Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.

We, the Rebel Alliance, do therefore in the name—and by the authority—of the free beings of the Galaxy, solemnly publish and declare our intentions:

To fight and oppose you and your forces, by any and all means at our disposal;

To refuse any Imperial law contrary to the rights of free beings;

To bring about your destruction and the destruction of the Galactic Empire;

To make forever free all beings in the galaxy.

To these ends, we pledge our property, our honor, and our lives.

Until about two months ago, I was really into the Empire in the Star Wars universe. Darth Vader was cool and the bounty hunters were awesome, and the Death Star was bad ass, and Star Destroyers were amazing.

And then America elected (barely and with interference from a hostile foreign power) a Fascist know-nothing who has so much contempt for our country and the people who live in it, he has chosen men and women who have no experience in government and/or aggressively hate the agencies they will be charged with overseeing to lead them. He’s instigated dangerous international diplomatic incidents that threaten the safety of all of us, and he doesn’t seem to care.Though he lost the popular vote by the largest margin in history, though he will take office (unless the Electoral College acts to preserve the Republic — I’m still in Bargaining, it turns out) with the lowest approval rating in this century, though he has never held a public office or cared about anyone other than himself in his life, he and his toadies are acting like he has a mandate to destroy the popular, progressive achievements of the last century, and enact policies that will greatly harm the very people who voted for him.

Neonazis have been welcomed into the mainstream of America, and their leaders have been normalized by our media. An unabashed authoritarian is set to take control of the most powerful office in the world, with the most invasive and unaccountable spying apparatus in history at his tiny orange fingertips.

All of that was going through my mind as I watched Rogue One last weekend, especially during scenes that take place in cities that are under occupation. I realized that I’d sort of known on some level that Star Wars was, at its core, an anti-Fascist story, and I’d understood that the bad guys were, like, bad … but it was all in the fiction for me. Until this weekend, it wasn’t something I’d ever really felt as a commentary on reality. After a lifetime of being entertained by Star Wars, it landed on me in a way that it never had, before. I didn’t want to like the Empire, or admire how cool it was when Vader uses the Force to choke someone. I wanted the Empire to lose, and to lose badly. I wanted the Empire, and the Emperor, and the Sith to be destroyed. Retroactively, Darth Vader’s redemption in Jedi was more powerful than it had ever been, and I haven’t watched Jedi in years.

Suddenly, Stormtroopers weren’t just cool action figures I played when when I was a kid; they were literal stormtroopers. They were the forces of evil and terror. The fun of cheering for Darth Vader when he’s being a badass villain, believing that bounty hunters are awesome, or getting excited when the Death Star is cleared to fire and a Star Destroyer blasts ships into oblivion … it was all gone. The Empire is terrible. The Empire is evil. I realized that Yoda is right about the Dark Side of the Force and those who are seduced by it. I realized that the Republic — our Republic — is worth fighting for, and even though it feels like nothing matters at all right now, everything is terrible, and the forces of evil are going to get away with it because the so-called “leaders” in Congress put their party and their ambitions ahead of their patriotism — maybe because of that — it may soon be time to get off of Tatooine, and join the Rebel Alliance.

May the Force be with us.

The last time I loved a Star Wars movie as much as I loved Rogue One, it was 1977.

That's a full-sized TIE Fighter! — That’s a full-sized TIE Fighter!

I wanted to take today off from the blog, but that would be counter to the goals I set out in Daily December, so here I am.

Anne and I went to the world premiere of Rogue One last night, because we apparently live in a world where we get invited to the world premiere of a Star Wars movie, which I still can’t believe actually happened.

I wanted to experience a Star Wars movie the way I did when I was a kid, so I deliberately avoided everything about this movie. All I knew was that it was a stand alone story that involved the plans for the Death Star that were such an important part of Star Wars. I didn’t even know that one of my friends was in the freaking thing!

I’m not going to discuss the film in depth, because that would be cheating, so I’m just going to repeat the title of this post, which is what I said on Twitter last night: The last time I loved a Star Wars movie as much as I loved #RogueOne, it was 1977.

Yes, I know that Empire came out in 1980. I chose my words carefully, and deliberately.

I’ll say a little more on the other side of the jump, so those of you who want to avoid hearing a little more until you’ve seen the movie can do that.

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these violent delights have violent ends

Seven days of a post a day, and it’s starting to feel like it’s okay to do stuff that isn’t super intense or deep, though I’ve discovered that instead of just posting whatever, I’m racking my brains for something heavy or at least in depth to write about. I guess I’m learning how to think with different parts of my creative self or whatever.

I got this thing called the triby from woot because it was on sale (I know, just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean you have to buy it) and though it has a terrible name (m’lady)*, it’s been a lot of fun to talk to Alexa on it throughout the day. It’s kind of cool that I can ask it to play me a news update, and it’ll cycle through about 10 minutes of news stuff from local to national to world news, then give me the weather. I keep wanting to thank it, the same way I want to thank my phone when Ok, Google, does something for me.

I kept hoping, all season long, that there would be some visual easter egg that gave a nod to the 1973 movie.

Hey speaking of self-aware robots: how about Westworld? I kept feeling like there was a good show inside whatever I’ve been watching for ten weeks, so I stuck with it, enduring awful exposition, two characters that are either badly written, badly performed, or both, and a criminal underuse of Anthony Hopkins … but after watching the season finale, I’m so glad I stuck it out. I’m looking forward to going back and watching it again, knowing what I know now. I still think the entire Mayve storyline is crap and stresses my suspension of disbelief more than the existence of Westworld, itself, but the other primary storyline was wonderful, and really paid off. Memo to LOST: this is how you do it without an audience-insulting shit ending.

Have you seen Ex-Machina? If you haven’t, and you liked Westworld, I highly recommend it. There’s also a fantastic episode of Black Mirror from series two called Be Right Back that provokes a lot of the same questions. Anne and I have been wanting to start series three of Black Mirror, but we’ve been investing our limited television time watching Channel Zero and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

You know, there’s so much good television right now, I feel like I could do nothing but watch incredible shows everywhere from broadcast networks to cable to online-only, and there wouldn’t be enough time in the day to see it all.

*I know, it isn’t Trilby, but it’s close enough.

One year ago, I rebooted my life. Has it worked?

Sometimes, I feel like I don't look terrible in a photo. — Sometimes, I feel like I don’t look terrible in a photo.

Just about one year ago, I took an honest look at myself and I didn’t like what I saw. I needed to reset a lot of habits, make some significant changes to the way I approached just about everything in my life, and keep working at it, even when it was hard.

I can’t even believe that it’s already been a year, and that it’s only been a year, because time feels like that when you’re 44, I guess.

Here are the things I decided to address:

Drink less beer.
Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).
Write more.
Watch more movies.
Get better sleep.
Eat better food.
Exercise more.

Some of these things have been easier than others, and from month to month (and even day to day) what happens to be easy and what happens to be hard are constantly changing. I know that’s an obvious thing, but I say it because we can forget that, and consequently be unfairly rough on ourselves when we don’t live up to our expectations.

I know a lot of you who are reading this have been doing reboots of your own, and I want you to know that, no matter where you are in your personal journey, I am super proud of you. I’m not the boss of you or anything, but I give you permission to be proud of yourself. Go you!!

So let’s dive in here and see how things are going:

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Because you asked: some thoughts on Star Trek Beyond

I was asked on my Tumblr thing what I thought about it, because I didn’t like the trailer at all (I said something like “I just saw this trailer for a generic sci-fi action movie, but everyone was wearing a Starfleet uniform.”)

Before I get into Beyond, some context: I’m the guy who worked on TNG, but was a massive TOS fan growing up (and still is). When I watch Star Trek movies, I don’t watch them as someone who actually went to Starfleet Academy (class of 2389 REPRESENT!) but as someone who loves Star Trek and cosplayed as Spock before he knew what cosplay was. So, that said, to recap: I loved the first rebooted Trek movie. It had its flaws, but none of them were big enough to upset me, so I give it 4 out of 5 jars of Red Matter. I really enjoyed Into Darkness when I was in the theater, but the more I thought about it after, the more it fell apart until I now have to give it 2 out of 5 tribbles-on-a-stick.

Star Trek movies are always going to have a hard time with fans of the series, because when we think about Star Trek, we think about 79 episodes of the original series, or our favorite 30 episodes of TNG, or the last season of DS9. We take something that’s been spread out over days of on-screen time, spread out across years of releases, and then compare all that character development and nuance and series of individual moments with something that has to be a fully-told and completely self-contained story in 90 or 120 minutes, and it has to be accessible (as defined by risk-averse studio goons) to as wide an audience as possible. So I think it’s unfair and unreasonable to directly compare the film installments of a long-running TV series to that series. I won’t do that with Star Trek Beyond. I’ll just compare it to the two previous installments in this series.

Without holding Beyond next to the hundreds of episodes of Star Trek we can watch on TV, and just looking at it as part of this current film trilogy: I was really disappointed by it. Unlike Into Darkness, which was a lot of fun for me in the theater but fell apart upon reflection, Beyond just fell apart while I was watching it. You can read more if you’d like to know some of my reasons. There are spoilers.

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