Monthly Archives: May 2005

May312005

Breaking News: Deep Throat Revealed!

Way back in February, I commented on rumors that the public would soon learn the identity of “Deep Throat,” the legendary anonymous source that led investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to the truth behind the Watergate scandal. Today the rumors came true.

According to an article in the new issue of Vanity Fair, Deep Throat is a man named Mark Felt, who was Deputy Director of the FBI at the time of the scandal. These days, Felt is a frail 91 years old and lives with his daughter in California. Woodward and Bernstein have issued a statement confirming the magazine’s claims, and their former editor, Ben Bradlee — who also knew Deep Throat’s identity — was quoted as saying, “The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long.”

So it looks like another big historical mystery is solved. Kind of anticlimatic, really, and regrettable, too. Like I said the other day in regards to Blackbeard’s lost pirate ship being found, it’s more fun to have some things remain unknown.

One interesting note (well, interesting to people who live in Salt Lake, anyhow): the local TV news says that Felt ran the Salt Lake office of the FBI for two years in the 1950s. Strange how often these big stories have some kind of Utah connection. Sometimes I think my home state truly is the nexus of the universe… and that scares me on many, many levels.

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May272005

Friday Afternoon Reading

If you’re still hanging around the computer on this beautiful, sunny, pre-MemDayWeekend afternoon, you’re more than likely looking out the window and longing for anything other than work to occupy your attention. Allow me to help by tossing out a few links I’ve been meaning to post for a while…

Continue Reading…

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May272005

Getting Back Down to Earth, and Worrying About Friends

While I’ve had my head off in the galaxy far, far away, a couple of real-life dramas have developed much closer to home.
First of all, I’ve recently learned that a good friend from my high school and college years who is now in the military has been posted to Iraq. He’ll be serving as an operations officer at a supply depot somewhere north of Baghdad, which sounds to my admittedly non-military ear like a prime target for insurgent attacks. Needless to say, I am worried for my friend’s safety, and I’m having a hard time imagining that the gentle boy with whom I used to talk about Star Trek and Dr. Who is now walking around a desert war-zone in a suit of body armor. Especially since he’s actually in the Navy and has spent most of the last fifteen years on nuclear submarines a mile underwater. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that he’d end up on the ground somewhere, but apparently the Joint Chiefs operate by a logic I don’t understand.

For the record, I am politically opposed to the war for reasons I don’t wish to go into right now. But that doesn’t stop me from hoping for the best possible outcome over there and that all the men and women who are far from home will soon be back with their friends and families, alive and intact.

My best wishes also go out to another old friend, a wonderful woman who has spent years trying to make a difficult relationship work and who has now decided that it’s time for her and her daughter to find a better way to live. I haven’t heard from her in a while, and I want to let her know, if she’s reading this, that I hope she’s okay.

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May272005

The Best Laid Plans of Wookiees and Men

So are we all sick of talking about Star Wars yet? I’m not, myself — I have a whole list of possible SW-themed entries that I wanted to write before Opening Day and didn’t get around to — but I can see how the topic may be getting a little old for my three loyal readers. Therefore I’m going to move on to other subjects, for your sakes. Because that’s the kind of guy I am. I care. Well, and also because I worry that I’m driving everyone away with my monomaniacal fanboyism.

Anyhow, I’m going to let Star Wars rest for a bit (although I may still work up some of those ideas I mentioned and post them from time to time). I’ll be back later today with my first post-Sith, non-Star Warsy entry. Also, I’m thinking about making a few changes to the site. Nothing major, just a couple of things to freshen the place up, so be watching for those in the next few days/weeks. I may even add some items to my long-neglected photo gallery…

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May262005

Movie Review: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

[Ed. note: Sorry it’s taken me so long to post my thoughts on ROTS, but like I said in a comment for an earlier entry, this movie is a big deal for me and it’s taken a while to absorb and process it. Given that it’s been out for a week and the box office returns for last weekend were flat-out astounding, I’m going to assume that half the planet’s population has already seen it. If, however, you are one of the handful of folks who didn’t come down with “Jedi flu” last week, be warned that this entry contains more spoilers than my usual movie reviews. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it can’t be helped in this particular case.]

I finally got to see my long-imagined lava-pit duel as well as the planet of the Wookiees (although the latter amounted to little more than a teasing glimpse). By themselves, these bits of fanboy wish fulfilment would probably be enough to earn Revenge of the Sith my personal thumbs-up. But as it turns out, the sixth and final Star Wars movie gave me a lot of other reasons to like it, too. It was, in fact, everything I was hoping for, a redemptive finish to the generally lackluster prequel trilogy and a successful, plausible bridge into the “next generation story” told in the original trilogy.

That’s not to say that Sith was a perfect movie, or even a perfect Star Wars movie. But I thought it was a surprisingly good movie, and, for me at least, a completely satisfying one.

Continue Reading…

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May202005

The Circle Is Now Complete

I just got home from the theater. It’s late, and I’ve got a heavy day of work tomorrow, so any kind of detailed review will have to wait. But I will say this much:

Twenty-two years ago, I cried at the death of Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi.

Tonight, I cried at his birth in Revenge of the Sith.

This movie is everything I hoped for, and probably not at all what most of the people going to see it are expecting. It’s not heroic summertime derring-do, as all the other Star Wars films have been. This one is nothing short of a Greek tragedy.

As far as I’m concerned, Uncle George has redeemed himself, at least as far as the prequel trilogy goes. As for the Not-So-Special Editions of the original trilogy, well, that’s another case entirely…

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May192005

Time to Line Up Myself

Just a quick note to let you all know I’m heading off the theater to line up for my 8 PM screening… because advance tickets may guarantee a seat, but they don’t guarantee a good one!

See you all on the other side of the galaxy!

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May182005

Almost There… Almost There…

A little under one hour from now, the long wait will be over and the die-hard fans will walk into the first 12:01 AM screenings of the last Star Wars movie ever. And then I’ll do the same eighteen hours after that.

I have to admit that my feelings at this moment are bittersweet. In a way, it’s like the last day of high school. I’m eagerly looking forward to signing yearbooks, accepting my diploma, and having the time of my life at the all-night graduation party, but I’m also sad because I’ve realized that a really big chapter of my life is coming to an end. As the Emperor once said to Luke Skywalker — or will say, depending on how you look at it — “Only now, at the end, do you understand.”

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May182005

My First Experience with “Spoilers”

It was the springtime of 1980, and the future was bearing down on me like a runaway bantha.

I was ten, the school year was winding down, and very soon the fifth grade would be behind me. So would elementary school. Come fall, I’d be spending my days in that great, fog-shrouded unknown called middle school. I’d been hearing rumors about what I could expect when I got there, and frankly I wasn’t looking forward to it. No one could tell me the point of changing classrooms and teachers multiple times during the day. There were stories about massive amounts of homework. Some said they held activities where they made you dance with girls. (I was never one of those stereotypical boys who disliked girls on principle, but the thought of dancing filled me with terror.) Then there was the transportation issue. My elementary school was within a stone’s-throw of my house, and I’d always walked to and from home; now I’d have to take the bus, one of those big, rattling, smelly yellow things that you always had to worry about missing. And what was this nonsense about having to take a shower… with other boys… at school? Revolting!

Thankfully, though, I had things to distract me from my middle-school anxieties. There was a whole three months of summer vacation coming up, and with them was the promise of all the bike-riding, Slurpee-swilling, and treehouse comic-book reading I could stand. My parents were planning to take me and my cousin Stacey on a camping trip to the Grand Canyon as soon as school was over. And, oh yeah, there was a new Star Wars movie about to premiere.

I could hardly wait.

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May172005

The Dark Side of Marketing Clouds Everything

Up until a couple days ago, I was thinking that the hype machine had been curiously subdued on the matter of Revenge of the Sith. I just wasn’t seeing the kind of overheated, artificial hysteria that preceded The Phantom Menace back in ’99 — all the fast-food tie-ins, the TV commercials, the billboards, the collectible Pepsi cans, the flood of new toys. That was overkill, even for someone like me, a compulsive collector who loves a good graphic design that incorporates beloved characters and logos.

I thought maybe we were getting a different approach with Sith, something more organic and natural, based on word-of-mouth like the buzz that fueled the success of the original Star Wars in 1977. I thought perhaps the bean-counters had realized that they really didn’t need to advertise this one much, aside from the usual movie trailers, because everyone already knew it was coming.

Apparently I just wasn’t paying attention.

Continue Reading…

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