Art Sandusky

No wonder you're up so late each night, unless you don't actually drink your products.

It started over in London, then spread to other European cities, then came to our country a ways back. It's massive in Los Angeles and New York, and similar businesses have been popping up in large metropolitan areas/college towns for a while. The dude who owns it started Charleston's back in January. So far, it's him and I doing it, with a third person joining us this weekend. It's slightly profitable already, even after all the ad space he's bought in different bars and all the business cards we've got, plus some evenings where I got paid my flat $50 and we had maybe one or two calls. We charge a $15 minimum and then it's $3 a mile from five miles on. These people have already given an arm and a leg at a bar, and our customers are generally the middle aged or younger professional types, so while I think it's a bit much to charge, they have no problem with it. The alternative is also thousands of dollars from a DUI, so that helps motivate people.

All Lucas had to do with Droids was creating the characters it used.

I drive drunk people around on Friday and Saturday nights by riding a moped to where they are, putting the moped in the back of their car/truck/SUV, driving the car to their home with them in it, and then taking out the moped and skeedaddling away. I make about $50-$70 a night when I do this, for only five or six hours of hanging around in a jumpsuit and eating Taco Bell, dependent on how busy we are. My second job is dishwashing at Mellow Mushroom, a massively drug referential restaurant downtown. Turns out I was just put back there to see if I'd be reliable before they moved me to the front of the house to eventually be a host (under how they pay, the host/hostess ends up making the most of anyone working front of the house), saying my "force of personality" had me working the front one day anyway.

This is the part of ANH I like most. Whole film coulda been like this if the studio and people around him had let Lucas do it.

Fuck, I'm dead!

It's good to have that explained.

A thread at TF.N raged for 50 pages after one guy put together a bunch of stuff from the films, novelizations, and whatever else to say that Mace is a few shades from being a Dark Jedi, but not a Sith. Again, the Obi-Wan/Vader fight is between an old man and a half robot, neither of whom have brandished their lightsaber in ten years or more probably. They've also already had a knockdown-dragout fight. They're seeing each other for the first time in 20 years. It's more about their words than their actual duel. Obi-Wan wasn't putting everything into it either, as he planned all along to have Vader cut him down. "Escape is not his plan, I must face him alone" was Vader's declaration as he went off to fight Kenobi. He could sense it also. Imagine a PT-style duel between those two. Would it really have the same effect?

I should talk to Marney on AIM again soon. I haven't done that in a while.

I'm a bad influence.

I'm interested to hear the reactions from us young people people now that we've seen an OT-calibre film as it premiered. Do you see this becoming as well-known as the original three, future generations seeing it all as one story without OT/PT discussion (besides the obvious technical difference), or something else?

The Empire Strikes Back Revenge of the Sith Return of the Jedi A New Hope The Phantom Menace Attack of the Clones (ROTS and ROTJ can switch depending on repeat viewings of ROTS, and TPM and ANH can switch depending on my mood)

#1 and #2 are looking too far into it, and #4 is outright wrong. #3 is very valid, and it's why Episode I ranks only fourth at highest in my mind.

He was a slave his whole life, you think he had much time to talk to other people and learn how to act in what we'd consider a normal way?

I love it. I might even rank it ahead of ANH.

I never did. I saw it four times in the theater, and then didn't watch it for a couple of years after I got it on VHS. I watched it again for the first time in a while about five months ago, and it's really not bad at all.

I thought it was weird to see Yoda in his underclothes in Bail Organa's speeder after the fight with Palpatine.

I really want to see it again before the weekend and the really bad crowds are there. Maybe tomorrow or something.

Dude, I said I'm going.

Guys, like I said. Okay, for real this time.

I know I liked it, I just need to figure out how much I liked it. The acting was greatly improved, with the few times dialogue was expected to carry what was going on doing at least a decent job. Hayden looks like he was cast with this one in mind, not AOTC. Natalie falls kinda flat, but probably has all of 45 lines in the whole thing. Ewan looks like he's having a blast and his lines and delivery make the transition from stuffy Obi-Wan in Episode II to witty and sarcastic in ANH an easy one. The only thing that bugged me was how much stuff seemed there just to get it out of the way, like the memory wipe, or the aside with Yoda telling Obi-Wan about Qui-Gon. It was also kinda weird to see the Emperor himself come to Mustafar and supervise Vader's recovery. The CGI work is seriously amazing. There's SO MUCH going on in every frame, it feels like. I dunno, I'll elaborate later, but for now it gets **** out of ***** to be safe.

I FINALLY got to borrow the OT DVDs from a friend, and the sound guy is the most boring person who has ever lived. I could listen to Lucas talk about OT stuff forever though. All I've ever heard until recently was PT interviews and stuff, with the exceptions of the interview scraps on the OT Special Edition VHS tapes.

Guys, like I said.

"The day we stop believing Star Wars is good is the day we lose it."

24 hours from now we're all going to be posting how incredible it was.