-size replica of Han Solo in Carbonite, having Han's face removed, and replacing it with your own. 'It is made from fiberglass, and the short story is that a friend who is a special effects guy owned the piece, which was a direct casting off the original prop. He was moving, (aka getting married and yelled at) and asked me if I wanted it. I screamed a huge lispy "Yes!", and picked it up, but knew I wanted to do something cool with it. So I called my other nerdy special effects pals, and they offered to replace Harrison Ford's face with mine. I was so tired of hearing this offer in my daily life, but decided to finally consider it, so off it went.'"

Comments

Head as big as his ego?

[Iphtashu Fitz]

From the looks of those pictures his head is a little too big, just like his ego undoubtedly must be.

Re:Head as big as his ego?

[anakin357]

http://mirrordot.org/stories/39a95b17d780f88643ca2 4fe07782398/index.html

wtf?

[stoolpigeon]

it all sounded pretty cool, but this bit, well I just don't know.
 
  The one thing I didn't know until later was that my friend Dana had been holding his bare ass and balls directly in front of my algae covered face while my head was encased. Talk about a missed opportunity.

Re:wtf?

[eln]

I thought you were trolling, but he really did say that. I don't know which would be more disturbing, that he meant it was a missed opportunity for his friend, or a missed opportunity for himself.

Re:wtf?

[Bluesman]

To me, that meant this:

(scream 'YES)

Desecration of a sacred artefact!

[Scrameustache]

replace Harrison Ford's face with mine He took something I want on my wall and removed all value!

I'll grab my torch, you get your pitchforks, let's go have a word with our attention whoring friend...

Re:Desecration of a sacred artefact!

[lolocaust]

Exactly, imagine the killing he could have made on eBay for that thing. Now with his ugly mug instead of Harrison Ford's it's worthless.

Re:Desecration of a sacred artefact!

[Keebler71]

apparently, the thought never crossed his mind to cast the whole thing and then simply modify the duplicate. Hell, he could have quit his job, made them one after another and spawned them on ebay... you know what they say... "a fool and his replica of carbonite of Han Solo are soon parted..."

I can vaguely feel the disturbance of his reading this post, as if his of voices suddenly cried out in terror and was suddenly silenced.

Carbonite my butt

[LordEd]

That's no moon...

Re:Carbonite my butt

[Tackhead]

> That's no moon...

Hmm. Take the high road, and go with "It's a TRAP!", or take the low road, and have Carrie Fisher muttering "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!"

Decisions, decisions.

Re:*Not to scale

[cayenne8]

Overall, sounds pretty stupid. I'd think with this thing originally being a 'casting' from the original Star Wars movie prop used in the movie.....it would have had some value.

Ain't gonna be worth sh*t with his face on it now....

We can only hope the rest of the fan base follows

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Star Wars Fan Puts Himself in Carbonite

We can only hope the rest of the fan base follows. It would make it much easier for their mothers to dust around them when they cleaned their basements.

Desecration of sacred relics.

[forgotenpasswerdmoro]

Bring him and the wookie to me.

Re:He'll be very well preserved

[Stochastism]

...if he survives the freezing process.

Let's hope not, for humanities sake. He might breed otherwise.

Re:*Not to scale

[ushering05401]

I have a hard time seeing this guy as a legit Star Wars fan, but then I am a traditional type fan. This story is another reminder of the way the fan to content relationship is changing. From t.v. to the web the lines are blurring between fans as passive consumers of entertainment to active participants. We have officially moved beyond 'focus groups' helping to guide the content creation process and the result is bound to be more personal identification of fans with the content they enjoy.

Long story short, this guy may be as much a true fan as I am, and his disregard for the monetary value of the piece may prove that he has a more intense personal identification with Star Wars than I do.

I still think he is an ego-maniacal whore, but given the shifts in society my opinion could easily be on the way to irrelevance.

Who is more foolish?

[everphilski]

Who is more foolish? the fool who posts the quote, or the fool who comments on it?

Jeez...

[bmo]

There are so many things wrong with this story.

"He was moving, (aka getting married and yelled at)"

Something like that is good enough to get auctioned off at a real auction house and not Ebay, for real money. It's not as if _real_ Star Wars stuff gets on the market.

And she was yelling at him for it? How about "This is going to pay for the wedding" or "Down payment on a house"? End of argument right there. Dumbass.

And the second dumbass removed all value?

Wow.

Please, if someone is giving away stuff like that, please give it to me. I'll be sure it will be taken care of properly.

Hmm...

[niceone]

He would have been better off getting his face remodelled to look like Harison's.

Re:Hmm...

[Dogtanian]

He would have been better off getting his face remodelled to look like Harison's. First thing I thought when I read the summary was that it could be interpreted the other way around: "So I called my other nerdy special effects pals, and they offered to replace Harrison Ford's face with mine. "

It's like some horrid real-life version of Face/Off, where Harrison Ford wakes up one morning, looks in the mirror and realises with horror that he's been given the face of a nerdy Star Wars fanboy. The anguished screams are heard up to 15 miles away and continue to this day...

Already Been Done

[dstiggy]

As featured on destructoid Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and Carnegie Mellon University created a partial replica of the Death Star for the booth during carnival. (A big competition for nerds which results in a huge party, one of the few cool things CMU does). http://www.beachheadonline.com/gallery/album66/IMG _2375 http://www.beachheadonline.com/gallery/album66/IMG _2369 These are the result of being frozen in carbonite. We took a plaster mold of the whole body and back filled it and reinforced it on a 2"x4" frame. The result is a 300lb plaster replica of Hans in carbonite. Check the site if you want to see more of what the booth looked like.

Re:All I can say is...

[Tablizer]

...his parents must be so proud.

They better be, he'll be living with them for a looooong time.

Re:uncool

[nuzak]

This is really uncool. You are not supposed to destroy one of a kind movie props. A casting from the prop is hardly one of a kind.

Moron. Yet we're still in agreement about him there.

Ah, the slashdot effect...

[nweaver]

Its like hundreds of megabits of bandwidth suddenly cried out and were suddenly silenced.

Typo in the story

[commodoresloat]

It's spelled "virginity," not "nerd-cred."

Re:...and

[Dogtanian]

Did any of you RTFA? He's gay. Damn... the excuses some people will make up rather than admit they can't get a girlfriend ;-)

Re:*Not to scale

[ChefInnocent]

This story is another reminder of the way the fan to content relationship is changing. From t.v. to the web the lines are blurring between fans as passive consumers of entertainment to active participants.

Unfortunately, many people don't understand what it means to be a true fan. I am often called a fan of StarTrek, but the truth is that I simply enjoy it. I've been to 1 convention and will never go again; I just don't want to deal with those who are fanatical enough to go in costum, or debate what the real chronological order of TOS should be. I have every episode on DVD of all the series, but I can't tell you what episode redshirt #3 died on plant who-really-cares. I know people who don't own any episodes, but could give you the information and the precise minute into the episode it happened.
I think of fans as those who are fanatical enough to make something a deep part of thier daily lives, and I just enjoy the content. Yet because I have every episode of StarTrek on DVD, I get accused of being a fan.
Maybe we need a new word for the consumers who enjoy a particular activity and those who are fanatical about it. Even more so, the word shouldn't just exist, but be used by the masses.

Antiques Road Show 2027

[MrMarket]

I can see it now: "If this were an original Harrison Ford model, it would be worth $5 million, but because your grandfather's brother* replaced Harrison Ford's handsome mug with Butt Head's, the piece is now only worth $5,000**"

Great niece nods and grits her teeth look while trying to hide her disappointment/embarrassment.

*has to be handed down to nieces/nephews -- no way this guy is breeding

** $5 adjusted for inflation

Re:*Not to scale

[markov_chain]

Maybe we need a new word for the consumers who enjoy a particular activity and those who are fanatical about it.

But how do you name... that which has no life?

No, it's the scale that's wrong

[tkrotchko]

The original can't be a full-sized replica of Harrison Ford; it's probably like an 80% model so it wouldn't be so big in the shots. But he cast his head at 100%. Then he made it worse by positioning the head too high.

It looks awful. I would try to put the original back together and never admit I did that if it came out that poorly.