blah blah blah Star Wars

… and blah some more. Feeling sluggish today. Not sure why, although I was up late watching Futurama episodes and my pager kept going off while I slept.
I’ve had early workdays this week, so haven’t been able to get to the gym at all.
But I have been getting to the garage work, and I’m almost done with the walls. I priced out some doors and windows and can get them both for a good price. The front door can be entirely replaced with a 3-section insulated terrace door, but that’s going to set me back a little — I may not get that done this year.

This morning I stumbled into 1842, and I’m drinking a rich espresso cup. I’ve been meaning to do more blogging this past week, but I keep getting distracted by something shiny. This week, it was a 1993 laserdisc rip of “Star Wars”. It had all the beautiful flaws of the original print; Han shoots first, there’s matte lines around the tie-fighters, lightsabers are a white-blue or white-red, and there’s no Jabba or other pesky CG distractions. It’s much cooler than any of the revisionist crap that came later. It even (still) pokes so many holes in Lucas’ “Episodes 1-3”. Here are some easy ones:
1. If the Emperor has so much power over the Senate, why did it take him 18-20 years to dissolve it?
2. Is Darth Vader only about 40-something? You get the impression he’s a lot older. Certainly, Uncle Owen’s much older than that, and he looks like late 50’s in this film. OK, argue all you want about “working hard makes you look older” or “the force keeps you alive longer”, etc, but Lucas didn’t quite do the temporal aspects of his series properly. And he has all the time in the world to do so.
3. Clone Wars. Not *Clone War*. We get the impression that there were many wars, and that they were *against* several, possibly cloned, enemies of some kind. Surely Lucas could have done something a little more with that than a simple clone army built especially for some sinister Republic purpose. I mean anyone familiar with the Robotech Saga understood the concept of clones and multiple wars. (man, do I ever sound geeky…)
4. How does 18-20 years cause people to forget about The Force, especially since it seems the Jedi ran rampant in the prequels with more presence in the galaxy than Starbucks? Ancient religions? Hell, Scientology’s been around since the 60s and almost no one practices it. We wouldn’t call it an “ancient religion,” would we? We don’t even call X-tianity an ancient religion.
5. Did people just stop caring about starships once the Emperor took over? Did he stifle technological advances when he attained power? All the ships look a little clunky and technology regressed in this film. Problem is, I like the way technology looked here … meaning Lucas went a little apeshit with the CG and starship designs in the prequels.
(Sigh) I could go on — and believe me, I did last night, much to R’s annoyance.