Opening Night!
As promised, no spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Pictured above: my wife and I before tonight’s 7:30pm showing. It’s been many years since I’ve seen a movie on opening night — forgot how much fun all of the extracurricular stuff is. I’ll talk about the movie next week.
The Force Awakens
I had a great time with my gaming group tonight, playing Carcassonne, Kingsburg, Forbidden Desert, and Roll for the Galaxy. It took me a while to “get” Roll for the Galaxy, but after I did, it’s been a blast.
Naturally, the conversation turned to The Force Awakens since a few of us are going to an early showing tomorrow night. Although Christmas is still a week away, it feels like this is my version of Christmas Eve; call it the Night Before Episode VII.
I’ve got my blinders on right now, trying not to catch any Internet spoilers. My state of mind can be summed up in two words:
So. Excited.
Star Wars for a Dollar.
Spoiler alert: The “Space Toys” vest at Dollar Tree isn’t really a real Darth Vader costume. Maybe next week they’ll have an Augie Ben Doggie costume in stock.
Star Wars Piano Medley
Although I’m now posting all of my Star Wars content to Lando’s ‘Stache, I couldn’t resist sharing the Ultimate Star Wars Medley here. It’s a brilliantly produced video featuring a supremely talented pianist covering five of the most popular Star Wars songs. The pianos themselves are also stars, as you’ll see in the video.
After watching this I was reminded of one thing: not everything in the prequels was awful, thanks to magic of John Williams’ music. Duel of the Fates is a classic Star Wars song and as arranged by Sonya Belousova, it fits perfectly into her medley below.
I committed to writing 100 Yelp reviews this year and I’m lagging. I’ve been focusing on board gaming as well as posting a bunch of stuff on my Star Wars blog, so my Yelping has fallen behind schedule.
I’ve got a bunch of half-finished Yelp reviews, so I’ll try to finish my 100th by the end of the year. Actually, I’ll do that by the end of the year. Do or do not … well, you know.
Kashyyyk Wookies
Both of my fantasy football teams are in contention for the playoffs in two weeks, so I spent today sweating out the action. I normally don’t do this on Sundays; I usually watch the Raiders game and occasionally check my fantasy stats along the way.
Today was different, though.
In my main league my Kashyyyk Wookies came back from the cellar to lead my division, but there’s been a lot of luck involved. I’ve played some low-scoring teams and my main guys never seem to be on the same page. I’ve had to deal with the Andrew Luck situation and now my brilliant drafting of Todd Gurley looks to be for naught as defenses stack the box to slow him down.
In my secondary league my Tusken Raiders have managed to crawl back into the playoff hunt after suffering a few early season bad beats. Of course, once I started rolling, Gronk went down. Luckily, I was able to snag Chandler off the waiver wire (another reason why I HATE non-auction leagues now; free agent pickups shouldn’t be such a luck fest).
I wrapped up my secondary league game as Mark Ingram scored for the Saints, but that meant my main team was facing an even bigger deficit. Oh, the joys of rooting for/against the same player.
So it looks like I’m in good shape entering next week’s final regular-season game, but you never know. I haven’t tried to figure out all of the tiebreaker situations yet and I don’t plan on doing so. I’m treating next week just like this week: it’s a must win game for my imaginary team of players.
And on the basketball side of things, my Warriors-esque type start (five straight wins to open the season) looks to be finished tonight. It was bound to happen, but it sure didn’t help having Okafor suspended for two games due to his off-court behavior.
Carrie, Mark, and Harrison.
Twenty two.
That’s the number of times I saw the original Star Wars in a movie theater.
Somehow I convinced my parents to let me go every time the opportunity presented itself. Whether it was with my cousins or classmates, I was not going to miss out on seeing the movie set in a galaxy far, far away.
I saw it at the Pasadena Academy, a huge palace of a theater that now houses a multiplex. I saw it at the General Cinema in the mall, where my brothers and I always giggled at the opening music. I saw it at the drive-in.
I even saw an early bootleg copy on my uncle’s Betamax.
With The Force Awakens less than a month away, I’m curious to see how many times I end up seeing it. The last movie I saw twice in a theater was Avatar, thanks to the game-changing 3-D effects.
My wife and I have had our tickets for opening night for months (thanks to our local comic book store, which is hosting an early private screening) and I’m assuming that we’ll take our niece and nephew when they visit for the holidays. So that’s at least two times I’ll be in the theater. Of course, I’ll have to see it in IMAX, so that’s a third viewing.
But I don’t think I have the desire to see any movie 22 times in a theater. I’ll probably stop after the IMAX version. Of course, that won’t stop me from watching it at home several times after the Blu-Ray release … as long as J.J. Abrams doesn’t pull a George Lucas by adding a bunch of unnecessary CGI to everything.
In fact, can we start a petition for the Blu-Ray release to have FEWER lens flares? I’ve seen one in the trailers so far, but I’m sure there will be plenty more.
Note: This entry was inspired by this excellent article. If you lived through childhood during the 70s and 80s, you’ll appreciate it.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Regular readers know how fired up I am about Episode VII and I thought this was pretty funny. I was hanging out with my nephew and I played the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer on Youtube.
Nephew: Not again!
Me: You’ve seen it already?
Nephew: That’s all daddy watches!
Me (laughing): The Force is strong in our family.
We’re less than a month away from the opening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We’ve scoured the Internet for any kind of Star Wars news. We’ve seen two teasers, a behind-the-scenes short, trailers for various parts of the world, and now TV spots. We’ve had merchandise shoved down our throats on Force Friday.
I’m not sure why, but I’m not tired of any of it.
In fact, things are just getting better. Sure, I probably don’t need another meme featuring that lightsaber, but the spoof above makes it worth wading through the mediocre stuff.
Beam Me Up, Scotty by James Doohan
With today’s announcement that CBS is launching a new Star Trek series in 2017, I thought it was a good time to start reading James Doohan’s memoir, Beam Me Up Scotty. I scored a used copy last year and it’s been on my to-read shelf ever since.
As you can see in the photo above, I’m using my Star Wars bookmark. What you can’t hear in the photo is the Game of Thrones soundtrack.
I know my geekdom is crossing streams here, but it’s a risk I’ll take for a good read. As you can tell, I also like to live dangerously.
