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At Raffles City this week they've set up a Lego Creators World. This is a chance for kids to play with and buy Lego sets, as at the googly-eyed crocodile car on the left, and for experts to show off what they've made, like in the giant spider display soon to bring Lego Wisconsin to its knees. I'm kind of suspicious of projects completed where everything's the appropriate color, but I can't deny the evidence of buildings in bloom, ready to be picked, or other wonders.
There are some life-size figures, like this of Boba Fett, who like many bounty hunters is not as tall as you might expect. (Nobody in movies is as tall as anyone else expects, which is why the observation someone isn't so tall is a more common movie greeting than ``Hello.'') By walking around I discovered what I didn't know before, that Fett carries a small Chrysler building on his back. There's also a neat little Max Weinberg, showing off his shiny robes and hourglass figure.
They had a lovely display of local attractions, like a dramatic re-creation of Merlion Park, which was set up with a button that meade something roar and did some lighting effect that just didn't photograph. In this whirlwind tour of the Pacific Rim you could see a nice Taiwanese temple adjacent to a Vietnamese hotel, though inexplicably I forgot to photograph the labels so I don't know which they are.
The Great Wall of China and the Sydney Opera House turn into surprisingly convincing Lego versions. I took this picture of the Opera House because nobody ever shows the real thing from this angle. On this little simulated beach nearby you could see a poor diver with his legs cut off.
There's also New Zealand's franchise of the Big Spikey Tower concept, around which was this charming slice of life scene: ``This is the best vacation ever, honey! Let me buy you a blender!'' There was another couple enjoying their blender unaware that just a few feet away was a charming little Lego drug runner roaring into Lego Hong Kong. All this was taking place at the Hong Kong Convention and Expo Centre, seen here in range of the Singapore Merlion (not to scale).
It was all really a lot of fun to look over, although I didn't buy anything, and they only had licensed theme sets for sale rather than just tubs of, you know, bricks. There were no dinosaurs in sight.
Trivia: The Continental Army, when George Washington assumed command in 1775, nominally consisted of 20,242 officers and men, 17,215 of whom were present for duty. Source: The March of Democracy, James Truslow Adams. (And while I'm at it, happy 790th to the Magna Carta, if you don't mind ignoring the conversion between Julian and Gregorian calendars.)
Currently Reading: World History, 1815-1920, Eduard Fueter.
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That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-15 03:49 pm (UTC)Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-15 04:15 pm (UTC)--Chiaroscuro
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-15 04:40 pm (UTC)I wonder if they'll just call this industry Cell Operas from now on or if the advertisers will insist that they be called 'Sell' Operas?
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-15 05:15 pm (UTC)Oh, it's not just soap operas; they're working on schemes for putting any TV stuff on mobile-internet devices like phones. They had a proof-of-concept thing at a communications expo showing how you could watch Channel Newsasia on it.
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-15 05:17 pm (UTC)... You're sure? The people wandering around there were pretty sure it was Boba Fett. As previous comments indicate, though, I never paid much attention to any of the Fetts.
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-15 05:38 pm (UTC)I want a life-size Samus Aran. Or, at the very least, Yori.
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-16 10:26 am (UTC)I have to be honest, one Fett looks like another to me. The original only had, like, 15 words of dialogue anyway.
I've got no idea who Samus Aran is ... is that any of the androgynous skinny aliens from the rainy planet where the Clone Army was made? They were rather appealing in their way. Same with that twin-tentacle-headed Jedi.
Yori I'll get around to scanning pictures for. I've got the Tron storybook here, really.
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-16 03:55 pm (UTC)I have two cardboard standees of her in my studio, one from each of the two GameCube-based Metroid games. It's not that I'm obsessed, but... the shoulders compel me....
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-16 04:50 pm (UTC)Ah, I see. I never played Metroid or any of the games like it.
Female Robots with Giant Shoulders, eh? Certainly that would qualify as a band name, but yeah, whatever you do like, you like.
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-16 08:06 pm (UTC)Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-17 10:03 am (UTC)Oh, no need to fear geeking here. This is Livejournal, after all, and even one of the relatively high-rent neighborhoods where language skills are prized.
I suppose this implies an explanation to the Chozo thing I've seen around now and then. I knew it had to refer to something, but never knew what, and didn't honestly worry much about it.
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-17 07:05 pm (UTC)Samus Aran's story starts off with her as a young girl in a human colony on the planet SR388. Space Pirates (English name, as their language is utterly unpronouncable) raid and destroy the colony, taking what they want and scorching the rest. Samus, as the only survivor, is found and rescued by the Chozo, a peaceful race whose technology has progressed so far that they have gone on to become spiritually enlightened as well since, you know, they had nothing better to do. They go to one of their occupied planets, Zebes (Zebeth in the first game; I pronounce it 'tsebesh' as though it were Romanian) and raise Samus.
The Chozo know the Space Pirates aren't gonna stop until they hold the whole damn galaxy in fear, but they are not a warrior race, they're not suited for such things. Young Samus burns with a passion, however... thanks to a combination of her tragic orphan status and natural human bloodlust, she'd make a great champion, someone the Chozo can trust to kick ass. So when she's old enough, they build her a powered suit of armor with adaptive technology that can kick the ass of practically anything out there, and set her loose. She starts by pitching herself as a bounty hunter... well, more like an independent contractor for the Galactic Police. The rest is history.
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-18 03:28 am (UTC)There you go, now don't you feel better?
I can't help thinking now for some reason of the Kim Possible where she got the magic armor, though ...
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-15 06:34 pm (UTC)Note the color scheme and then compare it to the link to Jango
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boba_Fett
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-16 10:29 am (UTC)Who's causing trouble? Anyway I'm fine if it's Jango Fett. He's still the one walking around with an Art Deco building on his back.
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-16 03:44 am (UTC)Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-16 06:13 am (UTC)and yesh coati.. lotsa linx! :D
Re: That's not Boba Fett
Date: 2005-06-16 10:30 am (UTC)It's not all that many pictures when you consider how much there is to document from China through to New Zealand, though. I had to cut a lot of material for time.
Many LEGO links (was: Re: That's not Boba Fett)
Date: 2005-06-19 02:53 am (UTC)(The same impulse arises at anime conventions vis-a-vis hall costumes.)
The vehicles arrayed around the Blooming Buildings are all of uniform colors (red and green) because TLC (The LEGO Company) now produces a line of sets (http://shop.lego.com/leaf.asp?cn=49&d=11&t=5) (called "Creators" or "Designers") that *do* that -- they're like the 1980s Universal sets, with a bunch of fairly generic pieces in a consistent color scheme, and an instruction book with themed plans for ~10 models and pics of ~20 more. Cars, planes, robots, sea life, etc.
You can also buy tubs of bulk brick (http://shop.lego.com/leaf.asp?cn=44&d=11&t=5): 1000 bricks for USD20 is a great deal. And the LEGO retail stores (http://www.lego.com/legostores/Default.asp?x=x) feature Pick-a-Brick bulk bins. (There's one at the Mall of America in Minnesota but, oddly, not at the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania. The former is the largest mall in the US by square footage, and the latter by number of stores.)
--PT in PA
Re: Many LEGO links (was: Re: That's not Boba Fett)
Date: 2005-06-19 02:54 am (UTC)Re: Many LEGO links (was: Re: That's not Boba Fett)
Date: 2005-06-19 05:34 pm (UTC)Happens to us all. There are weird things with the preview, and editing features would be quite welcome if they were ever to be added.
Re: Many LEGO links (was: Re: That's not Boba Fett)
Date: 2005-06-19 05:31 pm (UTC)I had to suppose they were all right with photographing the Lego Creators display. They didn't have any particular signs one way or the other, and malls tend to be about evenly split between ``having a posted no-photograph sign'' and ``have no posted sign one way or the other.'' Finally I went with the assumption there were plenty of other people taking pictures, in view of people who were selling Lego boxes, so if I was going to be in trouble they had a dozen other people to pick on first.
The Lego convention sounds rather interesting. If I'd had more money laying about when I was back in the US I ... well, probably wouldn't have gone, since I'm a very boring person who likes to spend his weekends doing daring things like going to the Chinese Buffet on Route 7, but it would at least have been an option. The big tubs of Legos given to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute back in '96 always seemed to be under-exploited.
The one Lego store I know of, in Singapore, is in Dhoby Ghaut's Plaza Singapura, and it only sells designed sets. I keep wondering about buying the Saturn V, but then I have so many Saturn V's already ...