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.'"

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.

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 [beachheadonline.com] http://www.beachheadonline.com/gallery/album66/IMG _2369 [beachheadonline.com] 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.