May the fourth...!

Happy Star Wars Day!  Today's that special day that everyone shares their favorite moments from the franchise (when are they not sharing those moments?) so here's mine. MPB's work takes him to comic cons regularly and sometimes, I tag along -- it's like a big nerd prom! --  hence, my photo op with those storm troopers and then some. 

The way to (re)watch any Star Wars movie is to see it through the eyes of a real super geek as both of you stare transfixed at that Robot Chicken tv screen.  Here's where it all started: "Go for papa Palpateen!"



I'm telling you, nothing's better than watching this stuff with someone who can explain all the minutae. 

Before Robot Chicken came along, I seriously couldn't stand Jar Jar Binks.  He's so many racist characters and stereotypes rolled into one. On the one hand, he's the Stepin Fetchit of the galaxy -- bumbling, clumsy, stupid, inarticulate.  On the other hand, I can tell that from his propensity to scream at the very idea of trouble, he's also got quite a bit of Butterfly McQueen in him, too. And what's up with the effeminate sway of the hips, the Jamaican patois, the dreadlock hair/ear/whatever? I mean, seriously. What in the world was George Lucas thinking?  Couldn't he have found a well-educated, intelligent, thinking black person to set him straight? God knows he's been dating one for years.

Well. Thanks to Robot Chicken, I can laugh at Jar Jar Binks now with (relative) abandon -- even if watching too much of him makes me feel like I just got slimed.

Here's a Geico commercial!



And here he is with Darth Vader...



...and here's a fan that really stuck their foot in that sparkly moment.

30 days of birthday - day 3: "...my backpack's got jets..."

i must say, i was profoundly disappointed that darth vader wasn't in attendance ad nauseum at the philly comic con. (i love that negro!)  actually, there was a dearth of star wars characters in general. everybody was way too busy flipping out over the avengers. lots of shirtless green children running around in flip flops. occasionally some little misfit from where the wild things are would pop up with a crown on his head, but no. no storm troopers storming the crowds. no straight guys with heavy duty facial hair dressed as princess leia. and no -- no darth.

thankfully, all was not lost. i did find boba fett.

don't be fooled. that gun was bigger than me. and his outfit looked real. a little too real, if you ask me. *sigh*

just in case you have absolutely NO idea who boba fett is, here's my favorite mc chris video that explains it all for you -- fett's vette. the first one has a vignette in the front that the drama queen in me just gushes over whenever i see it.

this one is just a straight up music video but the dancing sequences in it are so 1980s solid gold miss-jackson-if-you're-nasty, it's kind of irresistable, too.

i've had my star wars moments before, people. at this point, i'm way too much of a lady geek to not have a photo op with all of them eventually. (and yes, i'm STILL annoyed that i missed chewbacca yesterday.)

 stay tuned.

happy birthday to me!

"in my dreams, i'm bugs bunny -- but when i wake up, i'm daffy duck." - chuck jones

my friend took me to six flags in jackson, nj for my birthday. how cool is that? he also won that marvin the martian for me that i'm holding in the photo above by doing that whole he-man hit-the-stump-with-the-sledgehammer-and-the-pole-lights-all-the-way-up game. he didn't make it "ding" all the way at the top, but he came awfully close.

i love marvin the martian. of course, i never doubted his blackness when i was a little kid. him or darth vader. (or, as logic would have it, darth vader's children.) when i first came to the city, black people in harlem were all about wearing an oversized black t-shirt with marvin's eyes staring out menacingly with a gun barrel pointed at the viewer. them walking towards you in the most casual of circumstances looked like marvin was gunning for you. very effective. there was also another popular one that said "don't ask me 4 shit" in huge letters. heh. in the recent past, it was the warner brothers WB brand and in elaborate WB cursive, with the crest blaring in WB type: "if you see the cops, warn a brotha!"

i don't know when they took over, but warner brothers cartoon characters are everywhere in six flags. i loved it. i'm a massive chuck jones fan. but everywhere i turned, all i could think was, warn a brotha, warn a brotha, warn a brotha. trippy.

no. what was really tripped me out was all the mullets and the doo-rags that were there in full regalia and how bovine everyone was and how loud and bratty and chubby pert near all of the kids were and how almost every young girl dressed like a street-walking whore and the food was plentiful but horribly overpriced. even the water. four dollars for a liter? somebody was definitely tripping on that one.

any amusement park was such a drag when i was a little kid because there was always someone standing there to tell me what i couldn't ride, where i couldn't go, what i couldn't eat. after about a half hour, i was ready to go home. but yesterday, i felt like an 8 year old with a wallet. and a great deal of patience. after awhile, the lines were crazy. my friend remarked that all of it was a lot like war: long stretches of boredom (standing in line) followed by frenzied bursts of action (the ride). my favorite: the great american scream machine. it had not one but four loops. crazy.

my friend insisted on riding the runaway train ride. it's for kiddies really but he used to ride it with his father, who would take him and his brother there often when they were young. before our first big drop and twist, he dedicated our ride to him. that touched me very much.

funny, the things you remember from childhood.