Archive for November, 2009

The Creative Mind of George Lucas Divines a New Star Wars Character

by Glenn Vance on November 25, 2009 in Movies with No comments
george_lucas

The Place: Sky­walker Ranch.
The Sit­u­a­tion: A cre­ative meet­ing is tak­ing place to cre­ate a new Star Wars char­ac­ter who will be the focus of a new live action tele­vi­sion series that takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi.Major brain­storm­ing is going on.
The Peo­ple: Present are George Lucas and the Lucas­Film data­bank keeper.

Data­bank Keeper — “Okay, so what have we got so far?“
George Lucas — “Noth­ing. We have noth­ing.“
DK — “Alright…what is it? Human, crea­ture of some sort.…something…“
GL — “Not human. We have enough humans. Make it a crea­ture.“
DK — “Sen­tient or not?“
GL — “Def­i­nitely sen­tient.“
DK — “Wise or not?“
GL — “Wise? Like Yoda?“
DK — “Yeah.“
GL -  “Hmm…not so wise. Just nor­mal.“
DK — “Okay, a nor­mal crea­ture. What does it look like?“
GL — “Furry. Tall and furry.“
DK — “Like a Wook­iee?“
GL — “Okay…no, make it short.“
DK — “Like an Ewok?“
GL — *Sigh* “Scratch furry. Make it scaly. And green.“
DK — “Like Greedo?“
GL — “…Okay. Scaly, green, big beaver teeth.“
DK — “Like Wal­rus Man?“
GL — “Why is this so hard?“
DK — “I don’t know. You thought this stuff up.“
GL — “Short. Pigish…creature.“
DK — “Like an Ugnaught?“
*George hits his fist on the desk — repeat­edly*
GL — “Okay, not scaly and green. Scaly and…orange.“
DK — “…Orange is good.“
GL — “Yes, orange is good. Don’t have many orange crea­tures.“
DK — “What do we call the orange creature’s species?“
GL — “How about a…Rith.“
DK — “No can do. Too close to ‘Bith’. And ‘Sith’.“
GL — “Toy­nar­ian! Vim­ban­ite! Morax! Any­thing!“
DK — “Toy­dar­ian, Mim­ban­ite, Gorax. Already done.“
GL — “Okay…Flangian.“
DK — “Flan­gian?“
GL — “Yes. A Flan­gian. He will be a Flan­gian.“
DK — “Where did you come up with that?“
GL — “I just…cre­ated…it.“
DK — “Fine. What’s the Flangian’s back­story?“
*Silence for 5 min­utes*
GL — “The Flan­gian was recruited by crim­i­nal ele­ments on his home world, Flan­gia, and even­tu­ally grew up on a crime boss’ ship, the Bardo’s Luck. He even­tu­ally bought his free­dom from the crime boss and joined went to the Impe­r­ial Acad­emy. He was a good pilot but he got kicked out for…some reason…so he got back into crime and smuggled…things…around the galaxy. And then for…some reason…he got caught up in the Rebel­lion.“
DK — “…That’s Han Solo.“
GL — “YYYYYYYAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!“
He breaks a tech­ni­cal Oscar against the wall.
DK — “You know this isn’t easy, George! Remem­ber how long it took you to come up with Yoda?“
GL — “Jar Jar was so much sim­pler.“
DK — “Yeah, but the whole ‘race’ thing with him…“
GL — “Yeah, that sucked.“
DK — “Yeah.“
GL — “Okay…he grew up privledged, but then was sent to a farm when his par­ents died. He moved to a swamp planet and then after being hunted down by Dark Jedi he fled there to go live with…Ewoks or some­thing. And his best friend, he’s a Jedi too, and so his friend and he love the same girl but finally have a duel on a space plat­form -“
DK — “…You’re kidding…right?“
GL — “…What?“
DK — “That’s like every­body you’ve ever cre­ated in the whole saga, main-character-wise.“
GL — “Hey, who came up with this? Me? Yes, me! I’m detect­ing a more crit­i­cal tone than usual, so don’t screw with me! Mak­ing this stuff up is hard!“
DK — “Well exsqueeze me.“
GL — “Shut up, Jar Jar.“
DK — “Okay, easy one. What’s his name?“
GL — “How about…Fluke Bolo?“
DK — “Or Gorge Mucus? Come on, man! Are you kid­ding? Are you really out of ideas? Come on, man!“
*George hangs his head*
DK — “What should we call our scaly orange Flan­gian? I don’t know. Just say what­ever pops into your head. That’ll be his name.“
GL — “Bill.“
DK — “Bill?“
GL — “That’s the first thing that popped into my head.“
*George twid­dles his thumbs*
GL — “Okay, we can work with…Bill.”

Michael Jackson

by Glenn Vance on November 2, 2009 in Current Events with No comments
thisisit

I thank my lucky stars every­day that my fam­ily and I were over­seas from mid-June through mid-July. We went to Italy. It was won­der­ful and we had a great time and our fam­ily felt bet­ter again since Kim and I had been work­ing 60+ hour weeks.

In the town of Loro Ciufenna that we were stay­ing there was a news­stand that sold, on each Sun­day, one copy of the Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tri­bune. The IHT is the Euro­pean ver­sion of the New York Times, but from a decid­edly Euro-centric view­point, but you still have to put up with Paul Krug­man and Roger Cohen. So the first time we bought the IHT (for  2 Euro) and splashed across the front page was a story about Michael Jack­son, sort of a career ret­ro­spec­tive and how it men­tioned that he had planned to tour in the fall. Only after 10 or so para­graphs did it men­tion that he was dead.

Wow. Michael Jack­son was dead? I called my mother and asked her when it had hap­pened and was told that it was a few days after we had left the States, which made me happy to be in Italy, because it meant that I didn’t have to live through all of the crap that was going on in the States about how, oh my God, he’s dead! What hap­pened? What will we do with­out this lov­able eccen­tric genius who died before his time? Let’s all run out right this freak­ing sec­ond and buy every­thing that we can that has Michael Jackson’s voice or pic­ture or essence on it!

Sup­pos­edly Michael Jackson’s estate has earned over $100 mil­lion since his death. And yes, I feel for his chil­dren, whom I’m sure loved their father, even though he nick­named one of them Blan­ket. And I’m sure that his fam­ily was sad when he died, but I hope there is some remorse they feel cash­ing checks for every­thing from their shares of his estate to the new real­ity series that is going to be broad­cast with most of the Jack­sons in it. I’m prob­a­bly being pes­simistic, given what human nature is really like, of course.

I think that the thing that gets me the most about this Michael love is that every­one seems to have for­got­ten how com­pletely freaky this per­son they are wor­ship­ing was. All of these “Thriller” dance things and “Thriller” on Party City tele­vi­sion ads and Nev­er­land Ranch and the child-sex thing — what the — ? This per­son, only a few years ago, was con­sid­ered a freak of nature, a pos­si­ble child rapist and under­stand­ably dis­trusted by many peo­ple. Is the new love the prod­uct of a remark­able PR cam­paign? It’s def­i­nitely pos­si­ble. Who knows.

And why do I care? Part of the “Thriller” thing is, I’m sure, a long-lost love of an ephemeral, imag­ined 1980’s and a sim­pler time. Do peo­ple feel lonely for this? Should I care at all?

Give it a lit­tle while. It will go away.

I hope.