What’s wrong with us?

Since I got my first AARP card in the mail this week, I figure I’ve finally taken the first steps to becoming elderly. I’m excited about this, because one of the chief virtues people assign to the elderly is their wisdom. Older people know things. It must be because of all the miles they have logged, but the older a person gets, the more he or she understands life — even if the conclusion is that life cannot easily be understood.

I’m also excited to tell you that this older person = sage thing obviously worked. Because, less than a day after the card arrived, I woke up this morning understanding what is causing most of the problems in the world. It’s them.

You know who them is. In the realm of U.S. politics, for example, if you are a Democrat, it’s a Republican. Conversely, if you’re a Republican, it’s the Democrats. All of the world’s problems would disappear and the earth would be  a garden if we could just lock up all the Democrats, or all the Republicans. Simple as that.

While we’re at it, we have to get rid of the conservatives and the liberals. A lot of Republicans use Liberal as another label for Democrat, so we can probably kill two birds with one stone there, and conversely, Republican must equal Conservative, so that’s another two-for-one special out of the way.

So that’s my solution: If we just figure out who they are and take them out of the equation (non-violently, of course), surely whoever’s left will be free to enact their plans on how to fix America, and we’ll finally get that paradise we’re all wanting.

The only problem is people have tried that before: politically parties have taken over legislatures, or indeed, whole governments, when they saw other groups causing all the problems. For example, in 1930s Germany, they went by the name of Social Democrats. Once the opposition was eliminated, then Germany was free to usher in the “paradise” that was the Third Reich. And since so many men and women of my parent’s generation suffered and died to rid the world of that “paradise,” I think we can rule out mass bans of the opposition as a way of settling debate.

Our founding fathers were much wiser men than we seem to be. They built into our government a system of checks and balances, so a man like Adolph Hitler wouldn’t turn the country into a dictatorship — or, to be fair to their perspective, a monarchy. There are sophisticated controls to allow one branch, when pushed, to push back. The problem is, I don’t think they foresaw just how much of a role money and power would come to play in our governments. And I don’t think they knew to what extent pushing would become the rule, not the exception.

Washington today has become a joke. Were he to go to Washington today, Mr. Smith wouldn’t last five minutes before he was swallowed up by special interests and partisan politics. That’s simply the coin of the realm these days. Quite apart from their individual selfish interests, the various and sundry Republicans and Democrats have dropped any pretense of seeing the other side as “the loyal opposition,” and instead, have become the political equivalent of that old married couple down the street — the only way they can communicate is to argue. They belittle, they ridicule, they accuse, they demean, and the seek only the other side’s destruction. When a man goes to Washington these days, he’s often much more interested in hurting them and doing good for his own side than in doing what’s best for the people that sent him there. I know — that’s a generalization. But it is far too often true.

So in retrospect, I guess age does not automatically equate to wisdom. Mostly because I really have no clue how to fix what’s wrong in Washington, but also because so many of the people who are causing the problems in Washington could and perhaps do belong to AARP.

Be that as it may, I remain convinced that the United States has thrown aside the greatness of an us in favor of a lot of shrieking, divisive thems. 

When I was a young man, and even more idealistic than I am now, I watched the presidential election night results at a friend’s house. I won’t say which election, and I won’t say which party to which he and his mother belonged. But as the night fell irrevocably to them, one of them said to the other, with a wrathful relish I’ll not soon forget, “Now we’ll show them!”

I’ve thought of that every election night since then. At first, I thought that tone was simply the province of that particular party — proof that they were, themselves a them to be opposed. But now, I realize that both parties come to power, or return to it, with that battle cry on their lips. As a result, I have long since dismissed politics as an insolvable mess. As them against them. Oh, I voted every year — my duty as a citizen. But I tried to stay aloof; to not get involved. I had no desire to wade into somebody else’s fight. And besides, I really didn’t have any answers either, so why muddy the waters with my own amateurish and unschooled opinions.

Now, the “wisdom” of my years have made me realize that this was a mistake. I’ve sat on the sidelines for far too long. And, all kidding aside, I don’t know how many years I have left. I think perhaps the time has come for me to make some sort of difference with the time I have remaining.

The battle is out there. But it is also inside of us. The thems aren’t conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, or any of the various and traditional opposing forces. The thems are ignorance, poverty, greed, corruption, scorn, contempt, pride, arrogance, abuse of a dozen different kinds, prejudice, bigotry, waste, and hundreds of other sins of commission and omission. They are all around us. They are non-partisan. And they will never be stopped until the Lord returns. But they must always, always, be fought.

I am a small man, of small means, and there is little that I can do of myself. But starting today, and in my own small way, I mean to try.

Requiem

Steve Jobs, former CEO of my favorite technology company, died today. There are going to be a lot of people eulogizing Mr. Jobs, or Steve, as we Apple fanboys frequently called him.

Virtually any of these people are going to be far better qualified than I am to wax poetic about what he was like, or how his life mattered in ways we still don’t fully know the scope of.

I never knew Steve; never wrote to him, never even saw him from afar. I suspect that had I known him as a person, there’s a chance I might not have liked him. None of that matters right now, anyway.

I only want to tell one story about Steve, and its not really about him. It’s about me. 

When I was a young man in the mid-eighties, I loved music above practically all else. It consumed me. I wanted to spend the rest of my life making it, listening to it, and sharing it with other people. I was going to be the next Geddy Lee, or John Lennon, or any one of a handful of the talented men I idolized in my early twenties. Music was, in a word, sacred to me.

Flash forward roughly twenty years. By this time I have failed at becoming a musician, in more ways than one. I had burned out on studying trumpet (a very long story), which left a music education degree unfinished. I had subsequently left that to become a bass player with my best friend. That, too, came to naught, and eventually, the part of me that used to love music was a empty, dead place. Poke it a little with a memory, or somesuch thing, and the pain of my failure would come roaring back. So mostly, I avoided music for years at a time.

What changed that feeling for me was an iPod photo, which my wife, in her infinite wisdom, encouraged me to buy when she saw how much I wanted one. And make no mistake, it was enormously expensive compared to other devices — $500, at a time when portable CD players were $100. But it gave me the ability to carry around my music collection with me wherever I went. It let me sit, still and quiet in a chair, getting lost in pieces of music I hadn’t listened to for years. The ability to access whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, was a complete game-changer for me. And before much time had passed, I was able to fall in love with music again.

Oh, not to the same level I had before; I was young, then, and full of the passions of youth. Music will never be like that for me again. But thanks to that iPod, and the ones that came after it, I was able to become excited about music again, which for me is by no means a small thing.

The company that made that iPod is named Apple. The man who oversaw the many, many people in that company who designed and built that iPod is named Steve Jobs. He died today.

A lot of people are going to remember Steve for what he built. I’m going to remember him for what he, indirectly, gave back to me. As it turns out, the iPod was just the tip of the iceberg for me — there were Macs and iPhones and iPads in my future. But I still, still feel a soft spot in my heart for the simple genius of that first iPod. And it is altogether fitting that, when I heard the news of Steve’s death, I was tinkering with the playlists on my iPhone — still enjoying the world of digital music that he helped make happen.

Rest in peace, Steve. And, from the bottom of my heart, my deepest thanks.

Down, not out

This is a bit of a first. My Internet is down at home, so I'm resorting to my newly acquired Blogger app on my phone to post this. Typing on a 3.5-inch piece of glass is tricky — even trickier when you consider it's in portrait mode. But with patience and the right tools, anything is possible.

I have little to say this outing; only that I am in the end game of a long-overdue week off. Life is good right now. I hope to have more content in the future. For now, I think I'll use the absence of the World Wide Web as a chance to unplug for the rest of the weekend — at least from the Internet.

See you soon.

Imperfect present tense

I had a Facebook “conversation” not too long ago where I confessed to getting old. A friend of mine responded with “it beats being dead,” to which I replied, without thinking, that it did, for a fact.

Another friend immediately (and accurately) pointed out that we actually didn’t know that for a fact. The instant I read his post, I felt a bit like Peter when the rooster crowed for the third time. And I was instantly ashamed.

I was ashamed because I am a Christian. And as such, I’m supposed to know better.

Of course, everyone knows that Christians believe in an afterlife. We believe that what is waiting for us after death is so much better than what we have here that we can’t even imagine it. 

Often, this idea gets over-simplified (or more accurately, derided) by some as “pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die” — an unspecified and intangible reward you get in return for a lifetime of denial, sacrifice and doing what you’re told. And I’m sorry to say that it is the sum total of what some people think Christianity means.

I think it’s more accurate to say that Christians believe that death is the moment that we cease looking at the world through a dirty mirror, as Paul the Apostle famously wrote to the Church at Corinth, and get a look at the way things really are. It’s not just life after death — it’s life as it really is. 

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor. 13:12, NRSV).

Heaven, put simply, is when all of our questions have answers, and when we are reunited with the God we have been, whether we know it or not, yearning for all of our lives.

Before I go any further, I should say that I believe that as an important a concept as heaven for Christians, it is secondary to the much more important question of how we act towards our fellow men and women here and now; we are called to make earth as heaven-like as possible right now, with our work, our love, and our compassion. Simply sitting back, twiddling our thumbs, and waiting for heaven to come to us isn’t an option.

But I digress: I think the reason I gave my casual, off-the-cuff answer to my friend is twofold. First, I am, like most people, seeped in a lifetime of secular thinking, where death is seen as crushingly final. From where we stand now, when death comes, all of your choices end. From the earthbound perspective, the story is over. 

Of course, Christians believe the exact opposite — that death is the moment when the story actually begins. My pastor has a wonderful habit of saying someone who has died has “joined the Church Triumphant.” Apparently, it’s an idea hasn’t fully gotten into my bones yet.

There is a second possibility — that the off-the-cuff, without-thinking answer is much closer to what a person really believes than the reasoned, deliberate one. In other words, with my answer, I revealed that I really don’t believe what I actually profess to believe.

While I concede the possibility, I don’t think this is what’s going on at all. I’ve had ample opportunities during my lifetime to cultivate my innate deist tendencies (I never felt the call of true agnosticism within me, much less atheism). Instead, quite the opposite has happened; as I have gotten older, I have grown in my belief, and my faith.

In the interest of clarity, that belief is best summed up by the concise words of the Apostle’s Creed;

I believe in God the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth;

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord:

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, dead, and buried;

the third day he rose from the dead;

he ascended into heaven,

and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;

from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic* church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

Instead, I think there is a third, and much more likely, possibility; that I am simply guilty of having imperfect faith. To quote our friend Paul again, faith “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1). I have not seen heaven — not in this life, at least — but I really do I believe it exists, for the simple reason that people that I trust — Jesus, Paul, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others — have told me that it does.

I do not have the faith of any of these men; least of all Jesus, who Paul calls “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” Fortunately, faith is a not a quality that one is born with; it is a quantity that is developed, like strength or knowledge. If I am physically weak now, I can exercise, and become stronger. If I am ignorant on a given subject, I can study, and learn. And if my faith is imperfect (a foregone conclusion), prayer, study and fellowship can only increase it. 

If so, maybe next time, simple Facebook conversations won’t trip me up, and I won’t have to use almost 1,000 words to correct what I should have said in 30 or less.

We can always hope.

*We Protestants read this as “universal,” but my Catholic friends can feel free to substitute the uppercase C.

Saga Creed I: On the E.U.

This will be a short declaration fairly long screed on my Official Position on the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Ahem, and here goes:

I pretty much hate it.

Okay, obviously I won't be able to leave it at that. For those of you who don't know, the Expanded Universe, or E.U., are any stories or characters outside of the realm of the six Star Wars films. These six are called canon, which is a riff on the concept of canon scripture — i.e., something considered to be authoritative.

And I both love them and hate them. Mostly hate.

Mind you, I've been reading Star Wars novels for as long as there have been Star Wars novels, starting with the much-maligned and personally beloved Splinter of the Mind's Eye. It seems incredible in the age of instant information and communication in which we live, but in the days and months after Star Wars was first released in the late 70s, there was a big blob of nothing out there waiting if you wanted to get more of the Star Wars universe — especially if you lived in rural Tennessee, as I did.

You could:

Read Starlog — This godsend of a magazine debuted right around the time of Star Wars' release, as I recall, and contained articles about all things geek. My favorite memory was Starlog nailing the Blue Harvest ruse by Lucasfilm. It was the closest thing we had to regular news about the things we loved, and it was a lifeline back in the day.


Build models — Back before video games and DVDs, plastic model kits were both a way to get into the minutia of the Star Wars/Star Trek universe, and to fly your freak flag to any unsuspecting friends who happened to come over. My wife still talks about the shrine to Capt. Kirk I had built over my bed in college, including a picture of the man himself in the TOS-era captain's chair, framed by a collection of bugles and swords, and set off by a model of the TMP version of the Enterprise that I still regard as the high water mark of my model-making skills.

Talk to friends — This is still the heart of fandom, to me; listening and talking with someone who loves the things you love as much as you do, or maybe even more. Pretty much every friend I made in high school and college — notably my future wife and my two closest male friends — shared one or more of my great passions. Still, this had its drawbacks. For starters, the ratio of geeks to normal people in the 70s was still pretty low, and communications being what it was back then, it was pretty tough to find them. And I still remember my failed attempt to start my own Star Trek fan club while living in Ohio; it folded unceremoniously after the first meeting after the loud guffaws, giggles and constant interruptions from a boy who's name I can't recall cause me to give up 10 minutes in.

Write your own adventures — I have never been terribly productive at writing fiction. My first attempt was in my tweens, and I made another attempt a few years later. Both tries were seriously hampered by the fact that the word processor hadn't been invented yet, and I seem to be dependent on the much more malleable nature of digitized writing. But writing has always been a very popular way to dwell in the world of your choice; it is only since the birth of the internet that it has taken on the name Fan Fiction.

Read books —At last we come to it; the reason for the E.U.s of Star Trek, Star Wars and a few dozen other fandoms. The two big franchises are essentially story-telling mediums, albeit ones using very different narrative techniques. So if you really want to live in the galaxy far, far away (or the final frontier), and you don't have more canon to look forward to, what better way that through novels, comics and role-playing games that expand on that universe?

I wish that that were so. At its best, the E.U. novels do just that; they allow us to live in that world a little longer, visit with our favorite characters more, and have more adventures with them, and learn about how the world works. It gives you that little bit of extra time in a place where the Force works, space travel is how you get to work, and life is a little more black and white. They are, in a word, fun.

At their worst, they take beloved characters and turn them into something unrecognizable in the name of dramatic license; they carve off whole sections of a character's backstory to make what they're doing seem more important, and they create new characters that usually make the core characters look life buffoons. As I have observed elsewhere, Timothy Zahn did most of these in his widely-beloved Thrawn trilogy, which is widely credited/blamed with starting the whole E.U. business in the first place.

I should mention at this point that all of my knowledge comes from reading the E.U. in the mid-to-late 1990s, prior to the release of Phantom. From what I can infer on this rather good take on what the E.U. has become on fangirlblog.com, what I was reading then was actually the golden age of the Expanded Universe. Since then, there have been several multi-book sagas, one of which committed the cardinal sin of killing off Chewbacca, and none of which sound like very much fun.

I've mentioned fun twice, because at the end of the day, that is what Star Wars and Star Trek ultimately need to be for me; fun. Fun is my yardstick when it comes to Star Wars; I need to feel a sense of enjoyment. I don't go to those universes to get caught up in an angst-ridden soap opera with lightsabers. Drama is fine, but Star Wars is, first and foremost, an adventure story. It is, to use a crude analogy, Jules Verne, not Shakespeare.

That aside, I will tolerate not fun as long as George Lucas is the one dishing it out (witness Revenge of the Sith — grand and sweeping? Certainly. Riveting? Of course. Among the best of the saga? Possibly, depending on your point of view. Fun? Not so much). George is The Authority in his universe. But lately, because the content of the E.U. is so much larger than the core films themselves, it has, in the minds of many, become the main event; this multi-headed hydra, composed by a hundred different authors, all with different takes on the Star Wars characters and story, is, because of its sheer bulk, what is important, while the films themselves are, occasionally, made to conform to the product of the week to legitimize it. The tail is attempting to wag the dog.

A recent, and to me, rather infuriating example: One of my favorite vessels in A New Hope has always been the Tantive IV, also known as the Rebel Blockade Runner. Adopted from an early Ralph McQuarrie design concept for the Millennium Falcon, it is the first starship we see in the saga, as well as the site of the first battle. She never appeared again, and if anyone ever went anywhere near her history, I never saw it. I always wanted to know more about her, and when the ship made a glistening new appearance in Sith, I was thrilled to see the old girl again. It was, for me, an important link between Episode III and Episode IV.

I have only recently learned that in order to bring the ship into line with established E.U. continuity  — a vulgar practice apparently known as retconning — that ship has been stripped of its status as the Tantive IV, and is, instead, a similar ship from the Star Wars: Empire at War video game called the Sundered Heart. Apparently, this is the ship that Captain Antilles commanded when he wasn't aboard the Tantive IV. So when Obi-Wan lands on Bail Organa's ship, it's actually something from a video game I've never even heard of (and published a year after RotS) that's clawed its way into the films. It is not, as I've long believed, a beautiful bit of continuity and revealed backstory of one of the most iconic ships of the Star Wars story; it is some game designer's creation being forced into the main story. This was actually confirmed last year by Leland Chee, who has the unenviable task of making all of the myriad story lines in the Star Wars universe from the past 34 years seem like a continuous epic.

One point made often by the crew of The ForceCast is that the Star Wars story is ultimately what George says it is. It belongs to him, both as an artist, and in a very real, and legally binding sense. He is the master storyteller; he created the characters; he is, to use a fan nickname for him, The Maker. If he told us all tomorrow that Han Solo was actually Palpatine's half-brother, I wouldn't like it (as I didn't like the revelation that Luke and Leia were brother and sister back in the day), but I would have to live with it. And while I have nothing against Leland, his five-years-after-the-fact declaration isn't enough to change my mind. The fact is, there were toys from the time of the movie labeling the ship as the Tantive IV, which pretty much ends the debate for me.

I've gone far afield here, and probably muddied up the place with my griping about the E.U., when all I wanted this post to do was state my official position — my creed as a Star Wars fan when it comes to canon. And that, simply said, is this.

1. I believe that the six Star Wars films are the only truly canonical sources.
2. I believe that the Star Wars novels written from Splinter of the Mind's Eye onward should be regarded as professionally created fan fiction; fun, and occasionally edifying and instructive, but not authoritative.
3. I believe even more strongly that all of the Star Wars video games and comics should be taken with several grains, or perhaps an entire shaker, of salt.
4. I believe if you personally wish to adopt any or all of the novels, games, comics, cartoons, holiday specials or other fare, into your understanding of the Star Wars universe, you are free to do so. You are not free to tell me what pieces of the novels, games, comics, cartoons, holiday specials or other fare that I am allowed to adopt for my understanding of the Star Wars universe, and vice-versa, even if you work for a company George owns.

George Lucas said that for him, the end of the Star Wars story came with the final scene of Return of the Jedi. I quote from the Official Site:

"But there's no story past Episode VI, there's just no story. It's a certain story about Anakin Skywalker and once Anakin Skywalker dies, that's kind of the end of the story. There is no story about Luke Skywalker, I mean apart from the books. But there's three worlds: There's my world that I made up, there's the licensing world that's the books, the comics, all that kind of stuff, the games, which is their world, and then there's the fans' world, which is also very rich in imagination, but they don't always mesh. All I'm in charge of is my world. I can't be in charge of those other people's world, because I can't keep up with it."

I find this comment to be liberating. I don't have to like the E.U. (or the licensing world, as George calls it). I can accept it on an item-by-item basis, or not accept it at all — it is a different creature entirely. If I want to read a Star Wars novel, or play a game, I can enjoy it, but I don't have to find some way to rationalize something as being canonical if I personally don't want to. Star Wars, for George, and for me, is the films.

Exactly which version of the films is a can of worms I will crack open at another time.

Postscript: I want to give ample credit to an excellent discussion on E.U. and canon between Fangirl  and the TheForce.net crew in the May 27 edition of The Weekly ForceCast, for inspiring and informing this post.

Of Norse gods and flannel Jedis

Friday night, the wife and I went on a long-overdue date to the local movie house. We live in a somewhat rural part of West Tennessee; yet I am happy to say that the local theater now runs 3-D movies. And while I still think the whole 3-D movie thing is a bit overblown, and in no small degree a gimmick by Hollywood to keep traffic flowing to the theaters, I think this is a good thing, in the main — mostly because I no longer have to drive to Nashville to see a film in 3-D, which was the case as recently as two years ago.

On the downside, the local theater isn’t large enough to offer 2-D offerings of the same film for those who don’t like the new format (a non-existent complaint for me — if I care enough to go to the theater at all, it will likely only be for a ‘big’ picture, which I would probably want to see in 3-D in the first place). 

A greater concern is that two tickets to the Friday night 3-D showing of Thor nearly obliterated a $20 bill, leaving only a whimpering portrait of George Washington in its place — which explains nicely why I only rarely go to the movies these days.

So the wife and I have now seen the first of the big summer movies — Thor. I am no one’s comic book geek, as a general rule, but as a fan of stories with at least some element of the fantastical (Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, ect.), I find myself following them rather regularly, and consequently, have a passing familiarity with the comic, and the Norse mythos it was based upon. Also, I’ve always been a fan of Kenneth Branagh’s work, so there’s that.

It was, in a word, fun, from start to finish. Chris Hemsworth, whom we last saw as James T. Kirk’s father, is more than up to the task of bringing the son of Odin to life; he is, in equal parts, strong and vulnerable, infuriating and likable, and heroic and flawed. Natalie Portman’s performance was a surprise; she is, for the first time, cute. Thor’s brother, whose name I will not repeat in a nod to superstition, was deftly played by an actor whose name I cannot recall, and am, at the moment, too lazy to look up. In all, it was well worth sacrificing Mr. Hamilton, and I recommend it to anyone interested in an evening’s fun.

Earlier that morning, I had a happy accident when I accidently opened the Disney Parks Blog , which happened to be running a live stream of the opening ceremonies for Star Tours 3-D. I came in just in time to see Bob Iger and George Lucas making a few remarks in front of the attraction. When I went back later (when I wasn’t working), I found a picture of Iger and George standing next to Darth Vader, holding lightsabers.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen George with a lightsaber, and I have to say, it doesn’t really suit him. To be sure, no one has earned the right to actually carry a saber more than George, but on him, it looked a bit out of place. I think what threw me off was what he was wearing; jeans and a long-sleeved button-up flannel shirt. Now I know that George has developed a rep for rocking the flannel shirt as his default daily dress, but I’m sorry — lightsabers demand to be paired with a certain look, and “I’m heading down to IKEA to pick up some bookshelves” isn’t it. 

Of course, when George gave himself a Hitchcock moment and appeared in Revenge of the Sith, he didn’t appear in Jedi regalia, but instead dressed as a barely-recognizable blue-skinned alien. So I suppose if he didn’t do it when he had the full might of the Lucasfilm costuming and makeup departments behind him, he can hardly be expected to rise to the occasion for a theme park opening. 

But I’ve got to say, I expect more from a member of the 501^st — even an honorary one.

You say it's your birthday

I was just strolling through TheForce.net, and found this cool fan commemoration of George Lucas' birthday by a fan artist named Steven Hayford. Apparently, he's known for things like this, and I intend to find out more about his work. In any case, Happy Birthday to The Maker. You can find the original story, as well as a link to the full-size image, here.

The circle is now complete

I thought that I would dash off a hasty note to acknowledge that the thing has been accomplished: After six years of talking about it, I have succeeded in watching all six Star Wars films in chronological order, in a fairly rapid period of time — six films in slightly over six days. I started Phantom last Friday, but was called away early on (before the Jedi had even landed on Naboo), and carried on with the bulk of it the next day. I finished Return of the Jedi yesterday (Thursday) afternoon around 5:45 p.m. Watching with we was my wife and daughter. So what was started with The Phantom Menace as a solitary act became, by the end of the project, a family affair.

I was surprised by how engrossing I found some films (my top three were Empire, Sith and Clones, in that order). I was equally surprised how detached I was for others; particularly the original Star Wars, which has always nipped at the heels of Empire as my all-time favorite. There's always another day, however, and I expect the next time I see Phantom, A New Hope and Jedi, I'll get more out of them.

One thing that was reassuring was how very much I enjoyed the experience overall. If you are a Star Wars fan, and you have not watched the Saga as a cohesive whole, then you owe it to yourself to do so. There are things in the prequels that seemed like mere imitations of elements from the Classic Trilogy when the prequels were first released. When placed in the context of the whole saga, they take on the feel of recurring themes and elements.

The great surprise for me was how easily I was able to accept James Earl Jones/Dave Prowse's Darth Vader and Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader as the same person. While I was watching the prequels as they were released, I saw flashes of Vader in Christensen's performace, but when I would watch the Classic Trilogy, and I saw Vader, I saw what I had always seen — the shell. The black breath mask, the helmet, the cape. All of the accoutrements I've come to love, but no trace of the living being beneath.

This time, with the Prequels under my belt, I was able to imagine, in glimpses, the man trapped inside the armor. I would see Anakin in a gesture, or hear him with a line. I could almost literally see the younger Anakin's face. It was, for me, the essential piece of the puzzle I needed to meld the two trilogies together into one complete story. Before, I never quite believed that the Jedi Knight in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith was the Sith Lord from The Classic Trilogy. Now, I kind of do; or at least, I'm starting to.

Now if I could only convince myself that Jake Lloyd's Anakin could conceivably look anything like Hayden Christensen when he grows up...

We could be stuck here for a very long time

Well, I’m fresh from listening to TheForce.net’s commentary on A New Hope, which, by the way, I recommend highly. It was nothing, more or less, than four devoted Star Wars fans watching the classic trilogy together, albeit in separate living rooms, and just talking about what they love about the Saga. There was no negativity, no overt bashing of anything — just lots and lots of enthusiasm. Once again, my perceptions of TheForce.net being entirely staffed by collectors has been challenged.

I’m writing so soon after this morning’s post (nearly all of which I wrote last night) because I inadvertently passed along some false information, in the form of a bit of harmless speculation about George’s 3D plans. And I’d be a lot less depressed if it wasn’t true.

I had assumed that, given the February 2012 date of the 3D release of The Phantom Menace, that George was going to follow the same release strategy he did for the Special Editions — i.e., about one a month. Sadly, according to my new contacts at TheForce.net tell me that it will be more like one a year.

Let’s say that again: One a year.

That means that Return of the Jedi will be released in 2018. My daughter will be in college, and I’ll be uncomfortably close to the legal retirement age. This is most certainly not soon enough for my tastes, and I’m fervently hoping that their information is incorrect.

If it is true, at least I’ll have gotten my full mileage out of the Blu-ray box set. And who knows? I may even have a 3D TV by then.

Hey — it could happen.

A final note before I retire. I have just, moments ago, finished Revenge of the Sith, and by extension, the Prequel Trilogy. The tiny candle flame of detached indifference I began Phantom Menace with has grown over the three films. By the time I finished Sith, I was absolutely riveted, and it was some moments after the credits stopped before I could bring myself to speak. As I said in my last post, I'm definitely back.

I’m working tomorrow night; after that, I intend to wade into the Original Trilogy (the Special Editions, in a concession to George — we’ll let him have it his way this time). If all goes well, I hope to reach Jedi by Sunday at the latest.

I’ll keep you posted.

Well, I’m back

You’ve probably figured out by now, or soon will, that the part of me that’s a Star Wars fan has roared back into life in the past week. I have been eating, breathing and sleeping the Saga since Wednesday. That’s right, the same bit of vulgar fanbase manipulation that caused me to rip on Lucasfilm/Fox in my last post also reminded me of why I’m a fan in the first place. So, the old axiom that good can come from bad is once again proved true.

Since Tuesday, I have returned to a project I have long vowed to accomplish; a viewing of the complete saga, in order. I finished off The Phantom Menace yesterday afternoon, and finished Attack of the Clones just a few moments ago. After reacquainting myself with all six, I plan to go back and linger over each for a time — kicking the tires and so forth. 

It’s been a long time since I watched the films, and my viewing of Phantom yesterday brought home just how long it had been. I have always liked Phantom, even as I was aware of its flaws. I was surprised to find I didn’t enjoy it as much as I have in the past; I had a sense of detachment that was a little disquieting, and I didn’t get caught up in the story the way I once did. In short, I was very aware I was watching a movie, and was unable to lose myself in the story. Clearly, I have fallen far from the faith. But I found Clones to be much more engrossing than I expected, so all is not lost.

I have also returned to watching The Clone Wars on Cartoon Network. I have made the complaint in the past that the reason I don’t follow Star Wars more closely is because I don’t have new things to keep feeding the fire. Well, Clone Wars isn’t a full-blown live-action film, but it is at least something new. Thanks to the Official Site and the blessings of high-speed Internet, I can now get caught up on the second and third seasons, assuming this new interest in the saga doesn’t burn out too quickly.

I suspect that part of the reason for falling back in the habit, apart from the fact that it was simply just time, is that it is summer, or soon will be.

Most of my best memories of Star Wars take place during summer. Obviously, this is because Star Wars films get released in the summer. So when I weathered my first week away from home and family as a Boy’s State delegate, buttressed by a cassette version of The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack and the Brian Daley Han Solo novels, it was summer; when Entertainment Weekly published a cover story on the “new” Star Wars movies being made on the exact day of my daughter’s birth, it was still summer; when I drove to Virginia to see Phantom with my nephews (and fellow Jedi), it was summer again; and when I returned there six years later to attend the midnight screening of Sith in full Jedi regalia, it was, not too surprisingly, summer. In fact, for many movies — Phantom and Jedi in particular, I sort of lived in Star Wars leading up to summer, and well through it. It was, as they say, good times.

So welcome to summer a month or so early! I don’t think we’re in for as deep a journey as I’ve had in the past, but for now, I’m content to saddle up this bantha and ride it as far as it will take me. Next time, I will try to have actual Star Wars content, for you, my patient readers, and a little less about yours truly.

Wish me luck.

Forgive and forget

Well, the madness that was today has subsided, and, as predicted, my frustration has gone with it. Yes, the announcement was about the Blu-ray releases. Yes, it was both overblown, and poorly handled. And while what George has in mind isn't what I'd call a dream release, it looks like it will do nicely.

Does it have the original versions along with the Special Editions? Probably not. (And for the record, I'd like both, please — I think each has their place). Nor will it have From Star Wars to Jedi, which was a dandy little "making of" that was released back in the old VHS days, and to my knowledge, never made it to digital. There seems to be a fair amount of special features, but I won't speculate as to their quality yet. Some of the scenes are promised at Comic-Con in July; the 1976 Comic-Con was the first public promotion of Star Wars, and George is apparently still very grateful for that first public exposure. We'll just have to wait until then to see of what quality it is.

What surprises me is my reaction — despite my annoyance earlier today, I'm actually excited. I've been taking an extended sabbatical from Star Wars, and after nosing around the Official Site today, the old juices are starting to flow once more. In fact, I plan on popping at least one of the films in as soon as I get some time — it's simply been too long.

An offer you can't refuse

Well, as promised, I have been to the official Star Wars site to see what the big news is, and came away more than a little furious.

The main page shows Leia and R2 during the Tantive IV battle in A New Hope, with the title card  "On May 4th, all will be revealed. Click on that, and you're taken to a the "Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray" site, which includes a grid of bar graphs representing several countries around the world. Choose your country, and you're given a cascading slideshow of behind-the-scenes images, nearly all of which I'd already seen. The shows abruptly stops with a "Share to Reveal More" button, with the message to "come back throughout the day to see more images as they are revealed." Sure enough, I checked back after five minutes, after a similar button in the upper right had button had gone from "18 percent complete" to "25 percent complete," and I got five or six more images. To be fair, some of them were new to me.

The idea here seems to be that we, the Star Wars fan community, need to band together to show how much we stand behind this release before we can learn more about it. That we have to personally go out and take part in promoting this occasion to our friends and family — essentially becoming a tool of the marketing department in the process — before we can find out exactly what special features are coming on a collection of movies that we've all bought three times already.

I'm trying really hard not spew venom on you, the hapless reader, as I write this. I'm trying really hard not to bring everybody down with what will be, for me, a momentary annoyance until Fox, who seems to be behind this little debacle, gets the required number of free Facebook ads. By the time most people read this, it will all be over, we'll all know exactly what we have to look forward to, and even I will think back to this as merely a mild annoyance.

But brother, do these people have a lot to learn about manipulating a fan base.

As I've mentioned before, I am a big user of Apple products. Now there's a company that knows a thing or two about getting the most of their zealot-like user base. Ruminating on the capabilities and arrival dates of new Apple products is busy hobby for many (me included), and is actually a livelyhood for a chosen few. And Apple knows just how to spike interest in new products, with a very simple, and so far successful, formula.

First rule of Apple products is you do not talk about Apple products. You say nothing for long periods of time about what you're building, who will be building it, when it will be released, and why you'll want one. This means even if you've released an iPhone every year in June since you've been making iPhones, you don't confirm that you're doing it this year no matter how many people ask you.

Of course, this results in a lot of the professional rumor-mongers I just mentioned writing articles about whether or not Apple will stick to their schedule. This, in turn, generates exponentially more publicity for saidsame product than if just came out and said "We're building this, we'll tell you more about it later" — which is essentially what Fox did with this Bluray release.

Second, once you have something to show, you release a cryptic teaser about a special event you're holding. The teaser itself should reveal the nature of the event (i.e., computers, iPods, iPhones, iPads, etc.,) but not much more than that. This will cause the pundits I mentioned to go into informational overdrive, speculating even more rampantly about what we, the Apple faithful, will or will not see. Again, Fox did this — telling us when they were going to tell us more in very specific terms; at 6 a.m. PDT today, in this case.

The final, and most critical step, is when you have this special event — when you've reached the appointed day and time — you actually tell people something worth showing up for. Apple hasn't always come through in this regard; for example, it's hard to get worked up over a new version of iPhoto unless it does something really new and amazing (the last one didn't, IMHO). But generally, I find Apple special events well worth tuning into. I've watched them by livestreaming, downloading them after the fact, and once even followed one on a liveblog in my iPhone on my way to a Nashville doctor's appointment. The point is that once the event rolled around, Apple stopped jerking us around, and actually told us something.

Fox completely failed to do that today.

Instead, they jerked us around, and did the electronic equivalent of making us beg for what they'd already promised us. They made us go stand in the corner until they decided we'd been good enough for what they'd already told us we could have — some simple details on something we're going to give them money for. And since this is the company that is still trying to make money off its official website through the totally-not-worth-it Hyperspace pay site, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Well, I'm not going to pretend that I'm outraged enough about this that I'm going to boycott Fox/Lucasfilm for all time and eternity. Heck, I've checked the site twice since starting this little diatribe, and I'm still kind of excited to find out what's on the Blu-ray. To paraphrase a line from one of my favorite comedies, My Favorite Year, "With George, you forgive a lot, you know?"

I know.

Star Wars? What's That?

Welcome back! Hail and well met, all. I have returned after a long absence to throw out a few crumbs of Star Wars news, and maybe — just maybe — get out in front of a Star Wars related story. This post should be good deal shorter than my usual musings, but, I hope that it will be the first in a renewed effort at regular posts. I realize that my past performance of roughly two posts in a year probably doesn't bode well for my future efforts, but what are we if we don't try?

First, I must confess that I am fresh from watching the Royal Wedding this weekend. This was somewhat hypocritical on my part, since, like a lot of folks, I scoffed at the incessant media coverage leading up to the event. But when my wife, a veteran of the 3 a.m. brigade for Charles and Diana's wedding, expressed disappointment that she hadn't been able to watch, we found a repeat of the coverage of BBC America Friday, and gleefully made a night of it. As it happens, I enjoyed myself immensely, from a historic, Anglophilic and (gasp) fashionista standpoint, not to mention the always very great joy of being able to share an experience with my wife. Oddly enough, I still find myself trolling the internet for little informational nuggets on the occasion, and will likely continue to do so for the next week or so. In any case, the whole affair was great fun, and I shall probably look back on it fondly for some time.

All this goes to show what I have long suspected; that my opinion on any given subject cannot be trusted, since I am such an innate snob, and my tastes are so very malleable. Indeed, I have a long history of reversing myself on a number of what I had thought were strongly-held opinions, ranging from my distaste of large churches as a young man (I am currently a member of what just happens to be the largest church of its denomination in my county, which encompasses a building roughly one side of a city block long) to my musical tastes (I initially rejected several bands on first hearing which later became staples of record collection, including Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd). In short, I'm still rather a fool, but am still trying to at least become an open-minded fool.

But I promised short and sweet, didn't I? Very well; to the point. I noticed this morning that on Feb. 10, 2012, George Lucas will be releasing Star Wars: Episode 1 in the theaters — in 3-D, no less. No doubt, this will be followed by Episodes II in March and Episode III in April, leading up to the inevitable release of A New Hope on Friday, May 25 — 35 years to the day after it was originally released in theaters. If this is, in fact, George's planned schedule, then I think we can expect Episodes V-VI in June and July, respectively, which would give us arguably the three best films during the summer blockbuster season.

As a further point of conjecture, I think we can then look forward to a 3D blu-ray release of all six films in time for Christmas. If true, this will annoy me just a teensy bit since George has made rather a habit of milking re-releases of the films in new mediums; witness the multiple VHS versions (at least four different releases of the classic trilogy); two different DVD versions, Laserdisc set, and now, the upcoming Blu-ray release in September.

Before you ask, yes, I am planning on buying the full Blu-ray set when it comes out. Herein lies my problem. I am a "bonus features" junkie, and George has been very sparse with his behind-the-scenes content since hitting it out of the park with the Phantom Menace DVD. In fact, the follow up to Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, re-set the bar to an all-time low by using a collection of video press releases featuring the main actors being interviewed about the story as the core of its behind-the-scenes content. Revenge of the Sith got better marks for imagination, showing the roles of the different departments in producing one shot of the film. But the fly-on-the-wall stuff I love so much was nowhere to be seen.

When you add to this the paltry one disc of special features for the entire classic trilogy, I must admit my hopes for George to finally crack open the vaults for some top-notch bonus features are rather high. We will see if he delivers on Wednesday, May 4 (a date yielding the atrocious pun "May the fourth be with you"), when Lucasfilm promises some big news on the subject. That is the story that I have tried to get out in front of, and I will try my best to post some kind of reaction, no matter how short, on the day.

So far so good; on to my teensy problem. There is always going to need to be more stuff to for George to release, simply from a revenue standpoint. So knowing in advance that there will be a 3D version of the films, and knowing that there will inevitably be a demand from the 12 people who own 3D televisions for a home game version, will George follow the lead of films like Tron: Legacy and re-release a Blu-ray box of the 3D films? Likely. Will it have additional content to make compulsives like me need to buy it again? Ah, there's the rub — all indications (i.e. George's previous track record) say yes. Will it make me grumpy if he does? Absolutely.

Be that as it may, we will cross that bridge when we come to it; life is troublesome enough without borrowing more, and there is enough negativity in modern society without me throwing more on the fire — especially about something I purport to love. So, let me end you with the following daily affirmations: I am looking forward to the news on Wednesday, whatever it is, and I am excited about the possibility of being able to finally take my daughter to see all six Star Wars films in the theater.

That's all for this week campers. I doubt that life will allow me the time to make similarly lengthy posts in the future. But at the least, let's all meet back here Thursday — or more realistically, a week from today — and we'll sift through next week's announcement.