Often Imitated, Never Duplicated

Many Celebrities and wannabes have donned the gold bikini for various reasons, but none ever rocked it like Carrie Fisher.

Jennifer Aniston in an episode of Friends:

Kim Kardashian of course:

Kristen Bell:

Olivia Munn:

Hope

Carrie Fisher died at the age of 60 after suffering a massive heart attack on a plane.

She will be best remembered for playing Princess Leia in the original Star Wars movies and reprising that role in "The Force Awakens."

Two enduring images, as a hologram in "A New Hope"



and wearing a gold bikini in "Return of the Jedi"

Thoughts on the Force Awakens

Do not read this if you haven't seen it but want to.

I liked the movie, but didn't love it. If I had to give it a grade I would give an A-, maybe a B+.

A couple of issues:
I thought Finn was too jokey. He wasn't wise-cracking like Han Solo. Just a little annoying, and didn't provide comic relief, just disrupted the tension.
I hate, hate HATE when a show or a movie seemingly kills off a character, the other characters believe he's dead, and then he comes riding in when he's needed most, as happened with Poe Dameron. It's intellectually lazy movie-making.

But my main issue is I felt that not enough was made of The Force. What has always separated Star Wars from other science fiction or action movies is they actually had a fascinating plot point. The Force, the good and evil inside all of us. Do you give in to your negative feelings, fear and anger, or do you let the good in you shine through. There were opportunities to do so here, they just passed on them.

Problems that in retrospect weren't really problems:
1) The movie was too derivative of the originals. Yes, a droid containing a crucial piece of information is being pursued across the galaxy by evil people and good people have to see that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands, culminating in the destruction of the super weapon. How many Death Star and Death Star-ish things can they possibly build.



Yes, but...if they had completely abandoned the earlier movies I would have been even angrier. I know there's some middle ground there but probably a very thin target to hit.

2) It was too predictable. As the movie wore on you knew Kylo Ren was the son of Han and Leia and you got a pretty good idea that he was going to kill Han. You knew they were going to blow up the Death Star and you knew they were going to find Luke.

Yes, but...if they had a serious of ridiculous plot twists I would have been even angrier.

In summary, it was a good movie. I really liked it. There were some chill-inducing scenes. The special effects looked great. It is one of the few movies I really think does need to be viewed on the big screen. I think they have set up the next movie to be phenomenal. It can leave behind the past and blaze its own trail. Is Rey Kylo's sister? Is she Obi-Juan's descendant? Will Luke train her, and a new order of Jedi Knights? Will Kylo Ren be redeemed in the end as was Darth Vader.

I can't wait to find out.

But the boys certainly seemed to like it:

Have You Ever Loved Something This Much?

Through various TV shows and stuff Jules has become quite interested in Star Wars and I showed them "A New Hope" and they loved it.
Since then, the countdown has been on for the new movie.

I took the kids to a special Star Wars event at the Disney Store. It was quite cool. The taught the kids to use Jedi Mind tricks to trick a storm trooper, and eventually they received the Medal of Bravery from the Galactic Republic.

Note: I did my parental duty and reminded them of the racial injustice that denied Chewbacca his rightful medal.

After that, they learned to draw R2-D2 (neither of them follows in my artistic footsteps) and were given a cardboard 3-d puzzle of Artoo (which was very difficult to put together).

It was quite cool to be let into the mall an hour early for this special event (mainly because we got a good parking spot), but the real goal was to get the big shoppers into the store.

Ever since we saw the first trailer for "The Force Awakens" Julian loved BB-8, the roly poly new droid, though he kept calling him "BBQ."
He said he liked him "because he's cute like me!"

So I bought him a stuffed action figure, and bought Chase the figurine set.

And for the rest of the day he carried around this little BB-8 everywhere saying "I'm obsessed with him."

And then when Mrs. Poop went to check on him during the night, this is what she saw.

I wish I could get back to those innocent days of childhood when a ten dollar toy provided so much joy and happiness that I couldn't bear to be away from it, not even for a second, not even while sleeping.

Incidentally the other BB-8 we saw while we were in the store was fuckin awesome.

It's very similar to a remote control car, except you use an app through your phone to move it around the house. And it does cool things like create a map of your house based on things it runs into, including you. And it can even play messages hologram style, I think.

Read the review to understand more.

Only problems: it costs $150, and Julian would want to sleep with it in his bed.