Han broke up first. (Star Wars References)

While the rest of the world goes crazy over that breakup letter where the girl hid the guy's stuff, because love means never having to prove a letter isn't made up by, say, contacting the person who actually wrote the letter, I thought I'd share with you two Star Wars-themed breakup letters, because love also means never having to explain to your teacher that you have broken the cardinal rule, fallen in love, secretly married, and set into motion a chain of events that will eventually bring debris crashing down onto the jungle moons of Endor, spelling fiery doom for a race of innocent teddy-bear like people.

(What: you thought the remains of Death Star, Jr., would vaporize?)

The first is simple, to the point, and crude:

But what if you want to use Star Wars References not as a way to put people down, but to show how devoted you really are, by comparing yourself to evil or perhaps by comparing your beloved, now-ex, to the innards of an animal that smelled better when it was alive? You might write this:

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a restraining order.

As for whether the more-famous breakup letter is real, or not, I'll let you make up your own mind.  The letter:

was posted by "Nipplesquirrelham" (Really?) on Imgur, but Nipplesquirrelham (seriously?) doesn't claim he/she wrote it; rather, Nipplesquirrelham (doesn't have a job, I'm 100% sure) says it's the best breakup letter he/she has seen.

Nip... ok, I can't... this person also has as a goal to get 100,000 retweets by using that name, and otherwise appears to be in it for the notoriety.  

Not a single news story I read actually found the woman, or the man, or asked Ni... forget it... where he/she got the note.

So I did. I left him (?) a comment on the site, asking him to tell me where he got the letter.  We'll see what happens.

(NOTE: HE WILL NOT CONTACT ME BECAUSE THE LETTER IS A FAKE.)

I bet Jesus would agree with me that "A New Hope" was better than "Empire."

Allana Harkin, who plays a hot mom on a sad television show about a little boy who can't distinguish reality from fiction and so believes that he's living in a terrifying world populated by dinosaurs, recently said on Twitter

"I'm looking forward to the Holidays being over so I can stop thinking everything is a Star Wars reference."

Which is funny because she's from Canada. 

It's understandable for Allana to think that she can avoid things being a Star Wars reference, but it's also wrong because everything is a Star Wars reference, up to and including that cloud formation above, which was claimed to be a real cloud formation by the guy who posted it.  (IO9, my source for the picture, wasn't so sure.)  But even saying that every facet of Western culture -- and I am 64% sure that Canada is a part of Western Culture in that (a) it is located in the Western and (b) it has a culture, I'm sure, possibly -- is based on Star Wars (as superhero book author PT Dilloway noted) doesn't accurately describe just how bad it has gotten.

At least for me.

Here's what happened.  Every week, I listen to the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me podcast on NPR, because I pay good tax money for that service and if we are going to pay $178,000,000,000 to support it, as most people in the public incorrectly guess, then dang it, we'd all better listen, oughtn't we?

(Most of the public thinks that 5% of the federal budget goes towards NPR, as that link will tell you.  Some think  it's as high as 10%, which tells you that most of the public has no idea what the federal government does or how it spends its money,  which tells you in turn why the Tea Party is still a thing.)

I was, as I said, listening this week to Wait Wait, and they got to the segment where they read three news stories but only one of them is a real story, and the listener/contestant has to guess which story is the real one.

This week, the three candidates were a story about how yacht owners are protesting a nominal increase in dock fees by not holding a Christmas parade, a story about a grocery co-op having a skinny Santa to send kids a healthy message, and this story read by Bobcat Goldthwait, who is also still a thing and, I believe, also Canadian because why not?

Port Talbot, Wales, like many towns all over the world, has a manger in its town square, with animals, wise men and baby Jesus. And after requests from another religious community in town, the Jedi, it now has a manger showing the medical deck on the asteroid colony of Polis Massa, showing the birth of Luke Skywalker.

However, local vandals did not take too kindly to the space-themed nativity and stole baby Luke Skywalker from his cradle.

Jedi Porter Barron, the group's leader, turned to the local media in an effort to have Baby Luke. "It disturbs the force, in these times that all faiths are not respected equally, and myself and my brother and sister Jedi knights have been deeply hurt by the lack of sensitivity and attention that has been shown by the local authorities in helping return Baby Luke."

Mr. Barron added, "Also, the Luke doll wasn't even ours. It was on loan to us from a Jedi chapter from Hartford."

The correct answer, as it turns out, was the yacht owner thing because rich people with yachts are subhuman jerks who ought to be forced to live on that island from Lost so they can explain to the Smoke Monster why they are worthy of saving, but the real moral of this story is that I so badly wanted that last story to be the real one.  I wanted it so badly I could taste it, feel it.  I wanted it so badly that I almost spontaneously evolved a new sense just to be able to want it with that sense, too.

But, alas, that was not the real story.  Despite the fact that Star Wars now permeates even the holiday gatherings of Canadiers (where they call the holiday Canadian Christmas, and hold it a month earlier to prove they are different than us), it has not replaced the traditional Nativity in our mythology and religion.

Only, it turns out, it has.  The LA Times did a story over two years ago on just that thing.


Here's a jungle moon one:

Here's one that gets credit for having Luke and Leia be born without making Leia and Han somehow the parents because that is messed up mythology, people:

And here's one with R2D2 as our future lord and savior because let's face it, that's where Lucas was going with it and what do you expect from Disney Star Wars in the future?

Gritty space realism? Not when there's cute droids to merchandise:

The least essential Star Wars Product I've come across, ever...

... is this:

Wouldn't it kill the midichlorians? 

I suppose it's necessary to avoid getting bacteria all over your light sabre. 

Honestly, though, what is the market for this? Is there a person out there who is choosing their hand sanitizer based on how it relates to pop culture?  (Right next to this one, not pictured, was an Avengers hand sanitizer.  So there's finally something Avengers-related that's less helpful in a fight than Black Widow.)

Judge me by the number of times I hear people talking about Star Wars, do you?

What sound does a sword make?

If you said this:

You are old, or unhip, or possibly have been living in a cave for 35 years or so.

If you said this:

Then you agree with Stephen Colbert:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Who at about 3:25 into that clip pointed out that an entire generation of kids now does not say clank when they swordfight.

It's a THREEFER! Star Wars, sports, and politics, all together at once. (If only there was some sexy way to refer to such a thing...)

One show, one clip, relevant to three of my blogs in one day.  I love/am insanely jealous of Stephen Colbert.  But I'm also indebted to him, because he did this:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

I don't like to just post stuff without having something to say about it; I don't just spit back pop culture at you for no reason and call it a day.  I also try to sell you products and get paid through the advertising...  I mean, I try to comment intelligently on the subject of the post.

So here are some comments:

1.  (Politics) Why are Republican women so stereotypically ditzy?  I used to be a Republican, and I know some women who are extremely conservative and yet are smart.  Despite that, whenever you see a Republican woman in public -- Michelle Bachmann, Wisconsin's for-now-Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, "Dee Dee" the Republican commentator in that clip -- she appears to be a Barbie doll, only slightly dumber/more lobotomized.

I think it's indicative of the attitudes of today's Republicans that they and FOX continue to put forth a slightly-less-sexualized June Cleaver as their ideal woman.  But why do women put up with that? As Jon Stewart has pointed out, that particularly stupid-seeming Gretchen woman on Fox has a degree from Stanford, but she insists on acting like an NFL Today weathergirl.  Are they that desperate to be on TV, that they'd hide their intelligence?

For the life of me, I will never understand anyone backing a group, party, or political movement that openly denigrates them and forces them to be something they're not really.  (Gay Republicans, I am also looking at you in that sentence.)

2.  Sports:  It's kind of sad that if Notre Dame-USC was ever a truly great rivalry (was it? I don't know) it no longer is.  Notre Dame hasn't mattered to football since... I'll say 1972, when they still played football in black and white (in my mind, that is.)  USC hasn't mattered to football since Pete Carroll decided he wanted to openly be able to pay players for their performance. 

(USC's lack of mattering is indicative of the general weakness of the PAC-10 which is one of the reasons I think Andrew Luck may not actually be St. Peyton 2.0; everytime I say to someone what kind of competition did Luck face in college? Which good teams did he play? they look at me blankly and then mutter "Well he's really good," but what are you measuring that against?)

3.  Star Wars References:  Just to be clear: The Star Wars Reference category exists because Star Wars is the root of all Western culture and this clip shows that.  When he had to go to a film reference, Colbert immediately went for Star Wars; yes, there were other sci-fi shows mixed in, but the entire reference was built around Star Wars, because just as we all spring from DNA, or something, whatever, I'm not a scientist, culture all springs from Star Wars.

This is a joint post shared between Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!, The Best Of Everything, and Publicus Proventus.

Star Wars means more to some people than others. (Star Wars References)

I've got a soft spot in my heart for kids and especially for kids with any kind of special needs.  Kids like Drake, who I just read about over on The Chive.

This is Drake:

And this is what The Chive said about him:

Drake Earl hasn't had an easy life. When he was two years old, doctors found an arachnoid cyst on his brain. He had surgery when to implant a shunt that drains fluid from his cyst into his abdomen.
Last week, Drake's mother Mallory noticed Drake was yawning a lot - a classic sign that the boy is trying to relieve pressure in his brain. When Drake started getting massive headaches it became obvious to Mallory that Drake's shunt was malfunctioning. It wasn't long before Drake began vomiting and getting dizzy, his brain was filling with fluid.

The family rushed from South Dakota to St. Paul to see one of the few doctors who can perform such a difficult surgery. Drake spent the last 7 days recovering and he's doing well. While in the hospital Mallory would hop on theCHIVE to get her mind off things and she found herself writing me an email which I received last night. Mallory asked for a small favor:

"… Drake is in the hospital recovering and I don't ask for much. The last 6 years have been rough for Drake but he has such a positive attitude about it all. I want to do something special for him and I was wondering if we could ask theCHIVE for a small favor? Drake loves Star Wars and he'd be ecstatic to see a Star Wars themed post. You don't have to mention Drake or anything. I just know a Star Wars post on theCHIVE would make him smile, he's a loyal little Chiver and you've been helping me keep calm through this very difficult time.
At the very least, thank you very much for reading this. - Mallory."

Drake, this post is for you, buddy...

2

On his way from South Dakota to St. Paul for surgery. Drake’s head was under a lot of pressure the entire time.

The Chive goes on to say:

Drake is recovering well and feeling much better. And now for the good stuff. Star Wars! 

And they've done a whole post for Drake to help him feel even better; you can view it here. 

Star Wars References is meant to point out how all of Western Civilization now revolves around making some sort of connection to Star Wars.  And now everytime I see a Star Wars Reference I'm going to wish I had a way to send it to Drake.

I can't do that, but I can think good thoughts about him and go home and hug my own kids.  Even the older ones, who will resent me for it.

And I'll wish I could make one of these for them, too; I didn't do this. The Chive did:

And now for your most obscure "Star Wars Reference" ever. (Star Wars References.)

I've been sitting on this one for a while until the nerdiness/hipsterish/hoity-toityness of it all overwhelmed me today and I couldn't resist posting about it anymore, although truth be told, the other reason I didn't want to post about it was that I am always, always overwhelmed with an overwhelming urge to participate in weird hobbies when I read about them.

This is something I first realized about myself when I read my first issue of The New Yorker ever, something I did while sitting in the waiting room of the local hospital's ER while Sweetie was treated for a kidney stone; Sweetie gets kidney stones infrequently but always in the dead of night, and I have to then take her down to the ER to get shot up with painkillers so that she can get back to sleep, and so can I.

About 6 years ago or so, I was doing my semiannual waiting in the ER and the only things to do to pass the time (this being before Kindles and smartphones) was watch TV, which was tuned to a NASCAR-ish station and was being watched by a guy I think was infectious, or read one of the magazines they had: Woman's Weekly or something, and The New Yorker.

Well, after I finished reading all the cartoons in the The New Yorker, Sweetie wasn't done yet, so I had to read something else and I read an article about homing pigeon racing.

A fascinating, bewildering article about homing pigeon racing that noted all the different breeds of pigeons including one that gets around exclusively by doing somersaults. Which is a thing people always accuse me of making up when I mention it in conversation but which I am not: It really is a real thing, and just typing about it made me want one all over again.

Anyway, by the time Sweetie was cured or whatever, I had a hankering to raise homing pigeons and briefly contemplated using her drugged state to get her to agree to let me start doing just that. My better nature/exhaustion took over and I am, as we sit here today, still homingpigeonless, but not for lack of wanting.

Since then, every single thing I read about people doing -- almost without fail -- makes me want to do that thing. Sea Kayaker catches an octopus?



I want to do it -- even though I don't like kayaks. Or fishing. Or octopi. Well, I kind of like octopi.

People raising chickens in their backyard? When our city discussed an ordinance to regulate how many chickens you could raise, I realized you could raise chickens in your backyard and almost went out to buy one right then and there.

I even, briefly, wanted to learn to knit. Because I read an article on Yarn Bombing.

So I haven't wanted to go back to the brief period of time last October when I wanted to grow heirloom plants, something that I started wanting to do even though I can't even properly dig a garden (and hate nature) when I read an article in The New Yorker about heirloom seeds and fancy cooker-y down south and other things I generally find kind of obnoxious but also compelling -- a secret jealousy that I harbor forcing me to outwardly scorn all those things that I actually want to do.

The article, called "True Grits," talked about a guy trying to revive "real" Southern cooking (like the kind, maybe, that called for William Howard Taft to eat a opossum) and part of the article dealt with a guy who was getting "heirloom" seeds which are apparently seeds that have been around a long time and aren't genetically modified to be 54% Twinkie like the seeds we modern 21st century people have, resulting in plants that are way tastier and also far more likely to fall victim to some sort of crop blight and leave the world starving, but whatever -- it's haute cuisine, right, not survival of the human race -- and as part of the story (which, in reality, did make me want to grow heirloom plants) after the writer got done talking about killing pigs and eating them, the writer got to talking about a how a guy had quit his job and gone into business buying rare, heirloom seeds and selling them to fancy restauranteurs, with a network of farmers in thirty states working for him growing things like feral chickpeas and garlic bulbs, and never mind that I can't stand vegetables and like my food so far removed from any identifiable part of the food chain that I might as well eat nothing but freeze-dried astronaut ice cream, I wanted to grow heirloom seeds and I kind of want to, now.

Which brings me, finally, to the Star Wars Reference: Talking about that guy, one customer said:

"80 percent of what I put into the ground is from Glenn. He's the godfather of it all. He's the Obi Wan Kenobi."



Point of order: That video at the start of the post? That guy actually has the powers of the Sith. Get it right, people.

I want this, and hate myself for wanting this. (Star Wars References.)

The Phantom Menace is no longer just an unfairly-maligned Star Wars prequel; it's also the raison d'etre (that's French for raisin of death) for a new line of sandwiches available to Belgians which, really? There are like four Belgians in the world, total, and Belgium is always just moments away from being downgraded from "country" to "division of Epcot Center," the way scientists downgraded Pluto because they had nothing better to do that week.

What am I getting at? A story broken by HuffPo today that Quick, which is a Belgian restaurant chain, will be offering Phantom-Menace themed burgers, including, most notably, the Dark Vador:




HuffPo wondered why the burger is called the Dark Vador, and I wondered, too.

Initially I thought it might have to do with copyright, because Lucas copyrights everything, but I was thrown off by the fact that the green burger with what appears to be Play-Doh french fries on it is a "Jedi" burger, so I figured If they can use "Jedi" they must be able to use "Darth Vader", right?

Wrong: While Lucas sued a company for using the phrase "Jedi Mind" a while back, he doesn't have a copyright on the word Jedi. From that article:

The other interesting point: Lucas doesn't actually hold a trademark on "Jedi" or "Jedi Mind." It does hold trademarks on Jedi Knight, Jedi Power Battles and Jedi Training Academy but that's not quite the same thing...

That didn't stop "Jedi Mind" the company from caving in, despite the fact that the suit seemed to have no more merit than Hayden Christensen's claim that he actually came up with the idea for USA's Royal Pains show.

But "Darth Vader" IS trademarked for everything from toy figures to children's underwear. Which doesn't clear up anything, because Quick presumably can't use an image of Darth Vader unless they had permission, so why would they get permission for that but not the name?

I assumed then that Dark Vador is what he's called in Belgium, which I figured to prove quickly by googling What do they call Darth Vader in Belgium? but that just led me to this post about someone who met Darth Vader, only it was a giant balloon Vader, which actually exists:


The Vader Balloon has its own website and is available to be booked, which means that with Quick's Dark Vador burger, we are rapidly approaching the Vadersingularity, that time when you can have an entirely-Vader themed existence.

Also: are you disappointed that Hayden Christensen turns out to be kind of a whiner in real life, too? "Padme, I want credit for inventing Rooooooyaaallll Paaaaainnnns."

If the NPR people need help figuring out Star Wars, they could PROBABLY find someone on the Internet to explain it to them.... (Star Wars References)

Google the phrase "Movies about mind control" and a couple of things happen:

First, you move up a notch or two on that list the federal government, with it's more than 1,000,000 people who have a "classified" or higher security clearance keeps of all of us and our search histories. I know all about that list, and I recommend throwing it off as much as possible. Here's what I do: For every real search I do, I do a fake search to keep my place on the list (which is not meant to measure how much of a threat a person is to the federal government but instead is used to manipulate zinc prices, zinc being where the power's at these days. Zinc is perhaps the single most valuable element in the entire universe. That's what they don't want you to know: zinc is what you should be thinking about. The Powers That Be (Major League Baseball, Bill Cosby, and a platypus that developed sentience) are so hellbent on you not knowing how important zinc is that they've made up all the other elements in the periodic table just to hide zinc in plain sight as it were. You didn't really think there was an element called Protactinium, did you? That's just the name of the acne medicine Sentient Platypus uses. Platypusses (Platypi?) have terrible acne.

Here's a sample of a search string I do to throw off Sentient Platypus and his henchmen:

search for "movies about mind control"

search for "That wasn't a real search I did about movies about mind control."

search for "Ways to convince the Powers That Be that I'm not really interested in movies about mind control."

search for "Is Demi Moore really a bisexual lust goddess? Because that's kind of hot."

Note: That last one was really just for my curiosity. But it does help throw off Bill Cosby, who gets distracted by stuff like that. Also, she is, according to Gawker.

That's result one. Result two of a search for "movies about mind control" is a list of sci-fi movies about mind control, only one of the top ten of which (got that?) was a Star Wars-based substance. The others, ranging from "Village of the Damned" to "Destroy All Monsters" -- a movie which... well, I'll let the description speak for itself:

a race of evil aliens known as Kilaaks... release the world's population of giant monsters from their quarantine on Monster Island, employing powerful mind-control devices on the monsters as part of their master plan for subjugating humanity. When the secret equipment used for this purpose is discovered beneath Mount Fuji and destroyed, the aliens make a last-ditch attempt at reclaiming their foothold by summoning three-headed Ghidorah from space -- but by then, Godzilla and the other city-stompers have rallied together to defend the Earth from the alien menace.

How has that never been nominated for an Academy Award? What does it take, Godzilla crying in the ocean and yelling "Wilsoooooooooooooon!"

And that, my friends, is how you do a movie reference that doesn't involve Star Wars, even a little.

Which is the point of this post, of course: I was able to find 10 movies about mind control on a quick Google search, so it's obvious that there have been many, many movies about mind control, which makes it all the more obvious that Star Wars has, indeed, become the only thing pop culture can reference, because with all those movies about mind control, when push comes to shove, even the best and brightest, as exemplified by NPR game show host Peter Sagal and his guests, can only come up with lame Star Wars references.

Here's what happened: On Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, on NPR, about two weeks ago, the opening quiz, "Who's Carl This Time?" touched on Herman Cain's not-at-all-derailing (in a good moment for the American public, though, Cain's chances appeared to be derailed by his complete inability to articulate even a single coherent policy) sexual harassment scandal, as follows:

SAGAL: Politico, the online journal that broke the story, they came to him and they said, you know, we've got this story, what is your reaction? And they tried this for ten days and they couldn't get a response.

[Guest Peter] GROSZ: And a reporter walked up to him and said, "Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?" And asked him over and over again, and Cain looked at the ground and he didn't speak. And then he looked at the guy and he said, "Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?"

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: And then they were like, "no more questions."

SAGAL: Right. (SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: So he's a Jedi.

Which isn't even what happened in the movie, not really: First of all, Obi Wan didn't say "No more questions." He said "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

And second of all, Herman Cain is clearly not a Jedi, he would be if anything a Sith Lord, but it's hard to imagine a Sith Lord being as clueless about the Space Rebellion as Cain was about the Libyan one:




NOTE: I have no idea what the picture on this post has to do with anything, but if you google "Herman Cain Star Wars," that's one of the images that comes up.

When I say nobody's perfect, I'm obviously excluding ME. (Awesome Covers Of Already Awesome Songs)(Star Wars References)

The only Michael Jackson song I've ever liked was Will You Be There, which I think of as the Free Willy song:



I've always been uncomfortable liking that song, because I'm never sure where to draw the line when someone I should disapprove of does something that I approve of. I mean, pobody's nerfect, right?

Oh, my God, I'm sorry I wrote that. But it felt so good. Anyway, where do you decide you can't like someone anymore? It seems pretty obvious that I shouldn't (and don't) root for Michael Vick, but, then, he did his time and Tony Dungy, who's practically a saint, likes him, so what do I do about that?

And Michael Jackson? He was crazy, sure, and I tend to believe the rumors about him, but then, he was acquitted, right, so shouldn't we credit that? Of course, then you also have to believe Casey Anthony walk using her white trash powers to trick the jury (flashing her bra at them, I assume. Seems to work, down south.)

So here I am, in a moral limbo: love the song, hate the sinner, as Jesus would've said if He had an iPod, which He probably does. I mean, it's Heaven, after all. They've probably got the latest technology. Wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they?

What do you suppose Jesus would have on his iPod? I bet not a lot of country. Maybe Billy Ray Cyrus, but that's it.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah: Moral dilemma solved: I get to like Will You Be There a/k/a The Free Willy Song and still hate people, thanks to Ida Jo and the Show's cover:



I love me some fiddle, especially fiddle without ethical complications.

P.S.: if you click this link you'll see a clip that demonstrates the obvious way to improve not just the ending to Free Willy, but any movie. I'd have embedded it here but for some reason, the person who made the clip won't let me do that. Ordinarily, that would make me not even mention the video because what's the point of being stupid like that? Videos are on Youtube to share, but I have to go to your youtube channel to watch them? This is AMERICA, for Pete's sake. Why did I even bother voting in the last election?

Anyway, it was good enough that I broke my rule and linked to it. So go watch it.

I'm going to sculpt Han from SOLO PAPER CUPS. Get it? (Star Wars References)

So it turns out that Chewbacca was named after the Russian, or Ukrainian, word for dog. Did you know that? And did you know that Russian and Ukranian are the same language? Because I didn't know either of those things until I used all the investigative powers*

*clicking on links

at my disposal to track down that valuable information that will no doubt brighten your day, help you convince your boss to get a raise, maybe make your wife not leave you, and convince that guy in the parking lot to quit giving you noogies every afternoon.

He's kind of a jerk, that guy.

Here's the story behind the story. First, I became aware of this:

That's Chew-Bacco, which needs no explanation but I get paid by the word**

**I don't

So I'll point out that it's a Chewbacca, made out of chewing tobacco?

Get it?***

*** I do.

I saw that on Geekologie, but being the curious sort of guy I am, I thought to myself, there's got to be some story behind that, right? Because who just one day gets up and sculpts a miniature Chewbacca and gets it on the web? I figured it was some kind of protest against man's inhumanity to man, so I clicked the link and got to "Technabob," or I think that's what it's called because they use logo-y letters and it's hard for old guys like me to read. There, I saw this:

Despite being named after the Russian/Ukranian word for “dog”, I’ve always thought that Chewbacca’s name sounded like a hurried version of “chewing tobacco.” Apparently artist Terry Border thinks the same, so he made this literal interpretation to share with the world.

And there's that picture again. So then I clicked the link that Technabob, which sounds like a bad robot name, provided to prove the veracity of that audacious Russian/Ukrainian word claim, and got to a Wikipedia page *4

*4 of course. That was pre-ordained. Any Star Wars reference is never more than three clicks away from a Wikipedia link backing it up. Wikipedia and Star Wars are the kissin' cousins of geekery.

that featured this word:

собака

That, according to the pronunciation on the page, is pronounced something like so-bock-uh, and the Wikipedia page says the word is actually Iranic in origin, which means I'm now on a terrorist watch list, and the page also contains this helpful phrase, written in the original Russian/Ukrainian/Iranian

собака на сене

That means, dog in the manger, and if you're language has an idiom for dog in the manger you are raising your children, or your dogs or both, wrong.

Anyway, that Wikipedia page also says that the Ukrainians use the same word for dog, which doesn't surprise me because all languages just steal from English, a fact I can prove by noting that the French had to pass a law to get people to stop calling it an iPod and start calling it le baladeur, so let's finish this up by noting that "artist Terry Border," as he's respectfully known at Technabob, was featured on Smithsonian.com for anthropomorphizing foods, like this work titled "We Were Made For Each Other":

Which means that what began as a Star Wars Reference has now devolved into pointing out that you can be treated as a serious artist if you just steal ideas from Kramer.

Turns out, if you know science, Han Solo really DID take a short cut? (Star Wars References)

Can it possibly be true that I was wrong?

No. But hear me out.

About four months ago, I noted a Star Wars Reference from XKCD, and mentioned the oft-repeated claim that George Lucas messed up on Han Solo's dialogue about parsecs--

-- because obviously everything in the movie Star Wars was intended to be perfectly scientifically accurate, right down to the unnecessary presence of a monster in a trash compactor --

but now I've been told -- by Anonymous -- that in fact my knowledge is the one that's deficient. Said Anonymous:

The Kessel Run is a smuggling route that passes a cluster of black holes. The Falcon was able to fly closer to the black holes than other ships, thus shortening the journey it made from 18 to 12 parsecs. To fly closer to the black holes required enough power to escape their gravity. Speed comes from power. The Falcon is a fast ship. QED.

So was I wrong?

No. I know it looks that way, but hear me out. When I first read that comment, I thought "Huh, I guess I was wrong." But then I thought about it a second, and realized that it smacked to me of after-the-factism -- what happens when true believers in a story or movie or book fill in the gaps and problems in stories, like the way Harry Potterites claimed that there's an actual spell protecting Harry, a spell cast by his mother as she died at Voldemort's hand*

*Um, Spoiler Alert?

even though that's clearly bunk and is something readers made up because they don't want there to be unanswered questions about stories they love; readers want to think that authors had some sort of grand plan going into writing the story, as opposed to just making it up. But authors don't.**

**Rogue Mutt excepted

Authors -- screen writers, literary authors, all the rest are, I'm convinced, just making it up as they go along and then hoping it all makes sense. They're not going back over the manuscript over and over to make sure that what they wrote the first time around has not a single plot gap in it. They just write what they write and hope that it all makes sense as you go along.

That results in holes in stories, and unfortunate language-usage, at times -- like Harry Potter somehow surviving a curse that nobody can survive, or Han Solo not knowing the difference between space and time. But frankly, that doesn't matter: After all, all these holes blown into the stories of movies after the fact are just that: Ex post facto holes people pick at when they have time to do so -- usually about stuff that didn't really matter in the first place, like whether Han Solo, a space pilot, should know what a parsec is.

There are two kinds of plot holes or problem points in stories, then -- those that are real plot holes that pose real problems, and those that just don't matter. If it's a real problem, then the author or director should have caught it and made it work. If it just doesn't matter, if it's the equivalent of seeing a gladiator with a wristwatch on, a glitch that's no big deal, then it may be fun to talk about, but nobody should sweat filling in the gaps.

That is, there's no need to explain why that gladiator had a watch on; nobody needs to say "well, see, it wasn't really a wristwatch, it was a metal band that was invented by Claudius as a sort of rudimentary sundial...". It's just a glitch.

In that sense, it's dumb that people bothered coming up with an explanation for why Harry Potter lived, or why Han Solo said parsecs; it didn't really matter at all.

Here's the real test for whether something's a plot hole or just doesn't matter: If you caught it when you were watching the movie, or reading the book, it's a plot hole. If you only caught it after the fact, then it just doesn't matter. It may be fun to pick at, but that's all you're doing -- you're picking at something that you didn't notice in the first place.

So Han Solo's parsecs?




Just doesn't matter.

The fact that Commissioner Gordon's fake death***

***Seriously, can I get a spoiler alert here?

In The Dark Knight made no sense in the plot?

Just doesn't matter.

The "solution" to The Lincoln Lawyer's case being in a parking ticket?*4

*4 now, come ON. This is ridiculous

Plot hole.

So while I appreciate Anonymous (I know it's you, Timothy Zahn) and his efforts to make it clear that there are no holes in George Lucas' universe, it's also completely unnecessary to do, and that is why I have not put forth any effort into clarifying whether that was something Lucas claimed to have been his intention all along, or whether it was something that someone tacked on later.

And also why I wasn't wrong about Solo.

Besides --everyone knows that Lucas lied about his intentions, anyway, when he claimed that he always intended that Star Wars be a series of movies. Nobody starts a series of movies 67% of the way through the story, and nobody puts the big climax in the 4th movie, for Pete's sake. That's why he had to have a second Death Star: because he made it up as he went along, with no grand plan.

Now, on to more important things for the day, like why is Carrie Fisher trending 6th on Yahoo!?




It's because she dropped 50 pounds -- quite an achievement, and to celebrate, Carrie Fisher, who has been in movies going back to 1975, and who has written 11 different Hollywood productions, and has written five books and two plays, Carrie Fisher is celebrating by: saying she's going to try on her metal bikini again.

That's right: Given a chance to celebrate her many contributions to pop culture, Carrie Fisher went to the One True Source Of All References.

And why, when she could've gone with saying "I'm going to go back and wear that slip I wore in "Over the Rainbow?" Isn't that just as culturally significant?

This is the world that could have been. (Star Wars References)

The other day, I volunteered at a fundraiser for autism, and for the first 2 hours or so, I helped people out on the mini-golf course (making rulings on drops, making sure they went to the right hole, that sort of thing.)

The 18th hole was called "Hollywood" and had a red carpet that you had to putt on. Standing over it was this:



Notice anything missing?

Hint: That guy on the left is not a Jedi.

Score so far:

Exception that proves the rule: 1

Star Wars References: 3,752,475.

The saying "the exception that proves the rule" not making sense: 1

How else are you ever going to sell a movie? (Star Wars References)

By now, everybody knows that if you make some sort of low-budget sci-fi thing and put it on the Internet, and eventually a high-budget sci-fi guy sees it, you're golden as far as Hollywood is concerned. That's how Ataque De Panico *

*Literally translated, that means "These Taco Bell burritos are eating my insides"

director Fede Alvarez, who is Uruguayan**

** that's racist!

got noticed: He made a film, put it on Youtube, Kanye West saw it, and after that, Alvarez signed a deal with Sam Raimi to make more movies that Kanye West might also see.***

*** Hopefully, they will not be movies featuring the "writing" "talents" of Diablo Cody. Know what I'm saying, home slice?

But suppose you want to be more famous than some Uruguayan who Kanye once noticed?

And, as an aside, has anyone stopped to think about just how much power Kanye West holds? He made Taylor Swift become noticeable, inflicting her "talents" on us for several more years than we might otherwise have had to suffer, and now he is creating directors from thin air -- so if you're looking to make it big, I recommend that you get Kanye to look your way. Who knows what could be next? Maybe Kanye will notice those cute videos you posted of your kids, and the next thing you know, you're raising this century's version of the Olsen Twins?*4

*4 Fingers crossed!

Where was I? Oh, yeah: Suppose you want to be even more famous than Kanye West can make you (as if that's possible?) What are you going to do?

I'll tell you what you're going to do: You're going to do what budding filmmaker Gareth Edwards (the second-most famous Gareth in existence today) did: You're going to compare your future low-budget indie film to Star Wars:

British director Gareth Edwards burst onto the scene with the low budget science fiction film Monsters, catching the eye of everyone in Hollywood. He landed the job to direct a new Godzilla movie for Legendary Pictures, which is being rewritten by Superman/Batman scribe David Goyer. A Monsters sequel is being developed, which Edwards won’t direct. He’s also developing a top secret science fiction film with Russian director turned producer Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, The Darkest Hour, Night Watch). Not much has been revealed about this project, until now. My good sources tell me that the still untitled project is about a young human child (probably around 5 years old) and a robot who travel across the galaxy in search of mankind’s origin in a world void of humanity and filled with robots. Sounds pretty awesome right? Gareth is pitching this project as “a robot Star Wars.”

Sounds almost exactly like Star Wars to me. I mean, except for the parts that sound almost exactly like Battlestar Galactica. I would've pitched it just that way: Picture R2D2 and a kid who's completely unlike that little twit Anakin but still a kid, looking for the original Earth.

I bet that's exactly how Gareth did pitch it, but reporters edited out the Battlestar references because that show ended up so horribly.

But what's really being missed is the genius of pitching something as "_____ Plus Star Wars." Imagine how much more successful movies would have been if they'd been sold to us that way?

Instead of Gone With The Wind, we could have Civil War Star Wars. The Godfather could have been Mafia Star Wars. Every John Cusack movie ever could have been John Cusack Star Wars, and it wouldn't've even mattered that they didn't have anything to do with stars, or wars -- we'd just suck it up anyway.

Or, consider this pitch, for a little movie about a kid who grew up on a desert planet, only to get swept up in a rebellion with a ne'er do well friend and a princess and an old man:

Like a Star Wars, only crossed with Star Wars.

That's gold, right there.

Because I'm such an insider, I've got an early look at Robot Star Wars, which by rights ought to be called that. Here it is:




Oh, and here's Ataque de Panico, which could be described as "A human Star Wars, only with Robots, on Earth, instead of in the Stars." Enjoy:

This doesn't explain how Colbert was able to get away with referencing "Lord Of The Rings," though... (Star Wars References)

So this week the Tea Party made the news not for being racist or reactionary, but for comparing itself to a group of murderous thugs being used by other murderous thugs.

That in turn prompted wags like me and Jon Stewart to bring up other movies in relation to this story.

I, forgetting what every single reference in Western Civilization is supposed to be to, listed a variety of movies that showed what the Tea Party was all about. And got no response.

Here's what The Daily Show did:

The Daily Show - Republicans Watch "The Town"
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Jon Stewart remembered that if you ever reference a movie, it must be Star Wars. And that's why he has a TV show.

This is the God Particle of the Star Wars Universe. (Star Wars References.)

Remember how Lando can be used as slang for cool? What could possibly be cooler than Lando?

Just one thing. Listen carefully:



If such a thing existed, it would be the Higgs Boson of cool. But, sadly, like the Higgs Boson, it does not exist.

Also, is it racist to wonder why nobody went with Chewblacka?

This post is totally Lando. (Star Wars References)

Walking downtown the other day on what I've come to refer to as InstrumentQuest!, we passed by a kiosk full of posters about upcoming college-type stuff. That kiosk included this poster:




That's actually two bands: Wook is a jam band whose shows are described as a "must-attend party." But Urban Dictionary has a different concept of what a "wook" is:

A wook is a hippie without any ambition, motivation, or drive other than drugs and image. They're generally in their twenties, college students (or dropouts) at small-town liberal colleges (such as Appalachian State University) and dependent on an income other than their own.

Wooks tend to travel in packs, they smell strongly of patchouli and are in constant search for free drugs. One of the defining characteristics is an excessive amount of unkempt hair, usually in dreadlocks.

It is important to make the distinction between a hippie and a wook. Hippies can generally be viewed as positive, optimistic members of society with an idealistic goal for the betterment of society. Wooks are everything that you've been warned about in regard to hippies wrapped into a neat little package.

I haven't listened to any Wook songs, because my tolerance for jam bands is limited to enjoying Phish's Bouncing 'Round The Room. But it's obvious what the inspiration for the word was, isn't it?

The use of the word wook to describe the lower class of hippies -- who'd have guessed hippie culture was so rigidly stratified -- made me wonder if other classes of people are described by Star Wars lingo. And they are: It turns out that jawa is used a derogatory term for people living in the Mideast, and the meaning of Lando is hotly debated: Urban Dictionary has it both ways: Lando can be a traitorous person, but others say Lando is:

The old cool & new rad:

Wonderwhale's pretty lando.

That is great. I am going to describe every good thing that happens to me today as pretty lando. At least until someone punches me. Which would be so not lando.

This post starts off with baseball but finishes with underwear, so stick it out. (Star Wars References)

This is a joint story between Nonsportsmanlike Conduct! and The Best Of Everything.

You'd think the job of sports reporting would be easy enough: watch sports, talk to the athletes, and then say what just happened.

And you'd be right. And then you'd think that the job would get even easier when a story is just handed to you, the way "Evan Scribner wears a Yoda backpack" was handed to Deadspin, and you'd be right about that, too, except that when sports reporting, the easiest "job" in the world, crosses light sabers with Star Wars, the source of all Western culture, people get overwhelmed with implications and screwed up reporting even the simplest things.

That's what happened to Deadspin, my source for the latest Star Wars Reference, which is that San Diego Padres' pitcher Evan Scribner wears a Yoda backpack:


Deadspin, getting all hopped up on midichlorians, reported that story in Yoda-speak; the headline is "Something Of A Geek, Evan Scribner Is," and focused on the meaning of it all:

Evan Scribner, pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays Padres, has a Yoda backpack that makes it look as if he is giving Yoda a piggy-back ride. At some point in the last few years, we reached a cultural juncture at which this could either make Scribner a nerd or a hipster. I'm not sure that he's either, but he is a major league baseball pitcher who favors a Yoda backpack that makes it look as if he is giving Yoda a piggy-back ride. That noise you just heard is Americana folding in on itself.

And also the sound of Deadspin not realizing two things:

1. Americana isn't folding in on itself. Americana is Star Wars now, as this series of posts keeps proving.

2. Evan Scribner isn't a geek or a hipster. This is a hipster:







and this is a geek:







And if Deadspin realized that what Dan Savage says (G.F.E.) is true, they'd have done what I did, which is Google why does Evan Scribner wear a Yoda backpack, and they'd have found this Hartford Courant story, which explains that Scribner doesn't wear the Yoda out of any geekery, but out of major league-ery:

"Have to wear it out to the bullpen every day...If nobody else gets called up, I guess I'll have to wear it all year."

That is, Evan is the newest member of the staff, and he's being hazed.

But still, for my purposes, he's being hazed by being forced to wear a Yoda backpack; there are probably 20,000 other silly backpacks he could be forced to wear, and the Padres went with Yoda. They've been doing it for a while. Here's a 2010 picture of pitcher Ryan Webb wearing the Yoda:




It all began, in fact, about August 2010, when the Padres began putting Yoda into team pictures and made the Yoda Pack a hazing ritual; website Topless Robot speculated that it was because then-second baseman (he may be still, I don't know) David Eckstein, is married to Ashley Eckstein:




And Ashley is the voice of "Ahsoka" in Clone Wars:


(Topless Robot spelled her name wrong, by the way.) (Ahsoka was supposed to be trained by Anakin Skywalker, a bit of trivia that never made it into the movies.)

And Ashley Eckstein also makes the "Her Universe" line of clothing, a line of clothing that is said to be "more than Star Wars shirts," a point that is true, as the site also sells Boba Fett-ish underwear:



And that is why you should read this blog and not Deadspin.

That, and because I not only find you the whole story, but also find you sexy lightsaber fights:

A long time ago, in a galaxy that had not yet heard of "Axe Body Spray"... (Star Wars References.)

If there's one question I never thought would be answered in my lifetime, it's this:

What did Lando Calrissian smell like?

But thankfully, I will not go to my grave without knowing the answer to that burning issue, because this exists:



No, that's not the world's worst Star Wars Action Figure (TM); it's a bottle of Eau Lando Cologne, which you can buy for the low, low price of $29.99.

It is, that site says, an exclusive, and a limited edition.

Eau Lando smells like (again, according to that site)

Mandarin warmed with incense and lotus flower, exotic woods, dark violet and sensuous musk

Which is not what I

Dreamed

described in my as-yet-unpublished fan-fic “Lando & Greedo: Space Bail Bondsmen”

thought it would smell like.

That's not the only Star Wars-based cologne out there. There's also this:


But that's not as appealing, without more specificity. Which Jedi would it smell like? That one with the blue head and tentacles? Mace Windu? Yoda?

I hope not Yoda, because I bet Yoda had old man smell. You know the smell: a mixture of Ben Gay and prejudice.