"See you around, kid."

  

I have to say that Omaze.com, the online fundraising site, has nailed it in terms of their business model:  offer a wide range of donation levels to win a unique prize or experience, generally in association with a celebrity representative.  And it works: as an example, the opportunity to be in The Force Awakens that I contributed to in 2014 raised over 4.26 million dollars for UNICEF.

And, really, it's brilliant.  As opposed to charity ticket draws with large cash prizes, there's almost no serious expenses involved for most of the prizes.  Win a chance to be in a Star Wars movie?  Real costs, flights and a hotel - maybe meals, or a cab to the set.  Value of experience? PRICELESS.

Similarly, breakfast with a bunch of Doctor Whos?  How much would breakfast for eight people cost on top of airline tickets and accommodations?  But to the right person, it's the experience of all time.

I've entered a couple of other opportunities that haven't made it here, including a chance to take selfies with the cast of Schitt's Creek that was really on Karli's behalf, but the most recent charity offering takes the prize, so to speak.

Dinner with Mark Hamill.

Oh, sure, you get to attend the premier of The Rise of Skywalker, too, but really - DINNER WITH MARK HAMILL!

In addition to his unique contributions to the genre, most people are unaware that Mr. Hamill is also a major comic book geek in his own right.  There's also some of his lesser-known work that I'd love to discuss - does anyone else reading this remember his voice-over work from the Jeannie animated series, which was a California surfer dude re-imagining of the I Dream of Jeannie series from the 1960s?  Or how about The Black Pearl, the comic book he created for Dark Horse Comics in the 1990s?  Not to mention his incredible body of voice-over work as the Joker, which has come very close to eclipsing Star Wars in terms of its notoriety.

No offense to Daisy Ridley or Adam Driver, who also have Star Wars charity packages up on Omaze, but even ignoring Mark Hamill's stature as a geek icon, they haven't really offered anything close to the same level of involvement.  It's one thing to take someone to the premier and take a selfie or give them a signed souvenir light saber, or even get them into the afterparty, but I feel that Mark has gone the extra mile in offering up some of his own time in the interests of charity.

I really don't expect to win, I generally don't have any sort of luck at all in draws, but whoever does win?  You're a lucky person in more ways than one, and I very much hope you appreciate it.

- Sid