Anyway, check it out guys, ’cause it’s fun, and it’s never too early to start planning next year’s costume, amiright? This is one of the better / least involved lightsaber DIY projects I’ve encountered, so it’s totally worth it.

• 33-minute lightsaber (here)
• Sweet cheap Boba Fett helmet (here)
• A gorgeous Jawa ion blaster (here)
• And a Sand Person costume you’ll enjoy (here)

I didn’t have time to do a lot of digging, but as you can see, there’s some sweet and/or exciting stuff out there, so check it out! And remember you can send me pics of your cosplay ;-)

Exciting, right? That Chewbacca is soo cool. On the other hand, if you love Tatooine and can’t get enough of well-meaning fellows getting into exciting scrapes, complete with lots of fast driving and short shorts, well, The Dukes of Star Wars might be your speed.

Everybody loves this show! Loves, loves, loves–I don’t know why it’s not still on the air! Anyway, Star Wars is about a bunch of friends who all live in the same building and have hilarious escapades! Remember “The One on Hoth,” where the dude was like, you can’t go out there, the temperature’s dropping too rapidly, and Han was all, “That’s right! And my friend’s out in it!” And then the guy was like, your tauntaun will freeze before the first marker! And Han said, “Then I’ll see you in hell!” And the dude said, “I’ll see you in hell!” and Han said, “I guess you will!” and rode off to rescue Luke? Ah, those guys. I love those guys.

For my final offering, another great 90s classic! And just because we like to switch it up, it’s not about the rebels this time . . . you know Palpatine’s the real star of the show, and he’ll prove it to you in electricboa’s “The Fresh Emperor of Bel Air.”

Anyway, that was a lot of fun. Now, if you guys don’t mind, I’m going to try to catch a few of these on TV. Enjoy!

Then I remembered that I found this totally random website a few weeks ago, and I’ve been meaning to link to it. It’s the best of both worlds because it’s about costumes and it’s also awesome. It’s a website dedicated to the Dressing the Galaxy exhibit that went up in December of 2005  at the FIDM Museum & Galleries. It featured more than 100 costumes, accessories, and props from all six films. There are two galleries available online for your perusal: a tour of the gallery, which has some great panoramas of costumes including minor characters, and detail shots. These include a lot of Padmé’s gowns, but only two original trilogy costumes. The only trilogy items are Boba Fett, Han Solo, slave Leia, and an X-wing, which is kind of disappointing, but on the other hand, the prequel costumes are just gorgeous and worth a look. So check it out!

A family of Tusken Raiders

That being said, if you have Star Wars cosplay you’d like to send me, go ahead! I’ll do a spotlight on cosplay if I get enough material.

So this month, I was starting on a little Christmas shopping/some birthday present shopping for October birthdays, and I was tempted into buying product #1 here in order to get $10 off my order.

The AWESOME side of the Force!

The tote, by the way, is courtesy of Zazzle.com and was a gift from my dad for my birthday in July. The keychain, however, is one of these addictive little Star Wars Sound Drop Keychains imported from Japan. There are six different keychains; you either buy all six of them, or they send one to you at random. The random one I got was Darth Vader, who just so happens to match my SWL bag perfectly! I thought that was exciting and I’m definitely pleased. Pressing the button produces a nice sound clip of Vader breathing. I’m addicted to getting these things now and really would like to collect them all, but I especially want the saber duel.

Then I had to buy another birthday present and, to get another $10 off deal, I threw in a couple items, haha. Here’s my calender for next year, super exciting! Plus the bar-none coolest coasters you’ll ever see.

I'd like to take him on a date . . .

July is my birthday, which is why it’s on that month, but let me tell you, the pictures on this calender are excellent! They’re all montage-y and stuff. Obi-Wan, Boba Fett, Luke Skywalker–all your favorites and lookin’ hot! The coasters are cardboard-on-cork, but I decided to leave them in the convenient packaging so I could put them on display:

My little display board

You’ve got two pairs of good guys with their arch-nemesis–Boba Fett and Han, Luke and Darth Vader. They’re really cool, and I’m very pleased. All I’m lacking are the glasses to go with–sadly, they’re out of stock.

Anyway, those are the details of my buying spree on Think Geek. You should take a look, though, at their Star Wars goodies, and make your own wishlist up! Great products. Also, if I could effervesce about ThinkGeek, they have awesome customer service, great deals, and such cool stuff. Give them your business, and you won’t regret it!

I love my teddy bear!

And I know this is not available from ThinkGeek, but I thought I would show off my final bit of Star Warsia. Anyway, I didn’t have this website in December, when I got Trilogy there. Trilogy is my special edition Build-A-Bear, which my brother-in-law gave me for Christmas. And also that is my 2011 calendar which my mom got me from the Borders down the road just before it closed. That’s been a great calender. I have a great affection for them. You would not believe how cuddly and silky soft Trilogy is!

Okay, so that’s the fun stuff for this Friday. Compose a wishlist and send it to me ;) And have a fun weekend!

I would like to redress this though because I do have a lot of SW books that are good, and my plan is to go along systematically reviewing them for your pleasure, and I promise now that I’m out of that sheaf of bad books I read this spring, the reviews will be more varied in scale and scope. I only have three books left from my spring reading, and I’ve been saving them because I really enjoyed them. Or at least part of them. See, I was waiting to review them as a unit, so I had to finish them all. I’m talking about a couple little series that Michael Reeves put out–the Med Star books and the Coruscant Nights trilogy.

Before starting on on the Med Star books, make sure that you have Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter under your belt. If you don’t, you may want to go read it now and skip the rest of this review. Just trust me that these are good books and come back once you’ve got Shadow Hunter down.

Book 1

Star Wars: Clone Wars: Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry, follows and introduces some familiar characters. A Republic medical unit on the world Drongar have a dismal post that is also extremely important to the war effort. A miracle plant, bota, which grows on this planet and no other, is desperately sought by both the Republic and Separatist factions of the war, but it creates a challenge for the medical staff because mass bombing would destroy the precious plant. Hand-to-hand and close quarters combat leave Republic troops in desperate condition.  The planet is inhospitable, uncomfortable, and unpleasant, but the cause is a good one.

Book 2

Enter Jedi Padawan Barris Offee, who has been sent as back up to this post. Den Duhr, a Sullustian journalist, has also filtered down Drongar way and with him the modified droid I-FIVE who first showed up in Shadow Hunter. He’s lost his memories, though, and doesn’t remember what important mission he is supposed to be on, just that it’s something he needs to remember. Other characters are the doctors Jos (a war-worn Corellian) and Zan (a gentle, music-loving Zabrak).

I was thoroughly charmed by book 1, and enjoyed this glimpse into the “normal” side of life in the Star Wars universe. These people are purely EU characters (except Barris, who can be seen in E2), just everyday people. If you like medical dramas, you’ll certainly love these two stories, as they follow closely the pattern long-established by shows like Diagnosis Murder and ER. The characters also evolve quite a bit in the first book, which has a surprise ending that is beautifully tragic in a way.

Medstar II: Jedi Healer is not anywhere near as good a book as the first one. I devoured the first book and loved it, and was deeply disappointed in the second as being a shallow imitation. I didn’t much like how they portrayed Corellian culture as some kind of peculiar Amish knock off (Jos is forced to choose between his family’s values, the “in” life of Corellia, or his love, who is an “outsider”; nothing before has ever suggested Corellians feel this way). A new surgeon kind of comes in abruptly, he’s from Tatooine and is called “Uli,” and there is no real reason for the characters from the first to be hanging around (I’m looking at you, Den Duhr and I-FIVE). The plot kind of drags, but contains some important information for later, and therefore its gets buoyed along by other books. I wish I could say this is the only time this happens in this miniseries.

The first one I definitely recommend reading, but you’ll want the second one before you move on to the next part of the Reeves’ miniseries. Check them out on Amazon.com here and here!

The Glove of Darth Vader was a 6 book series about Darth Vader’s… well glove. I know this book falls into extended universe bot it was pretty early extended universe. My question is how “canonical” is it in the EU, or how important/rare is it? Also what was the deal with his glove to make it so important? — Eric

The Glove of Vader . . . Indeed.

My relationship with these bizarre little books started with this cute little bookmark I got at a Half Price Books a long time ago, featuring on it the same image that’s on the book cover there. This particular cover belongs to a compilation of the first three books, which Barnes & Noble released in 1997. It’s a squat, squarish hardback with some of the worst illustrations I have ever encountered, and when I sat down to read it two months ago, I quickly realized a few things about it in response to your question. The series was for children and published in 1992-1993 (the first three books in ’92, the second three in ’93; the second three books are compiled in Star Wars: Book Two from the same publisher in the same format). Each book contains a dubious cast of characters, illustrated fully but not well, and concludes with a strange little “glossary.” In the real world, a glossary is strictly defined as “an alphabetical list of technical terms in some specialized field of knowledge; usually published as an appendix to a text on that field,” but in the universe of Mr. and Mrs. Davids (a couple who should be arrested for crimes against Star Wars), glossary is the appropriate time to brush stupid little children up on the cast of characters for the third time.

The titles of the complete series are The Glove of Darth Vader, The Lost City of the Jedi, Zorba the Hutt’s Revenge, Mission from Mount Yoda, Queen of the Empire, and Prophets of the Dark Side. They make absolutely no attempt to be canonical, logical, or even coherent, and remain simply an excuse for people to spend their money on things with the Star Wars tattoo on them. How canonical? Not even remotely. How important? Not very. Rare? Well, I’ve never seen them outside of these two books, nor have I heard anyone talk about them, and it was hard for me to figure out what they were when I bought them. But rarity is, I think, caused by the badness of the product and not by specialness.

Unless we’re talking “Special Olympics” special. The books tell the story of Palpatine’s insane, mutant, three-eyed son Triclops (because nothing could have three eyes without being a mutant, and because Palpatine would totally name any three-eyed offspring “Triclops”)–and the three-eyed mutant Trioculus, whom the Empire is trying to put into power as a dummy for the insane son. The “Glove” of Vader, supposedly indestructible for no reason the authors care to mention, is the key to his power, because some Dark Side Prophets (who only speak in verse) have declared that the next ruler will wear the Glove of Darth Vader. Because said glove is indestructible, they conclude that it was not destroyed in the explosion of Death Star II, merely flung somewhere. The Imperials could be forgiven for this, not knowing that Luke burned Vader’s armor on the forest moon of Endor, but the authors seem to have forgotten this small detail as well, as Vader’s glove indeed turns out to have been flung . . . and quite a ways, too. While Luke and the gang are helping out a Captain Ahab rip-off on Mon Calamari (he hunts “whalevin”), they discover wreckage from the Death Star deep in Mon Calamari’s oceans. They’ve also happened on it at the same time as Trioculus and his pals. One of the characters graciously expresses surprise that Vader’s glove should be found there, but the explosion of the Death Star, it is explained, had an explosion so powerful it was able to knock bits of wreckage and the glove “many millions of miles.” I’ll say. Mon Calamari is literally on the other end of the galaxy from Endor. Look, I’ll even show you.

They couldn't have been further off if they'd tried!

The red circle in the lower left-hand corner is Endor. The other is Mon Calamari. Okay, you say, accepted, but this map wasn’t out yet. The authors couldn’t have known they were that far apart. And I say, wow, really? You’re going to defend them that way? You’re still going to defend that “many millions of miles” thing? Look, can I digress into a quick bit of astrophysics here? No? Well, look, one lightyear equals 5.879 trillion miles. Even if you subtracted “many millions” from 5.8 trillion, you’d still have over 5 trillion. One lightyear, by the way, besides equaling more miles than the authors could even begin to compute, is only a quarter of the distance between us and Alpha Centauri–it won’t even get you one star system away, in other words. See that grid on the map? Each one of those squares is 15 x 15 parsecs, or 2391.21 square lightyears. That is 14.057 quadrillion miles. Mind blown yet? I don’t mean to harp but this was one of the lowest points of the entire book. I mean, it was beyond ridiculous. To think a glove (which wasn’t even on the Death Star) could get blown even one planet away–and that bits of wreckage could be surviving the explosion, trip, and entry into atmosphere–it’s obvious trash.

Anyway, there were more delightful points. Yavin IV, the isolated jungle moon the rebels chose for a base because of its obscurity, turns out to be home of the galaxy’s absolute best top-notch physicians, because Luke can’t get his artificial hand repaired on Mon Calamari but has to go back to Yavin IV. There, in the Lost City of the Jedi, a young boy who was supposed to be the protagonist in a Robert A. Heinlein novel but bailed out at the last second is growing up raised by droids and playing with Star Wars action figures, I kid you not. His name is Ken and he lives in the underground lost city of the Jedi that just so happens to be on Yavin IV. He decides to run away on the very day his idol, Luke Skywalker, is strolling around. Also, Trioculus is there because the glove is making him go blind (his mama warned him!), and there’s some super-duper secret healer who lives on Yavin IV. This clown also only speaks in rhymed couplets that could make a cat sick. Insert hints that maybe Ken is Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lost son, which the authors really expect us to believe even though Ken’s only 12 and Obi-Wan was like 65 when he died.

Zorba the Hutt, by the way, turns out to be a bearded and braided old codger who is just devastated by the death of his son Jabba. Hutts, we find out, are experts in human child psychology, love art, and are generally misunderstood beings who like luxury but on the whole aren’t so bad. His revenge fails miserably and he ends slithering through the sands of Tatooine to escape. Trioculus falls in love with Leia, attempts to get her to marry him, but winds up in carbonite. Some other ludicrous things that happen in the course of the first three books are that Lando remains chief administrator of Cloud City–because Empire Strikes Back, like life, has no consequences whatsoever–and Han buys a big house there. Literally. He throws a housewarming party for his sky house on Cloud City, because he doesn’t have any reason to have bad memories of that place. He also starts carrying a ring around and fantasizes about proposing to Leia.

Reading all three of the first books took me about half an hour. They are liberally illustrated, as I think I mentioned already, but the pictures are generally horrible and do little to make the action make sense. Of course, they were a lot better than the second book. At first, I only flipped through Book Two looking at the pictures–and let me tell you, the BDSM subtext was pretty evident all through. My roommate asked me if I was reading some kind of bizarre erotic novel.

I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going . . .

Apart from the giant spiderwebs attacking Luke and Ken, there was also Leia in a cage, Zorba the Hutt strung up by his wrists, and even more, if you can believe it. The plots also continue to get even shakier. Dagobah has undergone a sudden transformation from Yoda’s uninhabited retreat to a major rebel enclave–and somehow the rebels have not only built a really snazzy science center there, but it was there long enough for them to decide to change the name after Yoda died. Because the authors apparently never even saw Empire Strikes Back and don’t remember Luke saying “I’m not picking up any cities or technologies . . .”

Even more rhyming in this book, only it’s not couplets anymore, and that makes it even worse. The authors even attempt to tell small children what quatrains are. (Not that I’d give small children these horrible books.) Triclops turns out not to be insane, just a pacifist with an eye in the back of his head, and as the novel progresses, we find out that he, and not Obi-Wan, is Ken’s father–holy shock! Yeah, ’cause we didn’t see that coming a mile away.

Han and Leia also make a digression to a place called, I kid you not, Hologram Fun World, which is supposed to be a knock-off on Las Vegas, and they attempt to get married there, find out Lando has recently bought the entire planet (because he lost Cloud City to Zorba the Hutt in a card game or I don’t know what) and that they need to have their birth certificates before they get married. Han, in case you were curious, has his birth certificate neatly stowed in a safe box in his home on Cloud City. Leia’s, however, was destroyed on Alderaan. She gets captured by Zorba the Hutt, almost killed, then almost married to Trioculus who has been unfrozen. In the end, the rebels win the day, again, and Han and Leia get married.

Did we mention the bad illustrations?

In conclusion, there is pretty much nothing in these books that 1) is not contradicted in a real book, 2) makes any sense whatsoever, no matter what planet you are from. I suggest avoiding them entirely, although a number of people on Goodreads are amused by the “campy read.” Little too campy for me. Little too like camping in the creepy woods where some toothless rednecks are going to put a serious hurt on you and you’ll get poison ivy.

The Rise of Crappy Writers

This Sunday is more of an anti-spotlight. I’m only telling you about this book to make you promise you will never, ever try to read it; I suffered quite enough for everybody! First of all, in no sense of the words is this horrible book a “must-read” (as the cover boldly states). Second of all, I bought this book years ago off the $2 rack at Half Price Books; I assume that price had more to do with its missing dust jacket and less to do with its wretched contents–if I’d been paying by content, I would’ve been overcharged. For two dollars, I could’ve bought some trash from a vending machine that would’ve tasted good while it lasted and been instantly forgotten when it was gone, but instead, I bought a terrible book that has left a sour taste long after I was done reading.

James Luceno is the bar-none, absolute worst Star Wars writer to come on the scene of Star Wars novels since 1995. There have been other bad ones, but if I were composing a list of Bottom 5, he would be the bottomest. If one hundred monkeys had gotten into a food fight with a hundred boxes of Alphabet Cereal and a hundred cans of Alphabet Soup, the resulting mess could have been scraped into a better book than this trash. Do not read this book. Pace many of the comments from Goodreads (where this book enjoys a 3.94 star rating explicable only by the fact that Star Wars attracts young people willing to highly rate anything with the words Star Wars tattooed on it), this is not a necessary chapter in the history of Darth Vader, nor is it exciting or even terribly interesting. A Goodreads user named Michael summed it up best by observing that 1/3rd of the way through the book, all it has going for it are a “variety of uninteresting characters,” guaranteed to be dead by the end. Chad, another sensible reader, astutely sums up: “A waste of time. It adds almost nothing to the Star Wars saga, and with the exception of a few pages, tells the story of a group of Jedi I’d never heard of. The character development is so poor that I could barely keep track of who was who, and I certainly didn’t care about them. “

There are many elements, strung together loosely and called a plot, and this stringing is done by Luceno without much regard to plausibility or possibility. The fact that he didn’t even bother to do any research before starting the project is evidenced in the book’s many errors (most glaringly, but certainly not alone, a bald statement that KDY did not make Venerator-class Destroyers). Enormous chunks of the book are dedicated to Darth Vader thinking about how horrible his prosthetic suit is. While it makes sense that Vader would have considered it uncomfortable (and see the epilogue to Stover’s E3 novelization for a truly uncomfortable take on the breathing apparatus), I found it completely inappropriate that the omniscient voice of the “narrator” was constantly leveling charges against the suit as being poorly, improperly, or inefficiently made; this just makes no sense.

This book is basically nothing but nonsense with a few insignificant details thrown in about what takes place between E3 and ANH. The epilogue between Obi-Wan and Ghost Qui-Gon was so badly done, it was all I could do to finish it without flinging the book away in frustration. I urge you not to waste your time, because that’s all this is . . . an inflated 336 pages full of short, abrupt chapters (some not more than two paragraphs long), wide margins, shoddy character development, and a bunch of lifeless puppets for characters who mill around aimlessly wondering what crimes they committed to get them sentenced to spend eternity in this ridiculous book. Avoid.

Anyway, the one thing I did find very interesting about the Blu Rays is the promised deleted scenes. None of the ones I’ve been desperately interested in, of course (like the Luke moisture farm, Tosche Station stuff), but nonetheless there are some really good, really interesting things we’ve been speculating on. Unfortunately, some of it didn’t make the release. But Hey Killer Films has done us a big favor and gotten some really special Jek Porkins footage that was removed from A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. Enjoy!

As you may know, being the Star Wars junkie you are, today is Mark Hamill’s 60th birthday. And I’m crazy disappointed because my plan was to spend two hours watching the combined Trilogy in One YouTube Video I found online a three weeks ago, but the user has removed it from YouTube. This upsets me. I was going to post it here for everyone’s enjoyment.

Since I can’t do that now, there’s only one other thing I can think to do for Mark Hamill’s birthday. That’s right, post a picture of a wedding cake and the video of Goldentusk’s lyricized version of the Star Wars theme! Happy Birthday, Mark Hamill, and don’t read anything into the fact that I’m posting a wedding cake for your birthday! ;)

I won't ask how Han is in carbonite and getting married . . .

I found this awesome Star Wars wedding cake on BetweenThePages, which is a great blog with lots of other Star Wars goodies to offer. Now, the bakers who did this cake–which is more rustic looking than some SW cakes I’ve seen, but makes up for that with its cuteness– are at Sugar Mountain Cakes in Pennsylvania; they have got some beautiful stuff totally worth checking out. Too bad I’m nowhere near Pennsylvania. Oh, well, I have no money for cake anyway. You know what, it’s just occurred to me that it’s not Han in carbonite and getting married; that’s Luke in the slab. Oh–my–gosh–! There’s an alternate ending ;)

Are you really going to complain about the fact that for Mark’s birthday I’m not finding a cake featuring him? Because I just think that’s weird to have yourself on a cake for your own birthday! Anyway, this is the music video all about Luke’s journey! Enjoy!

Oh, my gosh, are you really insisting about that Luke Skywalker cake thing? Fine. Go here and stop pestering me! And go watch Star Wars. That’s all.

Dexter Jettster, the diner's second owner

I just thought I’d start this fun Friday off with a bit of a character sketch on Dexter Jettster. Why? Because it’s never too early to start planning your Star Wars extravaganza, and next May is Episode II’s 10th birthday. Obviously I’m already working on my party–actually have been since May–and, if you paid attention to my last Star Wars party, you know that the cake is the centerpiece, and the cake obviously has to be related to E2 somehow.

In conferring with my primary co-planner, whose blog you should read, we searched a great deal and finally settled on Dex’s Diner, which has an epic cake shape already. Since I’ve already done all this research on Dex, I thought I’d do a character spotlight for this Fun Friday. So here goes with a quick bio of one of Coruscant’s well-known restaurateurs!

Dex is a Besalisk, a four-armed sentient hailing from the world of Ojom. Ojom is not in the Republic, and Dexter is more adventurous than many others of his race, who generally stay settled on their homeworld.

Take a seat! I'll be right wichya!

Dexter has quite a varied past, having been part of oil-harvesting expeditions all over the galaxy. The work he did with these crews ranged from technical work to bartending, cooking, and brawling, to the shadier work of selling contraband and running weapons. The diner is essentially his retirement, a clean start for a life haphazardly lived before. Of course, his previous experiences make him an ideal contact for a Jedi like Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Coruscant's CoCo Town

The Diner is located in the Coruscant neighborhood of CoCo Town (sometimes CoCo District, for the Collective Commerce District). There are lots of old-style diners in this area, hearkening back to the Republic’s Golden Age; and while the district is Upper-Level, traditionally indicative of high class luxury on Coruscant, but the eateries in this district cater to those who work for the Senators and other upper-class gentlebeings of Coruscant, and therefore offer more affordable options.

The window sign for Dex's

Obi-Wan first gained familiarity with the restaurant in his Padawan days with Qui-Gon; back then it was owned by a friend of Qui-Gon’s named Didi. Following his Master’s penchant for keeping friends and informants at all levels of society, Obi-Wan made friends with Dex and depends on his valuable insights and observations. At the same time, Dex recognizes a great friend in Obi-Wan, knowing he is neither judgmental nor high-minded like some other Jedi.

The Diner

Here’s the diner itself. You can see how the shape really lends itself to being “en-cake-ified.” It has an oblong shape, achievable by taking two rectangular layer cakes and cutting them in half, then stacking them and carving to shape. We plan to use red velvet cake. While we do have Obi-Wan action figures in droves, we don’t have a Dexter, so that might have to be remedied in the coming months.

Sources: the Databank entry (here) and The Ultimate Visual Guide as well as the Wookieepedia.