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by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

---

Happy Father’s Day, everyone.

On Friday night, Jen and I accompanied Tom and Audra to a viewing of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Contains spoilers.

I’ve read some reviews about EP3 and its predecessors. Many of them refer to George Lucas ripping up their childhoods. Such phrases are, of course, complete drivel. What many geeks of my generation fail to realize is that Lucas’s target audience has always been boys around the age of 10. It just so happens that many of us were around that age when the “classic trilogy” of episodes IV, V, and VI was released. Lucas hasn’t changed much; we’ve all grown up. In the intervening years, many of have to come to idealize the original Star Wars trilogy and esteem as one of the great myths of our time.

Frankly, Star Wars is, indeed, one of the great myths of our time, along with such creations as The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. But the movies were still aimed at little kids. Kids who buy toys and cereal.

With that in mind, I hereby declare Revenge of the Sith to be a great movie. I do not feel that George Lucas has crapped on my childhood or any such nonsense. In fact, if I had to pick one thing about which to be angry at Lucas, it would be his newfound resolve against creating episodes VII, VIII, and IX. He says now that he never said there would be nine movies, which is utter nonsense. Everybody knows that were supposed to be nine. But I digress.

It was the best of the six Star Wars movies, in my opinion. Seeing Anakin Skywalker’s descent into madness, as Mike so aptly described it, was heartbreaking. Having seen the backstory on the big screen gives much more depth to the classic trilogy. Knowing why and how Anakin fell for what should have been seen as an obvious ploy makes the whole story that much more tragic, and his ultimate redemption all the more meaningful. The tale of Anakin’s fall is very cautionary; it warns us all how easy it is for good people to fall into darkness. His reasons were noble enough: he wanted to protect his wife. And after losing his mother, who could blame him? But, as does every tragic hero, he went too far. It wasn’t enough to protect her: he wanted to make her immortal. That was his undoing. It was his refusal to settle for anything less than the absolute that made him such easy prey for Darth Sidious. Several people have commented that Anakin’s conversion to Darth Vader was too quick to be believable, but I disagree. It was very believable, which is precisely what makes it so very frightening.

The opening sequence was astonishing, from the vast batallion of ships to the Chancellor’s rescue. Right from the start, the movie establishes that Anakin’s relationship with Obi-Wan has changed significantly. Obi-Wan now treats his apprentice with more respect, and Anakin seems to have matured quite a bit, which is a nice change from his whiny petulance in Attack of the Clones. But their relationship is strained when Padme, Anakin’s secret wife (the Jedi are forbidden to marry) reveals to him that she is pregnant.

Anakin begins to have nightmares about Padme dying in childbirth, and he begins to be obsessed with preventing her death. He visits Yoda seeking advice, of course without revealing any information that would get him into trouble with the Jedi Council. Yoda tells him to learn to let go of anything he’s afraid to lose. Sage advice on any account.

Long story short, Palpatine, who is of course secretly Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, convinces Anakin that only he can teach Anakin how to save Padme. And Anakin, consumed with the thought of protecting his wife, gives in. Sidious names him Darth Vader, and a new villian is born.

Vader travels to the volcanic planet of Mustafar to kill Nute Gunray, Viceroy of the Trade Federation. In doing so, he made me very happy. Gunray was absolutely the dumbest character in the prequel trilogy, from his lousy costume to his ridiculous pseudo-Asian accent. Obi-Wan tracks Vader to Mustafar and what follows is one of the coolest lightsaber duels in the Star Wars franchise. It ends with Vader in defeat, and Obi-Wan walking away, leaving him for dead, mangled, crippled, and burning.

But we know it doesn’t end there, because we’ve already seen Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, right? Palpatine/Sidious finds what’s left of Vader’s body and has him turned into the twisted cyborg we see in the classic trilogy. As Vader assumes his new costume (or old costume, depending on how you look at it), we hear the faints strains of Imperial March. And then, in a very nice touch, we hear the voice of James Earl Jones coming from behind the helmet.

All in all, it was a good time and a good movie. Do I think Lucas has redeemed himself? Not a question for me to answer, as I didn’t feel personally offended by the first two episodes of the prequel trilogy. I never felt that Lucas had betrayed me or my childhood memories, nor was I offended by Ewoks in 1983. And I thought Boba Fett was the coolest guy ever when I was a kid.

No, in the end, I just think it’s a good series of movies, and that this one was the best of them. Personally, I hold out hope for episodes VII, VIII, and IX. I’d love to see more.

From Star Wars Spirituality, featured on christianitytoday.com:

Partly because the Star Wars saga is melodrama, and partly because human instinct tends to prematurely separate the sheep from the goats, the potential for the redemption of Darth Vader never crossed the well-set minds of most viewers. For some, the redemptive ending was not entirely plausible. The Time magazine reviewer, for example, thought it corny. But the very surprise it occasions effectively uncovers the bad manners of contemporary cynicism and hopelessness. That is admittedly a preachy point to make, but the effect of the ending of The Return of the Jedi, the unlikely return itself, pivots on the audience’s usual gullibility about the way the world usually works, which is badly. Sinners, whores, and late grape-pickers all the same, contemporary imaginative habits are constrained to see judgment and doom, to turn away from the possibility of renewal.

Very interesting reading.

I ran this through my irony meter, and it exploded.

Here’s a snippet. See if you can guess the author.
But not the iPod. Most agree it is the best quality player on the market even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars. The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD’s. But those other music sites have lots of music that you can’t get at the iTunes store. So, if you have an iPod, you are out of luck. If you are really a geek, you can figure out how to strip the songs you might have bought from another on-line store of all identifying information so that they will go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality. How cruel.

Oh, it boggles the mind.

I can’t even bring myself to comment. The whole thing is just too stupid.

From Howstuffworks.com: Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina. Therefore you know that a lightsaber is an amazing and versatile device that is able to cut through nearly anything in a matter of milliseconds.

Cool. I can’t remember ever being as excited about a new Star Wars movies as I am about Episode III. Gracie and I just finished Episode I and tomorrow we’re doing Episode II. I’ve seen them already, but it’s always good for another viewing, and it’s fun to watch Gracie discover the Star Wars universe. It’s also fun to hear her talk about Dark Vader, Dark Maul, and Dark Sidious.

When Darth Maul first appeared, she said, “Daddy, is he good or bad?”

“He’s bad,” I said.

“I can tell,” she replied. “I can tell by how he looks.”

Which is good, becuase if she ever encounters a dude with six little horns and a painted face in real life, I hope she runs.

I know I said I wasn’t going to write much about Tangelo on this weblog anymore, but I can’t help myself. And, what, are you gonna stop me?

Huh?

Didn’t think so.

Anyway, I’ve released a new version of Tangelo into the wild, version 1.2b5. The big news, aside from some bug fixes, is that it supports the new Tangelo Skin system I’ve devised. The original templating system left some things to be desired. For example, the only way to specify a background image for a page element was to use an absolute URL OR to require the user of your theme to upload a certain image manually. Both options suck. So I worked around that by creating a file format (based on SQLite – Will rocks!) that bunches all the images and templates together into one file. Tangelo can then open that file, show you a preview of the skin, upload any necessary images, back up your old templates, and replace your old templates. Republish, and you’re done.

So, how to create these special files? With Ugli! Ugli is a free add-on to Tangelo that lets you create and distribute your own custom skins. And I have to say, it’s pretty cool. I still need to produce some skeletal documentation and get it over to Dave so he can flesh it out.

And the burning question: Ugli? What the crap kind of name is that? Well, an Ugli is an exotic breed of Tangelo from Jamaica. So there’s the Tangelo connection. Aaaaaaand… I couldn’t resist going for the cheap joke and releasing a design tool called Ugli. It’s too funny.

A few people (including Tom) are already working on Tangelo Skins using Ugli. I hope to see a lot of third party skins developed in the future. That would be really cool, to see a tool I created being used like that. I’m personally developing several to include with the release of Tangelo 1.2.

Warning: This entry is rather rambling and disconnected. It’s been a strange evening.

Where to begin?

My stepgrandmother passed away a few days ago. She was my paternal grandfather’s second wife. Now, before you get all weepy, understand that I haven’t seen her since his funeral in 1998. Before that, our last encounter was at my wedding in 1994. So it’s not like we were close.

But, still, she was a decent woman from what I could tell, and I know that many in my family will miss her.

Tonight was her viewing. The funeral is tomorrow, but I won’t be attending that. Because the relationships in that branch of my family tree are, well, strained a bit, we debated whether to attend even the viewing. But my parents decided to go, and my sister and I went with them.

We all met at my parents’ house and drove together. Talk about strange. I can’t honestly remember the last time my parents, my sister, and I rode in the same car alone. It was like being a little kid again: Dad was driving, Mom rode shotgun, I sat behind Dad, and Becky sat behind Mom. There was no prior discussion of where anyone would sit. We simply regressed fifteen years and sat in our “assigned” seats.

This is a hard entry to write. There’s a lot of backstory and history, but very little of it is appropriate to share. Or at least, it’s not my business to share it.

At any rate, we made our appearance at the viewing. I don’t recall seeing any tears. This is largely becuase my stepgrandmother had been quite ill, and her passing ultimately came as a relief to those who were closest to her. Someone told me tonight that she was heard saying, “It really takes a long time to die.”

We ran into a bunch of people that know who I am: Rusty’s kid. But they don’t know me. And I sure as crap don’t know them. But I shook hands and smiled politely, just like Dad was doing. He didn’t know all of them, either.

We also saw some people I used to know quite well: my Dad’s brother and his family (well, except for my cousin who is a year younger than I am, who would have been one of very few people I would very much like to have run into tonight). We used to hang out with them all the time, but a family argument drove a wedge between the two families. Thankfully, that wedge is slowly being removed. I hope one day it’s gone altogether. It’s a sad thing to lose friends. It’s a sadder thing to lose family.

Becky and I talked for a bit after leaving our parents. We’re both so thankful that our kids get along well. Gracie genuinely counts Becky’s boys as among her best and truest friends. And I can honestly say that I consider my sister to be a good friend as well. Same for her husband. Yet here we are, siblings with families that get along well, just like my Dad and his brother. Kind of a sobering thought. So my sister and I agreed to make every effort to sustain friendship between our families and kids.

Like it says in that “Sunscreen” song: Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Of course, it also says: Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Via Slashdot:

Viggeh! writes “An overly excited Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software, today proclaimed at an internal company meeting that if the download numbers of the new Opera 8 Web browser reach 1 million within the first four days of the launch, he will swim from Norway to the USA with only one stop-over for a cup of hot chocolate at his mother’s house in his home country, Iceland. The new browser was released Tuesday and was downloaded 600.000 times in the first 48 hours since release. The challenge will end on Saturday at 0900 a.m. CET, so if you want to try out some new software and make the CEO stick to his big words, download it at Opera’s webpage(direct link).”

Reference

Interestingly, this is still not enough to make me want to try the new version of Opera. Anybody trying to make money selling web browsers in this day and age is deluded. I’ll refrain from further comment.

I can’t wait.

Tomorrow, at long last, I get to see Michael Penn in concert.

I’ve been enamored with MP’s music since 1992, when I saw his excellent “Long Way Down” video on MTV. The video was cool, but the song was enthralling. Who was this guy? Michael Penn? Wait a second… he did that song about Romeo in black jeans, right? Yep.

I rushed to the record store and bought his first two CDs: March and Free-For-All. I listened to them intently and repeatedly. I was hooked. The guy’s music is amazing, his lyrics are astonishingly fresh and intelligent, and his voice is mesmerizing. Finally, I though, some music I can sink my teeth into.

And then I waited five years for his next album, Resigned. It was worth the wait. Some of my all time favorite songs (like “All That That Implies” and “Small Black Box”) are on that album. That year, he toured in support of Sheryl Crow, and came within a two hour drive of my house, but I couldn’t afford tickets at the time.

A few more years went by and he released MP4 (Days Since a Lost Time Accident), which is another excellent album (“Trampoline” is a great track from that one).

And tomorrow, I get to see him in concert at The Point in Bryn Mawr. My wife doesn’t share my enthusiasm for Penn’s music (in fact, she actively dislikes his music), so Dave will be joining me.

I can’t wait.