Cracked.com has some pretty funny lists and countdowns. Now comes "7 Classic Star Wars Characters Who Totally Dropped The Ball," a list of bad calls and epic fails that shaped Eps IV-VI (language and hilarious caption warning):

http://www.cracked.com/article_17546_7-classic-star-wars-characters-who-totally-dropped-ball.html

Yeah, what was up with those lazy Imperial gunners who decided to just let the escape pod float by? Oh well, nobody ever said the citizens of the GFFA were smart ;).

Now they've added Tom "Yoda On CW" Kane and Matthew "General Grievous" Wood to Official Pix's autograph stable. The good news is I have Kane's autograph already, but now I'm looking at $200 worth of signatures!

How nice that Official Pix now has more CW images available...I hope their Anakin and Padmé still is available at Comic Con, because I'd really like to have Matt Lanter and Catherine Taber sign it. If I can't get Natalie and Hayden in the same room, it'll be the next best thing...

http://www.starwars.com/vault/collecting/20090708.html

Of course, everything Kotobukiya makes is $$. And their Comic Con booth always wants cash.

*I've noticed starwars.com has pimped the Fan Club Breakfast at Comic Con several times over the past few weeks. They've never had to do this before. I remember when the event would quickly sell out and now as the deadline is approaching, tickets are still available, despite the price dropping to $55 this year. I guess even con attendees are cutting back these days.

*The rumor mill about Indy V continues to grind along, with a report that the film will shoot next year and be out in 2011, quickly followed by a "never mind" after Popcorn Monster tweeted Frank Marshall about it. This is still a long shot IMO.

*The rumor mill about the live action show continues to grind along as well. The latest is that they have hired at least one Australian t.v. writer, a guy named John Edwards, who is not to be confused with the former presidential candidate or the guy who can talk to dead people. No one has come out yet to deny this and starwars.com linked to both of these stories without a denial. Could it be we're getting closer to something being done? Let's hope for news at Comic Con.

*starwars.com also linked to a story about the University of Illinois acquiring a collection of SW and other media fanzines from a fan named Mariellen "Ming" Wathne, who ran a private library of zines for several years. This is of interest to me because 1) I started during the zine age, 2) I'm acquainted with Ming, though I haven't seen her in a few years and 3) some of the zines in that collection are ones I published or contain stories I wrote. My ticket to immortality!

*TFN has a story about a SW summer camp. Too bad they didn't have 'em when I was kid!

*TFN also has a story about SW author Mike Stackpole advocating in favor of downloading pirated books for free! Actually, I think it's very forward thinking and it does offer an opportunity for newbies to get their work out there.

*And this lovely bit of artwork inspired by the upcoming SW novel Death Trooper....ZOMBIES!!!

http://www.theforce.net/image_popup/image_popup_global.asp?image=http://www.collectinghq.com/im/0016083.jpg

While perusing various unlicensed geek t-shirt sites, I saw this ladies' tee for sale on Geeklabel.com for $21.95:

http://www.geeklabel.com/show_product.php?product_id=320

They do make fun of the line, but by gum, I'm taking it back from the haters! I hope it gets here in time for Comic Con since you can customize colors and stuff.

Got back from a long weekend up north. My brother, the SIL, and friends of theirs with a 2-year-old son rented a house in scenic Carmel, CA, best known for having Clint Eastwood as a mayor some years ago. It's really a lovely place. Take the Shire from LOTR, dump it on the Pacific coast, sprinkle in a bunch of rich retirees, and you have Carmel. There are a lot of cool stores and great restaurants. Plus we saw Carrot Top walking around! You can't beat that ;). There weren't any fireworks on the 4th, so we settled for grilling and playing Cranium instead. We also visited some nearby locales like Big Sur, Pebble Beach, and Pacific Grove. All of them were beautiful places. Pacific Grove has a Borg's Motel. Really! I pointed at it and said, "Don't stay there! You will be assimilated!" Totally embarrassed my brother. Also ate a lot of places stocked with the local, fresh, and organic. It is Nor Cal after all. The only major drawback was the hellish evening spent at SFO last night, thanks to Southwest. My flight was supposed to have left at 7:20 p.m.. The problem was the plane was supposed to come from Denver and it was held up there for THREE hours due to thunderstorms. So my flight ended up being over 4 hours late and I got home after 1 a.m.. Needless to say, I'm dragging here. The long wait though allowed me to finish a book club selection for work...The Book Thief has to be the most depressing book I've read in a loooong time. Good Lord.

But I did get some fan fic plot bunnies while deprived of the usual stimuli, so hopefully I'll have the time to actually write them!

Again, have a safe, happy 4th!

I'm leaving town for the weekend tomorrow and I'll likely be offline until late Sunday night/Monday. So, have a safe, happy Fourth of July...to celebrate, here are some clips from what's perhaps the most patriotic video game of all time, Metal Wolf Chaos. Think of it as a cross between Transformers and Air Force One, if it was written by a bunch of Japanese guys. President Michael Wilson is deposed in a coup by his evil Vice President, Richard Hawk (who vetted that guy?) and Wilson straps on a mecha suit to do battle against Hawk, who also possesses a mecha suit, and his forces. Wilson utters a series of memorable one-liners, like "Let's parrrrty!" or "Suck on my missile punch!" and my personal favorite, "Eat my flame of justice!" You can tell that Hawk is utterly un-American because of his evil deeds and the fact he admits he sips on darjeeling tea.

Watch Air Force One take off from the Reflecting Pool (!!), the President literally hitch a ride on the Space Shuttle, and mecha-suited pols blow crap up in NYC.




God bless America!

Happy Canada Day to the Canucks on my f-list and in Lurkersville.

I watched AOTC on Spike this evening and it brings back the gooey summer days of 2002. Boy, it sure was nice having all of that time on the Metro to crank out A/P fic or finding "inspiration" by visiting places like Ellicott City, MD. Looking back on the type of stuff I wrote then as I post it all on FanFiction.net, it wasn't as hopelessly mushy as I feared ;). I always wrote that stuff bearing in mind that somehow, someway it was bound to come to a tragic end and even so, not every moment of their time together was full of angst and dark foreboding. There had to have been moments of great happiness and joy, and a lot of of my 2002-2003 A/P fic reflected the giddier moments seen in AOTC.

After the recent Metro train wreck, I got a message from someone on the old A/P Defenders thread on TFN I hadn't heard from in ages. The person didn't know I'd moved cross-country since then but after reassuring the person I was a safe 2500 miles from the carnage, I was inspired to look at the old A/P Defenders posts from summer 2002. Then I realized how much I really miss the great discussions that took place. It felt like at times I was actually learning something. What makes it even more painful now is how uninspiring a lot of SW discussion online has become. Twitter is nice for finding out something fast--it's how I found out Michael Jackson had died--but the format just doesn't allow for anything more. Most message boards are full of the same stupid crud. Metas are a dying artform even on formats like LiveJournal.

*Sigh.*

For those of you who love catching SW on t.v., Spike will be airing a SW flick 6 p.m. every night through July 4. It kicks off tonight with TPM.

In last week's poll on whether Indy V will actually get made, the results are:

Highly likely--8%
Somewhat likely--40%
I'm not holding my breath--52%
It won't happen--0%
I have no idea--0%

Poll #1422612 Where's Artoo?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What movie should Artoo appear in next?

Billy Mays, the star of countless t.v. ads and the co-star of Discovery's "Pitchmen," died this morning. We all knew Farrah was dying and I honestly wasn't all that surprised Michael Jackson died, but this was a real shocker and in a way, sadder than those higher-profile deaths. Mays was at the height of his success and personified the American dream, working his way up from the boardwalks in Atlantic City to being a multi-millionaire t.v. pitchman.

TMZ.com posted that he'd been on a flight that blew its tire out when it landed, just hours before his death. When this landed, Mays apparently got hit on the head pretty hard but didn't seek medical attention (the FAA is accusing him of not wearing a seatbelt while landing). Poor guy. I'll never forget those OxiClean ads and he'll likely be one of those '00s icons. Prayers for his family.




Now, will these celebrities stop dying? Please?

Update: An autopsy on 6/29/09 revealed that Mays died from a heart attack, not a head injury.

Yesterday, while everybody was focused on celebrity deaths, starwars.com posted this rather amusing piece on vintage SW collectibles aimed at girls:

http://www.starwars.com/vault/collecting/20090626.html?page=1

No, that was not an illustration of me circa 1978, though I did sort of look like that then. Right down to the pigtails. My parents did not buy me loads of action figures, sheets, and toy lightsabers when I was a kid. I'm certain that my current collecting/acquiring habits had everything to do with that. I did get a few things like a small handful of action figures (actually they were my brother's but for a Luke TESB figure), the 12" Leia, a book or two, a scattering of long-lost trading cards, some of the Marvel comics, and a very cool black t-shirt with the Hildebrandts' ANH artwork for Christmas 1977. But other than that? Not a heck of a lot more in the post-ANH era. My Leia doll's buns came out easily and you couldn't style them back the way they were. Her leg kept popping off too for some reason. My brother meanwhile acquired the Luke 12" doll and the really big Chewbacca one. We lost Chewie years ago, but I still have Luke, although not with his original shirt and his pants/boots were shortened for some reason.

By the time TESB came out, I was too, um, mature for Underoos. They didn't make SW training bras. All I got out of that was the TESB novelization. I had a Burger King promotional poster/game thing, but my mom threw it away eventually. I had the Boris Vallejo poster that my mom bought at the movie theater; it was even on my bedroom wall for years. That unfortunately is MIA, which is too bad. It's one of my favorite promotional pieces. I got some TESB trading cards while trick or treating but my brother drew all over them.

When ROTJ came out, I was already a teenager and about 99% of ROTJ merch was meant for the small fry. I got the novel, the "graphic novel" adaptation, and for Christmas, the 1984 ROTJ calendar. But I did get one "kid" item...a stuffed Ewok. Not only do I still have my Wicket after all of this time, I even bought Princess Kneesaa on eBay some years ago. You see, my mom originally intended to give me both Wicket and Kneesaa, but they ran out of Kneesaa. My mom was probably more excited about my purchase than I was, though I adore my chick Ewok to pieces.

How They Once Were

( Rest for those who needed the peace )

The lack of new SW movies won't keep one of Hollywood's enduring stars off the big screen! Nope, Artoo's career keeps chugging along in the form of hard-to-spot cameos so geeks on the internet can guess where he is, then see the movie multiple times to look for him.

Already, Artoo had a hidden cameo in Star Trek. Now I hear he has a hidden cameo in the brand new Transformers 2. His agent must be working overtime.

For the first time ever, Lucasfilm's annual song and dance, known as the "Spectacular," will air on cable's G4 July 25 at 2 p.m. ET/PT. Hosted by Olivia Munn and Kevin Pereira, who also host "Attack of the Show," it will precede a live feed from the convention at 4 p.m.. I think what will happen is the presentation will be on Friday as it usually is and taped for airing on Saturday. Hey, I just might turn up on camera. Or, maybe Olivia Munn will put on her Slave Leia costume and Megan Fox will make good on her threat to wear hers, and they will wrestle in Jell-O for the fanboys.

What's actually planned is a Q&A session with Dave Filoni that will include questions submitted in advance through G4's website and a live script read through with most of the main cast of CW. Other crazy stuff will occur, I'm sure.

Moreover, Lucasfilm will unleash the opportunity for fans to unload their life stories for a new project. It's similar to Steven Spielberg's projects for Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans. I had no idea SW fans were dying at a rate of a thousand a day. Anyway, fans can not only submit their own videos expounding on how much they hate Jar Jar and George Lucas for raping their childhoods, they can also do it at Comic Con this year. I hope to be a voice of sanity participate if able. Of course, they may take one look at me and go, "Not that effin' @##$#."

Nerfherders Anonymous posted a list of SW guests slated to appear at Comic Con. Aside from the previously mentioned Mark Hamill, James Arnold Taylor, and Dave Filoni, the guest roster also includes several CW cast members: Ashley Eckstein, Matt Lanter, and Catherine Taber. Taylor is signing at the Fan Club breakfast and likely at the con itself. If the rest of the cast also signs at the con, I am going to be one VERY broke fangirl. Maybe I can find a picture with all of the main CW characters on it and get them all to sign it.

"Jon & Kate" beat out #iranelection for the top trending topic on Twitter.

I found out this afternoon about the rush hour Metro train crash in Washington, D.C.. As of yet, 6 are dead, 60 are injured. I saw video of the crash site and it looks like to me the second train had to have hit the first VERY hard to subvert itself under the other train. Going by experience, those trains had to have been packed at the time of the crash :(.

Here's the D.C. Metro map:



According to the news (those of you in the D.C. area can correct me if those sources are wrong), the crash happened on the Red Line between the Fort Totten and Takoma stations. I've gone on that route before, though my usual commute was on the Orange Line from Northern VA to downtown D.C..

I wonder if it was another instance of a train operator texting or otherwise distracted while she's supposed to be working; that's what happened with the big commuter train crash in Los Angeles recently. But Metro trains are supposed to automatically slow down when approaching another train on the same track. Was it a combination of driver error and mechanical failure, or one of the two? We'll have to see.

Results of last week's poll "what's your opinion of the Jedi Order?"

It's awesome--39.1%
Like the rank and file, don't like the leadership--56.5%
Deeply suspicious--8.7%
Don't like them--4.3%
No opinion--4.3%

Poll #1419279 Indiana Jones V?
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What's the likelihood Indy V will actually get made?