Excitement Beamed Into CES 2009 & Twitter

Have you heard the news from CES? I haven’t attended a Consumer Electronic Show in many years and I expected this years to be a real snoozer.  For the most part, I was correct.  The most exciting product announcement seemed to be the Palm Pre although it’s not available yet and is limited to Sprint.

The big excitement came from Levar Burton who arrived and spent time with many of our favorite geeks. Suddenly, the interest of all the editors and bloggers went from new products to the opportunity to really get to know the man who brought Geordi La Forge into our lives.

Harry McCracken, Marie Domingo and Levar Burton at CES

Levar was also introduced to the world of Twitter and has been actively talking to many of his fans.  He’s discussed his love of Reading Rainbow, life with fellow actors on Star Trek TNG and hinted at some future plans  I happen to notice that in his list of followers was @ABC_DWTS (Dancing with the Stars).  That leads me to believe he’s either a big fan of the show or we’ll be seeing Levar as one of the Stars dancing on the show next season. I would certainly rather see Levar Burton dancing than Cloris Leachman. How about you?

 

 

Levar showed off a tattoo to his new friends on Twitter, explaining that if you look at it one way, it says Kunta from his break-through role on the Mini-Series, Roots.  If however you look at it from the other way it says Levar. Way cool.







It was designed by Mark Palmer and is called an Ambigram.
http://www.redchapterclothing.com/
 

Last week I mentioned many of the businesses I follow on Twitter.  Levar isn’t the only celebrity who spends time talking to fans and making new friends.  If you’re a Sci-Fi fan you’ll also find Wil Wheaton on Twitter as http://twitter.com/wilw and Kryten from Red Dwarf as http://twitter.com/bobbyllew. Like Levar, they’re the real people and not some PR agent.  Just understand with the number of replies they get, you may not be one of the lucky ones who get a reply back

UPDATE: Thank you to Levar for mentioning this post on Twitter.  I'm not actually the one in the photo above but I appreciate his attention. I've been flooded with stories about what a nice guy Levar is including an injured solider who cherishs an autographed photo of Kunta Kinte which he carries with him when visiting his family in Ethiopia.
Levar has been silent on my theory that he will be appearing in Dancing with the Stars.  That makes me think we really may have a scoop here.  :)