Saturday evening, Laura Atkins joined Michele and myself to watch the Warrior vs, Spurs game and we thought it would be nice to have pizza while we watched it. We had picked up some sausage, veggie, and cheese at the Farmer’s market and a ball of dough for two bucks from Howie’s Artisan Pizza. The Warriors lost, although it was a good game, but the pizza was great.
“Star Wars, the Franchise Awakens” touches on each and every trope of the original, bigger and better of course and lots of fun. Mike Moore
We saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens over our Christmas holiday in the mountains and it reminded me of Starbucks. I mean that in the best possible way, I like Starbucks. I really, really, do; a lot. Early in the morning, on the way somewhere, there is no better place to stop to pick up a breakfast on the go. The small Starbucks’ Double Cappuccino, with nonfat milk, is excellent – even if they want to call the small cup Tall – and the Double-Smoked Bacon, Cheddar & Egg Sandwich is always tasty and very satisfying. It is the perfect breakfast for eating in the car. I feel pretty much the same way about Star Wars: The Force Awakens except for the car bit. It was good, very good. But the thing about Starbucks is that the breakfast is planned to be consistent and non-offensive. That consistency means that my breakfast sandwich is always very good, never a disappointment, but never great either. It is never quirky or idiosyncratic, it does not reflect the personality of the person who made it. I never walk out of Starbucks saying Wow, was THAT a pleasant surprise.
As an aside, that consistency and tight control relates to the current residential zoning regulations in most of California. In an effort to protect us from having to live with a supposed eyesore down the block, anything that deviates from an authorized sameness is banned. So we have no bad houses in the neighborhood, but no great houses either. End aside.
If nothing else, the original Star Wars, now called Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, was idiosyncratic, quirky even. George Lucas has made many, what most people consider to be horrible, movies; think Star Wars I through III, but he also made two of the most treasured movies ever. Those lousy movies and the great movies are related. The idiosyncrasy of collecting snippets of Westerns, Flash Gordon movies, Errol Flynn sword fight movies, War Movies like The Dam Busters, even Casablanca, and putting them in a plot lifted primarily – from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, worked. And it still works, sure most of the acting is not very good and the plot is silly – to be charitable – but Star Wars has become one of almost every body’s treasured memories.
Indeed, the silly plot is a big part of Star Wars’ charm and one of the reasons, along with the action figures of course, it has become so big a part of our pop culture. From reading some of the things that George Lucas has said, it seems his main interest is experimental film collages, and I get the feeling that he likes Star Wars I through III better than IV, while we have fallen in love with IV because of the characters and their stories. Star Wars VII, The Force Awakens , directed by J.J. Abrams who, from all accounts, was under the tight control of Disney – understandably so seeing that they paid $4.05 billion for, basically, an idea and the accompanying copyrights – is more a reboot of the franchise than a sequel.
Han Solo still dresses like a cross between a Indiana Jones and a Wild Bill Hickok, the heroes still have lightsaber fights, the spaceships still fly around like WWII airplanes – then popping off the planet very unlike, say, a Saturn V rocket that seems to stand on its fiery tail for hours – but we have a new Orphan-on-a-Desert Planet, and a new R2D2 in BB-8, and and a new guy in a fancier black mask (but, mercifully, no Jar Jar Binks). Not all, but many of the scenes still change with wipes copied by Lucas from early black and white movies and the plot feels eerily familiar, still, it didn’t quite feel like a Lucas movie to me.
For one thing, the acting is much better. Daisy Ridley as Luke Rey was especially good and one lightsaber fight, in particular, is a stunner and very Kill Billish, taking place in a snowy forest with big snowflakes falling. One thing that is very Lucasian is that The Force Awakens was shot at real places and it looks like it ( although I suspect the shots of Ren’s home planet, Jakku, were really shot on Tatooine). All in all, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a much better than average action movie that doesn’t quite have the DNA of the Lucas films and may be better for that. It is a thrilling ride, sometimes funny and and sometimes touching.
We are going to mountains for a White Christmas and will be back somewhere around January 4th.
(As various people, ranging from friends to the White House, wish me a Happy Holidays, I have become more aware that I usually wish them a Merry Christmas. I don’t believe in the Christmas Story but I did grow up with this time of year being Christmas and Merry Christmas just seems more natural. The important thing is that the Solstice is over and the Light is coming back; that is a Universal Story no matter what it is called.)
So Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and Happy New Year and may we all be blessed by our favorite Story.
For a little comfort in the still long darkness, here is Ken Burns on the Intergalactic Civil War.
When we drove home from Paso about a month ago, we went through Parkfield hoping to follow the San Andreas Fault north to Hollister. We followed a wide valley north for a while, thinking we were following the San Andreas Fault when the fault really went through the mountains to our left.
We knew that the San Andreas Fault ran through both places but we really had have no idea where the fault is on the ground between those two points. But, while we were driving up the Parkfield-Coalinga Road and then up Highway 25, we kept thinking we were near the fault and we would each point out landscape features that we were sure was the handwork of the fault. We were interpreting data to match our preconceived answers. The problem with knowing the answer is that it is always easy to find data to support it.
It is easy to think that Science is the child of knowledge, but it really isn’t. Science is the child of ignorance. Before Galileo, the official doctrine of the Catholic Church was that the Bible told us all that needed to be known, and the Catholic Church was the arbitrator of knowledge for all of Christendom; in Europe, at least. If it was in the Bible, that was the answer, if it wasn’t in the Bible, it wasn’t worth knowing, and even worse, it might show that someone was influenced by the Devil. Galileo put a crack in that wall of Total Knowledge and then Isaac Newton put a hole in it big enough to run a buggy through. With increasing knowledge, even more questions could be seen, and the wall of Total Knowledge that hides the questions came down still faster.
I like to think that now we are living in the Golden Age of science – when you think about it, we live in the Golden Age of almost everything, except Democracy and World Peace – but that is misleading. Just because we are living in the Golden Age of science, doesn’t mean that everybody is. In much of the world, the wall of Total Knowledge still stands. Much of the world is still living smug, sure that they know everything that needs to be known. Not just in the Middle East, the wilds of Afghanistan, or Africa, but here too. A large number of people in the United States, pretend – or believe and I am not quite sure where the dividing line is – that they know everything that there is to know. Some of them are uneducated and not worldly, but some are educated and seemly are proud of their ignorance, and a couple are even running for president of the United States.
As we climbed out of the valley, going north on the Parkfield-Coalinga Road, three things happened almost simultaneously. The paved road turn to graded gravel with a sign that said Impassable When Wet, it started to drizzle, and Michele realized we were nowhere near the San Andreas Fault. We were in Michele’s TT with four-wheel drive and all-weather tires and she suggested we put the top up and give it a try. BTW, I was driving and Michele took most – but not all – of the pictures. 
Two minutes later, we drove out of the drizzle and put the top back down. Just after crossing over the summit at about 3500 feet, we pulled over to enjoy the view and eat a couple of leftover braised pork belly taquitos and a braised short rib tacos from the night before. The road turned to pavement and we followed it north to 198 and then Highway 25.
With all the things that seem to be going wrong, let’s pause for a moment to remind ourselves that this is the best time in history to be alive. Happy Thanksgiving