Here's where the fun begins

I celebrated my 46th birthday on Wednesday, the high point of which was sitting down to watch A New Hope. I had decided that since it was my birthday, I should feel free to do something that was special, just for me, and thought a viewing of New Hope fit the bill nicely.

I couldn't have been more right. I was joined by my youngest padawan, who is beginning to see things in the movies that she missed a year ago. After, we looked through a Star Wars popup book that was a Christmas present from her and her mother. She still has much to learn, but she is growing stronger in the Force, and is taking her first steps into a larger world.

Since then, she has enthusiastically joined me as I watched the remaining Original Trilogy movies on successive nights. We also have plans to watch Episodes I and II before the premiere of The Clone Wars.  As my apprentice Veiltender is no doubt discovering, and as my other former padawans will one day learn, one of the great joys of parenthood, and of life in general, is sharing things that you love with your offspring.

Happily, it seems that there will be much more of that sort of things in the future. I interrupted our viewing of Jedi last night to watch a 30-minute preview of Clone Wars on Cartoon Network. Sure, it's for kids; what did one expect? But it looks like fun, both to my kid, and the kid in me. As a result, we are both looking forward to the debut this Friday (which will naturally be followed by a post on our reactions).

What are my expectations for the series? I do not expect it to be great, I do not expect it to live up to the lofty standards of the Original Trilogy. But I do expect it to be good, overall. If all goes well, it should be a fun little half-hour in the Star Wars galaxy, delivered fresh to my door every Friday night. Some of it will be funny, some of it will be bad, or juvenile, and some of it will simply be so-so. But overall, I am very happy at the prospect of getting to know a new Star Wars creation.

I must admit, I've had some help in nurturing my fandom. In the past few weeks, I have been listening to the podcasts on TheForce.Net once again. I once derided this podcast as being too much about collecting and conventions, and with a little too much name dropping.

To quote Obi-Wan Kenobi, "I was wrong." I fully retract that premature judgement. The people who do the Force.Net are sincere fans, who are obviously thrilled at the prospect of new Star Wars. And their excitement is starting to fuel my own.

As a result of my current fan focus, you can expect more posts on Star Wars in the coming weeks. In addition the aforementioned review of the series premiere, I plan to follow the example of my Fellow Travelers, and throw out a few lists of my own for consideration — Saga based, of course.

I expect the next few weeks to be great fun.