Star Wars Memories 12: Comic Shop War Stories #2 - Do You Have a Lando?

Over the years, I sold a lot of Star Wars toys back to a lot of men in their 20s who were completely dissatisfied with how their lives turned out and were trying to recapture a time when the world was easier to navigate and a plastic Tauntaun could make you feel like the King of the World. If that sounds harsh or judgmental, I don’t mean it to be. If anything, it’s a comment on the bill of goods we were sold as children; the idea that we could be anything we wanted to be, and if you work hard, you’ll succeed, and all you have to do is pull yourself up by your bootstraps and everything will work out, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.

Well, we all wanted to be Jedi Knights. And instead, we got straight jobs, working on computers, sitting in cubicles, making a lot of money for a few people. We wanted to be Rebels, and we ended up minions of the Empire.

That is, most of you. Not me. I kept working at comic shops, manning the counter, helping you to escape to other worlds. Better worlds. A temporary fix, to be sure, but I never judge nor begrudge a person their right to check out of this reality for a time and get their act together. The real world sucks. That’s why stuff like Star Wars is so appealing. Fiction has to make sense. Reality never does.

Like I said, I spent years—over a decade, in fact, working at comic stores. And even when I didn’t like it, I really did love it. I don’t have a lot of specific instances that stick out in my mind, but I will never forget a Christmas back in 1997, during the 20^th Anniversary of the Star Wars. The year of the Special Editions, and we’ll get back to that soon enough.

I was working in Austin, at a different comic store, for the same family from Waco. Austin Books was, and will always be, a spiritual home base for me. I met, and maintained relationships with some of the best, most creative, wonderful people on either side of the sales counter. One of my co-workers, Brian, is still one of the smartest and quickest-witted guys I’ve ever known. His come-backs were lightning-fast, and when there was a quip to make, he was almost always first to make it. If you wanted to hang at Austin Books, and hang with us, you had to bring your A-Game.I also met some real whackadoos, but for the most part, it was positive for good, kind, clever folks.

They may call him Ponda Baba, but he'll
always be Walrus Man to me.

Christmas in comic shops is always a lot of fun. Not only do you get to sell some nice, high-end comics and statues and toys, but you always get this spate of shoppers every year who show up, list in hand, wearing confused expressions. They’ve been to the mall already, and to Toys ‘R Us, and they can’t find a...what is it? A ‘Ponda Baba in the package’? What the hell is that? And we’d get to gently steer them over to the Star Wars case and show them the vast array of loose and carded action figures we were selling. Or, more often as not, send them over to Brian, because that was his domain at the time. He worked the counter the way Sam Malone worked the bar at Cheers. It was awesome to watch him be charming.

The store is busy, and we’re rocking and rolling along, and all of a sudden, the door flies open, and a woman fairly lunges at the counter and blurts out to me, “Do you have a Lando?”

This pissed me off. It was a Saturday. I had been working all day, and even though it was busy, and I was tired, I was still in the zone and on-point. Brian had been amusing us all day with his impression of Gary Busey as Han Solo. We were in a good mood.

At Austin Books, we made it a point to greet every customer. We also made it a point to treat everyone as if they wanted to be there. In other words, we assumed everyone was qualified to be a comics fan, and didn’t treat the women any differently than the men. I’m telling you this because even back in the mid-90s, this was a problem. Our shop was “Fangirl Friendly.”

This woman—late twenties, well-dressed, and obviously in a hurry—didn’t even give me a chance to be nice. To greet her. To ask her if I can help her. Just, “Do you have a Lando?” I took all of this in in the space of a heart beat, and then I made a point of blinking, looking startled, and said, “Hi! Can I help you with anything?”

“Do you have a Lando?” she repeated. She looked testy. This is a question that would usually follow an exchange of half a dozen sentences:

“Hi, how are you?”

“Hi, I’m fine, thanks.”

“Can I help you find anything?”

“Yes, actually, I’m looking for some loose Star Wars figures.”

“Cool beans, we’ve got a lot. Brian over there can help you out.”

(Brian) “Hi there, what are you looking for in particular?”

“Yes. I need a Bespin Han Solo, a TIE Fighter Pilot, and oh, yes, do you have a Lando?”

That’s how 99% of our interactions went, with appropriate variations. We were nice, they were nice. It was nice. But she was cutting across all of that. All business. Okay, lady, you want to play it that way, fine. I’ll send you over to the master. “Yes, we do,” I said. “Brian? She’s looking for a Lando.”

"I'm Lando Calrissian. I'm the
administrator of this facility."

Brian, who was already plugged into the situation (the counters weren’t that far apart), said, “Of course, I’ve got several to choose from here...” He brought out a tray, wherein we had several bagged figures. At the time, these were selling for between $5 and $10, if they were complete with accessories—usually a laser pistol that barely fit into their hand.

Lando Calrissian, the turncoat rogue of Cloud City, was $8.

The woman lunged over to the counter. “I’ll take the best one you’ve got,” she said.

Brian tried to re-direct her. “Well, they’re all in pretty decent shape—”

“I’ll take the best one.” She said it quickly, and a little loudly. It’s clear that she didn’t want to be in our store, and we were only pissing her off by prolonging the interaction. Without another word, Brian handed her the little action figure and she returned to me. “I’ll take this,” she said.

I dispensed with my counter rap. She wouldn’t have appreciated it; it would have only made things worse. And when I’m in “helping at the counter” mode, I am just O.C.D. enough that if I skip one or two of my steps, it throws me off for the rest of the day. She was messing with my mojo, here.

I ran her charge card and she signed the receipt and was heading for the door, even as I thanked her for her business. We were watching her go, so we could shoot each other those knowing looks and say the things we usually reserved for difficult customers, when she stopped in the middle of the door and leaned back into the store. She said, at me, with no other pretense, “Do you have a Woody?”

I knew what she meant the instant she said it. I also know how it sounded the instant she said it. Had I not been jousting with Brian all day, and been in “rapier-wit mode,” I likely would not have done what I did. But to be fair, comedians, actors, and other entertainers wait their whole lives for such a perfect straight line. It would have been criminal—unconscionable, even—to ignore it or worse, give her an out.

So I took a step back, pretending to be confused, and glanced downward for just an instant, and then I said, “Oh, you mean from Toy Story!”

Her eyes bulged and her face melted into a mask of abject horror as she realized her verbal faux pas. She looked like the Nazi Toht staring at the contents of the Lost Ark.

“No ma’am, I don’t have a woody, or a buzz, for that matter,” I said in my best Bill Murray delivery. I smiled at her. She threw the door open and fled without a word. I looked over and Brian was doubled over laughing. Mind you, this was not our usual behavior. We would never have done anything like that with a real customer. I submit to you (as I said back then, at closing time that day) that we were never going to see her again, anyway.

Best Eight Dollar Transaction Ever.

Star Wars Memories 11: Comic Shop War Stories #1 - The Great Kenner Buy

We all had one of these. I knew a kid who had two.

I got a job in my late teens that would change my life in so many ways. My friend Brent’s family owned a comic book store. They also sold baseball cards and other collectibles and memorabilia. He thought we could work well together and so I was hired as a part-time after school counter helper. It was the beginning of a series of jobs that ruined me for honest work now and forevermore.

There are few jobs that have as much social currency, cultural weight, and insider credibility to the Geek Nation as working in a comic book store. While the rest of the world thinks all comic shops are built like The Android’s Dungeon and all comic store flunkies are Comic Book Guy from the Simpson’s, the rest of us know better. Only some of the world’s comic shops are an unintended homage to the Android’s Dungeon and Comic Book Guy. The rest of the comic shops are actually very cool places to work and hang out. Nowadays, that is. Back then, you pretty much took your chances.

This has not always been the case. In the 1980’s, comic shops were the sausage-festivals you would imagine them to be, and with that lone statistic comes a host of other inferences you may correctly make about working at a comic book store pertaining to smell, emotional maturity, and general dorkiness. Still, there were exceptions to these rules. The store I worked at tried very hard to be professional. We welcomed everyone, and we did our best to not make anyone (meaning, you know, women) feel creeped out. That most of us had girlfriends, or at least dated girls at the time, was a testament to our success in is regard. I know you probably don’t believe me, but it’s true.

That’s how I found myself working the comics counter at one of only two comic shops in the Waco area. I learned a lot about not only the care and preservation of old comics, but grading in general for paper collectibles. We had the wherewithal to occasionally buy memorabilia, such as the glass Pepsi glasses with the DC Comics super heroes on them. Or Mego 8” action figures. These were occasional items that we came across. Mostly, it was comics.

I think it was Brent who decided we were going to start buying and selling Star Wars toys. He and his family were always looking for what the next trend in collecting was, as you can well imagine. We all knew that there were after market Star Wars toy collectors out there. The movies were ten years old, at this point. Figures and vehicles were starting to show up at flea markets and even the occasional comic convention among the proto-toy dealers, and as always, condition was everything.

It was a good move. We were the only store actively buying Star Wars toys, and once the word got out, oh boy, here they came. Of course, we were most interested in things that were still in their original packaging. Boxes and blister cards. Unopened. Unplayed. It was hard to come by, as most self-respecting kids tore into this stuff the second the Christmas wrapping paper was off. But there were a few cool things that showed up, and we paid good money for them. Oh, and lots of loose figures and loose guns.

This was a regular topic of conversation in the store; what we had as kids, and what we didn’t have, and what we always wanted, and what we didn’t know was even out there. Right away, the most coveted items of our collective childhood began to take precedent. Tall blue Snaggletooth. Sears and Montgomery Ward exclusives. Power of the Force action figures. Yak Face. Mail in figures. You know: the Good Stuff.

This went on for years. We displayed the toys; even hung a couple of the space ships from the ceiling. We turned ourselves into Star Wars toy experts. After a while, we got sort of blasé about the stuff that walked in. “A complete Droid Factory? Oh, my, yes, we’ve had those before. Oh, you’ve got a Slave 1 in the box, that’s nice.” We weren’t being assholes about it, mind you, but frankly, if you’ve seen one tall blue Snaggletooth, you’ve seen them all.

One day changed all of that.

Brent took the call and when he got off the phone, he informed me that a guy was coming in with a couple of boxes of Star Wars stuff. He nodded. I nodded. We knew what this meant. Probably a beat-up X-Wing Fighter, missing the stickers, and a handful of action figures that looked like they did actual time in an actual swamp. It was important not to get excited before the customer got there. What they consider to be valuable and what’s actually, really valuable are two wildly and completely disparate things, usually.

When the guy showed up, he had more than two boxes. The first one he came in with was full of loose stuff; things from his childhood. I got busy doing something else, and after a while, I looked up to find Brent looking at me with his eyebrows raised while he was talking to the guy. I took this to mean he needed me.  

As nonchalantly as I could, I strolled over. “Mark, this is so-and-so. Mark is our Comics guy, and he also is a big Star Wars fan,” Brent told the guy, whose name I have completely blanked on. We shook hands, and then I glanced down at the figures Brent had set aside. They were Power of the Force action figures, which were the really hard-to-find figures at the time. They were loose, but they were pristine, and they had all of the weapons, and the coins. This guy had enough commemorative coins to put in a treasure chest. Coins everywhere.

This was not the Star Wars buy we were looking for. This was something else entirely.

I picked up the Luke in Stormtrooper armor and said, very calmly, “Oh good, you’ve got the helmet.”  I then put it down and walked away. Very casual-like. We did not want to tip our hands, here, because we wanted—nay, we needed to buy this guy’s stuff. This guy wasn’t a motivated seller, like so many of the treasure hunters we used to get in those days. This guy had heard Star Wars toys were hot items and wondered aloud if his stuff was worth anything, and would we take a look at it? This would require every ounce of finesse in our adolescent frames. Thankfully, it was neither of ours first rodeo.

Another box came out from the car; more random stuff, but in really good condition, and some things in the packaging. There were also packages—unpunched cards for the action figures with no plastic bubble on them. Where the hell was this guy getting this stuff from?

In the course of the conversation, it came out: his family was from Ohio, and his mother (or father) actually worked at Kenner during the 80s. They brought this stuff home for him. Right off of the factory floor. He had a handful of random guns—things that, in the beginning of the hobby, were so difficult to come by. All of the mail-in figurers in packages, unopened. Stacks of coins. Things that were probably sitting in giant bins in the Kenner factory that we would all have given our lightsaber-wielding hand to get a free scoop of when we were kids.

“There’s one more thing I wanted to show you,” he said. “I’ve never seen another one, so I’m curious as to your take on it.”

At this point, we would have examined his colon if we’d asked him to. “Yep, it looks just like the Death Star exhaust port, you betcha.” Instead of dropping trou, he went back out to his car for a third time, and came back in with another box. In this box was a Darth Vader carrying case.

Gold! Shiny! My God, it's Beautiful.

You probably had one of these. Black molded plastic in the iconic shape of the Dark Lord of the Sith, this case could be cracked open, split in half thanks to a hinge along the bottom, and it held a lot of action figures. It was the preferred carrying case for all kids from Empire on. And he had one that was still in the cardboard package and shrink wrap.

It was also painted shiny metallic gold. 

I’ve heard of certain celestial objects presented to the various priests and saints having a kind of internal glow about them. That’s what this thing did. We couldn’t look at it. Not right away. Not directly. It was like fire from the Ark of the Covenant. Sure enough, though, eventually Brent took it out of the box and we just stared at it. Very calmly, very casually, as cool as I’ve ever seen Brent be, he said, “Yeah, you know, I’ve never seen that before. Mark?” He gave me a look that said, “Don’t blow this.”

I shook my head, slowly. “Nope. Never seen that before.” I said it with the same tone of voice I used when I turned down Subway as a lunch suggestion. And then with all the energy I possessed, I went back to grading comics and tried so hard not to keep staring at it.

Brent bought it. For the store, I mean. How could he not? The negotiations were harrowing, and in the end, he spent a lot of money for the guy’s collection. A LOT. After all, this guy was parting with childhood memories. We, on the other hand, were obtaining something that, for all we knew, was unique. After all, it came directly from the factory that this kid’s parent worked at.

We did not put it out right away. There was a time and a place for such an unveiling, and this was not that time and place. Besides, there was research to be done. We found out, some time later, that what Brent bought that day was a prototype product test. See, the Darth Vader carrying cases were so popular, they wanted to do another case, in the shape of Threepio’s head, that would function the same way. So, in order to get the right finish on the case, they painted several Darth Vader cases with different formulas of gold paint and shipped them to Kenner employees to see how the finish survived in transit.

Smart idea, right? Now that they had their answers, those gold Darth Vader cases had served their purpose. And that’s how one of them found their way home to this one kid, and he in turn brought it with him to Waco, Texas, and how it ended up in a small comic and collectible store, being stared at by two First Generation Star Wars fans as if it were the Holy Grail. Which, it turns out, it was. It’s one of the rarest Star Wars toys around. And it passed through our hands.  

Over the years, that buy has become the stuff of legends. The store, and Brent, are still around, still in business, and still selling Star Wars toys. I bought an Artoo and Threepio from them earlier this year. I asked the guy at the counter, “So, did Brent ever tell you about the gold Vader case...”

“Yeah,” he cut me off. “We’ve heard all about it.” 

Kids today. No sense of history.

Star Wars Memories 10: I Disagree with Joseph Campbell

If you haven't seen it, it's worth
watching. You may not agree
with everything, but there's a
lot of grist for the old mill, if
you know what I mean and I
think you do.

Girls and high school and a move some four hours away from my home town, and making new friends and band and jobs, and girls, all pretty much conspired to keep me from thinking overly much about Star Wars from 1984 to 1988. I wasn’t buying the toys any more, and even though the terrible animated cartoons were showing on Saturday morning, no one would ever argue that those were connected to the Star Wars story in a meaningful way. Kid’s stuff. Easy to skip.

There was, even then, a shared language that formed a kind of short hand amongst my friends and classmates. We’d all seen the movies. Who hadn’t? There was always one weird kid who was a Jehovah’s Witness, but other than that, everyone knew if you said, in class, for instance, “I have a very bad feeling about this,” you were referencing Star Wars. Right?  It may have been a movie about space, but it wasn’t rocket science.

Other points of reference included Death Star trench fight chatter; any reference to using The Force; nearly every line of Vader’s dialogue from Empire Strikes Back, and any reference to the Cantina Scene, usually levied at someone who was weird-looking, or a situation that was bizarre and strange. In high school, that could have meant anything. But it was possible to have a conversation in shorthand, using dialogue from the three movies. We did it all the time.

“These are not the droids you’re looking for.”

“I have a very bad feeling about this.”

“You worry about those fighters, I’ll worry about the tower.”

“The Force will be with you. Always.”

Translation:

“Here’s the pop quiz I’m supposed to pass back to you.”

“Dammit. I’m going to fail this. I haven’t studied.”

“You can copy off of me.”

“You’re a good friend.”

For those of you reading this under the age of 30, the above conversation was done in person, face-to-face, back when you had to sit next to the person you wanted to talk to in math class.

Anyway.

In the Pre-Internet world, I’m sure the fan club was chugging along with monthly newsletters, but aside from that, there were other fish to fry. Other movies to see. Other things to obsess over. Star Wars became another shared childhood experience along with Schoolhouse Rock, the Micronauts, and Disco. Or so we thought.

I don’t recall who in my family was more interested in watching The Power of Myth when it aired on PBS in 1988. Probably my mother, who was always very earthy-crunchy, and would have been certainly interested in what Joseph Campbell had to say. Unfortunately, those conversations with Bill Moyers are as dry as toast. Fascinating subject matter, rendered boring as hell by two white guys nattering at one another.

I don’t mean for that to be reductive or dismissive, but at the time, all I was really interested in hearing was his commentary on Star Wars. See, there was this idea that had been floated around as Return of the Jedi ran its course and the documentary From Star Wars to Jedi: the Making of a Saga first aired (and later hung around on VHS cassette) at the end of 1983 that maybe, just maybe, Star Wars was about more than just space ships and monsters and robots and Jedi Knights.

The aforementioned documentary certainly planted the seeds of greatness, using language and terminology that suggested a deeper connection with mythology—and in the same documentary, Lucas makes some assertions about the nature of the story and how writing shifts to meet the needs of the filmmakers on-set.

The other great influence on this new intellectual renaissance was curiously absent from the discussions, and that’s the amount of money annually made on the then-burgeoning Star Wars merchandising line. I remembered something, post Jedi, as I was taking the film apart in my head: the Christmas after Empire, the must-have toy was the Yoda puppet and stuffed doll. Everyone wanted them (okay, Mothers wanted them), and no one had enough. It was the first time I remember a news story about a toy being on the television. Yoda was the most popular Kenner toy that year.

This fact would not have been lost on George Lucas, who had his finger in every pie, his input on every decision. In fact, in a movie full of grim truths and harsh realities, narrow escapes and life or death situations, Yoda’s first meeting with Luke, more or less, is the lightest, most comical scene in the story. Granted, for me, the important Yoda information all occurs once he drops the buffoon act and becomes the stern and sober Jedi master. But Kenner, Lucas, and the nascent soccer moms of the world all thought he’d make a much better stuffed plush toy. Nice.

Fast-forward to Jedi prep, and the idea behind a planet of Wookies, for some inexplicable reason, no longer appeals to Lucas. But a planet of Teddy Bears (and he calls them that in the documentary) would make perfect ecumenical, commercial, and licensing sense. Oh, yeah, and yadda yadda yadda hand-waving about the service of the story.

If you’ve not watched From Star Wars to Jedi: the Making of a Saga, do so. It’s a great interview with Lucas, young and lean, without his neck-pouch, and you can see he’s trying out some revisionist scripting that has now become fairly dogmatic. It’s obvious. There are language choices involving words like “mythic” and “hero” and “Good” and “Evil” being applied to the three movies that definitely implied a much broader interpretation of events in the story.

By the time we get to The Power of Myth on PBS in the late 1980s, the fix was really in.

I listened eagerly to Campbell’s explanation of the monomyth, the hero with a thousand faces, and those ideas as they related to Star Wars.  Hero and Princess, Rogue and Mentor. These archetypes from Jungian Philosophy and Campbell’s reading of myth and story worked, and they worked well. I’m a senior in high school at the time. I knew about some things, like symbolism, but I didn’t really believe it, until I saw Moyers and Campbell applying it to Star Wars.

My “Literary Criticism” brain turned on in that instant. And then it did something I wasn’t expecting. Onscreen, Moyers and Campbell were talking about key scenes in Star Wars, and Moyers asked Campbell about the scene where they fall into the trash compacter and are nearly crushed.

“Well, that’s the classic idea of the hero entering the Dragon’s Den,” said Campbell. He continued to explain himself, and I sat there, dumbfounded. Um, professor, wouldn’t a much closer reading of that scene be Jonah and the Whale? I mean, if this is what we’re doing, and this is how you want to do it, the entering of the Dragon’s Den happens when the Falcon is towed into the Death Star. Frankly, the idea of the heroes harrowing hell to rescue someone is much closer. But Dragon? No. That’s the Rancor scene from Jedi. Not the trash compactor scene from Star Wars. Was the old man confused? Why wasn’t Moyers correcting him?

Yes, Joseph Campbell is dead wrong about that one thing. What else, I wondered, was he wrong about? And let me be very clear, here. I am not accusing Campbell of throwing the game, either. I don’t think he was coerced into saying what he said. Between 1983 and 1988 we heard, those of us who were listening, about some of the real behind the scenes things going on with the creation of the Star Wars movies. The information was out there, scattered around for those who wanted to see it. It came from a variety of other sources, most of the time, from Lucas himself, in the service of other films, like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Lucas was certainly aiming for the fences when he envisioned Star Wars. But initially, he wanted to remake Flash Gordon. The old Buster Crabbe serial. Certain elements of Star Wars (and Empire) now make more sense, don’t they? Stuff like the presence of light swords in a world of blasters. Also, Lucas loved the famed Japanese director Akira Kurasawa. It’s funny how some of the structure of Star Wars looks an awful lot like the movie, The Hidden Fortress, isn’t it? More on this later.

Thanks to The Power of Myth, I started learning more about literary criticism. I started reading books about lit-crit, paying more attention to things like the Introductions of books, and most importantly, I started examining these pop cultural artifacts more closely for evidence of someone else choosing to think creatively. Sometimes this had unintended consequences. Sometimes this ruined (and still does) movies and TV shows I’m not supposed to examine critically. But I couldn’t help myself. I wanted more substance in my soup. I’d gotten a taste for it, and I found that I liked it.

So, why was George Lucas trying to change the flavor of the soup that he sold us all on? He was trying to pull off the world’s biggest Jedi Mind Trick. And some folks were taking the bait.

Star Wars Memories 09: Return of the Jedi--I am So Over This

This is what I wanted. It's what
we all wanted. Payback.

In the three years between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, a funny thing happened to me: puberty. It was the full deal, turning me into a sasquatch and making me hyper-aware of every girl in the state. I couldn’t ditch my youthful trappings fast enough. Well, not exactly ditch. More like, shift around in the closet and hope no one noticed or remembered.

That was the artificial atmosphere that I took with me to see Return of the Jedi. I had to go see it. I wasn’t crazy. But at the time, I’d been into Star Wars for half of my life. I felt like I’d outgrown the movies. I wasn’t sure. I mean, most of the time, I wasn’t watching Saturday Morning cartoons, either. Things were different, now.

But of course, I had to see this movie, if only to find out what happened to Han Solo. I was excited to return to Tatooine, and I was over the moon at the prospect of a showdown with Boba Fett. It was, after all, inevitable. Besides, Luke now had a robot hand, and there’s no telling what cool stuff it could do, right?

Even at the age of 13, I could tell the fix was in. I did not watch Return of the Jedi with an uncritical eye, even back then. Worse, I watched it with an intact sense of propriety and ownership—me, at the age of 13. But I was not alone. See, I was a kid when Star Wars started. (To my way of thinking), I wasn’t a kid for Jedi. I wanted to see something more in keeping with my evolved situation. After all, it was Star Wars (really Empire Strikes Back) that told me to man up by cutting Luke’s hand off and giving him some crushing news. But he soldiered on. We all do. You get your bionic hand and you deal with the new information.

So, I wanted to see where this all was going. My opinion of Jedi is virtually unchanged in 32 years: it’s a failed masterpiece. I walked out of the theater, really pissed off, in 1983. The only thing that has abated in the intervening years is my righteous indignation. In its place is a knowing cynicism about the power of money and how much of it is needed to cause an artist to amend their thinking. Another first lesson for me on the relationship between art and commerce.

This is what we ended up with.
It's got moments, but on the whole...

 Jedi starts out good enough. The rescue of Han on Tatooine had to be the first thing covered, or we would have collectively lost our damn minds. And what an opening it is—right into the heart of Jabba’s palace, for a reworking of the Cantina scene from the first movie—a reminder that we are in another world—and a promise of future derring do in the scene with Leia, Chewie, and Lando. When Luke shows up, we’re as skeptical as Han is: “A Jedi Knight? I’m out of it for a little while and everyone gets delusions of grandeur.”

One of the better lines in the movie is the reunion of Han and Luke in Jabba’s Palace after Luke dispatches the Rancor. “Together again!”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“How’re we doing?”

“Same as always.”
“That bad, huh?”

This kind of dialogue has always been my favorite, because it speaks to character and also establishes history. This isn’t the first time these guys have been neck-deep in trouble. The stories and situations that conjures up with just a few lines of dialogue make the scene infinitely more rich.

Out on the barge, when Artoo proves once again why you never leave home without him, and Luke gets his lightsaber and that wonderful music cues you in, things get awesome. I have no idea what Lucas was thinking when he put Leia in her “slave” costume. Clearly, Jabba was humiliating her. I never took away any other implication than that, initially, but it’s worth noting that the second she is able to do so, Leia strangles Jabba with her own chain—that’s some brutal, up-close and personal shit, right there. Since the story literally makes zero mention of it afterward, maybe this is all just part of the “get Han back plan.” It doesn’t have to be an abusive or deviant thing, no matter what the subtext implies.

However, at the age of 13 I was far less concerned with the liminal space between Princess Leia and Slave Leia and one hundred and twelve percent focused on the instant Boba Fett steps off of the barge, fires his jet pack, and moves to engage Luke Skywalker, heir to the Jedi mantle.

This two page spread exists because every kid I knew
who was into Star Wars meticulously collected every
scrap of information they fed us about Boba Fett.

See, I was an expert on Boba Fett. We ALL were. I had the sketchbook designs, showing all of the various weapons and lasers and missiles that were literally buried in his armor. Here’s a guy who looks Darth Vader in the eyepiece and speaks to him as if they are equals. He fears no one. He is (and we know this because we were told this in ad copy, on the back of gum cards, in print, and anywhere Kenner and Lucasfilm could tattoo the message) “The most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy.” Superfans, who had absorbed and memorized the lore of the back story, knew that the Mandalorian armor (what Boba Fett wore) was a special kind of shock-commando suit designed for Jedi hunting. In short: Boba has done this before. This was not his first Jedi round-up. I flashed on ALL OF THAT in the two seconds it took Boba Fett to cross the distance between the barge and the skiff and land opposite Luke, ready to do battle. This was going to be epic.

Epic, I tell you!

Aaaaaaany second now.

Wait, was Boba Fett going to actually shoot a Jedi? The guys who can knock blaster fire out of the sky with their lightsabers? Oh, well, maybe he was just testing Luke. Yeah, that’s it. Only it cost him his rifle, so that was kinda dumb. Now he’s using a tow cable to wrap around Luke. Okay, that was only going to last a few seconds. What he should do now is fire those wrist rockets! Or the flame thrower! Come on, Boba! Oh, damn, he got knocked down. By the deck gun’s stray laser blasts.

Um.

Okay, Luke is over there, now, and Boba Fett is about to shoot him! Wrist rockets? Flame thrower? Oh, damn, Luke, here it comes...wait, what? Did we just actually see a blind man accidentally hit Boba Fett’s jetpack and cause it to malfunction? Did Boba Fett just actually fall into the Sarlaac Pit? Did the Sarlaac Pit actually just burp?

You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.

According to one interview, Lucas did this because he was frustrated by his ongoing divorce at the time and didn’t want to deal with working out of how this battle between Jedi and Bounty Hunter would go down. If that’s the case, it becomes rather damning evidence for—but I’m getting ahead of myself.

That scene, about thirty seconds of film, made every Star Wars fan in the audience cringe. We were gypped! Ripped off! The adults tricked us! You promised us (implicitly, if not explicitly) a pay off, and, well, yeah, okay, now the sand barge is blowing up, and Leia just strangled Jabba the Hutt, and everyone is together again, but...couldn’t this have been done with a little more panache?

Luke goes back to Dagobah. He has some questions. As do we all. See, as shocking and as soul-splitting as the revelation that Vader was Luke’s father was, it fundamentally contradicts something that Ben told Luke in the first movie. We were all very concerned about this. After all, there were now three movies to keep straight in our heads. What would Yoda say?

We don’t know. He dies pretty quickly. But hey, cool, here’s Ghost-Ben, and while that seems problematic, it’s at least answering the question. Luke’s reply to Ben’s explanation carried the same tone as ours did: “From a certain point of view?” Really? That’s your take? Well, okay, we’re going to let that go, as well, because even though none of us had yet read Robert McKee’s seminal screenwriting bible, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting, we all instinctively knew that it made for a much better story to have Vader be Luke’s father.

And now we find out that Leia is Luke’s sister? Are we just supposed to forget that smooch in Echo Base on Hoth? Dammit, Lucas! Well, that does explain the telepathy scene in Empire. But please, enough with the surprise family nonsense!

Whew. Okay, moving on.

Okay, they are rebuilding the Death Star, and this time, they are putting Duct Tape over that pesky exhaust port. Now the Death Star will finally be the ultimate power in the universe. So, the rebels have to take it out before it’s finished. This is a good plan. What could possibly go wrong?

Family drama, is what. Admiral Akbar splits everyone up. Lando gets the Falcon for the big space fight. Han tells us he’s got a feeling we’re never going to see it again. I almost started crying right then. Either Han Solo is going to die, or the Millennium Falcon is going to blow up. Or both. Super Duper Darth Vader was right all along! Nooooooo!

All of this happens in a minute of screen time. Always in motion, is the Star Wars franchise.

Now the group is in the jungle, and they run across some stormtroopers in cool armor, on these amazing hover bikes. What follows is one of the best scenes in the movie, as Luke and Leia engage in a high-speed chase through the woods with crashes, some lightsaber fu, and great high speed photography. They get separated, of course, and then the story splits off into thirds. Luke goes to confront Vader (and the emperor). Okay, this is a good storyline, and we are interested in this. It's somber and melodramatic and is emotionally and physically what we were expecting, a promise made by Empire that was fulfilled by Jedi.

The second story is just as compelling. The fleet is amassing for the big fight, and our POV characters, Admiral Ackbar (one of fandom’s favorite Star Wars aliens) and Lando are raring to go. Only, there's problems! The Shield isn't down! The Empire knew they were coming! Who didn’t get goosebumps when Lando yelled, “That shield is still active! Pull up! All craft pull up!” and suddenly we see the Star Destroyers and Ackbar exclaimed, “It’s a Trap!” So, Space battle. Good. You know we’re on board for this.

The third story is all about how the Ewoks get involved in the fight. From the first second the Ewoks are on screen, I knew that Lucas no longer cared about Star Wars. Rather, he cared about getting paid.

See, one of the unintended consequences of the Star Wars movies was the massive amount of money made from the merchandise. Even back then, the numbers were being published and no one could believe how many millions of dollars were being generated by the toys. When Empire came out, far and away the most popular toy from that movie was anything having to do with Yoda. He was small, he was cute (in an ugly sort of way), he had the funny voice and the strange syntax problem, and oh! Did you know that Frank Oz was the puppeteer for Yoda? He also does Miss Piggy! If this suddenly sounds like your mother, that’s on purpose. Moms everywhere finally had a hook, an in, from which they could attempt to relate to their latchkey children. Something, anything, to make all of this space-gobbledygook make sense.

In short, Yoda toys; puppets, plush doll, etc, went like hotcakes. They were must-have items at Christmas. This would not have gone unnoticed by George Lucas.

Now there’s a third movie coming. Granted, at some point, there was supposed to be a planet of Wookies helping the rebels, and well, everyone likes Chewbacca, but that Yoda outsold the Chewie teddy bear six to one. If only the wookies were somehow smaller...cuter...hey, wait a minute...!

In short, the fix was in. Here’s how I know: Stormtrooper armor, we were told, was riot gear, designed to protect the clones from unarmed or lightly armored peasants. It offered excellent protection against things like sticks and stones, but was no match for well-aimed blaster fire. Right. Okay. Gotcha.

So, two movies later, here we are on the forest planet, and the stormtroopers are being mowed down, cut like sheaves of wheat before the scythe, as the Ewoks bring them down with...sticks and stones.

The last thirty minutes of Return of the Jedi is both the zenith and the nadir of the series. Every time we cut away from Luke struggling with his father in an awesome lightsaber duel, or the massive, impressive, so-very-cool space fight going on around the Death Star, and we head back down Endor to watch the stormtroopers getting slaughtered by teddy bears holding dirt clods, a part of my soul died.

This is not adult Mark, talking to you. Even at the age of thirteen (and perhaps especially at the age of thirteen), I knew this was bullshit. Star Wars opened my eyes to the infinite size of the world. Empire taught me how to shave. And Jedi reminded me that I’m still too young to drive the family car and father knows best.

In the end, Luke and Anakin get their resolution. Han doesn’t die. The Falcon survives the explosion. Super Duper Darth Vader was a bit fat liar all along. And the Ewoks are singing this song that sounds like something from Sesame Street. That was the final shot of the movie.

I wanted to like it. I felt as if I was supposed to like it. But at the time, I remember being supremely disappointed. Another life lesson for everyone who watched it, now it’s become part of the fabric of the movie-going universe, that the third movie in a trilogy will inevitably suck. That tradition started in 1983 with Return of the Jedi. A dubious honor, to be sure, but you have to include it as just one more thing the franchise gave the world.

After that, it was easy to wean yourself from buying Star Wars stuff. The Ewoks had arrived, and your younger brother and sister (including mine, now) loved that crap, but I sure didn’t. Worse, they didn't even try to hide the fact that it was aimed at little kids. It was inevitable that there would be Saturday morning cartoons featuring both the Droids and the Ewoks. Ugh. I am shaking my head as I write this. Did they think we were all stuck at age seven?

A thought was beginning to form in my head. Maybe, just maybe, George Lucas didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

Star Wars Memories 08: Counting Coup With Snaggletooth

Going from being an only child, to a child of divorce, and then the oldest child of three in a blended family, has a few perks. Lest anyone think this is a venting of grievances for decisions my parents made thirty years ago, let me assure you, this is not so. Both of my parents ended up in much happier marriages, and both of my “steps” chose to include, rather than exclude me. I was treated the same in both houses, and while those houses were very different, it was actually stabilizing for me. I lucked out. I’ve got friends who dealt with divorce. I’ve seen the collateral damage. My situation could have been infinitely worse than it was.

In the seventies, being a Star Wars fan was tribal. We were all in this together, and everyone was equal in our love of this one, single movie. The way in which you loved it could take many forms: you could be into the Star Wars comic from Marvel, a monthly title that started with a six-issue adaptation of the original screenplay and then quickly went whackadoo gonzo in the Mighty Marvel Manner. There was the Topp’s bubble gum cards; five different sets of images, consecutively numbered, with different-colored borders. You could dive into the Star Wars magazines and posters that came out on a monthly basis. There were, of course, the toys. Or you could do a little bit of all of it. That was me. Star Wars dilettante.

Even within all of the stuff you could consume—and make no mistake, the merchandising was there, almost right away—there were Holy Grail items that one counted coup with. Certain things we heard about, and saw only once. Near legendary items, talismans of great joy. These were the things your friends owned, and if there was ever a movie franchise to perfectly encapsulate the joys of consumerism, it was this one.

Note the full-sized Blue Snaggletooth that the
Demented Incubus in the photograph is holding.

Case in point: When the Star Wars cantina playset first hit the market, it was initially a Sears exclusive, offered during the Christmas of 1977, and if your mother blinked, then you missed it. The “cantina” was little more than a cardboard backdrop and four exclusive figures: Hammerhead, Walrus Man, Greedo, and Snaggletooth. All four figures were featured in the movie, and you can readily spot them in the cantina scene. Even Snaggletooth. There’s just one problem: the Snaggletooth that came with the cantina playset wore a blue space suit and is as tall as the other figures. Snaggletooth from the movie wore a red suit and is the size of a jawa.

Whoops.

This is one of the storied incidents with Kenner and Lucas. They needed pictures to make action figures with, and sometimes all they had to go on was a mask. Snaggletooth was initially designed based on a photograph with no size or scale reference. The error was caught and corrected so that when Snaggletooth came out on his own blister card, he was the right size and color.

I can’t tell you how much I wanted that blue snaggletooth. We knew about it, because we saw the pictures. But none of my friends had one. Oh, there were sightings, right? A friend of a friend... my cousin in Florida saw one... pfft. Yeah, sure, whatever. Of course, they were out there; it sold through Sears, for crying out loud. But I didn’t actually get to see one until I was nearly an adult.

I had a few things that were pretty cool. A couple of the playsets, a variation Han Solo with a small head, stuff like that. My remote controlled Sandcrawler was a delight, and if you had, oh, all day, to watch the giant plastic toy navigate your shag carpet, then you were one of the lucky ones. Still, it was a good sized vehicle, much better than the cardboard backdrop that was part of the Land of the Jawas playset. That playset also came with a plastic escape pod for Artoo and Threepio to hang out in; it was literally a molded cup with a hinged lid. For the rest of my action figure playing career, that escape pod helped me vocalize Darth Vader.

I was a builder. I owned several of the model kits, and even put them together. My favorite? The snowspeeder. Such a cool design. There were also paper punch out books, where you assembled less-sophisticated models. That stuff fascinated me. If I wasn’t building, I was reading. My magazine collection was large and ungainly. I wanted info, and those mags were the only place to read about things like stormtrooper armor and the fact that they were vat-grown clones designed to be disposable soldiers. My Star Wars bookshelf was pretty impressive for a time.

One of the coolest Star Wars toys I owned was the three-position laser rifle. A hefty, solid black plastic gun that would get anyone shot on sight today. But back then, you could scramble around outside for hours, firing imaginary bolts at passing cars, and no one blinked. It was a different time. I never had Han Solo’s pistol, but it was equally impressive. The “laser” sound was anything but; a mechanical motor that spun a plastic wheel across a flexible tab. Not even close to the digital sound chips in today’s toys. But my laser rifle looked way, way cooler than the white and orange guns found in today’s toy aisles.

This French Kid is clearly unimpressed. Me? I would
never have left the house if I found this under the
Christmas Tree in 1978. Look at that damn thing...

There were other rumors about stuff being made in Canada that we couldn’t get. For instance, there was a Death Star playset made out of cardboard that was a dome with multiple rooms—something I would have given my left arm to own. I was big on playsets and this was a stage with a rotating back drop. It was glorious. Some of the mail order programs were pretty sweet, and you had to pay attention and be patient if you wanted the extra gear and figures they offered. But nothing was so coveted as the Boba Fett with the Firing Missile Backpack.

Spoken only in hushed tones, this was our Bigfoot. Our Nessie. Originally offered as a mail-order send away deal, there was talk about it happening, and then suddenly, here’s the figure, only the rocket doesn’t fire! What gives?  

One kid had the answer. They recalled the toys, you know. Some kid shot a missile into his throat and choked and died. True story.

It was just like the Battlestar Galactica space ships! First the missiles fired, and then they didn’t. Who was this stupid kid, who kept firing little plastic projectiles into his open mouth? It wasn’t anyone we knew. But he was ruining it for all of us. But the story continued—a few of these figures got out! There were sightings, of course. The same cousin from Florida, who seemed to have all of the good stuff, for example. We never saw the figure ourselves. Mind you, it didn’t make Boba Fett any less cool in our eyes, but oh, that missile firing rocket pack would have been the best thing ever.

Our compensation prize was Kenner’s 12” Boba Fett, a G.I. Joe-sized figure with actual articulation and a rocket pack that doubled as a zip line. I had one. It was the shit.

There was so much Star Wars merchandise, not only was it impossible to collect everything, but weird-ass stuff was bound to slip through now and again. Kenner, Lucasfilm, everyone, was flying by the seat of their pants. Whether it was a Yak Face on a Power of the Force blister card, or the hard to find final 107^th issue of Marvel’s Star Wars comic, there was always something to chase.

Star Wars Memories 07: Playing with Joel

During those two weird years where my parents sought new life partners, there was a lot of crap to deal with. Living with mom, who lived with a roommate, who also had a daughter, was weird. Then, I had the extra pressure of dealing with Paul and his kids, twice or three times a week. None of this was bad, per se. Paul and Mom were quick to include us in at least one evening’s worth of activities, even if it was a trip to Dairy Queen to eat burgers and play Galaga and Pac Man. Our roommate’s kid was a fellow only child, and very girly, so we stayed out of each other’s way. It was hard on someone who was an only child for ten years.

Mom got that, I think, and made sure I had space to retreat to when the kids were all over. I grew up in my mother’s day care center, eventually becoming one of the “older kids” who helped wrangle the younger kids. On days when I knew that was expected of me, I was pretty good with them. At home, or during the school year, I liked being alone with my thoughts and my toys.

My father’s house wasn’t much better. He started dating as soon as my mother did, if not sooner. I only saw him every other weekend, and that in and of itself was pretty hard on us. Dad went from being not around so much to being someone who suddenly gave a shit what I was doing. Interesting. And dad’s new girlfriend, Jo Anne, was nice enough, as well. They went out and did things on the weekends, and so that left me and Jo Ann’s son, Joel, with a baby sitter.

I knew Joel in passing. He and I went to the same school. We were in different classes, but we were still together. And just for the record, ten year old boys have no idea how to navigate those kinds of situations where parents are suddenly dating and you’re suddenly expected to get along.

It was difficult, initially. Joel’s father was nowhere to be found. If they ever got together, I don’t remember it. I remember Joel being upset about it at the time. I got the impression from listening to the grown-ups talk that he was always promising to visit, but never quite made it over.

So, here we were; two morose kids, sitting in Joel’s room, trying to figure out what to talk about. Being ten is one of those ages where you’re too old to really “play” but you’re too young to do much else. We had, on the surface, very little in common. At the time, Joel was really interested in World War II. I used to watch old John Wayne movies with my grandfather, but that was it. Joel knew the difference between a Tiger tank and a Panzer. That kind of “into,” the way boys will memorize baseball stats and other trivia. The way I was “into” comic books, if I’m being fair.

We were floundering. The only comics he had were Sgt. Rock comics. I’m not complaining, but I was an Enemy Ace man, myself. At the bottom of his small stack of comics was Star Wars #6, one of the issues I didn’t have. “Oh, cool,” I said. “I’ve never seen this.”

“I didn’t like it,” Joel said.

“Why not?”

“There was a bunch of stuff in there that wasn’t in the movie. I wanted the movie.”

I disagreed with him, but it made sense. We started talking about Biggs, the 1977 Elephant in the Room, and his appearance on gum cards and in comics and even the novelization, but not in the movie itself. We both agreed it would have been better if he was.

“What else you got?” I asked.

Joel walked over to his toy chest and opened it, and pulled out Slave 1. Boba Fett’s personal space ship. It was just large enough to be impressive, but small enough to fly with one hand. And his Boba Fett action figure was right there in the cockpit, visible through the smoky plastic canopy. I was blown away. Why the hell wouldn’t you lead with that? “Hi, I’m Joel, I’ve got Slave 1.” Dammit, man!

See, my parents gave me the playsets, but not so much the vehicles. Joel had star ships, but not as many of the playsets.

We agreed to pool our resources, and the next time I came over, it was with my Star Wars figures in hand (well, in vinyl carrying case).  Joel let me take Slave 1 around the room for a test flight. It was glorious. After the Millennium Falcon, and the snowspeeders, my favorite space ship in the entire Star Wars fleet is Slave 1.

Mind you, we didn’t become best friends overnight. It was rocky. But we had found a common language, one that eventually led to other activities, like watching terrible Sci-Fi offerings on HBO, and playing Dungeons and Dragons together, and swapping fantasy books we’d read. We became good friends, and eventually step-brothers. And the Star Wars universe was a constant topic of conversation until I moved to Waco several years later.

Star Wars Memories 06: Watching Empire Strikes Back with my Mom's Boyfriend

I was ten years old when The Empire Strikes Back came out. This time, there was no missing it, no excuses about not being plugged in. Everyone knew about this movie. The tag line on the television ads was, “The Star Wars saga continues...” and really, that’s all anyone had to say to make us lose our collective minds.

A lot had changed in three years. My parents were now in the midst of a divorce, with all the attendant drama that goes with it. To their credit, they both tried to keep me out of the fight as much as possible, but there was inevitable bleed-through in the form of snarky comments, weird behavior, and strident, whispered conversations with other people, or over the phone.

I was living with my mother. I was given no choice in the matter, and then, as now, I was grateful for not being made to choose. It still sucked, though. My mom’s decision to leave my father was as mundane as it was spectacular, seen from my limited viewpoint, and a lot was asked of me that I now know is just par for the course in any divorce.

Case in point: my mother’s new boyfriend. Paul was a divorcee himself, with two very young children. I have vague memories of him talking to my father on several occasions prior to the split-up. He briefly taught guitar to my mother. He talked photography with my dad. In fact, one of my favorite pictures of Mom and Paul was taken, by my father, during one of their guitar lessons. How's that for nutty? His kids were both enrolled at my mom’s day care center. And they were little, too; 3 and 5. I was, like, twice as old as them, so, you know, they were, like, babies, to me. Pfft. Whatever.

Now, mom and Paul are seeing each other at least twice a week. Sometimes, more. And now I’m trying to figure out how to get along with these two kids. Hillary was five, and a girl, so right away, I was dealing with a Martian. She liked Barbies. I liked G.I. Joes. This was never going to work. Joshua, the three year old, was, at least, a boy. And very prone to suggestion, which is a great trait for a little brother to possess. Hillary worked him like a sheep herding dog, keeping him on task, on track, and more or less corralled at all times. He was quite good at fetching things, as I recall.

I was expected to get along with them. I did this, initially, by staying out of the way.

It was Paul who made the effort. He was, after all, the adult in the relationship. I read a lot, and so did he. We had some common interests, in science fiction and fantasy, and most especially, in movies. When The Empire Strikes Back came out, we went as a “family outing.”  I think this was actually our first movie we watched as a family.

I should say, right up front, that I was glad Han Solo wasn’t killed in the film, and initially very pissed at Super Duper Darth Vader for lying to me. “Ohhhh,” I thought, “yeah, he’s the villain. Maybe he lied on purpose.” Then I realized, as the movie just ended in the middle of the action, no less, that maybe Vader got it wrong, and Han was going to die in the next movie. Son of a bitch! He pulled a bait and switch on me! I scanned the newspaper for a full year in the hopes that Vader would return to the Super Duper, but he never did. Perhaps he suspected he would be called on the carpet for his deliberate untruths.

The Empire Strikes Back. What a mean-sounding title. And everything, from the music, to the tone, was a meaner, more dark, journey into the Star Wars universe.  I was a little ball of negative energy at the time, and so I absorbed this like a cynical sponge. Decades later, I found out that even if your parents weren’t in the middle of a divorce, the movie was good shit.

The banter, the raised stakes, the improved special effects, and oh my God! Luke! Vader! The hand! Boba Fett! Boba Fett! Are you kidding me? The emotions that movie still drags up in me, to this day, are amazing. I was rooting for Han and Leia from the start, all right? And then to yank them apart on the Cloud City Platform with Chewie howling in frustration, and that music playing in the background...

Look: The Empire Strikes Back is still the best Star Wars movie, ever. Period. This is not in dispute. It’s just not. You may think I’m wrong, but I’m not. You’re wrong, and we’ll never agree. And if you tell me it’s not your favorite, I will forever second-guess any movie review or recommendation you give me for the rest of our association. I’m just telling you this up front.

Some of the more layered and nuanced scenes zipped by me. At the age of ten, I was more fascinated by the monsters, the space ships, etc. And for my monster-addled, special-effects-obsessed brain, it didn’t get much better than the ice planet Hoth. By this time, I was a devotee of Ray Harryhausen, and so it should come as no surprise to anyone that I was out of my mind about the tauntauns. Also, the Imperial Walkers, but mostly those furry, bipedal mounts that were obviously and beautifully stop-motion animated for those few, key scenes.

See, back in 1980, that was the apex of movie monster making. If you wanted something to interact with people onscreen, you had to stop motion that that monster. I knew it was expensive, and that’s why so many other movies didn’t use it. But now, here it was in this new Star Wars movie. I was thrilled.

Luke? Way more interesting. Han? Still a rogue. Lando? Also a rogue. Boba Fett? My new favorite villain. Best space ship in the film? The snowspeeders, no question about it. Yoda? Best Muppet ever.

I was awash in emotions and energy. But as we left the theater, Paul asked me, “What did you think?” We started talking about the movie. He liked some of the stuff that I liked. He pointed out some things I missed. We kept up an animated discussion all the way back to Mom’s Day Care Center. As we got out of the car, I asked Josh and Hillary what they thought of the movie. Joshua was bouncing all over the place. I scooped him up on my back and told him I was a tauntaun, and he was Luke Skywalker, and ran around the playground with him on my back and me making noises like the MacDonald’s Hamburglar. He was cool with that.

That was our first shared experience. Paul and I first connected over Star Wars.

St ar Wars Memories 05: Meet Darth Vader--In Person!

My coveted Darth Vader poster.
I was grateful for the giant letters
spelling out his name, lest I
forget who the hell was hanging
on my bedroom wall.

Sometimes, I think maybe I dreamed it. No one else I know had an experience like this. Certainly, none of my friends were there, or we’d have talked about it. But it really did happen. One of the most surreal events in my young life occurred one Saturday afternoon in 1978, at the Super Duper Grocery Store in Abilene, Texas.

I only found out about it because my grandfather’s shoe store was in the same shopping center as the Super Duper. In between the walk from Super Duper to Oliver’s Shoes was Eddie Krieger’s Pharmacy, an old-fashioned drug store with a lunch counter and a killer magazine rack, where I routinely bought comics. But I digress.

There were probably twenty-five or thirty of us kids, ages ranging from seven to twelve, standing in the frozen food aisle, staring up at the grim, unfathomably evil countenance of the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader, himself.

Yeah. Darth Vader made a personal appearance at Super Duper.

The absurdity of it all didn’t hit me until years later. At the time, I could only stare and listen as Vader described the functions of his suit and explained the life support system that kept his heart beating and his lungs working.

He went on to explain that he was badly burned in a duel with Obi Wan Kenobi, and fell into a pool of lava, which accounted for his burns and mechanical arms. Clearly, this was stuff from Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the Alan Dean Foster novel that appeared earlier that year. Didn’t matter. The technical specs on his life support suit alone were worth my standing next to the frozen peas, freezing my ears off.

You need to realize, at this point, whoever was in the costume, looked and sounded exactly like Darth Vader. I don’t know if he was just pantomiming for a recording that was playing from a cassette or something, but there was nothing to distinguish this guy from the real deal. Then he dropped a bomb on us and completely upended my world. He said, “How many of you are fans of Han Solo?”

We all dutifully raised our hands. Okay, a few kids didn’t, and I remember thinking, “What dopes.” Vader took a second to regard us with his obsidian indifference and then said, “Han Solo will be killed in the next Star Wars movie.”

Tell me Santa isn’t real. Tell me John Wayne’s real name is Marion. Tell me anything, but don’t tell me that. I remember getting angry, almost defiant. I wanted to ask him how come he knows so much? I wanted details. But Vader kept right on talking about the next Star Wars movie, and when it would be completed, and I had to keep listening because this was primo-gold information, straight from the horse’s mouth. No further bombshells were reported, thankfully, and as we all lined up to...what? Welcome Vader to Earth? I remembered trying to keep my thoughts organized so I could ask him some questions.

The line was getting closer, and suddenly, a woman handed me a photo of Darth Vader. Now, I’m looking up at him, and Man, is he tall, and he took my photo from me and scrawled “Dblarh Vblargh” across the bottom, and someone gently pulled me to the right, and that was it. I’d blown it. Son of a bitch.

Back home, I hung up my new trophy on my Star Wars wall. I had survived my first encounter with the Dark Side of the Force. But at what cost? I tried to tell my friends about Han Solo’s fate, but none of them believed me. Only after I showed them my autographed Darth Vader glossy did they consider I might be telling the truth.

Star Wars Memories 04: Uncle Larry's Video Disc Player

I know, that's a Star Trek disc in the ad.
That's not the issue, here. Please focus.

My father’s younger brother, Larry (brother to Jerry, and son to Harry), was something of an early adopter. He and his wife Kathy were fun, especially Kathy. She loved listening to 50’s rock and roll music. She loved Grease. She had some Peter Pan Syndrome issues going on, but when you’re a kid, she’s like the cool older sister. I never knew how she and Larry got together. Larry was fun, but in a grown-up kind of way. My father’s side of the family laughed a lot. They were all high-functioning, affable alcoholics, and they got a lot out of life back then.

I will never forget the Saturday we all caravanned over to Larry and Kathy’s house. It was a family get-together of some kind. I can’t remember what. A birthday party, maybe. But they had all gathered around in the kitchen to drink and smoke and eat off of small plates. My cousin was still a toddler, and not much fun to play with. So I was by myself.

Uncle Larry appeared in the living room, where I was watching something forgettable. The other adults followed him in, and he started to demonstrate for everyone this new thing on top of the television. I later learned it was an RCA SelectaVision Video Disc Player, and it cost just under a thousand bucks at the time. I have no idea how Larry got it. He sold shoes, for crying out loud. But then he slid in the cardboard cover and extracted the disc and hit play and son-of-a-bitch, there it was: “A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...”

The John Williams fanfare started, and my jaw hit the floor. Star Wars! On the television! Right in front of me! This is what the party should have been about! This should have been what the hubbub was over. But the adults, one by one, drifted back into the kitchen for food and booze, leaving me alone, sitting two feet from the television screen, watching the movie, sometimes adjusting the volume when their laughter overrode the dialogue.

Those fools! They had this magic thing in their house and they were just nattering away in there, like it was no big deal. Oh, god, what I would have done for the ability to watch Star Wars in my own home...and then watching it again...and again...and again...

The disc ran out about an hour into the movie, and I hollered for Uncle Larry to help me. He came in, turned it over, patted my head, and hit play. And I watched it all, my brain fully engaged at the task of recording the movie into my brain, memorizing the scenes, even the dialogue itself, because I didn’t know when I was going to get another chance to do this.

That’s something I’ve noticed people my age have in common. Prior to the early 1980s, when the video cassette players became available to rent and later, to own, those of us who were attracted to fantasy, science fiction, and the like, had to watch movies and television and give it our full and complete attention. We purposefully listened to the dialogue. Sometimes, I even took notes. We did this because there was no way of knowing when, if ever, you were going to see that movie again.

I know, it sounds absolutely crazy today. But back then, movies and television (and lp records, too) were our only means of seeing a particular film or show. TV was, on a local level, very cool in that respect, showing lots of old movies that I wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to. But re-watching a hot movie meant buying another ticket. Did I have the two dollars and fifty cents to see Star Wars again? Or did I leverage that into a Ben Kenobi action figure? Five bucks only went so far.

I watched Star Wars twice that night, while my parents yukked it up and ate ham salad in the other room. I fell asleep in front of the television. But I had it locked in. Huge chunks of scenes, long sections of dialogue. My recall, even now, is impressive. Most impressive. See what I did, there? Some of you know.

The adults, sensing that Larry had inadvertently picked a winner, were only too keen to let me visit Larry and Kathy after that. And I was a gracious, quiet, and undemanding houseguest. Just put the Star Wars movie on the laser disc player and go do whatever you need to do. I’ll be right here when it’s lunch time.