Apple. Tree. Close proximity fall. - Star Wars Christmas, vintage-style!

Pretty sure I have a picture of me just like this 30 years ago, with the same present. Vintage Star Wars toys rock!

Grandma&Grandpa bought this one, along with a few figs. Of course, Santa brought some more SW figs and related gear too.

So far I think he has this Imperial Tie Fighter (above), Vader, Luke (Snowspeeder pilot version), Yoda, Darth Maul, Obi Wan (ep III-ish), a Clone Trooper (I could *swear* I told them Sandtrooper - ah well), C-3PO and R2.

Pretty sweet loot! Err.... I mean, for my son, that is. ;^]

Super-cool birthday gifts... from back in '77

I was diggin' through some old photo albums at my folks' house this week, and came across this snapshot in time:


I found several years of birthday pics, including some from back in '81, but this one really caught my eye, especially with some of that suh-weeeet vintage Star Wars swag.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a peek at some of those AWESOME b-day gifts from "a much simpler time."

So let's take stock. From left to right (sorta):

• a Star Wars marker/coloring poster (with 3-D Vader mask, mind you!)
• a Dallas Cowboys helmet lamp (I either put 12 or 33 on the back with stickers)
• a set of 6 "silver" (ok, silver-colored) Hot Wheels cars (these I kept... they're my son's now)
• an mpc R2-D2 *fully-articulated* model kit
• a full set of all NFL teams pencils
• an amt Cuckoo Nest Custom Ford Van model kit
• an Obsession board game - "The game you can't get enough of!" (Dig that preposition-ending sentence. Nice grammar, babe!)
• a Skorpion (advanced design street machine) model kit - I guess I got my share of sniffing glue back then, eh?
  

Sadly, no TSR loot. But then again, the earliest I really got into the likes of D&D, Gamma World and Top Secret was, well... back in '81.

Live a little, Chewie!

"Gggggaaaarrrrrrrr!!!! Arrrrhhhn!!!!!"

Happy World Wide Wookiee Life Day!

November 17 - And it's my birthday, too. Sorry for the self-promotion - I'm just in a happy mood today, and proud to have made it through another year.

"Me? Old? Hhmmmm...? Think so, I do not."

At any rate, in Chewbacca's honor, tonight I think I'll dig out this old fella from back in '77 (actually, I didn't get mine until '78, IIRC), and school my son on the wonders of late '70s action figure articulation... all four points of it.

A belated beheading. Plus a *pac*-o-lantern and some Darth Silliness

I had the above pic set aside for a Halloween related blog post, but 10/31 came and went. Alas, here it is, several days late. Still, what an totally AWESOME work by the late, GREAT Frazetta. I absolutely LOVE his stuff; always have. I still run across works of his that I have never seen before. This was one of those. The image alone is so bad@$$, but the use of color in his art is just plain stunning. God, I wish I could draw/paint/*pastel* like that! Nobody even comes close, in my mind.

Since this is basically a post-Halloween post, I may as well cover a couple other items:

First, on the "back in '81" tip ('80, really, but who's counting?), my son (6 y.o.) wanted a Pac-Man pumpkin this year. It's nothing extravagant (not like some of those amazing carvings I've seen posted online), but about 3/4 of the way through, it started to get a little tricky. Ya see I almost blew out the whole thing when I carved away too much of the bottom half before punching out the ghosts' eyes. Doh! Anyway... it held up, and he really dug it... and that's truly all that matters.

"Waka-waka-waka..."

And finally, I also had a little too much fun out with the fam, as Darth Robbo, terroizin' y'alls neighborhood (hope this works - the video won't play in the *preview* pane - gives an ERROR):

Darth Neighbor
"I sense something; a presence I've not felt since... [burrrrrp]"

Note to self: Eating garlic-heavy lasagna for dinner and then heading out trick or-treating with the kiddos in a tightly-enclosed face-mask is NOT highly recommended.

"The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now *I* am the master-bathroom![sic]"

Truth be told, if I would have had this costume this year, you bet your bounty-hunter-butt that I would have worn it instead of that Target one I'm wearing above. Check out this life-like, near-movie-prop below from back in tha day (note, this is for the lesser-known, often-disregarded Darth Vadar):

The Dark Lord of the Sith's "fun poncho."

"OK, now *these* are the droids we're looking for." - retro Star Wars night with the kiddos

OK, so I lied... a little. Way back in April, I noted that it had been since way back in November that I had blogged. I vowed to blog more, but I failed my save vs. (the_universe - this_blog). In other words, life has been so fun for me that I just haven't had much chance to get on here and talk about it.

See, I've been very busy with family stuff, especially since it has been the summer, and my kiddos and my wife were on summer break. That means lots of time spent doing cool, fun, kiddo things with them. This is a good thing, BTW.

Still, in keeping with some level of geekdadliness, I have continued to mix as much gaming, fantasy, sci-fi, etc as possible into many of our activities. So just recently I decided it was time (why did I wait so long?!?!?) to introduce my son to some real Star Wars. See, he started getting interested in the animated Clone Wars stuff, which is pretty sweet in its own right, but I wanted to make sure he experienced the really-REALLY cool stuff.

So I got out the "original theatrical version" DVD of the beloved '77 gem:


Yeah, yeah... I know... there are numerous "original" versions which have been released, and this DVD one certainly isn't exactly the way we saw it back in the day. But, as far as I know, it's the best we have as far as DVD format goes.

Because of this, and for better aspect-ratio purposes, I almost took 'em back to the VHS world. Maybe next time:


Certainly, it is pretty easy to fall into the trap of just watching the newer edited versions, which seem to be on SpikeTV every other week. However, my conscious just wouldn't be happy with that move. So we went back (pretty darn close) to the way I saw it, in a tiny two-screen cinema in my hometown, back in... err... '77.


You bet yer shaggy bantha-butt that my kiddos will know, without a doubt, that "Han shot first." Greedo's a punk!


Similar to good ol' Luke Starkiller... err, Skywalker, my son skipped right past that silly "Jedi Youngling" stage. Lame title, anyway.

Darth Bobby - "The circle is now complete."

50,000,000 Princess Leia Fans Can't Be Wrong

Holy Carbon Freeze! I just saw this post over at geekdad, and now my co-workers are wondering just WTF is so funny about this conference call in which I am (sorta) participating. ALT-TAB don't fail me now!

Anyway here's WTF is so funny: the very cool and hilarious animated short by Joe Nicolosi over at FishRockit that he made to visualize his friend Amanda's interpretation of the plot of the Star Wars Trilogy...sorta.

It appears to be getting a lot of action on teh internets, but it made me smile (and laugh, and choke, and urinate...huh?), so I'm gonna give it a +1 modifier with another plug here.


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

It is filled to the rim with massive amounts of hilarity, as she (Amanda) employs such phrases as "he's got white-face", "brown muppets", "frozen with...the stuff", "the force is strong, or whatever", and "a big crusty white guy".

Sprinkle on a few more cups of "or something"s and "or whatever"s, and call it good!

My fave part has to be Princess Leia's "Golden Suit", which looks suspiciously like something I've seen before....hhmmnn. She looks hilarious in that thing, sporting that blaster.

Look for that special somebody at the awards ceremony. Oh, and the final kiss is...well...an "alternative" ending. I don't quite recall that one. I wonder if Han shot first? (ok, that was bad...sorry...really)