As an American male of a certain age, I spend more time than I'd like to admit thinking about when and how the boys should be introduced to Star Wars. Machete Order raises the tantalizing hope that the end of Empire can be shocking and unspoiled. But by the time my kids are ready there will be four or five new-fangled spin-offs added to the franchise. (I really wonder how watchable they will be without twelve hours of homework. A ten-year-old kid in 2015 is going to be, like, "Oh, yay, Carrie Fisher!"?)
Heebie: You "more or less" follow the plot? Farm boy is called to adventure, meets a mentor who provides supernatural aid. Then there's a trash compactor and some space dogfights. Then they blow up the villains and get a medal.
I've never managed to pay attention through the entire movie. And then I look back and think, "Are they shooting at each other for the same reason or a different reason?" There is an ungodly amount of running through corridors while shooting and I get really bored.
Until last night!
Also we had subtitles on last night and I realized that you're supposed to pay close attention to the dialogue because they're feeding you bits of world-building via awkard dialogue. Rebel forces blah blah dantooine tantooine.
Sounds like someone is the wrong kind of nerd.
CSI: Comic-Con! Thursdays at 9 on CBS!
But I have no idea what happens in episodes 5, 6, 1, 2, or 3. I mean, aside from the cultural touchstones - there's a gold bikini, Darth Vader is their father, Luke's hand gets cut off. But in what order? Who can say?
"Priorly, we shot at stormtroopers because they defend a genocidal dictatorship. But now, it's because of their views on marginal tax rates."
Who can say?
Billions of people! Literal billions! George Lucas can have money fights with Paul McCartney and Warren Buffett because so many people can say!
I was disappointed that I found Star Wars, all orders, kind of boring when I watched them in my 20s after really liking the first three, when there were only three, in my teens.
It turns out it was the butler all along, and Detectives Briscoe and Ice-T are barely in time to defuse the bomb, saving the entire neighborhood.
The plot of the original series is: the Empire is bad; the good guys, who are sometimes Jedis do various things to defeat the Empire. Certain characters are surprisingly related. Certain other characters surprisingly fall in love.
The plot of the prequels is genuinely confusing, at least the background political stuff that nobody cares about. Like, in Episode II, Yoda discovers a clone army that was created by (somebody) at the request of (somebody) on behalf of (somebody) in order to (something). It's all part of the master plan though. That part I get.
One of the reason I wish I could travel to the far future is to see what kind of interpretations people do of Star Wars when it has become analogous to Hamlet or The Magic Flute or something.
Of course, if you really wanted to give kids the whole experience, you'd start them out with the Mabinogion, Kurosawa films, Triumph of the Will etc.
I think a lot of kids would like The Hidden Fortress, but Seven Samurai is kind of long and there is a great deal of stage-setting before Mifune et al. get their bandit-chopping on, rain-and-mud style.
10. Can't be doing with Star Wars, myself. Really boring and predictable world building of a kind that I was doing better with my mates in the playground when I was twelve. Non-story, as per 2 above. Just not interesting. Am I supposed to be captivated by the production excesses? Bad scripting, should be able to convey the same sense on a tenth of the budget. I would guess that Hawaii, as a very bright five-year-old, is the ideal audience.
Toshiro Mifune plays the farm general, escorted (with Princess Yuki) to his Death Star by the bickering droids, one of whom stinks of death.
1. I think the secret to any really broad, long-lived cultural phenomenon is that it has to do two things simultaneously. First, it has to have broad enough appeal that it appeals to both men and women or boys and girls. Second, it has hide this fact well enough that boys and men can think of it as a guy-thing.
I always thought of a Star Wars fan as a guy thing, though when the Episode 7 preview came out, the enthusiasm on my Facebook was split 50/50. My wife is way more into the Star Wars movies than I am, and I have seen them all multiple times in the theater. When Episode I came out, she made us wait up all night for tickets. When she finally showed Star Wars to my daughter, she clearly had been looking forward to introducing her to Star Wars when she's old enough. Our holiday plans have an important "When are we going to take the kids to see Episode 7?" component.
I know that she had already imagined how it would go when she showed my daughter Star Wars for the first time, because it didn't go that way at all. My daughter kept complaining that it was boring, and just when they got to the Death Star my wife was so angry that she shut the video off, and wouldn't let them watch anymore.
My daughter later saw Episode 3 and 4 back to back at a friend's house, and then she saw the Episode 7 preview, so now she's enthused. But I suspect part of her enthusiasm is a desire to get back in her mother's good graces.
Star Wars when it has become analogous to Hamlet or The Magic Flute
More like the Sinbad the Sailor movies.
My kid is starting to get into Star Wars, based on youtube clips he's been watching of light saber fights from the prequels. I own the three real Star Wars movies on DVD, but when I tried to get him to watch them a few years ago he got bored. I'll try again, except the latest season of Dr. Who is finally available on our Netflix, so we will probably be absorbed with that for a while.
If I was inclined to even bother with the prequels, I would worry about the order in which to show them, buy it probably doesn't really matter because he's not one for following plots anyway. Heroes shooting bad guys with laser beams in space is all he really cares about.
Chris y has it right. When I rewatched the original as an adult, I was surprised at how much of a B movie it was. I vaguely remember there being some redeeming value to the next one, but wasn't it the one after that that ended with everyone dancing and clapping to Earth Wind & Fire or some shit? Even as a callow youth, I felt embarrassed for everyone involved.
This thread has me feeling vindicated. I'm a huge sci-fi movie and tv fan* but I find Star Wars dreadfully boring.
*And that includes a fair amount of stuff I'd readily admit is craptacular.
18.1 certainly explains the enduring popularity of Jane Austen.
I'm a huge sci-fi movie and tv fan
Well there's your problem. Because Star Wars is neither sci-fi nor TV.
I find Star Wars dreadfully boring.
Yeah, but have you ever, like, really watched Star Wars, man? I mean really watched Star Wars? Like, have you ever really watched Star Wars... on weed?
26 Last time I tried I couldn't tear myself away from looking at my hands.
Here is the thing about Star Wars in the current kid context -- the kids encounter, as boy-themed toys, the marketing and kid-specific weird animated stuff (Lego Star Wars, action figures, light sabre toys, whatever "Clone Wars" are) long before they get to the actual movies. For example, my friends' three year old had a Star Wars themed birthday party. Had this kid seen any of the actual movies? No, way too scary. Yet, he wanted a Star Wars party because that was the thing that boys at preschool are into and Star Wars is just what you do if you're a boy instead of Frozen and Disney Princesses or whatever. He was excited because a guy in a Darth Vader costume was at the party and he wanted to know "Is Darth Vader going to be living with us all the time now? Yay!" Are these the words of someone who has seen Episode IV or V? No.
So, in this context, Star Wars is (a) ubiquitous (b) boy-themed (making 18 totally wrong, btw, except for the parts that are personal testimony, and Walt is probably lying about those) and (c) almost totally divorced from the actual movies. I've been trying to convince my daughter for a while now to watch the originals but she already hates Star Wars because of (a)-(c).
I can report that, upon seeing a trailer for Episode 7 before her first full feature in the theater (Frozen por supueste) yesterday, Φ pronounced, "I don't like Star Wars. Cha-Cha [her cousin] likes Star Wars."
I suppose it's also tangentially on topic to report that she has a Disney Princess potty seat that features the motto "Make Your Own Magic."
For me the only Star Wars product that's still watchable is the Clone Wars cartoon.
IME, for the kids the movies seem to be these odd spinoffs from the Clone Wars series, which features approximately a billion blaster bolts per space scene.
Here is the thing about Star Wars in the current kid context -- the kids encounter, as boy-themed toys, the marketing and kid-specific weird animated stuff (Lego Star Wars, action figures, light sabre toys, whatever "Clone Wars" are) long before they get to the actual movies.
Not entirely different from my own childhood, actually. The franchise has always been huge on licensing.
Look, people gotta eat and pay mortgages and whatnot.
Had this kid seen any of the actual movies? No, way too scary.
Ahimsub, my friend's kid, who had a somewhat precocious exposure to cinema, referred to Jabba the Hutt as "Mean Frog" when she was 2 or 3. And then she found five credits.
My son wanted to be Spiderman for Halloween, entirely because spiders are scary. I think he's the only person to embrace the true spirit of Halloween in the last 100 years.
I was twenty-five when the first one was shown. For some reason I saw it on one of the first days, being struck by how there was a line for a matinee. I got the B-movie campiness right away, and thought that was the point.
A friend of mine arranged a double date to see it again a few weeks later. I had mistakenly presumed we would all be on the same wavelength about it, but my date was offended by my attitude. The spiritual response was a thing from the gitgo.
My friend's date must not have been so put off, because although a huge SF/F fan, a type I did not often encounter then, she and I got together soon after.
37 -- "When dissing Chewbacca got me laid"
I loved the Star Wars movies when I was a kid, but it's clear that most of that was because of the special effects and my age at the time. Without impressive special effects, it's clearly a badly acted cheesy soap opera (with explosions) (in space). Or maybe more of a Western for people with shorter attention spans (and a Western is really just a soap opera for dudes).
I have been unable to convince friends my age of this, though almost everyone I've spoken with who was too young to see them in theaters agrees.
38: "You didn't like that movie, either. Want to come up and hear my dissings?"
31: Are you new people or do I have a bad memory?
30
Well, it does have some magical properties
I mean, new from yesterday. My memory isn't that bad.
39: Well, yeah, I mean, that's why they call it a space opera, innit?
Obviously, everyone, including George Lucas, agrees that the '77 vintage special effects were kinda cheesy. But compare Episode IV to Logan's Run, which was a contemporary of it, and which featured what were, for that time, pretty elaborate special effects and set pieces. Logan's Run does not benefit from the comparison. Lucas's deployment of the "used future" aesthetic was, I think, key to the enjoyment of the effects. Unlike Star Trek or 2001, Star Wars described a fantastic environment that was totally believable and relateable for the average viewer. Likewise, the sense of scale that Lucas & Co. were able to create was much more impressive than anything since, e.g. Leni Riefenstahl.*
*It amuses me that the shot at the end of Episode IV that is cribbed directly from TotW comes, in the original, right after Hitler gets done haranguing the SA and the SS to play nicely together and let Nights of the Long Knives be bygones.
I dunno, I thought Silent Running was pretty awesome in the special effects department and that was five years earlier. (Of course it was directed by Douglas Trumbull who did the special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
And I would watch the fuck out of Logan's Run if it were on TV or I had it on DVD or whatever.
Logan's Run has an arguably more interesting story. Not necessarily a better movie, definitely worse effects, especially the one that was supposed to make us believe the actors playing the male protagonists were under 30.
Logan's Run has more cats than 99% of feature films, so there's that.
I thought 90210 was a Logan's Run adaptation in a high school setting.
28: Isn't that part of the process by which boys are convinced that something is for boys, and therefore girl-cootie free? In Age of Ultron, Black Widow drives a motorcycle out of a jet, and slides it under an 18-wheeler to catch Captain America's shield. In the toy aisle, you can find a toy with the quinjet and the motorcyle, but Black Widow is replaced with Captain America. Many of the Guardians of the Galaxy action figure sets leave out Gamora, even though she probably had the second-best screentime, and a big part of the climax was her kung-fu fight with her sister. Probably if, when I was a kid, my mom had bought me a Princess Leia action figure, I would have run screaming back to my G.I. Joe doll, even though objectively Leia is 80 times cooler than Luke.
even though objectively Leia is 80 times cooler than Luke.
Way better hair, I'll give her that.
50 -- for sure, yes.
I met (for a case not related to SW) one of the guys involved in the 70s in the Star Wars franchise's truly revolutionary innovations in licensing and merchandising. We didn't talk much about it but one thing he said was that they were using what KISS was doing as a model and inspiration, which I think is pretty damn awesome.
Speaking of movies which are great, (which we weren't), I'm crushed that I'm missing seeing Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm at this very moment. It's been on my 70mm film bucket list for ages.
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I guess if I'd had my act together I could have arranged a meetup for my several-hour SeaTac layover the way Charley did for his. Oh well. At least it's a lot nicer than LAX.
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But honestly for me it's the late 70s-ishness of the original films and the tie-in to 70s Hollywood realism film culture plus B-movie appreciation makes the first two movies great. Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher are awesome, things like the cantina scene are glorious Stuart Freeborn puppet productions, and the thing has a nice kind of bright lights, mysticism-and-cocaine combined with vague sense of America in decline, let's pine for the now-lost innocent past that's 70's specific. It's already mostly gone by Return of the Jedi, but even there the Jabba's palace and land-speeder scenes can't be denied. Unfortunately it turned out that years of ungodly money and being away from Roger Corman and film school and Harry plus CGI gave George Lucas free reign to suck.
Also Darth Vader OG version before we got his stupid lame backstory in the prequels was a legitimately scary dude and just a great film creation.
54: I am now starting a three hour layover at Midway.
53 -- dude, where you are now you could literally BE Lawrence of Arabia. Just get on camel with a bunch of buddies and take Aqaba.
55 is exactly why I liked SW. But I didn't like it the right way for some people
As cries of "Al Freed" echo through the desert valleys.
58 True, but I'd rather be on a fine Arabian steed with a falcon on my arm so I'm going for the Carl Raswan thing.
62: Don't make me say it.
It's from an actual novel. That somebody acclaimed wrote.
63: You mean don't make me plagiarize it.
Anyway, I was recently at the Seattle airport but I can't recall any useful information to impart. I think there were some stores and bars. I had a nice salmon sandwich.
I'm at a bar that has microbrews and such. I ordered a burger.
There's also a pretty cool map store.
I think the extent to which it feels B-movie-ish has a lot more to do with the fact that probably hundreds of B movies for the next ten years were trying to rip it off, mostly unsuccessfully except for the ones that succeeded in being magnificently bad, like Starcrash or Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam. The first one was certainly made on the cheap, and the 'everything is old and worn down' view of the future was probably a direct result of that, but it doesn't really resemble most of the other B-grade science fiction movies that were floating around at the time. The Empire Strikes Back doesn't seem cheap at all to me, which isn't surprising after Star Wars made every money.
By Return of the Jedi, though, it was clear that everything good in the previous two movies had been despite Lucas rather than because of him. And the three prequels hammered that home to a remarkable degree. I have no idea why anyone watches those at all.
Also the order you need to watch them in definitely starts with Star Wars. If you watch the prequels first the ridiculous back story that Lucas came up with makes massive chunks of the movie into confusing nonsense by having the gap between the last of the prequels happen about sixteen years before the original movie.
Midway has free wifi. I never knew until somebody just asked me to take a survey and rate my satisfaction with it.
It's only for 30 minutes and you need to sign in. Screw that.
SeaTac has free wifi but it doesn't seem very reliable. Good enough, though.
People are going to show up to the blog tomorrow morning and be very bored by these comments.
Then they should have showed up now when we are bored in airports.
The main reason the guy at the link doesn't want you to see them in "release order" is there's a scene at the end of RotJ where you see the young Anakin as a ghost (or whatever). Hayden Christiansen couldn't have appeared in the original release of RotJ because he probably wasn't even born yet. So, the thing to do is watch the versions from before Lucas screwed them up with the edited re-releases. (Not to mention other asinine changes Lucas put in the other re-releases: Han shot first, dammit.)
Watch the original versions. George Lucas: worse than Hitler.
To like Star Wars, you have to be susceptible to the music. At least half of the appeal is down to the score.
82: As amply demonstrated by the original trailer.
And sometimes, when clients and their project managers get pissy at how long it's taking us to do difficult and complex things on their behalf, I console myself by watching this.
My main take-away from the Machete Order link is that there's no reason to watch the prequels at all, since the original trilogy makes a pretty good dramatic arc. I haven't seen Episodes II or III, though (Episode I was so bad I totally lost interest).
79/80: I can play the bored-at-airports game, too, but I hope you're both on your flights by now.
I spent all of Episode I wondering how to reconcile it with nobody recognizing the droids in Episode IV.
88/90: Yuck. Mine's delayed 40 min so far. I'm hoping it doesn't get worse. At least it's short.
Mine just started boarding, which seems like a good sign. Good luck.
Mine doesn't leave for a couple more hours but is on time AFAIK.
I watched Empire Strikes Back first, because it came out when I was old enough to go. Around the same time, they re-released Star Wars, and I saw it. I wouldn't have planned it that way, but most people didn't really have home video in 1980. (When did Betamax come out? Wikipedia says '75 and VHS was '76. But the new tapes were expensive then.)
The floor here is filthy. My soles are turned black with carpet-crud.
Right. Previously the bottom of my shoes was a nice, translucent brown. Now they are black.
Oooh, a plane just arrived. I don't think I'll be departing in 20 minutes, though.
Everything about Midway is gross, but that's worse than I'd expect.
-i +e
I want to make a joke about having a black soul, but it'snot really coming together.
Midway is Purgatory, O'Hare is Hell.
On another note, these forest fires are crazy. When we were flying in the whole area from the Rockies to here was just covered in smoke.
105: Right? We've had very little but Washington and Idaho are getting murdered.
I was trying to look into how to watch the originals in high-definition, un-CGI-ed form and it seems like it's annoyingly complicated (not to mention illegal). That irks me.
94: Based on the movies I vaguely remember renting in the early days of VHS, I'd guess video rental arrived in my town around 1984 or 85. I remember seeing Empire and Jedi specifically on video. Jedi was the kind of movie that would get predictably rented for birthday sleepovers. I also have a possibly unreliable memory of watch Star Wars on 16mm film at school.
Star Wars seems like a B movie because it was heavily influenced by old movie serials like Flash Gordon. It was maybe the first of what Roger Ebert used to call "B movies on A movie budgets."
112: We definitely watched Star Wars on 16mm as a treat in first grade. Those were the days.
Star Wars was the first live-action movie I saw in the theater.
105/108
It's the smokiest I've ever seen it here.
The music from the medal scene is playing right now I baggage claim. For real. I'm cheered tremendously.
And I'm not even counting the pot smoke drifting in through my window.
I'd be even more cheered if my bags came out wearing orange jackets and medals. Or if my bags came out at all.
How sad it is to lose ones bags, or not to have a bag at all.
But the new tapes were expensive then
Heh, remember how rental places used to claim that if you lost a tape you owed them over $100 (which in mid 80s money is over $200 today)? That practice just sort of disappeared but I don't remember some huge lawsuit to overturn it, they just changed the fees to the consumer price of $20 or $30 dollars, but can't imagine they did so voluntarily.
That's separate from Blockbuster's practice of keeping the juice running well after your late fees were past the replacement value of the tape, which I do remember them being sued for. Everyone got a $5 coupon.
113: Were you in Mrs. Jennings' class, or Mrs. Dixon's?
I set up the beginning of Theory of the Novel by the literary critic Georg Lukács as scrolling Star Wars text. (They annoyingly muted the sound on youtube.) As many as two of you might find it amusing; it's not funny if you're not a grad student in literature and probably not even if you are/were, but it does work uncannily well. (Very weird book, and hard to justify reading if it's not assigned.)
I've never gotten any contrarian points for thinking Return of the Jedi was comparatively not so bad. I can't remember anything about the movie except Leia generally kicking ass and rescuing Han, and Vader throwing the emperor to his doom. That's all fine! I gather that other people remember only "100 minutes of Ewoks + bikini" and I pity them. But I think the real problem for me is the implication that the other films are a whole lot better, when they are all terrible. I mean, TERRIBLE. However, because I was on powerful mind-altering drugs I somehow watched the first prequel five times in the theater, so I have no idea.
Doesn't the staff usually clear out the theater between screenings? Don't know how you made it through five without being caught.
Back home. This concludes a month of travel that included Barcelona, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Boston.
122.1: I hear the sound. But as with actual Star Wars text, I stopped paying attention to the words so I just know it's playing in another tab.
I also have been informed about Machete Order, which I assume you all know about.
I never figured Daniel Trejo for such a Star Wars geek.
Danny, Daniel, whatever. Way to step on your own joke.
Got home mid afternoon today: it was pretty smoky and has been getting worse since. The worst was probably Cataldo ID, annoying because I'd planned on stopping there for lunch. It was a lot clearer in Taft MT, but then bad again once we got close to home.
I thought the 1st SW movie was cheap junk aimed at people younger than me (then 19?), and haven't seen a reason to change my opinion on that. Of a piece with choosing fucking Reagan over Jimmy Carter, culturally.
Looks like my upcoming trip to Moscow is going to be very ugly.
But still better than going to LAX or watching a SW movie . . .
Of a piece with choosing fucking Reagan over Jimmy Carter, culturally.
I almost posted something along the same lines. The "restoration of lost glory" aspect of the response to the movie was gag-inducing. I have, however, softened on this somewhat through the years and my kids were huge fans.
THX-1138 was good.
And as cultural touchstone it has inspired some pretty great humor. One of my favorites is the 2nd one here (#14--Emperor Palpatine's Inbox).
Also, I find your lack of pants disturbing.
Mixed-race President is a meme-mixer:
"I know that this has been some of the conventional wisdom that's been floating around Washington that somehow, even though most people agree that I'm being reasonable, that most people agree I'm presenting a fair deal," he continued. "The fact that they don't take it means that I should somehow, you know, do a Jedi mind-meld with these folks and convince them to do what's right. Well, you know, they're elected. We have a constitutional system of government."
"NEVER FORGET" S/B "REMEMBER"
122: I like Return of the Jedi too, for the same reasons. Also, that video is awesome even though I know nothing about Lukács or literary theory.
122 is the tits. I read Lukacs for a Quixote class my second term of college. Really you should have done the intro, where he subtweets Adorno as lounging in "the Grand Hotel Abyss."
I feel like that must be a nonstandard use of "subtweets" but I don't really understand Twitter.
Oh, actually, I'm wrong -- he calls out Adorno by name. I had thought he was referring to him without naming him for only those in the know, which if he had done it on twitter, would be subtweeting.
Huh, I guess I was right in 141 despite not having any idea what I was talking about. Everything's coming up teo!
People with pseuds related to states where they once lived don't understand twitter. #subtweet
Is it me you're subtweeting there? Because I think my pseud has only a very tenuous connection to a state where I once lived.
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So, half-time didn't really work out any better than full-time had. As of today, I'm not working (it was a mix of quitting and being fired). My (working) life stretches before me, an open canvas! So terrifying!
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Sorry to hear that, Herr Renner. How's your financial situation?
145: I thought it had some connection with a restaurant? I guess I should have run a search. If I'd been subtweeting you.
No, it does, but it also has a connection with my real name, so.
Based on some very rough budgeting, we're probably fine on my wife's salary. My worries have more to do with self-respect and feeling my life to be meaningful, which are challenges at the best of times.
Ooops. I mean, it was super transparent anyway, and it's not like there was any real need to go presidential, but if someone could fix 150, that'd be great.
55 gets it right. I've seen the original trilogy a couple of times as an adult, and enjoyed the first two as fun B-movies.
On the other hand, I was so offended by the Phantom Menace that I still haven't seen the other two.
I saw episode IV during the original theatrical run when I was 7, which more or less makes me the ideal audience. I don't really understand the cultish fascination with SW, though.
re: 153
Yeah, ditto. I think I was 6. Possibly 5, depending on how soon after release we went to the cinema. I remember queues round the block, though.
Just googled, and the nice Art Deco era cinema in Falkirk is now a sports bar. Meh.
I thought you guys couldn't have sports bars because of the football hooligans.
Anyway, according to Twitter, China is collapsing and going to take the world economy with it. We should all be seriously considering that instead of forty year old movies.
If we watched forty year-old movies it might give the economy a boost. Second run theaters are a key growth driver.
You know what the best thing is about watching forty year old movies?
There are forty of them!
re: 155
Circa 1989, I was personally beaten up by a load of football hooligans who came out of the precursor to that very bar, in fact. Wanks.
But no, sports bars do exist.
I never saw one when I was there, but I never really looked and it was like 25 years ago.
They still aren't common. I've only ever been in two, I think. Obviously most ordinary pubs show sport anyway.
Stupid TV prices dropped, so that happens here also.
Per the original question, the correct order is 4-5-6-play "Knights of the Old Republic"-stop.
6 is not great but it does bring the story to a reasonably satisfying conclusion where 5 ends on a super cliffhanger.
It's possible the correct order is 4-5-6-wait ten years-play KOTOR so revisiting everything in the trilogy is nostalgic instead of repetitive.
The strip club opposite my place of work has now (so their advertising informs me) purchased several widescreen TVs so you can watch the football, which seems to display a worrying lack of comprehension of the whole strip-club concept on the part of the management.
I just committed an act of intellectual property law.
164: Maybe you don't understand the whole sublimation concept.
Per the original question, the correct order is 4-5-6-play "Knights of the Old Republic"-stop.
KOTOR 2 just got released on Steam with mod support (and including the Restored Content patch, so maybe 4-5-6-KOTOR-KOTOR 2-stop.
A big advantage of starting with Episode IV is that it stands on its own. So if you're not interested in watching any more SW movies, at least you've got a complete story.
164: A strip club on my daily commute advertises FREE WIFI. For liveblogging, I guess.
163.last are great instructions for consuming culture in general. 1. Watch it. 2. Wait long enough until your experience of it is shrouded by your imagined past glory, a relic of a relatively happy time in your life. Try to avoid dying in the meantime.
And play KOTOR. Always play KOTOR.
170: they're clearly after the lucrative "eclectic online magazine meetup venue" market.
170: That would sum up a certain character -- even at a strip club he wouldn't look up from his phone.
A strip club on my daily commute advertises FREE WIFI.
Browsing online porn while at a strip club is either totally wrong or totally perfect. I can't decide which.
Not to be overdramatic but one direction is over and so is my whole life.
Herr Bundespräsident, I'm sorry. Your dilemma is really "how do I use my newfound tech skills to cause politically useful mayhem without inconveniencing my spouse," right? Would you like people to suggest causes and projects to which you might usefully contribute volunteer code/etc.? Or do you just want another job?
164/170: AIMHMHB(?), the one strip club I have been to had one utterly mysterious element to it, viz. that the TVs not only existed but were playing one of the home-and-garden networks.
I found the whole experience faintly ridiculous anyway, but that was clearly the strangest thing.
178: I'm honestly not sure. There's an election in a month and a half, and so there's something to be said for trying to get involved now, if I'm going to get involved at all. I went to a meeting of the local Greens last week, and a social gathering of Socialist-aligned youngish people over the weekend. There's a bit of a problem there in that I don't know enough about the actual parties to know where my sympathies really lie; I just want the immigrant-hating far right party to do much worse than it looks like they're going to. And it seems like it would be sort of wrong to try to help out two competing parties. I also don't know if I could contribute much--my German still sucks, so I doubt I'd be a very good person to try to persuade undecideds.
The one strip club I've been to was Cafe Risque, and they weren't allowed to serve alcohol (maybe a Florida law?), so they went for a brightly lit breakfast diner kind of mood. It was bright pink on the inside, well-lit, with the stage and the waitresses, and menus so that you can pick what kind of eggs you want with your pancakes.
That sound you hear is Apo rummaging around for a basket.
I have no real advice for you Bundespräsident, but that really sucks. I'm sure you'll be able to turn up something.
(Volunteering strikes me as a very good idea and in my experience does help keep one busy, fights feelings of depression, can help sharpen skills or acquire new ones and sometimes can lead to new possibilities.)
I went to a meeting of the local Greens last week
AB's cousin is heavily involved with die Grüne, and may actually hold a local office in your locality.
It's absurd, but I could hook you up via FB. His English is pretty good, for whatever that's worth.
41: I'm not new, I've just recently decided to stop commenting using $firstname because I didn't want to be associated with other $firstnames.
73:
everything good in the previous two movies had been despite Lucas rather than because of him
Several months back, stories about the Obama presidential library and the George Lucas museum were running concurrently in the Chicago local news. Which I thought was funny, the joke being that soon the city will have two places dedicated to people best known for disappointing their biggest fans.
In my head you are now Bumrub.
On the one hand this makes me slightly less worried about climate change killing us all. On the other hand it's because we might not make it that long. On the gripping hand I think we pretty much deserve it either way at this point.
Ha, I hadn't realized I'd been reading Rubrum backwards. I didn't see redrum, but I did see "this must be someone's name backwards" and that's all.
I started writing my name backwards and nobody noticed.
196: ITS ON HIS FUCKING HAT PEOPLE! You know he's serious when he puts it ON HIS FUCKING HAT! You don't kid around with words on a hat the way you do with t-shirts. Hats is serious bizness.
I like how the article is basically describing Frank Luntz realizing for the first time just how badly the Republican party has fucked up giant chunks of the American public. "Oh shit. These people are genuinely demented. We're really fucked here."
I can't wait to see Ted Cruz's hat.
