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Worst Sentence Ever

Wow, this one’s bad. Something I’ve noticed from sports writers in recent years is a desperate need to throw in pop-culture references when writing sports commentary. Sometimes this works well, but other times, it just feels unbelievably forced, and this example’s amazingly bad. It’s from this article which argues that the Jaguars are going to need their ground game to perform well if they want to beat the Patriots (a proposition that’s so obvious one wonders why this article was needed in the first place; what’s next, arguing that the Jags will also want to have more points than the other guys when the game ends?). It’s a pretty pedestrian article, until two-thirds of the way through, when this happens:

It’s pretty simple — successfully running the ball provides a time-of-possession element that may be more crucial than anything we’ve seen since the halcyon days of Linda Blair.

Dude, you’re doing it wrong.

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What is SF?

A bunch of SF writers are asked to define SF; hilarity ensues.

My favorite two definitions that I recall are: “SF is whatever I point at when I say SF”, and “SF is when you push a button to make something impossible happen, while fantasy is when you wave your have to make something impossible happen.”

I think that Damon Knight said the former, but I don’t remember where I got the latter, so if anyone knows, feel free to give my memory a jog. Interestingly, that second definition still fails to classify Star Wars! Personally I consider Star Wars to be SF, although it’s so strongly shot through with fantastic tropes that maybe it’s best thought of as fantasy set in space instead of Middle Earth. But for some reason, that answer just doesn’t feel right to me.

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Grief

I wrote this essay a few months ago, hoping to have it published in The Buffalo News, but they rejected it. Maybe it was too much of a downer topic, but anyway, since as the editor of Byzantium’s Shores I can accept my own writing*, here it is. The topic is, of course, grief, something I’ve had cause to think an awful lot about in recent years, and not just for the obvious reasons, either.

When a person we love dies, our friends and family surround us, offer us comfort, and pledge to do anything we ever need to get through the dark period. They laugh and cry with us as we remember the happy stories of the loved one we’ve lost, they put their arms around our shoulders and bring us meals because we’re too weak ourselves to cook, and they assure us that they are praying for us at their own home churches too. They come to the funeral, they pay their respects one last time, and then they go home. They have their own lives too, and life doesn’t stop for the living.

But what’s rarely acknowledged, or even realized, is that the for the bereaved, the funeral is just the beginning of grief. The funeral is easy. Everyone knows how to behave and how to talk to a funeral. We are not nearly as good at dealing with what comes after the funeral, when the grief settles in like an unwelcome guest.

These days, it’s hard to even notice that people around us are grieving. Gone are the days when rigid societal rules dictated how long grief would last, and when grief would be made obvious by the color of our clothes or of the drapes in the parlor. Sadly, also gone is our understanding that grief goes on not for weeks or months, but for years.

For we the grieving, it is not a temporary feeling but rather a semi-permanent state. It becomes a fact of who we are, which in turn becomes even more difficult in the face of a society that sometimes seems to believe that death and grief are not to be discussed any more than absolutely necessary. This leaves us feeling that our loved ones are best left unmentioned – or, worse, unremembered.

This is the worst of things. We want to talk about our loved ones! And not in the hushed or reverent tones best used for Saints, but in the messy tones of human feeling. We want to laugh anew at the happy stories, and we want to admit the things they did that made us so angry we could scream. We want to hear their names spoken. To know that they are still remembered, that their lives touched someone and continue to do so, is the best antidote to the sadness of grief.

So please, don’t avoid mentioning our loved ones for fear of unnecessarily reminding us of pain and anguish. Grief is not a wound we must forever fear re-opening.

And when we do cry, know that it is normal and natural. Put an arm around us and cry with us, in silence even; hugs given in silence are among the most underrated things we can do for one another. Don’t feel that you have to know the perfect thing to say, and don’t feel that you have to openly admit the inadequacy of the words that you do say. You can send a “Thinking of You” card with nothing more than just your signature inside.

Grief is probably the most burdensome of human emotions. But like all burdens, it is most easily borne when shared; and shared, it need not even be a burden at all.

End of sermon.

* You’d be surprised how often I write a post only to have my Inner Editor send me a nicely-phrased rejection letter.

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Grading the Folks

Since I can’t help myself when it comes to stealing quiz-things, here’s a quiz-thing from Messrs. Tosy and Cosh. Apparently this is supposed to gauge how advantaged you are when you enter adult life, or something like that. I’m not sure I buy the methodology, but hey, I’m always one for bolding stuff that applies to me!

So, the items, with occasional comment:

Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor

Were the same or higher socio-economic class than your high school teachers (Geez, I have no idea. Some of ’em, probably. Others, probably not. I didn’t hang out with my teachers or go to their houses to see what kind of china they used or what cars they drove.)

Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children’s books by a parent (Absolutely!)

Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 (Trumpet, piano, swimming)

The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively (Well, you don’t see too many long-haired hippie types in overalls on the teevee these days, so….)

Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18 (Yeah, what a good idea that was.)

Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs (I wish I’d have gotten off my ass in college and found a part-time job to help out. This is one of few things I’d do differently if I got to re-live my life.)

Went to a private high school

Went to summer camp (Ahhh, the Bristol Hills Music Camp! One of the greatest experiences of my life.)

Family vacations involved staying at hotels (Sometimes yes, sometimes it was the camper. Never really cared, as long as there was a pool and, when I got older, an arcade.)

Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 (I honestly don’t know. I never lacked for clothing, although I was never the one demanding the latest styles and whatnot. To this day, I have never owned a single pair of Levi’s.)

There was original art in your house when you were a child

You and your family lived in a single family house

Your parent(s) owned their own house(s) or apartment before you left home (I’m leaving this one unbolded because I genuinely don’t know when the mortgage got paid off, and I’m pretty sure that it was none of my business, anyway.)

You had your own room as a child (I don’t remember ever not having my own room.)

You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course

Had your own TV in your room in High School (No cable, though, ran to my room, so I either used the aerial antenna on the house or just used the teevee as the “monitor” for my VIC-20.)

Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16 (I never flew until college)

Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family (OK, I’m cheating here, counting canoeing and kayaking trips as cruising. Hey, it’s what we did. A part of heaven had better be just like the Clarion and Youghiogheny Rivers, or I’m going to be mad when I get there!)

Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up (Not terribly often, but we did go. I still have a few very vivid memories of the year I was in kindergarten, and we went to Chicago to see the Treasures of King Tutankhamun. As I grew up, school took this function over more and more.)

You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. (Well, my parents generally didn’t tell me how much bills were, although I did hear the occasional kvetching over high bills or the like. Also, once we settled in Western New York in 1981, we used wood for our heating exclusively until the gas lines finally got laid up to my parents’ house, sometime while I was in college, I think. And even then they continued using wood for some years, until the wood stove itself gave up the ghost. I have fond memories of getting up on icy winter mornings and stoking the great iron beast with wood, of huddling around the stove as it heated up, of the terribly uneven heat of the thing as sometimes we’d overstoke the thing and end up with a ninety-degree house, of the cat who’d lick the stove when it wasn’t containing a fire [with no apparent ill effect, as that cat lived to be twenty] and the occasional hilarity when Dad would mislay his checkbook and invariably become convinced that he’d thrown it into the stove. [He never actually did turn out to have thrown it in there, so far as I can recall.])

Received a beating from my mother when she discovered a wire hanger in my closet. (I sure learned my lesson that day: plastic hangers, or nothing!)

(OK, that last one didn’t happen.)

So yeah: the Rockefellers we weren’t, but neither were we the Ingallses.

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Sentential Links #123

Wow. Been a while, eh?

:: You ever have a friend who is just… different when he/she drinks? I’m not saying that Jim Kirk has a problem, it’s just that I get uncomfortable around him when he drinks. So do my dogs. (The post is a couple of weeks old, but who cares?)

:: And they’re all gone now. I remain. I remember. Do they?

:: You know what they have on the cigarette package in Great Britain? In great big letters? (I have less and less sympathy for smokers these days, I have to admit.)

:: In some perverse tribute to you, I watched “High Fidelity”–or the parts I could see through my tears–tonight. (This blog continues to break my heart every time I read it.)

:: But at the end of the day, we have four Democrats with serious plans to forestall a major environmental crisis. On the Republican side, we have Mike Huckabee who thinks global warming is a serious problem but doesn’t have any particular ideas about dealing with it. We have Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani who basically seem to be in denial. And then most bizarrely we have John McCain who acknowledges the problem, acknowledges its severity, acknowledges that the only solution is curbs on carbon emissions and then . . . won’t endorse the sort of curbs that his own analysis suggests is necessary.

:: Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

:: And here’s the good news: when the better candidates got taken out in 2004, we ended up with John Kerry, a decent man but a lousy candidate. This year, if Hillary does indeed go on to lose, we’ll end up Barack Obama, a decent man and a terrific candidate. So at least we’re making progress.

:: The truth is that, of course, I fully understand that the far right’s influence on the mainstream remains limited by a number of factors, the greatest of which is the basic decency of such a large segment of the populace. There are at times much more important issues than these people. But it’s important that someone keep a spotlight shining on them and their activities — important because it’s a fundamental part of making the public aware and informed, which is the most important part of effectively combating them and their poisonous effects in our culture and our lives — and I’m well-equipped to do the job. (And a fine job they do, over there at Orcinus.)

:: Robots do not want to have sex with you. Are you listening, Japan? (Salty language alert)

:: Watch out, Eric! When the four different voices in Margo’s head all say the same thing, it means nothing but trouble.

:: No one wants to read a blog that’s all flowers and rainbows and fuzzy bunnies. (So that explains the drop in my traffic over the last year! [rimshot] )

All for this week, as usual.

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How to serve your customers (if you hate them)

BuffaloGeek recently made a vehicle purchase at Joe Cecconi Chrysler, and the resulting transaction with Joe Cecconi Chrysler did not go well. It seems that the people at Joe Cecconi Chrysler consider customer service to have ended as soon as the vehicle is off the lot, and that any attempt by a customer to procure more service from Joe Cecconi Chrysler constitutes attempted theft of services or something similar. It appears that lying and refusing to talk to customers is the way things are done at Joe Cecconi Chrysler, which is a shame. It’s not like there are lots of other Chrysler dealerships in the region; why, Joe Cecconi Chrysler is just about the only place to by a Chrysler for a fifty-mile radius, so it’s not like the guys at Joe Cecconi Chrysler will miss out on commissions if word of the abysmal, combative, and downright rude customer service at Joe Cecconi Chrysler should get out.

So shop at Joe Cecconi Chrysler if you must, folks, but hold on to your wallets, and make sure you get all the service you think you’ll ever need before you sign the dotted line with the salespeople at Joe Cecconi Chrysler.

Remember that name: Joe Cecconi Chrysler. That’s a name you can trust.

Joe Cecconi Chrysler.

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I-oh-way

When I was picking colleges, one small factor that led to me choosing to go to school in Iowa was the Iowa caucuses; I thought it would be really cool to be there for that entire process. This was in 1989, when I was about to graduate high school; I was anticipating the 1992 caucuses.

And then, when 1992 finally rolled around, Iowa’s own Senator Tom Harkin ran for the Democratic nomination, which meant that the Iowa caucuses meant absolutely nothing and New Hampshire became the big prize.

Oh well.

My point? I don’t have one, of course.

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Fixing the Prequels – The Phantom Menace (part four)

part one
part two
part three

Wow, it’s been a long time since I updated this series, so let’s get right into it, shall we?

When last we left our heroes, they had just blasted their way out of the hangar bay on Naboo and are now heading toward space, in an attempt to get to Coruscant where Queen Amidala hopes to be able to gain the support of the Chancellor in the matter of her world’s invasion by the Trade Federation.

Now, before getting back into matters of script, a brief digression about visual effects. I’ve never been one to lament the rise of computer-generated effects in place of photographing models and stop-motion animation and the like of effects-laden-movies past, but there’s one area of TPM that’s always bugged me slightly, effects-wise, and it’s the movements of the ships. Well, one ship in particular: the Queen’s ship, which for some reason never really seems to have any real weight about it.

I assume that the Queen’s ship is roughly the size of the Millennium Falcon or the original Blockade Runner. But in the OT, when those ships were onscreen, they seemed like real, physical objects. The Queen’s ship always looks to me like a construct instead of an object. Just the way it tears out of the hangar bay and streaks upward into the sky in a perfect curve, achieving velocity seemingly the second it clears the doors of the hangar. Contrast that with all those times we saw the Millennium Falcon lift off from various locales; it always had to gather up a head of steam, so to speak, as we might expect a large vehicle to have to do in a planetary environment.

Oddly, this problem of the ships having “weight” only seems to really afflict the chrome-hulled cruisers of Naboo in the OT (except for the ship that lands on Coruscant at the opening of Attack of the Clones, which also happens to be my single favorite ship from the entire PT; how sad that it was only in about a minute of screentime!). The problem doesn’t even extend, in my view, to the Naboo starfighters, so why this one ship really stands out as moving in a totally unworldly way has always vexed me a little bit.

You know what else bugs me about the ships in the PT? The fact that none of them have names. Most of the really important ships in the OT had names: Millennium Falcon. Executor. Avenger. Slave One. Tantive IV. Not so the PT, unfortunately. Giving this ship a name would have really enhanced the personality a bit.

So anyway, back to the script stuff. The escape from Naboo always seems to take a bit too little time for me, with too little sense of desperation. It seems, frankly, too easy. Mostly, this is a matter of pacing, since all the elements are there: the ship is under heavy fire, the shields are knocked out, the astrodroids deploy to fix the shields but start getting picked off, R2-D2’s first heroic moment in the Star Wars saga, the escape into deep space. There’s a lot of good stuff there, and I like the sequence as is, but it frankly could be better. It’s this sequence, actually, that to me represents the greatest evidence that when making TPM George Lucas was, frankly, out of practice as a film maker. The editing here lets him down, when it’s editing that is Lucas’s strong point. Comparing this escape sequence with that of the Millennium Falcon from the Death Star in ANH is illustrative.

So what does the sequence need? More heft, frankly. This is the first space-based action sequence in the movie, and as such, it should stand out more than it does. Here’s also a place where a toned-down Jar Jar could be used for small comic effect. This is how my version of the escape from Naboo would take place:

EXT: SPACE

The Naboo cruiser is powering through the upper atmosphere.

INT: COCKPIT

COMMANDER RIC OLIE sits in the pilot’s seat, with two co-pilots flanking him. Standing behind him are QUI GON and CAPTAIN PANAKA.

RIC OLIE: They’re still jamming our communications. Start calculating a course for Coruscant.

INT: MAIN HOLD.

OBI WAN leads JAR JAR into a cramped room where six astrodroids are in sleep-mode. Jar Jar’s color is way off, his ears are drooping more than normal, and he moans as he holds his stomach.

JAR JAR: Mesa sorry! Mesa never fly before.

OBI WAN: Well, we past some closets coming down here. The Queen has more gowns.

JAR JAR: Ohhhh….

OBI WAN: Stay in here, and keep quiet. And don’t touch anything.

Obi Wan turns and exits, leaving a moaning Jar Jar to sit down on the floor and put his head between his legs.

JAR JAR: Disen not my day.

INT: COCKPIT

CO-PILOT: Look!

RIC OLIE: I see them.

PANAKA: What is it?

RIC OLIE: Federation ships, two of them. Moving to cut us off. (to co-pilot) Activate our shields.

One of the Federation ships fires a couple of warning shots at the Naboo cruiser, which lightly rocks under the fire.

QUI GON: Perhaps you should accelerate to attack speed.

RIC OLIE: Attack speed? This isn’t a Jedi attack ship! You’re flying aboard the Queen Marisma the Golden, the Capital Cruiser of Naboo! [I plucked the name “Marisma” out of thin air. -Ed.]

Another burst of fire from the Federation battleship rocks the Marisma.

PANAKA: Commander, fire all thrusters. We’re never going to run that blockade like this.

RIC OLIE: Captain, this ship–

PANAKA: Commander, on my authority as the Queen’s personal Captain of Naboo Security, I order you to fly this ship in any way you need to! Get us through that blockade, Commander!

Ric Olie stiffens, and now his inner “gritty war pilot” starts to come out. He turns back to his console.

RIC OLIE: Transfer all auxiliary power to the secondary thrusters. We need more speed. And put all power in our front shields. They’re not shooting at us from behind!

The sounds of the engines, deep in the ship, become more powerful and insistent. The lights dim as the power is diverted, and everyone shifts stance as the ship accelerates.

INT: MAIN HOLD.

The Queen’s entourage is holding on for dear life. The Queen’s gaze is locked on that of her earlier Handmaiden.

INT: DROID ROOM.

Jar Jar lifts his head, and then ducks it again.

EXT: SPACE

The Marisma‘s thrusters fire anew, and the ship picks up speed.

INT: FEDERATION BATTLESHIP – BRIDGE

DOFINE stands at the shoulder of a scanning operator.

DOFINE: They can’t expect to run our blockade in that ship, can they?

SCANNING OPERATOR: They are accelerating to attack speed.

DOFINE: All guns fire!

EXT: SPACE

Now the Federation Battleship starts blasting away at the Marisma. The Naboo ship is stuck several times.

INT: COCKPIT

Panaka and Qui Gon have to hold on for dear life as the ship lurches under heavy fire.

INT: MAIN HOLD

The Queen and her entourage are in fear as the lights flicker.

HANDMAIDEN: We’re closing on the blockade.

The Queen nods.

INT: DROID ROOM

Jar Jar is literally trying to become one with the floor.

INT: COCKPIT

Obi Wan enters and has to grab a handhold as a fresh volley of laserfire jolts the ship again.

RIC OLIE: Our shield generator’s hit!

CO-PILOT: Activating astrodroids.

He presses a button.

INT: DROID ROOM

Jar Jar is whimpering on the floor when all six astrodroids suddenly snap to life and begin. Now he has to leap up and get out of the way as the astrodroids emerge from their cocoons and begin heading for an exterior airlock.

JAR JAR: Ohhh, what next!

He stumbles on the leg of one particularly familiar blue astrodroid and falls to the floor. The astrodroid whistles at him as it enters the airlock, from where it is ejected onto the hull of the ship.

EXT: SPACE

The six astrodroids are all clustered around an open portal into the ship’s systems, where they are trying to repair some obvious blast damage. The Federation Battleship’s bombardment continues, and one droid is blasted right off the hull almost immediately, quickly followed by another. The BLUE DROID is busily connecting wires while a third of his comrades is blasted away.

INT: COCKPIT

Obi Wan is watching the progress of the astrodroids via a video monitor.

OBI WAN: We’re losing droids fast.

RIC OLIE: If we lose them all before they get the shields back up, they’ll have us.

PANAKA: Keep flying, Commander.

The ship lurches again, particularly violently this time.

EXT: SPACE

One of the astrodroids is literally shaken loose from the hull of the ship by the latest impact, and tumbles shrieking into space. Now only two remain.

INT: DROID ROOM

Jar Jar is trying to pull himself up, via a handle on the wall. Unfortunately, the handle is to a parts locker, which pops open and dumps all manner of machine parts on top of him.

EXT: SPACE

The Marisma is now flying across the surface of the Federation Battleship. The two droids are still working feverishly on reconnecting the shield generators.

INT: FEDERATION BATTLESHIP – BRIDGE

SCANNING OPERATOR: I have them in range for precision cannons, sir.

DOFINE: Fire!

EXT: SPACE

A fresh volley of Federation cannonade blasts the fifth droid into atoms, leaving just the BLUE DROID working on the ship. Somehow the blue droid actually manages to evade several near laser blasts while he connects the last of the wires. Sparks fly as the power flow is restored, and the blue droid lets out a whistle of triumph.

INT: COCKPIT

RIC OLIE: Our shields are back up! The droid did it!

EXT: SPACE

The Marisma streaks away from the planet, leaving the Federation blockade in its wake.

INT: MAIN HOLD

The Handmaiden glances at a computer screen and sees the Federation ships receding in the distance.

HANDMAIDEN: We’re away!

INT: COCKPIT

RIC OLIE: Prepare for jump to hyperspace. Lay in your course for Coruscant.

CO-PILOT: We can’t, sir! The hyperdrive took a direct hit. We don’t have enough power to get all the way to the central systems.

PANAKA: We got through the blockade but now we can’t get anywhere?

QUI GON: Obi Wan.

OBI WAN: Yes, Master.

Obi Wan sits down at a vacant screen and starts looking through navigational charts. He quickly hones in on one system.

OBI WAN: We can go into the Outer Rim, Master. There’s a system called Tatooine. Small, poor, mostly out of the standard shipping lanes.

QUI GON: Which means no Trade Federation presence there. Excellent.

Captain Panaka glances at the screen and reacts strongly to something he reads there.

PANAKA: Tatooine is controlled by the Hutts! You can’t take Her Royal Highness there! If the Hutts capture her–

QUI GON: A calculated risk, Captain. But the Hutts aren’t looking for her, are they? In their eyes we will be as everyone else in their worlds: travelers who are looking to repair a broken ship and be on our way. They need never know the Queen is there.

INT: DROID ROOM

Jar Jar is rubbing his aching head when the Blue droid comes back inside from the airlock. The droid surveys the scene – a sick Gungan and parts strewn all over – and whistles as he shakes his dome-head.

JAR JAR: Sorry.

The Droid emits a whistle of disdain.

OK, that got pretty long-winded, but I make no apologies. So there. The basic notion is that there should be a palpable sense of desperation here, of danger.

Next up comes another scene where the Trade Federation baddies report to Darth Sidious. In the original script, Sidious orders Nute Gunray to “destroy all of the Naboo high-ranking officials, slowly and quietly”. I like that and would restore it to the film. Then he asks if the Queen has signed the treaty, and Gunray has to admit that she has not: the Queen has escaped and that they can’t track the Naboo ship, but Sidious says that the Sith can, and here we meet Darth Maul. I’ve always liked this scene, and really the only change I’d make would be to restore the afore-mentioned line about the high-ranking officials and an addition to the exchange at the very end, after the two Sith have faded from view:

NUTE: This is getting out of hand. Now there are two of them!

RUNE: We should not have made this bargain. What will the Jedi do when they become aware of these Sith Lords?

What I like about a lot of this stuff is that it starts to become clear that the Trade Federation is also in the dark as to what’s going on just why they’re doing what they’re being told to do. They’re losing the plot as it were.

Also, I’ve always loved the way Darth Maul’s hologram appears, looming over the shoulder of Darth Sidious; at that exact moment, John Williams’s score has this ominous figure intoned by the low brass. It’s a terrific entrance.

Meanwhile, back on the Naboo cruiser, we’re officially introduced to R2-D2 and the Queen is briefed on what’s going on now. I like this scene as is, and the only change I’d make would be to have the Queen in a different outfit, since my version of the escape makes clear that Jar Jar had thrown up on the old one.

And now, we arrive at what I hold to be the single worst scene in any Star Wars movie, and by a good margin. It’s a very brief scene, really, but it’s gobsmackingly bad. Padme (the handmaiden) is cleaning R2-D2 as ordered by “the Queen”, when Jar Jar pops in and gives a brief summation of the day he’s had. He’s all cheerful and bubbly and it’s basically just another bit of Jar Jar when, really, none is needed. Particularly bad, though, is Padme’s line, “You’re a Gungan, aren’t you?” I always feel as though Jar Jar’s response should be something like “Yousa know any other races of orange-skinned amphibians native to Naboo?”

The scene is nothing more than filler, to take up space between “We’ve got to get to Tatooine!” and “We’re on Tatooine!”. Nothing wrong with filler, per se; I’ve always felt, for instance, that The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring could have used some kind of filler between the escape across the Brandywine River and the arrival at Bree. But this particular filler scene is just awful. I squirm every time I see it. This little scene is, to me, the best piece of evidence in favor of people who claim that George Lucas’s problem in the PT is that there’s nobody around to tell him when something in his movie is crap on a stick. And as much as I love Uncle George, there’s just no getting around it: this scene is crap on a stick.

So, how to fix it? Simple: no Jar Jar. This scene should have Obi Wan in it. Here’s my version:

INT: MAIN HOLD

PADME enters, now dressed in simple working garb. She walks toward R2.

OBI WAN: (offscreen) Watch your step!

PADME stops cold and realizes that she was about to stumble over a sleeping JAR JAR, who is sprawled across the floor. She smiles at Obi Wan as she steps over the Gungan. Obi Wan is sitting at a table, with his lightsaber in pieces in front of him. She sits at the table opposite him and takes up a cloth; R2 whistles and rolls over for his cleaning.

OBI WAN: I tried getting him to sleep in a bunk, but he says he prefers the floor.

PADME: Gungans like hard surfaces. Once when I was – with The Queen on a diplomatic meeting with them, we all had to sleep on their floors. Our backs ached for a week afterward.

Obi Wan cocks an eyebrow but lets her minor slip pass.

PADME: Did you make that weapon yourself?

OBI WAN: No. The making of one’s own lightsaber is part of the final trials before one becomes a full Jedi Knight.

PADME: You are not a Jedi Knight?

OBI WAN: I am Master Qui Gon’s Padawan learner. But don’t fear, Miss…

PADME: Padme.

OBI WAN: Don’t fear, Miss Padme. I am almost ready to undergo the trials myself, and Qui Gon is one of the greatest of all Jedi. You are in good hands.

PADME: Which is why we’re here, instead of in a Federation prison camp on our own planet.

She sighs.

PADME: We must find a solution to this problem quickly. The Naboo are peaceful people, but we have been used to our freedom for a thousand years. Being imprisoned will destroy the spirit of my world in a very short time.

OBI WAN: What is the nature of your dispute with the Federation? I’ve been trying to understand what could have motivated them to a blockade and an invasion, but it makes little sense to me.

PADME: That’s because it makes little sense. We are an old world, but we are not terribly rich. Naboo is known more for its artisans and its scholars than its traders. There is little the Federation stands to gain by taking control of our shipping lanes. It won’t make them that much richer than they are already, and it won’t put them in any better position than they are now to establish themselves in the Outer Rim. Perhaps there is something deeper at work here. Our Galactic Senator, Palpatine, has told us of intrigues in the Senate that have drawn even him, a relatively junior delegate from a small world far from the Galactic center, into various factions who are constantly competing for power and influence on Coruscant. I fear that Naboo has become a mere pawn upon a very complex game board.

Obi Wan has been listening to this in fascination, as he begins putting the last pieces of his lightsaber back together.

OBI WAN: I must say, you have a very keen mind, Miss Padme. The Queen chooses her handmaidens well.

She smiles at him, a bit mysteriously, and he rises from his chair and holds his saber at arm’s length.

OBI WAN: Ah, that should do it.

He presses the button, and the saber ignites, with its brilliant blue blade. But the blade’s hum is oddly high-pitched, and the blade itself is only about twelve inches long. He frowns as he deactivates it and sits back down.

OBI WAN: Well that’s not right.

Padme laughs, and R2 expresses his mirth with a series of whistles.

Something like this would give Obi Wan some needed screentime in the middle section of the film, as he disappears a bit. (That never really bugged me, but still, the character does get slightly shortchanged.) It also keeps his role as Padawan learner in perspective a bit, as well as flesh out a bit of the progression from Padawan to Jedi Knight. The bit about a Jedi finally making his own lightsaber reflects Luke Skywalker’s own lightsaber-making in Return of the Jedi: in the OT, Luke is never an “official” Padawan learner, and yet he still in some ways undergoes the same tests required of an actual Padawan making his transition to Jedi Knight.

(By the way, I’ve always wondered why all lightsabers are the same length. Why not a lightdagger? Or Jedis jousting from the backs of some big beastie while wielding a twelve-foot-long lightlance? Now there’s an idle thought for another time.)

Also, this version of the scene establishes that there might be a bit more to this particular handmaiden than meets the eye, as well as gives a bit of background to the entire political situation. One of the things that always intrigued me about TPM was the way that the entire plot on Naboo, in the end, doesn’t really matter that much at all; Palpatine is able to get what he wants whether his schemes for Naboo are successful or not. He is playing a game with Naboo as one of his pawns.

In fact, this is a larger theme throughout all of the PT, and it’s one I’d emphasize a bit more strongly than George Lucas did. It tends to get missed a bit, but virtually all of the intrigues and battles and conflicts throughout the PT are basically diversions constructed by Palpatine/Sidious to keep the Jedi from seeing what’s really going on until it’s far too late for them to do anything about it.

And that’s where I’ll end for now, since this got more long-winded than I’d originally planned. Next time we’ll meet the boy who over the course of his life will save the Galaxy, destroy it, and save it again. On to Tatooine!

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Eagles 17, Bills 9

I suppose I should post about the last game of the Bills’ 2007 season, mainly for the sake of completeness.

Woo-hoo!

:: The Bills finished 7-9 with one of the NFL’s youngest and most injury-prone rosters. There’s some talent here to build on.

Meh.

:: Bills quarterbacks. Sure, Trent Edwards has shown promise. So did JP Losman and Rob Johnson, once upon a time. I’m not bothered by Edwards’s play in those two games with horrible weather; he seems like a smart and competitive guy, so maybe he learns better to handle that stuff. I dunno.

D'oh!

:: Defensive line getting run down.

:: Offensive line often getting dominated.

:: Offensive playcalling: early in the season they’d call daring plays at really bad times while late in the season they seemingly stopped calling daring plays at all.

So there it is: they went 7-9, which is what I originally figured was the very best they could do. And yes, I do take a “glass is half full” view of this team; there’s talent here and they’re closer, I think, to being good than they were two years ago.

But Marv Levy has just resigned, leaving the team behind again after two years as General Manager, and the worst thing is that for claiming that he was never going to serve in that position for more than two years, he didn’t have a successor ready to step in and carry on the work. So now there’s uncertainty in the front office again.

And even more pressing is that Ralph Wilson, the team’s owner, is still getting older. I really think that he’ll be dead within five years, and when that happens, unless something dramatic happens in this area, I have come to think that the Bills are almost certain to leave. When that happens, I very much doubt my interest in football will continue.

This is almost certainly the last football post I’ll be writing for this season, because I’m just not that interested in the playoffs or in continuing to try to invent new ways to call the Patriots names. As promising as the Bills were this year, I’m increasingly finding the NFL a joyless, mechanical affair, so much so that my posts on the subject are also joyless and mechanical. So, while I’ll still watch football, I probably won’t be blogging about it any more.

Thus, as long as they’re still in Buffalo, go Bills!

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