13 Years After The Phantom Menace
To mark its re-release in 3D, Moviefone asked 13 writers, reporters and critics to reflect back on their experience watching The Phantom Menace for the first time:
We drove home in silence. The first thing I can remember saying was “Well … it looked cool.” The droid army was absolutely intimidating. Yoda didn’t look like a pile of spoiled lunchmeat. And it certainly wasn’t weird that Samuel L. Jackson was on the Jedi council … at all. I had developed Stockholm Syndrome — I’d become a full-fledged Lucas apologist. “No, that was just bad. Really bad.” Kate paused, “And you’re not allowed to pick out any movies anymore.”
Some wounds take longer to heal.
Punishment
“She took a hammer and smashed my game. Hard, all to bits. It was a punishment.” He sat in the backseat, strapped in, his face to the window. Then his eyes met mine through the rearview mirror. He saw something, a flinch, a startle, maybe. “I deserved it,” he said. “Really I did.”
Another day, they were laughing. They could have been brothers, the two cutups. We drove past a stand of trees and then it was quiet in the car. “Have you been to that graveyard?” Asking me, this time. I had no idea a cemetery was in that neighorhood, hidden somewhere amid well-tended yards and fine, old houses.
“There’s a little boy’s grave. I go when I’m riding my bike. He died a long time ago, but somebody leaves teddy bears. And cookies and things. On the boy’s birthday? There are always cookies. I don’t touch them.” I asked why he went there. “I like to,” he said. “And it just makes me really sad.” I held my eyes steady, steely straight ahead. I kept clearing my throat. Finally I said all I could say, “It makes me sad too. It’s nice of you to think about him. You know, you are such a good kid.”
We haven’t laid eyes on him in years. But I still can see him, sitting at the grave of a long gone boy. The living keeping company with the dead.
Nasty Doritos
Concerning events in and around Anoka, MN
This is so depressing/infuriating that I actually recommend putting off reading until you have time to decompress afterward. I took it in two chunks.
“This isn’t something you kid about, Brittany,” her mom scolded, snatching the kitchen cordless and taking it down the hall to call the Johnsons. A minute later she returned, her face a mask of shock and terror. “Honey, I’m so sorry. We’re too late,” she said tonelessly as Brittany’s knees buckled; 13-year-old Sam had climbed into the bathtub after school and shot herself in the mouth with her own hunting rifle. No one at school had seen her suicide coming.
Stolen Instruments (Public Service Announcement)
This is of primarily local (Chicago) import and is not your typical clusterflock post, but what happened makes me so blistering mad that I want everyone I know to know about it and to keep their eyes and ears open.
STOLEN INSTRUMENTS alert! Violin and 2 guitars stolen from trunk of car outside The Whistler on Milwaukee on Sat night:
VIOLIN — Handmade, bears label: “Samuel Giovanni Casco in Örebro Anno 2010 For Ethan Adelsman”. The back has these measurements: 35.2 cm, 16.5 cm, 11.1 cm, 20.3 cm. The linseed oil-based varnish is a warm orange-brown color on a golden ground. The bow: Handmade by E. Herrmann of Brazilian pernambuco wood with silver mounted hardware. The bow bears inscription: E. HERRMANN *** Violin & bow were in a Bam Lotus case, black with grayish stripes on the top and black backpack-style straps.
Dear Clusterflock
How do you deal with the unbearable rudeness of strangers? I’m serious, here, guys. It’s starting to really affect my life.
It could be anything — the guy who cuts you off when you’re clearly waiting for the men’s room, the guy who switches to the fucking right lane after he sees the “right lane ends 1000 feet” sign, the elderly couple who really ought to know better than narrate through the entire showing of The Artist (even after you finally yell “hey” after he says “he didn’t do it” – BANG!), the woman who starts doing her makeup next to you on the train, the omnipresent imbeciles yelling into thin air (oh, they’re on the phone).
I’m thinking of never going to another movie again (damn kids nearly ruined Red Riding Hood for me), or moving to a cabin in the woods. I’ve been checking Craigslist for jobs, but so far, nothing.
headline of the day
Boy throws rocks at cars, shot by crossbow
Funk songs from Vietnam GIs
If you didn’t get a Christmas present from me, it’s because I’m waiting till the New Year to buy you East of Underground: Hell Below. (Thanks to Valerie for the tip.)
In 1971 the US was pulling troops out of Vietnam, and its bases in Germany were full of draftees at a loose end. “You were painting shovels, picking up cigarette butts – it was a lot of busy-work,” remembers former serviceman Lewis Hitt. “There was a longing by everyone, especially the draftees, to get home and go back to what you were doing before.”
This was the crucible in which were formed scores of raucous funk bands made up of servicemen, four of which have just been compiled by Now-Again Records. Adoring crowd noise was crudely dubbed on top of their records, which were then distributed in recruitment centres. These bands were used by the army to present service as varied, even hip. But the songs they cover – the bitter, suspicious likes of Backstabbers and Smiling Faces Sometimes – undermine any potential propagandising.
Angry Rats
From a year end compilation of scientific photos:
Rats don’t deserve their bad name, but this ball of fury won’t win over many murophobes. Russian scientists bred this aggressive rat strain to compare it with more docile creatures in a study on domestication that has teased out several genetic regions linked to tame traits.
attack ads
I was always taught that before you criticize someone else, you should look at yourself. So let me admit up front that I’m completely disgusting: there’s not much worse than a cockroach. You know what is worse? The emerald cockroach wasp. They have what some people would call an interesting appearance, with a metallic blue body and red legs, but they reproduce by stinging us and using us as hosts for their larvae, which then consume our internal organs in such a matter that we stay alive just long enough to give them life. That kind of behavior demonstrates a real lack of respect for private property rights, and is also unthinkably gross.
dear clusterflock, serious edition
How do you move through your grudges? Is it a process of letting go? Giving in? If you focus on forgiveness, do you feel that you’ve metabolized your anger?
Dear Clusterflock
Here I was having a terrible morning, and then I logged in to my work computer and got on here. I just noticed my stress headache is gone. Why didn’t someone tell me about all y’all when I was in rehab or when I felt like dying? I’m glad someone told me about clusterflock or I just don’t know where I would be right now.
Got any good jokes?
typical
So: for three years I live with a dude who claps, hoots, and hollers at anything resembling a sport on TV. I finally get my own place in a different city, I am excited at the relative peace and quiet, and guess what kind of person I live under.
Memorandum
All:
Please disregard my recent emails. Forget about the phone messages, too. I know I sounded angry and excited, but I’ve had a chance to think things over and I don’t feel the same as I did when I said all of those hurtful words. I won’t apologize for the basis of my comments—I have a right to my own opinions, especially because they are correct—but regret your exposure to that barrage of toxicity. And the physical threats. You’ll notice I did not say “sorry.” That word is for the weak.
in a haze
seeing isn’t necessary, running is. so say the limbs to the eyes.
screams echo in a haze but there is no body.
Police fire tear gas at protesters in Oakland
(thanks, Sarah)
I ain’t a cyclo-facist
but Bikesnob nails it:
It’s fascinating how readily we’ve come accept this notion that we must have respect for a car’s “power,” as though it’s some force of nature beyond all human control. Sure, someone who goes into the wilderness, starts poking grizzlys with a stick, and then gets eaten should maybe have a little more respect for the power of the bear, but that’s a different scenario. Oddly though, if a bear is just doing its bear thing and kills somebody we’ll go out of our way to destroy the bear. Yet if a human being kills somebody with a car we just charge them $42 and blame the victim.
How a reporter was arrested at #OWS for standing lawfully
Naomi Wolf in the Guardian:
I went over to the sidewalk at issue and identified myself as a NYC citizen and a reporter, and asked to see the permit in question or to locate the source on the police or event side that claimed it forbade citizen access to a public sidewalk. Finally a tall man, who seemed to be with the event, confessed that while it did have a permit, the permit did allow for protest so long as we did not block pedestrian passage.
I thanked him, returned to the protesters, and said: “The permit allows us to walk on the other side of the street if we don’t block access. I am now going to walk on the public sidewalk and not block it. It is legal to do so. Please join me if you wish.” My partner and I then returned to the event-side sidewalk and began to walk peacefully arm in arm, while about 30 or 40 people walked with us in single file, not blocking access.
Then a phalanx of perhaps 40 white-shirted senior offices descended out of seemingly nowhere and, with a megaphone (which was supposedly illegal for citizens to use), one said: “You are unlawfully creating a disruption. You are ordered to disperse.” I approached him peacefully, slowly, gently and respectfully and said: “I am confused. I was told that the permit in question allows us to walk if we don’t block pedestrian access and as you see we are complying with the permit.”
A Few Remarks
I sat next to him for almost two years. Inches apart, in fact, but there was a wall of sorts between us. Blue tweed-looking stuff stretched over a metal frame and filled with a thin layer of sound deadening material. It was not enough to prevent my hearing his chronic wheezing and throat-clearing.
The first week was not too bad. I was kind enough to welcome him into our little dysfunctional family. Show him how to do things and avoid the obvious rookie mistakes. He was slow to pick up departmental procedures and obstinate about what he thought he knew.
At what point did I stop trying to help him? It was when he took credit for projects that were not his own, compounded by a reluctance to admit he never knew what the fuck he was talking about. He couldn’t support an opinion or back up an assertion based on his own experience–Googling an answer was his method of showing how smart he was.
From streetbonersandtvcarnage.com
A reflection on #Occupywallstreet by a twenty-something hipster-ish business owner:
To make ends meet while my business grows, I work at a wine shop and that nets me a whopping $12.50 an hour. As a bonus for my ears, I am privy to humoring whatever bat-shit crazy political stance my customers offer up as they wait for me to ring up their booze. Lately, I’ve been getting customers buying hooch on their way to Occupy Wall Street. Funny, because I don’t recall seeing any of the Little Rock Nine being armed with flasks of Evan Williams. Anyhoo, today this British girl with legs that nearly scraped the ceiling strutted into the shop wearing a see-thru dress. She was particularly amped because she was on her way to the protest and asked if I would like to go. I said no thanks. Without skipping a beat she asks, “Why not? Don’t you hate the banks?”
And there my friends lies the problem with Occupy Wall Street. There is a considerable lack of education on what caused the economic crises and therefore we are playing the blame game. To make matters worse, there seems to be no clear resolution being offered by the protest’s organizers. And if you are reading this and saying, “Well, the giant corporations could just give us the money,” then you sir are a jackass. That mode of thought is reserved for friends of successful rappers who thought that they’d be getting a free ride out of the hood.
I don’t think people shouldn’t be angry, but this feels more like a mood than a movement.
Government logic
Josh recommended that I post this here.
This cuts to the bone
John Doe and Cindy Wasserman performing Never Enough. Sound Fix. NYC. 09.07.11.
So I can’t sleep
It’s probably because of a variety of internal and external stimuli, but I suspect one of the larger factors might be the dude who is always yelling at a Bobby I’ve never met. This neighbor has the strange habit of screaming “fuck you you you you you you you you” around two in the morning. This repetition somehow finds the nexus of hypnotic, tragic, hilarious, and enraging.
Related news: I now have the Kansas City Police phone number in my favorites on my iPhone.
headline of the day
Los Altos Woman Wore Bubble Wrap Under Jumpsuit When She Attacked Husband
Three for Today (Day Two)
Troy Davis died yesterday by the hand of justice. Many factions fought both sides. When does truth lie?
