You're Retiring When?

I got this call today at work from Smith & Barney. They wanted to help me with my retirement and asked when I was planning on retiring. I said, "Um, like, 40 years?". I get somewhat of a chuckled response. "Ok, sorry to bother you," he says. Ha ha. This is not the only time this has happened to me. I can only assume this is from some time in my past when I had to fill out some survey to download software or something and thought it would be really fun if I checked the age 65+ box. When the guy was trying to hang up, I should have said, "Oh don't hang up, I DO need help! I only have 40 years left. I'm so glad you called and just in time too!" Yeah, it wasn't his fault, so I didn't give him a hard time.

Star Wars DVD

How can I be an engineer and not talk about Star Wars this week? Anyways, I bought the DVD box set yesterday and watched a little of it. When I first got a DVD player, the very first DVD I wanted was Star Wars thinking that would be a timeless piece of my collection that would never get old. Didn't exist yet, so I bought Zorro instead, ha ha. Anyways, I think the documentaries are the most fascinating cuz that's where you hear the cool stories and learn how they did things. You also can watch the old TV spots and trailers which are way cheesy. The best TV spot is called "Forbidden Love" and it says something like "a boy and a girl in love in a romantic love story that reaches the stars" or something really weird like that, but it's showing Luke and Leia. So I guess Lucas didn't really come up with the brother/sister plot until later. I thought it was funny in retrospect they called the TV Spot "Forbidden Love" on the DVD. Forbidden love indeed. Well, Lucas made changes for his special edition and he made even more changes for the DVD release to make the movies more in line with the new movies. I watched Empire Strikes Back yesterday and some of the major changes I noticed were:

- Teramura Morrison (who played Jango Fett) is now the voice of Boba Fett. That makes sense since Boba is a clone of Jango.
- The scene where Darth Vader talks to the hologram of the Emperor has been changed. Ian McDiarmid, who plays Palpatine/Darth Sidious/Emperor, has replaced whoever they used for that scene. There is also extra dialogue about the son of Anakin Skywalker being the one responsible for destroying the Death Star which is a really weird conversation since they both know who Anakin Skywalker is and one of them just happens to be that person and they are talking about him in the 3rd person to preserve the shocking reveal to Luke later on I suppose. I can understand changing the hologram image to be more consistent, but I think the extra dialogue just insults my intelligence.

They touched up the visual effects too. No complaints there. Anyways, I'm not one of those hardcore fanboys that is so upset over the changes. I really don't care. Lucas makes the movie the way he wants. It's his story and his money and he can do whatever he wants with it. There are probably more changes, but I hadn't seen the movie in a long time so I couldn't really tell. I'm sure you can find out on the internet somewhere. I'm sure someone has listed every tiny detail on how the glory of Star Wars has been defiled by the changes, ha ha.

Star Wars Stories

Since I'm on the subject, I might as well reminisce a little bit. I've actually seen all the original Star Wars movies in the theater although the first one I saw as a re-release in the early 80's. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mom, but this is how I remember these Star Wars events in my life:

The year is 1980. I'm 5 years old. My mom tells me we're going to see Empire Strikes Back tonight which I'm totally excited about. Then while I'm watching TV, I fall asleep. I wake up later. It's dark. I run downstairs and the babysitter is there. NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! So my parents went and saw the movie without me. I couldn't believe it! So then my mom tells me she'll take me to see it another time. That "another time" was like two or three months later. There were only like 5 people in the theater. No doubt my mom didn't want to deal with the crowds again. Who can blame her for that? Well, except me, I guess, ha ha. Anyways, my mom let me sit near the front and she didn't want to sit there so she sat near the back. So when Luke got his hand cut off, I ran back there so fast, ha ha. That was so scary and I watch it now and it looks so cheesy, ha ha!

I remember at that age going to the movies alot with my parents. And there were always these huge crowds and I thought it was just normal to wait a long time before going into a movie. And then inside, I could never see anything cuz people's heads were in the way. I remember that was so frustrating. But who's laughing now, shorties??? Ha ha, j/k.