I just saw Star Wars Episode III for the second time. The opinion of the pundits, so far, seems to be that the movie succeeds in spite of itself. I have to agree with that. We as a culture are emotionally invested in George Lucas’ saga. We already know that the cute, mildly annoying kid from Episode I devolves into one of the most captivating movie villains ever. We also know, based on our experience with Episodes I and II, that the movie is going to be a letdown in many ways. But there we are, bouncing in our seats and silently yelling at poor Anakin to Turn Back While He Still Can. Just like in Titanic, we know the inevitable will happen. Rubberneckers that we are, we watch anyway. Twice, in my case.

I don’t really aspire to be a movie critic. I usually have to read other reviews before I make up my own mind. Others have sufficiently beaten the dead horse of Lucas’ dialogue. There are bones to pick about the pacing and acting — but I’ll leave that stuff to the pros. McGregor and Christensen, though, did a fine job mimicking the speech patterns of Alec Guinness and James Earl Jones respectively. Christensen even resembles Mark Hamill circa Episode VI.

Plotwise, I thought Anakin’s downward spiral could have been drawn out a little longer. We cheer for him in Episode I’s pod race, but find him insufferable and whiny in Episode II. He seems to have his act together (if a little misguided) for the first two-thirds of Sith. However, because the end happens so suddenly, the audience feels more sympathy for Anakin than he probably deserves. Palpatine tricked him, Obi-Wan abandoned him, Windu alienated him and Yoda blew him off. It’s like Lucas is trying to absolve him of responsibility for his own actions. But the tragic hero has to take some of the blame. We need to hate him a little, and not just for his whining in Attack of the Clones.

Speaking of Episode II, let’s toss it out and replace it with the expanded first half of III. Most of Clones is just exposition for Palpatine’s plotting, anyway. That would allow for the events in the final thirty minutes of Sith to be paced out better. In particular, I’d have loved to see more pre-mask Vader. So let the big showdown with Obi-Wan build up over weeks or months of plot time, as a mullet-haired, red-eyed Anakin spews angst across the galaxy. Once the mask goes on, his character development is done until Episode VI.

After all the nitpicking, the question I’d like answered is this: Why does the movie work despite all its faults? Why are we gripped by the last thirty minutes, despite the clunky lines and stiff acting? I think it all comes down to the Big Moment. We have to see Anakin dumped in the lava, and we have to see the mask donned. How the Big Moment is implemented, in detail, is not that important. The Star Wars macro-story transcends the script. Now that the macro-story is complete, we have to go check it out for ourselves, to get closure.

We’ve heard for years that Star Wars is really about Anakin. I went home and watched A New Hope on DVD to see if I perceived it any differently. Sure enough, it really hit home this time that Vader — his rise, fall and redemption — is the story. Luke, Han and company are the epilogue. I’ve always loved the idea of a nice round nine Star Wars movies. It seems to me now, though, that the story has been told, the gap closed.

Lucas came up with a killer framework for his myth. The books, games and action figures sold will number in the thousands. Fox will eventually crank out a third Star Wars trilogy, with or without Lucas. They’d be fools not to. But the framework is not the point. I think Lucas (for all his faults) understands something that Tolkien (for all his gifts) never did: it’s nifty to build your own universe, but that universe should serve the story. Not the other way around.

I started this post convinced that building a universe — in a series of doorstopper novels — was something I would love to do. I enjoy the writers that are good at it: Tolkien, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, J.K. Rowling, Asimov’s Foundation series, and others. But the brilliance of Star Wars is not the universe alone, but the macro-story: the myth that resonates with us even if it’s not so deftly told. We’ll still tune in to see what happens next.

Appendix: a couple of “what were they thinking?” rants, because I just have to get them off my chest.

• What was the point of the whole General Grievous subplot? The only thing Obi-Wan accomplished by riding around on a big lizard is the sale of big lizard action figures.

• I almost laughed out loud when Palpatine’s face melted. He has to be pushing a hundred by the time we see him in Return of the Jedi. Isn’t that (plus a hundred years of smoking the Dark Side crack) enough to ugly up his face? The lousy makeup job almost ruined the dramatic climax of the movie.

• Space-geeky nitpick: While crash-landing Grievous’ cruiser, Anakin says “Now we’re really picking up speed!” during reentry. Any freshman physics student could have told George that spaceships slow down when they hit the atmosphere. They’re going thousands of miles per hour and then they start plowing through air. That’s where the heat comes from. It’s called friction, George. Look it up.

The family is going to Quebec City in a week. My wife’s mother is from there, so we’re going to show off the new addition to the extended family. Everyone speaks English, so there’s no communication barrier per se, but I have a thing for languages and I like to fit in as best I can — so I’m cramming some French. I bought a “French in Ten Minutes a Day” book before our last trip there, but didn’t keep up the studying after I got back. I also have a Pimsleur conversational French audiobook, but have I been doing my daily lessons?

Have we discussed how little free time I have?

So now I’m trying to get semi-serious about it at the last minute. Any tips? Besides just buckling down and doing the audiobook? Merci.

Steve Pavlina has some tips on how to become an early riser. Interesting stuff. I know I typically need less than 8 hours of sleep, but I hate the idea of going to bed late and getting up early — even if I could be doing something productive (like writing) with the extra time. Regardless, this seems like a good way to find out exactly how much sleep I do need.

Written (mostly) while waiting for my takeout order.

Hunger brings out the worst in people. You see it in restaurants every day. Otherwise patient folks get testy (”Where’s my refill?”) and suspicious (”I bet she forgot to put our order in.”) if they have to wait two minutes for food and drink. Is it any wonder that so many cooks and servers smoke? They have to deal with the stress somehow.

Maybe that’s why fasting is a ritual in more than one religion. It forces you to confront yourself at your lowest. I fasted for twenty-four hours once. It was torture. I didn’t even feel human at the end.

All of which brings to mind a popular misconception: that asceticism is somehow linked to self-righteousness. The world tends to think that those who abstain from temptation or vice have a pretty high opinion of themselves. I believe that, in reality, those who exercise the most self-control are most aware of just how bad they are. Conversely, one who indulges himself in everything has no idea. He always silences the little devil on his shoulder by giving it everything it wants.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my afternoon snack break.

So who here watches Lost?

I don’t want to turn this into a discussion board (there are plenty of those out there already), but last night’s episode was some of the best TV writing I’ve seen in ages… or since Ed went off the air, anyway. The character interaction was particularly amazing.

The season finale is three hours long. Last night’s episode was hour number one. I think my head will explode next Wednesday if I have to process two consecutive hours of Lost.

I’ve been a little tied up the past few days with home-buying and a weekend trip. To tide us over, here’s the first of my five-minute-work-break pieces. This is sort of an extension of the oneword idea. I sit down, pick the first thing I see or the first thing that comes to mind, and start writing about it. This one, from last week, is Palmetto. I edited it a bit during transcription.

Something ironic about the way the tree is braced in place. A natural thing relocated to a place it hardly belongs. Surrounded by concrete, skyscrapers every which way, one triangular patch of dirt holds a few shrubs, a transplanted palmetto, and (get this) a fixture for a future traffic light. Odd roommates.

It’s easy to shoehorn nature into the unrelenting streetscape. Dig a small hole. Whack branches off poor palmetto tree. Brace with a couple of 2×4s. See, the tree has no root system, so it needs crutches until it acclimates.

And here it stands, a bare trunk with just a flash of green on top, propped up with lumber from Boozer.

How natural.

Sci Fi Wire reports that one of my favorite childhood series is making the jump to cinema. I highly recommend the books even for adults. Let’s hope the movie(s) aspire to be more than just Harry Potter knockoffs.

oneword is an interesting writing exercise. Thanks to Ant for the link.
Here’s mine. I can see I have a ways to go…

soft, foamy whiteness fills my view as the light breaks in on my sleep. I hear a husky voice from the next pillow over: “morning already?”

Time for a break from all the navel-gazing. Let’s do some traffic-whoring, and talk Getting Things Done. GTDMail works great for 90 percent of my time management needs. One thing it lacks, though, is a tickler. For GTD newbs, a tickler is a filing system in which you store reminders for future tasks. You really need this sense of time in order to defer items and get them out of your head. Bryan and I thought about writing one ourselves, but then we stumbled across FutureMail. It’s a simple little web app that emails you custom reminders at a specified time.

Let’s say my bank emails me to let me know that my next power bill is available, and due in three weeks. It takes five days for my electronic bill payments to go through. With Gmail alone, I would have to put the notice in my “@Waiting For” context, and remember to review it often enough so that I pay the bill on time. In this scenario, the bill never really leaves my mind, because there is a possibility that I could check “@Waiting For” on the wrong day, and end up paying late. Enter FutureMail. I log on and tell it to email me a reminder in two weeks, so that I have a two-day buffer. I put the original email from my bank into “@Waiting For”, so it’s available for reference. Two weeks later, I have an email from FutureMail in my inbox, telling me exactly what I asked for. I process it as I would any new item in my inbox. I can even set up Gmail filters to act on it just like any other new item.

This is literally the way a tickler should work. Everything in your tickler must end up back in your inbox at the proper time. The only drawback is that you have to enter your email subject and text manually on the FutureMail site. Fortunately, Ben is working on an email interface, so eventually I’ll be able to just forward stuff into FutureMail and forget about it until the right time. Et voila, mind like water.

Bonus tip: for microscheduling (setting reminders within the span of a day), I use IM Smarter. I send it an instant message in plain English , and it reminds me in two hours that I’m meeting someone for lunch. Those items don’t even need to be on my GTD radar.

Do I have the time (and money) for it?

Remember that short list of hobbies from the Means post? Most of them have one thing in common. If you can’t figure out what that is, my wife will be happy to tell you. They’re expensive — in terms of time, money, or both. Guitars cost money. Renting an airplane is hardly cheap (I can forget about owning one at least until retirement). Proficiency at any skill takes regular hours of practice.

My son is seven months old now, and we’re in the process of buying a house. Time and money have not exactly been plentiful. I haven’t flown in three months. I practice with the church band one night a week, and other than that, I don’t get to play my guitar much. If you want to be good at something, to the point of getting paid for it, you must have the opportunity — in terms of time and money — to practice it.

Writing is cheap in terms of money. If you have a pen and paper, you’re all set. In terms of time, it’s not so cheap. You still have to practice daily, but that’s easily solved by putting said pen and paper in your pocket and pulling it out whenever you have a moment. We’ve been watching a lot of TV lately. It’s about the only form of entertainment readily available to new parents. I can offset some of the brain drainage by writing while couch-potatoing. I’m going to start finding a bench outside on my work breaks and spend a few minutes writing to give my left brain a breather. I’m writing this post out longhand on a Tablet PC from bed. There are countless opportunities to apply pen to paper, and countless things to write about during the day. If I have the motive, and the means, I would be remiss not to take the opportunities.

This blog is cheap. I registered the domain name for $9 a year. It’s hosted through an informal arrangement. I tell friends about it, get a few trackbacks, and oh, the places we’ll go. For next to nothing, I have a stage and an audience.

And if this never takes off? If — like a lot of other times in my life — I lose interest after a few weeks, quit posting, quit writing in my notebook? I’m out a few bones and posterity has a record of the whole nutty idea. And we’ve all learned something along the way.

I can live with that.