I’m not really a sci-fi convention guy—I find them wearing though I can see why most fans love ‘em—but I had the idea that I ought to get the soundtrack autographed, and that meant hitting up some shows.

I got Mark Hamill (“Luke”) and Peter Mayhew (“Chewbacca”) to sign it at New York Comic Con in October, 2011—Hamill flipped it around a few times to look at it and then asked if it was an old Laserdisk (the obscure format before DVD, for all you young’ns). Mayhew’s only comment was to suspiciously ask if I’d paid his wife $30 before he signed it. Nice.

In March, 2012, I did a film history lecture at I-Con, a small Long Island sci-fi convention, and heard that one of the guests would be Paul Blake, one of the two people who played Greedo (the green alien that Han shot first in the cantina). His signature is on the back cover (the left side), and he was a very nice guy—warm and extremely funny. He came across as a regular fella who happened to have had a one-day temp job half-a-lifetime ago, and to his astonishment, he’d discovered he could still make a few bucks from it, all these years later. Friends of mine invited him out to dinner that evening, and I’m told he was both charming and a riot.

As for the Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) signature (front cover, bottom), that was a teeth-gritting experience. At the 2012 edition of New York Comic Con, we waited on a line for an hour, then she took a 30-minute break when I was three people away. Fair enough—it’s got to be a tiresome gig. When she came back, I handed the LP to an assistant, who handed it to an assistant, who handed it to Fisher at a table 15 feet away, so as to ensure that no one could even attempt to talk to her. I mean, I get it—there’s got to be a lot of wackos out there, and frankly, I wouldn’t have anything to say beyond “thanks for the autograph” anyway, but that’s still pretty weak. Oh, and you weren’t allowed to have a camera or cell phone out, not even to take a “proof” picture of her signing your object (though she was so far away, who could see it?). Again, weak. I did the next best thing—while waiting in line, pre-signature, I took a photo of my LP with the “I’ve paid” Carrie Fisher line ticket. Circumstantial, but it’ll probably do. Not that I plan to sell this album, but hey, you never know.