Wednesday, March 28, 2012

The 100-day, 100-Question Great Star Wars Blogathon, Question 35


Yesterday marked The Grand Convergence, as in a single post, we managed to combine Star Wars, boobs, and Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch. I don't know if Rusty was aware, since it was a long time ago, but I named Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch to be The Best Breakfast Cereal almost 6 years ago, using this justification:

My theory is this: I like fake flavor better than real flavor. I've been raised on preservatives and additives and riboflavin and the like, and by this time, I don't want "real" flavor, I want real flavoring. I prefer Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch to real peanut butter and prefer generic peanut butter to natural peanut butter and prefer all of those to the taste of an actual peanut, which if I eat them at all I get the honey-roasted kind (so I also, obviously, prefer sweets.)

That was in the early days of this blog, when such things as Blogathons were but a twinkle in my mind's eye. But I can tell by the way yesterday's comments went that we're really on to something special here.

Speaking of Mind's Eye, Lara asked a great question about just where the heck does all this trivia come from since, honestly, I would have bet that Obi Wan used panda style lightsaber fighting. But apparently there really are different forms of lightsaber fighting, as evidenced by the fact that you can major in it at community college:



It kind of makes sense and kind of does not make sense that there are different forms of lightsaber fighting. As a former fencer, I can say that different types of swords used different types of styles -- saber fighting is more slashy and piratey; foil fencing, which I did, is quick and restrained and hardly has any lateral movement of the sword:



A lightsaber is more like a broadsword than a foil or epee or even a saber -- with foils and epees you can only hurt someone with the tip, so you never slash. With a saber, you can stab or slash, but only with one side.

So I checked to see if there are different styles of broadsword fighting, but then I got distracted when the Wikipedia article on swordfighting mentioned an "arqebus," which made me remember that once I was going to create a website called "Arqebus," which would be like Twitter except that every user could only post one thing ever.

Which is kind of genius, I think: Imagine, if you could ONLY say ONE THING, period... what would you say?

I never did that, though, because I have no idea how to actually make a website like that. But don't steal my idea, because I'm extremely litigious.

Also, I looked for a clip from the movie The Toy, where Richard Pryor says his wife is a lawyer and is extremely litigious, but I couldn't find it.

I found this, though:



What does this all have to do with Star Wars? Not a thing. And I've run out of time to talk about what I was going to talk about, which was the first book I ever read about Star Wars that wasn't actually a novelization of Star Wars. So maybe I'll do that tomorrow. In the meantime, here's today's question, worth 17 points:

Which species' name translates to "People Of The Trees?"

Commenter number 5 gets the 10 point bonus, if he/she isn't also commenter 4.

7 comments:

PT Dilloway said...

I think I should save this one for Rusty.

Rusty Carl said...

WOOKIES!

Rusty Carl said...

I missed that course in college. I wasted my time taking about a hundred different types of science classes. Never anything advanced mind you, just all the survey courses I could find in any of the harder sciences. I wish I hadn't done that now, I want to take lightsaber 101.

And I did not know about the peanut butter Cap'n Crunch love we share. Yes, it truly is the greatest.

Also, I take back all the bad things I said about Grumpy, if I end up winning this thing by fewer than 17 points, well, then I'm sure he'll feel like we disproved the existence of Karma together.

Yeah science!

Andrew Leon said...

Hmm... but you never actually said who got yesterday's question. I wouldn't wonder except that the last time Grumpy came in with a wrong answer in front of my correct answer you gave the points to him anyway, so I'm wondering.

I do like in the history of the lightsaber styles that they explain why there are different styles and what they are responses to.

Just to say it, there are different styles of various forms of sword fighting besides being based on particular weapons. I'm not really remembering what they are, but I do remember there being different styles.

I'm glad Grumpy left today's question for Rusty.

Andrew Leon said...

Oh, and speaking of Mind's Eye, was your first Star Wars book Splinter of the Mind's Eye? That was mine.

PT Dilloway said...

Do I get 10 points now?

Andrew Leon said...

There's no sliding rule...