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Star Wars Fun Fact
Surprising and little known Star Wars tidbits, usually related to today’s Force Feature.Did you know? As of 8/31/14, the Star Wars 7×7 podcast has been downloaded on six continents! And it happened in less than two months, which is nutsen. If you know someone who knows someone in a research station on Antarctica, please get in touch with them and tell them about the podcast. If Metallica can perform there, why not Star Wars 7×7?
Life on “Tweet”-ooine
A featured dispatch from the Star Wars Twitterverse!When John Williams conducts the #StarWars theme at the #HollywoodBowl, the light sabers come out. #legend #epic pic.twitter.com/r3QqH02TcZ
— James Van Der Beek (@vanderjames) August 31, 2014
Star Wars Swag Bag
So many fun, quirky, and awesome ways to bring Star Wars into your daily life!Stormtrooper and Darth Vader Salt and Pepper Shakers – click the pic for details!
Trivia Time!
Test your knowledge of the Star Wars universe!Yesterday’s answer: Darth Vader
Today’s question: Who, according to the Emperor, did Luke feel compassion for, which would be his undoing?
Force Feature: What Kind of Star Wars Fan Are You?
Exploring the many worlds of Star Wars, in the imagination and in real life!I was probably the biggest Star Wars fan I knew growing up. My mom indulged me with the vintage toys, and I got almost all of them. I had t-shirts and school folders and trinket boxes and the die-cast miniatures and you name it, I probably had it. We even had a bootleg VHS tape of The Empire Strikes Back, which was just incredible. The quality wasn’t great, as I recall, but it was amazing all the same. (Didn’t those old VHS tapes cost $90 a pop when they finally came out with the movies?)
There was a time when, if you played Star Wars Trivial Pursuit with me, I’d have to go last, because I could answer 20-30 questions in a row without blinking.
Does any of this sound familiar to you, and your life? How about this:
I kept the Star Wars Fan Club membership card in my wallet, and still have the issues of Bantha Tracks I got while I was a member. Plus the patches I was able to order from the club, too. I even have a Revenge of the Jedi one. You heard me right, the ones that they made before they changed it to Return of the Jedi as the final official release.
I thought the height of cool would have been to have Luke’s Hoth outfit for my own. At the very least, I wanted one of the hats he and the other Rebel commanders and soldiers wore on Hoth. Growing up in southern California, as I did, there was no chance of seeing anything like that in a store within 1,000 miles of me, but that didn’t stop me from looking for something similar in the malls at wintertime.
For a long time, I thought my level of fandom was represented by my investment in the “stuff” of Star Wars. But a couple of things happened that changed my take on it.
First off, the collecting instinct dropped off. I had everything from the movies I’d wanted, and it seemed like, once we got past 1985, everything being put out was either redundant or didn’t matter to my vision of Star Wars. That’s something we talked about a bit in the early days of this podcast, that Star Wars belongs to you and me now, and our experiences of it are deeply personal.
The movies always drove the vision for me. So when the laserdiscs came out, I got ‘em. And when the DVDs were released with both the Special Edition and the Original Versions of the films, I jumped on those, too. I desperately hope the rumors about a pristine cut of the originals for Blu-ray are true.
The second time was the day I decided there were more Star Wars novels coming out than I had time to read. It’s funny, I used to look in the sci-fi section of the bookstore before 1991, and think how shocking it was that there were so many Star Trek novels, but that there hadn’t been any Star Wars novel since the Lando series in the early 80s. And then I was so psyched when the Timothy Zahn series came out!
But eventually, my interest in the novels waned, and again, I think that was because the movies had been my first love. I don’t think I realized it back then, though. At the time, I just thought I wasn’t as much of a fan anymore.
And I saw my friends still collecting toys by the case, and saw the rise of the costuming clubs, and used to think, well, these folks are way bigger fans than I am. Or, the ones who could answer pretty much every single question in the Trivial Pursuit box. Definitely bigger fans.
I’m 60 episodes in to this podcast now – 62, if you count the “Episode 0” and the bonus episode from last month – and what I’ve learned is that not only does Star Wars belong to me, my fandom belongs to me, too. It shouldn’t be judged or weighed against anyone else’s investment in Star Wars and their own fandom. And the same goes for you.
I hope that’s how you feel about your own love of Star Wars, and if not, then let’s hope this podcast helps you get there.
Now, it’s your turn! What kind of Star Wars fan are YOU? Tell us over at the post for this episode at Facebook.com/sw7x7!