What "Star Wars" means to me.

I don’t think it will be an uncommon occurrence this weekend to see people going apeshit over Star Wars, sharing stories about their own epic light saber battles, or recounting memories about the movie(s).  This won’t be that generic. 

Everyone who knows me knows that I love “Star Wars”.  I don’t keep it a secret. I’m staying home from the office today, partly just to write this and document it before I go see the movie, exactly 24 hours from now.  I have those sort of regular kind of “Star Wars” memories and details running around in my life.  My kid is named Luke.  The runner up name middle name was Harrison (depending on what Ben chose as the first name).  The “family decals” on my rear car window are “Star Wars” characters.  I have a light saber windshield wiper back there, too.  I quote it pretty often.  But then, I have some not so generic, not-so-regular thoughts about “Star Wars”, too.  Things that you might not always think about when you’re making fun of someone dressed up as Princess Leia trying to get out of jury duty.

I will start with my generic story, which is moderately interesting.  I was 6 in 1977.  My sister, Tina, would have been 8 or 9.  We didn’t have a lot of money.  We actually had no money.  Ever.  But occasionally, our parents and their friends would want some adult time, and drop us off at the Merrimon Twin theatre on Saturday mornings to see these “matinee” movies with the other friends’ kids.  Yes, I said “drop us off”.  They would leave us there.  A bunch of kids, all under 10.  ‘Cause you could do that back then.  It couldn’t have cost more than 4 or 5 bucks or something for both of us.  This day was the first time we went to the theatre.  It was my first movie in a theatre.  The matinee we were supposed to see was “The Apple Dumpling Gang”, a Don Knotts movie.  But one of us conned the ticket person to sell us tickets to the other movie playing in the other theatre.  “Star Wars”.  I remember flashes of it.  I couldn’t have recounted the plot to you, but I remember the music.  I remember the light sabers.  I remember the Death Star blowing up.  I remembered robots.  And I remember Princess Leia.

So then there were two other movies, and I saw the characters grow up and mature as I grew and matured.  Now we’re going deep.

There are two reasons “Star Wars” is more than just a space movie to me.  Leia and The Force.

Leia is a child, really, in “Star Wars”.  A young girl.  In the beginning of the movie, she’s in trouble.  But she is not afraid of these towering men.  She is the *leader of the rebellion* against them.  She has the plans that will destroy them.  And she has *clearly* outwitted them, and they know it.  So they blow up everyone she loves to break her.  But it doesn’t.  It strengthens her resolve.  Now, there’s purpose to her survival other than delivering a message.  Now, she’s really going to “deliver a message”.  When the “men” show up to rescue her – she’s the one that blasts them out of there, and isn’t ashamed to take credit for it.  She has a mission.  She has a brain, but she can fight when she needs to. She is resourceful.  And she’s all of about 19 years old.  As she progresses throughout the other two movies, she is all those things and more.  In “Empire Strikes Back”, she opens her heart and falls in love.  She orchestrates the initial maneuver to rescue Han from Jabba’s lair.  And when she is “enslaved”, she breaks loose, and wearing a gold bikini, she strangles that blob bastard *all by herself*.

You get where I’m going with this, right?  I can only *hope* that there’s a character like this in the new movie, and that Riley can have that like I did.

Second reason – The Force.  Han calls it a “hokey religion” in “Star Wars”.  But it’s not a religion at all.  Obi Wan says, “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us.”  It’s the human experience.  It isn’t discriminatory, although those meant to be Jedi can use it to throw people around.  What better way to think about the world than to know that the power is within us to make all things right and true.  The thing that can make everything right is *in* us – that it isn’t hovering above us, waiting for us to screw up and condemn us.  In “Star Wars”, for those who understand it, it can be used to “bring peace to the galaxy”.  Or, it can be used to “rule” the galaxy.  But ultimately, it is the good that prevails.  And it’s all brought around by one kid, true to himself, true to what is right, even through the temptation and outstandingly negative odds against him.  And it’s that thing itself, The Force, that allows us to choose which side we’re on, or to change ourselves when we realize we are wrong (like Darth coming around at the end of “Return of the Jedi”).  Self awareness.  Self confidence.  The all-too-human ability to nourish ourselves with empathy, or destroy ourselves with selfishness.   **I put “Jedi” on a college scholarship application when it asked for my religion (I didn’t want to leave it blank).  I got the scholarship, by the way.** 

…Sooooo much better to be the change we want to see than to just think it’s going to happen…and to be able to hold ourselves accountable when we choose not to do anything…that’s nice too.

Now, I’m really not certain George Lucas meant all these little innuendos when he wrote such stunning dialogue (pfffft).  But was a nice side effect for this little girl, living in BFWNC (Asheville really wasn’t the hopping Metropolis it is now – that’s another essay), who really thought the whole universe was the immediate area around her home until I saw that movie. It was also nice to think as a fantasizing child that there might just be something “special” in me that no one, not even me, would know about until it was important enough to save the galaxy.  And I met lots of “others” as I got older, and realized that about them too -  “why, yes, I would like to watch your extremely rare VHS tape of the “Star Wars Christmas Special”  that only aired once, thank you…”.  Generations of kids who just wanted to believe in themselves.  I will be going on Saturday morning, with my sister, her family, Ben and my children to see the new movie.  When that logo comes up on the screen, and that first blast of theme music plays, I’m probably going to cry.  OK, not probably.  I’m going to cry.  I hope it makes my children feel powerful, special, and important.  Not to anyone else – but to themselves.  I hope it makes them believe just a little bit more in themselves.

Because that’s what “Star Wars” meant to me.

David Letterman - my TV hero.

All factions of my family were what we called “40-hour-a-week families”, which means, you needed to work 40 hours a week in order to make ends meet.  That status meant my sister and I normally rode the bus to my grandparents’ house from school every day, sometimes meant that we spent the night if it was late, and spent a whole lot of nights during the summer when school was out.  My granddad worked second-shift (3pm-11pm) at Steelcase from about 1977 until he retired.  When he got home sometime around 11:17 or so, we would be waiting up.  We’d make him a plate or a bowl of whatever supper we’d had, and we’d watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Watching Johnny Carson shows with my grandparents created some of the most lasting memories of my childhood.  Sometimes, when I get that faint flash that triggers a moment – a one-liner, a name mentioned on the news, that theme music - it literally stops me in my tracks, and I close my eyes and try to hold onto it for a second.  Just a second longer with them, hearing my grandmother belly laugh at Buddy Hackett, or my granddad say that “That Richard Pryor is one funny son of a bitch…”.

Then they’d go to bed after that hour of winding down after work.  But I was 10, and jazzed up. You gotta be kidding, “go to bed”…I just watched the funniest thing ever!  What a thing this was, television on late at night…celebrities, music, people *standing there telling jokes*!  I mean, holy cow – for me, I wanted more.  And I got it at 12:30.

If Carson was for me and my grandparents to watch together, Letterman was something for just me.  The guy had a face for radio – and low and behold, that’s where he’d started!  I played “DJ”…I looked funny…I was kind of a clown, even at 10…and these people he had on, they were people I *knew* - Bill Murray, Christopher Reeve, Siskel and Ebert...and the music from the band – there was a drummer that had a mullet – and it was current music, not big band swing - it was everything a budding sarcastic, movie-centric 10 year old girl needed to be a hit the next day.  And I soaked it in like a sponge.  I loved that he’d give the camera these looks like – what the hell am *I* doing here?!  Letterman was smug, and self-deprecating, and he wore t-shirts with suits and ball socks for crying out loud…he threw pencils at the camera!  He threw TV’s off the top of the building!  He had a bit where a guy lived under the audience!  He had a bit called “Network Time Killers”!  He had people doing nutty things and called it “Stupid Human Tricks”…I mean, who calls the people “stupid”, and they still come on the show!  Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.  Subversive.  Brilliant.  I would mock interview myself in the mirror, appearing on Letterman…”yes, Dave – can I call you Dave? – I am from Asheville, North Carolina”.  

I grew up with that guy, staying up way too late for a 10-18 year old during the 4 nights a week that the first-run shows ran.  To be honest, I’m not sure many people I knew in high school watched Late Night with as much – appreciation- as  I did.  Oh, I’m sure they liked it.  But the daily grind didn’t reflect it that much I guess.  So I thought I might be the only one who got the necessity of a personal daily Top-Ten list.  And maybe I wasn’t, but I don’t know.  Then I went to college.  And there were others.  Other geeky looking, late-night TV revering, kooky joke telling people.  I found them at the radio station (well, duh).  And we all just sorta – knew.  We knew the secret.  There were microphones!  We eventually all gravitated toward each other, and created amazing things. One of those guys got a ticket to Letterman’s first show on CBS – a rather large group of us were very, very jealous. 

My buddy Matt and I did a morning radio show, 3 hours a day, 5 days a week from August through December of 1994 – and we were obviously shaped by everything David Letterman did.  We did a top ten list (“Top Ten Good, Great, and Delicious Things About ‘The Appalachian’ – the ASU newspaper) and got some mean looks from the faculty advisor.  We then mocked said faculty advisor by saying everything was “good, great and delicious” (something a non-profit station wasn’t supposed to say about things to keep from sounding like we were “promoting” them).  Witty banter.  Bits with guests doing impressions or characters.  ALL ripped off from Letterman.  Then, a few of my other Broadcasting friends approached the TV faculty advisor about doing a TV talk show.  We all worked positions on other shows produced by the university – the stuff is already there – “give us a couple of hours during the week, and we’ll do it all ourselves – it’ll be good for us!”  They pitched it as a “Letterman-style sit-down talk show, set in Matt’s dorm room, with guests sitting on his bed”.  They were reluctant at first, but they agreed.  So we did it, and it was awesome.  Matt showing his movie soundtrack collection and one-liners about each one, lord-a-mighty a character called “Afro-Jack”, an unlikely fitness-video guru, cut-aways to audience members stunned faces…ALL ripped off from Letterman.  We were a hit, and holy cow – High Country Cable in Boone decided to run it on their local public access cable channel.  Good Lord.  Don’t these people in charge of things talk to each other?! We’re troublemakers!  Rabble-rousers!   

It was, aside from the joys I have as a wife and mother now, the best time of my life.

I think I will just watch tomorrow night, alone, and say some private goodbyes.  Probably shed just a few tears, mostly for the loss of his presence.  He was there when I needed him most - in late hours for the beginning of my self formation, even later in hours of self reflection -  and was likely the number one reason I went into that radio station the first chance I could.  David Letterman is my TV hero, and I have a lot to thank him for.  I’m sorry I never got the chance in person, but I will just mock-interview myself in the mirror later. Maybe that will suffice.