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“I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah/Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated soda/S-O-D-A, soda”

Originally, this week’s column was going to be a three-way standoff between Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but after personal events of the past week, and the realization that I was not going to find 464 minutes of free time - or, if you extended me your unwavering optimism, 493 minutes, to allow for the extended/special versions of Empire and Two Towers, which if you did, I humbly thank you for your naïve foolishness - I realized I would have to set aside the cage match theatrics that I pulled out in my last column and apply a laser-trained focus on just one of the three. So, with no digressions into sex, drugs or rock n roll this time (well, I will grant you the Weird Al quote but nothing more), some thoughts, tangential and otherwise, on The Empire Strikes Back, 31 years after its release.

The Empire Strikes Back was the first film my parents took me to see in the theater. This sounds more impressive and wow-worthy than it actually is. I am relying on their word because I have no recollection of this event. It is possible I was so scarred by the revelation of Luke’s lineage that I repressed the knowledge for the remainder of my childhood. The summer of 1983 (I was seven) is the first time period I vividly recall seeing films on the big screen so Return of the Jedi (the first Star Wars film to go directly into a 1,000+ screen release) does fall into this epoch. I was thrilled beyond words at the time as I recall.

I also mark this era as my limited-time experiment with collecting action figures, mostly of the Star Wars variety. I had the discombobulated C-3PO packed up in his little sack for Chewbacca to carry around on his back. I had Han encased in his carbon crypt and I had black robed Skywalker (which among all the sartorial stylings of the SW characters, I think I liked the most, even more, so I must admit, than Leia’s bondage/captive-of-Jabba outfit). I even had the carrying case in the shape of Vader’s head. But this didn’t last long. I often ponder why exactly I lost interest so quickly with action figures/dolls and video games and later on, comic books (more on that next column). They seemed like things, I guess, to outgrow. (For me, anyway).

I fell into reading heavily at an early age and lost the desire (or maybe patience?) to be able to focus on most other game-playing endeavors for anything more than a few minutes at a time. And this goes for outdoor activities as well. I broke my grandfather and father’s hearts by expressing no interest in fly-fishing. My thought then as now: I cannot fathom how standing in freezing water whipping a fly dangling from a line attached to a rod back and forth in the hopes of enticing a fish to bite is supposed to be calming or edifying. For those like my antecedents, for whom it attained a level of Zen satisfaction, I can only humbly submit that I am glad it provided them with so much pleasure.

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