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By Tgreen, February 25, 2019 9:54 am

Big old wall of words coming at you to talk about writing, and planning, and doing both poorly, and also an update on the sad but inevitable fate of Happy Friday. Take a look, if you dare…

Arizona

Longtime readers — and you know who they are because they’re the ones who run in the other direction at the first sign of the phrase “longtime readers”; I mean, Carolyn’s read so many of these things I think she gets on a plane to another country any time I start a paragraph with the letter L just to be safe — may recall back in 2015 when I tracked my daily writing with a countdown from January 1 to December 31. When that ended, I still tried to keep up the daily schedule but missed a day sometime in January, then missed another day, and eventually lapsed back into my usual writing schedule of doing something when I felt like it or when I had a deadline.

Which is why when 2017 rolled around, I did the same thing. I wrote every day and did a little social media countdown to keep myself honest. And again, on December 31 I stopped, figuring I’d made my point. And maybe I did, because this time I didn’t stop the daily writing. Sure, some days it was revising old stuff instead of all new writing. And some days it was a few sentences or paragraphs. But other days it was a couple thousand words. The point is, I didn’t stop when the countdown stopped. I still haven’t stopped. I’ve done something writing-related every day since January 1, 2017. This had been good and bad.

It’s been good because, hey, it’s always good to get the words down on paper, or on the screen. But it’s been bad because it’s hard to stay focused every day. It’s hard to stay goal-oriented when some days you’re just too tired to put the words in any kind of order. It’s too easy to focus on whatever you’re working on at that moment without seeing how, or even if, it fits into some bigger plan. It gets easy to abandon any sense of a bigger plan because you can always say you’re working every day and therefore of course you’re being productive.

But over the last 2+ years, I realized that the daily work is worth a lot more if it’s directed at a specific goal. It doesn’t mean I’m any better at doing it that way, but at least I know when I’m doing something constructive and when I might just be spinning my wheels, and that’s a start.

My pattern for the last couple of years has been pretty consistent. I shoot for a story for The First Line every quarter, depending on what line they’re offering, though usually I take a shot no matter what the line is. Sometimes I just don’t end up with a complete story, and whatever I wrote sits unfinished in the archives unless and until I find some way to repurpose it. I also try to shoot for The Last Line and Tales from whatever industry they’re highlighting that year. This keeps me working on at least 6 short stories a year, and I usually find another couple of places to submit to, which helps to give me things to focus on.

I also do NaNoWriMo every year, which forces me to bang out 50K words in a month. I’ve written several awful books this way, and I’ve also written a couple of books that might be worth something if I put in the work. And that’s been the dilemma I’ve faced the last few years. Do I bail on the short stories and put in the time on one of these novels, or do I stick to the somewhat instant gratification of the short stories and hope that somehow I’ll squeeze in time for one of the novels someday? The last few years I’ve mostly been doing that second one, and it hasn’t really worked.

So when it came time to figure out the plan for 2019, I thought I’d put the short stories aside for a bit and focus on a novel. Last year I’d picked this space opera thing that was mostly a love letter to the Star Wars and Star Trek of my youth and that wasn’t completely awful. To fix it I’d need to do a lot of world building and to be honest I got lazy about it. Instead I moved to another book that was kind of a suburban noir. It also needed work, like it needed at least one new character added in there so that the ending made more sense, but that level of work seemed a little easier. So I picked that as my 2019 work.

Punch it, Chewy!

Then, while flying the red eye from Arizona in early January, I had an idea for a project. Four parts, spread out over the year. Four stories. All stand-alone and all taking place in Arizona. I sketched out a few ideas and went to work, because the first story had a February 1 deadline. I started a story, ran out of steam, started a second story, ran out of steam, figured out how the first story was supposed to go and went back to that, all while trying to live a life and do my day job.

It didn’t work. I was still standing up and punching as late as 11PM on January 31, but I just couldn’t make the deadline. So now I have to decide if I walk away and go back to my original plans for 2019, or if I take a crack at the next story anyway and see if I can make it work with a decent amount of time to dedicate to it. The cool thing about the idea, for me, was that the stories would be stand-alone, but when they were all finished, I’d add some common thread to the ones that didn’t sell and maybe try to self-publish a little novella. And that’s the thing that keeps me considering this idea at all after last month’s failure.

I’ve still given up on any other short story work for the year unless some amazing idea comes to me, because it’s past time to get serious with editing and revising one of these novels to try and sell. I’ve done some work on that suburban noir already, and that space opera thing never completely leaves my brain, so I’m gonna devote some time to that one as well. The goal is to have at least one of them more closely resembling an actual book by the end of 2019. There’s still a ton more that would have to be done after that, but it’s a huge first step I’ve never quite achieved before. Now I get to see if I can do it.

Of course, if the opportunity to write a reboot of happens to come up, all these plans get thrown out the window, so if you’ve got any casting ideas for 2019’s Sheriff Lobo, feel free to send them my way.

Hey there, where you goin’…

The problem, though, is my brain is like a magnet for questionable story ideas, and just last week something I wrote to someone in an email got me thinking, and now I have several pages of notes I’m writing to try and convince myself to write the damn thing, or to not write the damn thing. It’s kind of hard to tell sometimes. All of which is kind of a long way to say that planning is hard and almost never works. There’s a little free hard-earned wisdom from your Uncle T.

And since people have asked, I suppose I should give an update about the only writing of mine some of you folks care about. Happy Friday. People want to know if Happy Friday is ever coming back. And the answer is that I used to think it was, but since it’s been dead and gone since Trump’s 100th day, it seems obvious that Happy Friday is official done for. It had a good run but everything has to end sometime, and that last Top 100 List was as good a way as any to wrap things up. So yeah, Happy Friday is finished. More than wenty years, on and off, is nothing to sneeze at, but that’s enough. If I was ever gonna write a funny joke, I’m sure it would’ve happened already. So Rest In Peace, Happy Friday.

Which, of course, means it’ll be back at some point to cover the 2020 election season. I’m feeling pretty confident this election is the one that’s gonna finally break this country, and I would hate to miss out on that. So I just have to get some momentum on the fiction writing and then we’ll all get to see if I’ve got anything left in the tank to document the absolute fucking circus I expect 2020 to be.

2020 is coming…

T “this was way too many words to have to read on a Monday morning so I don’t blame all of you for never making it all the way down to here” green

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By Tgreen, December 18, 2015 10:03 am

Today marks the official opening day for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the 7th episode in the Star Wars saga. After the poor reception the prequel trilogy received, fans around the world have been understandably nervous about what to expect this time around. Reviews and early word of mouth are positive, but the only way to really know if the movie is any good is to go see it. I’ll be seeing it later today, but before I go I got to thinking about all the ways this movie could go wrong. I’m not one of those fans whose life will be ruined by a bad Star Wars movie, but still, I’m hoping that when the trailers are over and the John Williams music kicks in, I don’t see any of…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Ways They Can Screw Up Star Wars: The Force Awakens:

10. New cantina scene takes twice as long as necessary because everyone at the bar is too busy taking selfies to advance the plot

9. Princess Leia takes another crack at that English accent from the first Star Wars movie

8. Han Solo shows up riding an old fashioned motorcycle while blasting a Beastie Boys song (oh, wait, sorry, that’s one of Tgreen’s Top Ten Ways They Can Screw Up Star Trek Beyond)

7. Cameo appearance by Jar-Jar Binks’ annoying grandson Jar-Jar Urkel

6. Corporate synergy requires new Stormtrooper outfits to include Mickey Mouse ears

5. In an effort to hook today’s texting-addicted kids, the opening crawl includes emojis

4. Product placement deal ends with Apple logo plastered on new Death Star

3. Reveal Luke Skywalker has been hiding out with the ghosts of Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman’s characters from the Star Wars Holiday Special

2. New bad guy turns out to be two Ewoks in a black suit

1. Subplot has newly-empowered Emperor Palpatrump initiating a ban on all Jedi coming to Tatooine “just until we can be sure about them”

Until next time, go out and see Star Wars and halfway through stand up and yell, “Where the hell is Lando?!?”, get the large popcorn for a quarter more, please silence your cell phone, don’t fall asleep in those comfortable reclining chairs and, as always, May the Happy Friday be with you.

T “Top Ten Lists would be way easier if they only had 5 or 6 items” green

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By Tgreen, November 17, 2015 11:22 am

It was twenty years ago today
Happy Friday taught you all to say,
“We don’t want to see those lame-ass lists.
“Their lack of humor leaves us really pissed.”
But on this anniversary
Here’s jokes you’ve read for years and years
Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists

It’s Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists
We know you won’t enjoy this show
It’s Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists
The jokes you hated years ago
Happy Friday’s Crappy
Happy Friday’s Crappy
Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists

It’s a surprise to be here
It’s certainly a shock
We thought we killed this damn thing off
You know you didn’t miss these jokes
You’d like to make them stop

I don’t really want to start this show
But I thought you might like to know
The writer’s giving jokes a spin
And he wants you to pretend to grin
So let me warn you all right now
The one and only Tgreen’s here
With Happy Friday’s Crappy Top Ten Lists

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand Happy Friday everybody! Yes, I know it’s technically Tuesday but since this is the actual anniversary of the first Happy Friday email, we’re just going to pretend that it’s Friday. Just like you used to pretend you laughed at all those Top Ten lists. The only difference now is you still have to go to work tomorrow. Shitty jokes and a Wednesday staring you in the face right after? No wonder I didn’t call this thing Happy Tuesday way back when.

This week actor Charlie Sheen revealed that he’s HIV positive. Doctors say there’s no way of knowing how Sheen got the disease because not only is he the first patient who was ever able to check off every possible way to get it on a lifestyle survey, he also added three other possibilities they’d never even heard of.

There was an embarrassing moment in the White House this week when President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize fell off a shelf and accidentally launched 10 drone attacks in the Middle East.

This week the latest poll results have Ben Carson and Donald Trump leading in the GOP race for the 2016 election, which is a rare case where the story is actually its own punchline.

Former President Bill Clinton this week live-tweeted the second Democratic Presidential debate and showed his support for Hillary by using the hashtag #Imwithher, which is the first time he’s ever admitted to being with a woman without the involvement of a subpoena.

In response to the terrorist attacks in France, this week the United States announced new travel rules for Syrian refugees. From now on they’re only going to be allowed one explosive device and one automatic weapon in their carryon luggage.

In other Syria news, it was noted this week that Apple founder Steve Jobs’s father was a Syrian migrant, prompting Fox News to pull its app from the Apple App Store in protest.

This week aging mobster Vincent Asaro was acquitted of charges that he was involved in the 1978 Lufthansa heist. Jurors said Asaro couldn’t possibly have been guilty because his character never showed up in the movie Goodfellas.

In a biography released this week, former President George H. W. Bush said that his son’s advisors gave him some bad advice in the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. When asked to respond to the charges, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he had no hard feelings toward the former President and then offered to prove it by taking him on a special hunting trip.

In other Sith Lord news, Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens on December 18th. So if you think you may have some business to take care of on the Internet, you might want to take care of it on the 17th. Because after that the Internet is going to be used exclusively for complaining about Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the next 2.5 years.

And that’s enough News Roundup for this week.

Thanks to recent events I’ve seen a bomb-sniffing dog at my local train station. I can’t say whether he’s ever going to smell a bomb there, but I know for sure he’s never going to smell an on-time train in that station.

I’ll tell you, if the New England Patriots keep winning, everybody’s gonna want to put their hands on Tom Brady’s soft balls. Which is just how he likes it.

Last week I took my first Uber ride. My driver was a nice guy from Kenya named Benson. And I’ll admit it made me think about all the opportunities we have in this country. I mean, here was a guy born in the middle of Kenya who managed to pull himself up and move here and get a job he loves driving a car in San Antonio. Granted, it’s not as great a story as the guy born in the middle of Kenya who managed to pull himself up and move here and get a job he loves as the President of the United States, but it’s still pretty cool.

The previous paragraph was brought to you by Trump for President, 2016.

Us children of the 70s have an interesting month coming up. We’re going to have the opportunity to see a new Rocky movie with Sylvester Stallone playing Rocky, and then a new Star Wars movie with Harrison Ford, Mark Hammill and Carrie Fisher playing Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. And then of course there’s the rumor that John Travolta was spotted getting fitted for a white suit.

And while we’re on the subject of Star Wars, the new movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens takes place 30 years after the end of Return of the Jedi. This means that some of the new merchandise is quite different from what traditionally comes out for a Star Wars movie, as you’ll see when you take a look at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Examples of Star Wars: The Force Awakens Merchandise:

10. Han Solo Blaster/AARP Card Combo Pack
9. Jabba the Hutt Slimming Undergarments
8. Large Print Movie Novelization
7. C3P0’s Twitter to English Translator, for Confused Grandparents Everywhere
6. The Chewbacca Hair Piece (formerly known as The Trump)
5. Princess Leia’s You’re My Only Hope Botox Cream
4. Imperial Walker
3. Jar-Jar Binks action figure (they really made at lot of these in 1999 so please just buy one already)
2. Lando Calrissian’s Cloud City Walking Shoes — So Comfortable You’ll Think You’re Walking on a Cloud
1. Luke Skywalker’s May the Force Be With You Male Enhancement Pills

And that’s all the time we have this week. I’m not entirely sure what the traditional present for the 20th Anniversary is, but I’m guessing it’s a crappy Top Ten List, right?

A brief historical note, if you’ll indulge me. The first Happy Friday did actually go out 20 years ago today in email format to a bunch of friends who’d just gotten email at work. Many of those people are still out there right now reading this, probably on a mobile device that no one could’ve predicted in 1995. I can only imagine it’s because they’re still waiting for me to write a good joke, in which case I might as well tell them I’ll see them all for Happy Friday’s 40th Anniversary, beamed directly to the brain implants we’ll all no doubt have by then.

If I counted up all the times I ended Happy Friday for good, never to return to it again, I’d get a higher number than George Pataki gets when he counts the people who’d vote for him in 2016, but despite that low bar it is a pretty high number. So thanks to those of you who do still show up whenever I find a few minutes to crank out one of these. And now Happy Friday is going to slip back into retirement for a bit. But Happy Friday will return on a regular-ish schedule next year to cover the 2016 Presidential Election. Sorry, there’s nothing I can do to stop that.

So until next time, stop encouraging Trump, celebrate your Thanksgiving with a Pizza Hut Triple Bypass, er, uh, Triple Treat box, stand up in the middle of that new Star Wars movie and shout “where the hell is Scotty?!?”, cower in fear as I decide whether I want to rerun all my old OJ Simpson jokes when that new OJ Simpson show comes on, go check IMDB to prove that I’m not lying about that OJ Simpson show, wonder if I made that reference just because Happy Friday doesn’t seem like Happy Friday without an OJ Simpson joke, realize that’s exactly why I did it, accept the fact that I’m using a very generous definition of the word “joke,” go to the store and buy Chris Christie a nice “sorry you won’t be President” card, ponder which is more presidential — Trump’s hair or the old Giuliani combover, be forgiving of the fact that this paragraph ran off the rails a lot of words ago and, as always, have a Happy Friday. Or Tuesday. Or whatever day you get around to reading this.

T “anyone know when that Poison Pen 30th anniversary is supposed to happen?” green

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By Tgreen, September 4, 2015 8:17 am

Lines formed in front of toy stores around the world this week in anticipation of Force Friday, a midnight event where a wave of new Star Wars merchandise, including the first toys associated with the upcoming The Force Awakens movie, went on sale. Star Wars parent company Disney expects to pull in billions of dollars in merchandise money for the new movie, and it was counting on a record-breaking turnout for the event. Mostly because Disney was fortunate enough to pick a night when none of the people standing on those midnight lines had a date, or anything better to do, really.

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By Tgreen, June 13, 2010 9:38 pm

Star Wars was a great movie, but it was The Empire Strikes Back that turned the franchise into a religion. Think about it. The original Star Wars was cool, it told a story, and it had a nice, neat ending where the good guys won and the bad guys got their asses kicked. You can have a lot of fun with that, but you don’t make a bazillion dollars and create a nerd army ready to kill for you. No, to do that, you need a sequel. And not just any sequel. If the first Star Wars sequel had been less Godfather II and more Caddyshack 2, I would not be sitting here writing this and you would not be wearing your Ewok Underoos while reading it. So a sequel. A good sequel. And that’s what we got with The Empire Strikes Back.

Though not right away. The Empire Strikes Back wasn’t actually the first Star Wars sequel. Not really. Before we got that, we got this:

Okay, maybe not strictly a sequel, but it was the first time our characters appeared on film since the movie, so I think we have to count it. Even if George Lucas would probably trade all the money he made off of those boxes of C3PO cereal he sold in the 80s to get us to forget the sight of Bea Arthur singing in the cantina, this thing happened and so we’re counting it.

In fact, The Empire Strikes Back isn’t even the second sequel. That honor goes to this book:

I remember seeing this book in the library in 1978 or 1979, reading it dozens of times, and eventually buying my own copy, which I also read dozens of times. Still probably have it in storage somewhere. But this book was an honest to goodness continuation of the Star Wars story, with Luke and Leia and Darth Vader and a lightsaber duel. Couldn’t ask for much more than that if you were a prepubescent Star Wars geek whose only other contact with Star Wars at the time was the Marvel Comics series, which occasionally featured a 6′-tall green rabbit (see previous Star Wars post for more of the gory details).

No, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was a real sequel, and only recently did I find out how true that is. Apparently, when George Lucas was making Star Wars, he had no idea if it would be a hit or a flop so he commissioned 2 sequels in book form that, if necessary, could be turned into low-budget movies if there was no big money to make sequels. Obviously, the first movie was a hit, big budget sequels were a given, and so Splinter was released as a book that pretty much was contradicted by everything filmed afterwards (uh, yeah, Luke and Leia really seemed to have the hots for each other in this one and as we know, that would turn out to be really inappropriate). It was fun, but it was doomed to be a tiny footnote in the overall Star Wars saga. Which brings us to the first real, big deal, not a Golden Girl in sight Star Wars sequel, which I first saw in theaters some time in June, 1980, and which I then spent a whole summer reliving with this:

I think I may have bought the book before seeing the movie, but I’m not sure. I know for sure the book cover was the first time I ever saw the poster for the movie in color. And I know I didn’t read the book until seeing the movie and I doubt I had the self-control to own the book and not take a peek, so maybe I just missed the poster entirely while at the theater to see the movie. I know for sure I loved the book. I interacted with these movies so much more with the books back in these pre-VCR or -DVD years. And so after seeing the movie in the theaters twice, the book let me go back to the story whenever I wanted. The book, and this:

Yes, the movie in all its big glossy comic book glory. I read the hell out of this thing. Copied that picture of Darth Vader many times as it turned out to be the only thing I could do as a kid that could impress girls. Sad, but a Star Wars geek will take what he can get, and for me it was Darth Vader pictures. It’s facts like this that make me wonder how I ever got a girl to let me see her naked.

Odd little side note to that Marvel comics adaptation. It came out in 3 versions. The big magazine whose cover I copied, as monthly installments of the regular comics series, and a small paperback with the same cover as the magazine. Marvel did the adaptation while the movie was being made, so it worked with early drafts of the script and concept art, without being able to see the actual movie. So given how things change during a movie’s production, and how the paperback version of the adaptation went to press earlier than the other 2 versions, the paperback version has Luke being trained by a Yoda you might not recognize:

They managed to redraw Yoda in time for the magazine and comic books, to save our childhood heads from exploding. I didn’t own the paperback book, but I did own all 6 issues of the comic book in addition to the magazine, because even at that young age I needed to find as many ways as possible to throw my money at George Lucas. Another way I found was by getting this:

Star Wars music on cassette tape. That was the way to go back in 1980. I think I had to get it twice, because the first one was defective. Ever get a cassette tape that played to the end and the tape came loose so you could never play it again? This was one of those. I’ve owned a couple of versions of the music from all of these movies over the years, but I think The Empire Strikes Back had my favorite soundtrack of them all. Not sure why, but I think it’s the best one. Sounds way better on CD than it did on cassette tape, too. But crack open one of the comics, crank the cassette player, and you could pretty much guarantee someone bigger than you would want to kick your ass before the afternoon was over. Good thing I knew how to fight back.

There was one other way to keep up with a Star Wars movie back in the day, and it’s a way that’s pretty much disappeared by now. I’m talking about the official satire of the movie, as you might find here:

Mad Magazine still exists, barely, as a quarterly magazine, so if you really want to catch a spoof of a movie you liked, you might be able to even a decade deep into the 21st Century. But back in 1980, there was actually competition for such things, and if you really wanted to, you could drop a couple of bucks to compare and contrast:

Crazy Magazine was done by the same people who ran Marvel Comics, so not only were they first to the newsstand, but they had the wrong Yoda in their spoof. In the 30 years since I’ve forgotten if any of these were any good, but I’m sure I laughed my 12-year-old butt off at the time.

So, there it is, The Empire Strikes Back, named by some one of the better sequels in movie history, and often considered the best of the Star Wars movies. And I can understand why. It was bigger, faster, and louder than the first movie. It introduced a bunch of new stuff to the saga and threw in a twist and a downer ending that almost anyone knows even if they don’t care about these movies.

But what it also did was take the first step into a larger saga that, if you really look at it, doesn’t have a whole lot of room for the original movie. Five sequels later and the movies all more or less fit together into one neat story, except for the original Star Wars. There’s stuff in there that doesn’t quite match the layers of extra story George Lucas ladled onto it over the years. So while The Empire Strikes Back is easily the best Star Wars sequel, it loses many points because of what it did to the original. Though if I could dig out a copy of the comics adaptation tonight, I’d probably read it.

See you back here, or somewhere, in 3 years as we celebrate 30 years of The Return of the Jedi. Might take me that long to come up with enough positive things to write about it.

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By Tgreen, May 7, 2010 9:10 am

This week the folks at TomTom, the GPS maker (not to be confused with TgreenTgreen, the lame Top Ten maker), began selling add-ons to their GPS line that would allow you to have characters from the Star Wars movies read your driving directions to you. Now at this point you’re getting ready to either roll your eyes or reach for your credit card, and only you truly know which reaction is yours, and no one here will judge you. But before you do that, let’s look at this from the the most appropriate angle possible — the Top Ten List. Which brings us to…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Least Helpful Star Wars Quotes For A GPS To Use:
10. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
9. I find your lack of faith disturbing.
8. Meesa people gonna die?
7. There is no try.
6. It’s a trap!
5. That’s no moon, it’s a space station!
4. Now that’s pod racing!
3. I don’t mind flying, but what you’re doing is suicide.
2. Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy!
1. So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view.

Now feel free roll your eyes or reach for your credit c… Ah, who am I kidding? Feel free to roll your eyes.

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By Tgreen, April 21, 2010 10:25 pm

This post is from May 28, 2007, and originally appeared in T & Sympathy on the Treetop Lounge site upon the 30th anniversary of the premiere of Star Wars . With the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back looming, I figured I’d post this here so that when I write about Empire, there’ll be some context. I hope you enjoy this repeat of a glimpse into the soul of a geek:

You know, earlier this year I got through my 39th birthday without a hitch. I didn’t spend even one second thinking about how old I am, so I sure as hell didn’t waste time feeling old. But that was then. Now, with the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars coming this Friday, I realize that I am, in fact, quite old. That was 30 years ago? I can still remember it so clearly (but don’t ask me what I did last Thursday, because there’s no way in hell I can remember that). But Star Wars? Thirty years ago? Is that even possible?

One thing I do know is that I didn’t see Star Wars on its opening day. Even if I’d wanted to, and even if I’d been able to harass my mom into taking me, I’m not sure the movie was open anywhere near me that first day. I’m pretty sure that Empire Strikes Back opened in Brooklyn a couple of weeks after it opened in Manhattan, and I know for a fact that Return of the Jedi opened on the same day everywhere (since I was there for the 3:00 show), but I don’t know what the deal was with Star Wars. I just know I didn’t see it until sometime in June, or possibly even July or August.

Which is not to say that I lived a Star Wars-free existence for all that time. Oh, no. I can recall seeing commercials for it in the late winter and early spring. And oddly enough, considering what came next, I don’t remember thinking that Star Wars was a movie I had to see. In fact, I had the opposite reaction and figured I’d end up passing. I don’t think I went to the movies too often back then anyway. If I did, I barely remember them.

But then Star Wars opened and at some point kids in school started to see it and the word in the school yard was that this movie was great. Incredible. Must-see. The most amazing thing ever put on film. Plus, there were comics, including what was probably my first direct encounter with the Star Wars universe:

Yeah, okay, this was probably not the best way for someone to be introduced to the whole Star Wars concept, seeing as it takes place after the movie, includes only two characters who actually appeared in the movie, and features a six-foot-tall green bunny rabbit with guns. Just try and imagine how hard my 9-year-old brain worked to resolve this picture with the scraps of information I’d been given by my friends who’d already seen the movie. Let me tell you, no one had mentioned any big green bunnies before.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long to stumble across another comic that actually introduced me to the real Star Wars story:

This was a gigantic comic book printed on paper so thin and cheap that I think it began to turn yellow the instant I opened it. But the important thing was it contained 3 full issues of Marvel’s Star Wars comic, which covered about half of the Star Wars movie. I still hadn’t seen the movie, but now I had some idea of what it was about and it just made me want to see it more. And if I couldn’t see it, then at least I wanted to read the second half, but that second half proved to be very elusive and I didn’t track it down until many, many months later while being dragged on a shopping trip by my mom because I was taking a sick day from school. By the time I found the second half of the comic adaptation, I’d seen the movie and was desperate for more, but since there were no VCRs and no DVDs, this holy grail offered me the chance to relive the whole story whenever I wanted:

So yeah, when I think of Star Wars, I don’t always think of the movie first; I think of these comics. Or, I think of this:

I got this maybe a year after the movie came out, and I read it so often that I eventually had to tape the damn thing together with duct tape to keep it from turning into a random pile of pages that might or might not remain in the proper order. I actually picked up another copy of this back in the mid-90s in a used book store in San Francisco. It was an earlier edition than mine, and in way better condition. I never read it, though. Turns out it’s just not the same without the duct tape. Anyway, this book claimed to be from “The Adventures of Luke Skywalker,” which led me to imagine a long series of other such adventures, which never really happened in novel form for a couple of decades. For many years, while waiting for the VCR to come along, then for my family to get one, then for Star Wars to turn up on video, if I was interested in the story, I’d read this book or I’d read the comics or I’d be flat out of luck. In this day where there’s probably 2 or 3 different versions of the entire saga available at your local Best Buy, my story seems pretty sad, huh?

But you know what? I don’t think I agree. Because by reading the book, and reading the comics, I got to read some scenes that never made it to the movie, but sure did flesh out the story a little bit more. And I got to take those little clues as to how everyone got where they were at the start of the movie and imagine my own version of the Clone Wars and the Jedi and how Darth Vader got into that big black suit. And after so many years of those ideas percolating in the back of my head thanks to the spark these books set off in my overactive 9-year-old imagination, I watched the prequels with a profound sense of disappointment,
because their story wasn’t as good as mine. So on the 30th Anniversary, I might watch Star Wars again (probably on my VHS because it’s the only version I’ve got that’s not all Special Editioned), but if I don’t have the time instead I might just read this:

I never knew this existed when I was a kid, but a couple of years ago I picked it up dirt cheap on eBay. Yeah, the pages are big and cheap and yellowed, but this is my Star Wars and if I’ve gotta acknowledge that 30 years have passed since it first appeared, I might as well do so on my own terms. And if I really want to go all ultra-super-mega-geek, I’ll read it while playing a few selections from this:

My first CD boxed set ever. Damn you, George Lucas. I mean, thanks for the great movie and somewhat lame sequels and prequels and for helping set me on this creative path that sure as hell hasn’t worked out so well for me so far, and I hope you’ve enjoyed all the money I’ve thrown your way over the years, but still, damn you all to hell for creating something that inspired this big long geeky page.

T “these are not the droids you’re looking for” green

And, as always, T & Sympathy is brought to you by the Star Wars collection from Kenner. May the Force be with you, and your children…

The original version of this included a YouTube video of an old Kenner Star Wars toy commercial that has since been pulled for copyright reasons. Sorry I can’t include it here.

Comments (0)

By Tgreen, April 20, 2010 11:21 pm

You now what makes me sad? This makes me sad:

How the hell is it possible that The Empire Strikes Back is turning 30? I’m almost positive I just went to see it at the Brook Theater on Flatbush and Flatlands maybe 2 or 3 years ago. Certainly not 30 years ago. That can’t be possible. I’m not that old.

Whether I’m old enough or not, this surprising news means I’ll probably go and dig out the Star Wars essay I wrote for T & Sympathy at the Treetop Lounge a couple of years ago and add it here, maybe with an edit or two. And then I’m gonna write one up for Empire, because I’ve got some similar stuff to say about that movie. And then I’ll go get drunk over the very real possibility that I might be so old that I saw this movie premiere 30 years ago. Though I still don’t completely believe it.

I could also use a time machine to help me out with my Script Frenzy script. I’m back to writing regularly, but I’m way behind, which we’ll get to in a post tomorrow, I believe. And a time machine might ensure that I actually get around to creating some of the action-packed Tgreen vs Walt Disney World content that I want to post to this blog. But mostly, the time machine would help me go back and prove there’s no way I’m old enough to remember this movie’s premiere and must be thinking of its latest DVD release. Any other possibility is not worth considering.