Siskel and Ebert – The Jason’s Way

Siskel and Ebert had “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Some critics use a four-star for five-star system. You can theme your critiquing depending on the subject matter, like the time my editor rated summer movies by the size of your bucket of popcorn, soda and/or other snacks. (I think the jumbo popcorn, extra large soda and pack of Skittles was the winning rating, though I forget the movie.)

My rating system is much more simple: Sucks vs. Doesn’t Suck. Yep, that’s all there is to it, no added layers to further complicate things. Movies, books, television shows, songs, artwork, you name it – either it sucks or doesn’t suck. Sure, if you ask me to rank top five or top ten I’ll ignore the request and give you a Magnificent Seven list (haven’t you been reading), but that simply means that the top seven simply earned the ranking “doesn’t suck.” (Unless I’m ranking the worst of something, which they suck.) That’s right, Blade Runner, the greatest science-fiction film of all time only gets a doesn’t suck and no more!

Take, for example, my old vacuum cleaner. It sucks because it doesn’t suck. So we bought a new one which sucks, and that doesn’t suck. Because some things only don’t suck when they suck, and other thinks truly suck because they don’t suck.

Hopefully you think my blog doesn’t suck. If not, then suck it!

Epitome of Random – vol. 19

I saw a shirt which read, “Support Your Local Run Shop”…why would anyone want the runs? Yuck.

My youngest daughter took off her pull up and ran around the downstairs yelling, “butt, butt, butt, butt, butt!” Perhaps my idea to counteract her was wrong; I put on ALL of my underwear and yelled, “however, however, however, however!”

Saw a recipe for Jamaican Jerk Chicken. What makes jerk chicken? Fowl language?

I’m thinking of taking a part-time job as a reverse stripper. I’ll have women pay me to put my clothes back on. Heck, I could probably retire in a week with that job!

My youngest has been known to eat straight butter if we don’t keep it away from her. Then again it makes sense, after all it is BUTTer!

And now for the shortest eulogy ever: “Hodor.”

The Well-Trained Three Year Old

No, this is not a post about my wonderful parenting ability, because said three year old has been known to release some furious temper tantrums. This is about my sixteen year old’s ability to train her littlest sister.

As I’ve mentioned before, my oldest is a Fogelmaniac. (That’s a fan of child actor Corey Fogelmanis from Disney’s Girl Meets World.) Actually, she’s more than just a fan…she’s his future wife, in her mind. So, her littlest sister knows all about Corey. And she’ll ask to go see Corey at the prompting of big sis.

Just the other day at supper, however, she needed no such cue from the eldest. The sixteen year old and twelve year old were talking about other celebrities (yes, male celebrities) when the little one piped up, “Stop talking about them. I want to talk about Corey!” The sixteen year old was beaming with pride. On top of all that, the three year old was able to name all of Corey’s dogs, much to the delight of the “future Mrs. Fogelmanis.” Yep, she’s got her well trained.

Now, if only I could get her to channel her influence into something which can benefit all mankind; like getting Amy Adams to return my phone calls!

Know Thine Enemy

No, this is not a political post…although the vehemency spewing forth from the foaming mouths of the extremes on both sides point to a perception of treating dissenting voices as enemies instead of citizens with differing views. I’ll save that for my political-themed blog. The Jason’s Mind is my fun blog. And, once again, we revert to the geekery of Star Wars!!!

It has become my firm belief that the Empire/First Order are not the bad guys. Okay, they’re not exactly good, but they are not the bad guys the films make them out to be. That role falls on the shoulders of the Rebellion/Resistance.

I had my first inkling of this belief many moons ago when I realized that the majority of droids appear in the Rebellion/Resistance. What do the droids call their human counterparts? Master. Slavery has a long, inglorious history; and here we find the supposed good guys subjecting droids to slavery. R2-D2 was awesome, and BB-8 is freaking adorable. Yet those cretins in the Rebellion/Resistance have them enslaved for only God knows what functions. In our modern world how can we let slave owners be called the good guys?

But the real kicker came with the The Force Awakens. General Leia dispatched her best pilot to contact an “old ally” with information about Luke. And who is this old ally? Why, it’s MING THE MERCILESS! First slave droids and now a close partnership with Ming the Merciless and we’re still supposed to think they are the good guys?

Hey, J.J. – maybe you should’ve cast Topol!

Drink Coke

Before reading, please click on the link to the youtube video of the Pepsi commercial entitled

Archaeology

(I know the picture quality isn’t the best, but it’s a relatively old commercial.)

Okay, so let’s get this straight, Pepsi. Coke doesn’t exist in the future and this class on a field trip is learning about a time when Coke did exist, even though they don’t know about Coke at the opening.

First of all, how in the world is the old fart a professor if he doesn’t even know what a baseball is? It’s just a “spherical object” which people hurl with great philosophy? Um, if you’re a professor is it safe to assume that the students are in college of some sort? If so, why must they be told a baseball is a spherical object? Don’t they teach basic geometry in Pepsi’s future?

As for the bottle, sure Pepsi may only be consumed out of cans in the future, but this so-called professor can’t even tell the Coke bottle is a container of some sorts? Heck, archaeological finds are full of containers from past cultures. That should be a no-brainer for Prof. Dimwit.

And don’t even get me started on the lack of appreciation Pepsi has for the performing arts by calling a guitar a device which emits loud noises.

So, do me a favor and, if you must drink sodas, please drink Coke. Because, by their own roundabout admission, drinking Pepsi makes you dumb.

(Except for my brother-in-law’s lovely wife. Okay, covered my butt, check.)

The Third Skywalker

Perhaps one of my favorite memes about Star Wars: The Force Awakens read, “Is Rey Luke’s daughter? Leia’s daughter? I say, why not both!” with a picture of Luke and Leia kissing in The Empire Strikes Back. And that’s been the talk of the Star Wars nerds – who are Rey’s parents? Is she Luke’s or Leia’s daughter?

Well, I like the idea of a third Skywalker sibling being Rey’s parent, specifically her father. I know I’m not the only one to come up with this, and I haven’t done any research to see what all people are saying about this theory – yeah, I’m a nerd but I’m not THAT big of a nerd. So, let’s just look a some possible evidence chronologically.

In The Empire Strikes Back, while Luke is leaving Yoda, Obi-Wan’s spirit mentions, “That boy was our last hope.” (sic) To which Yoda replies, “No, there is another.”

Flash forward to Return of the Jedi and we learn that Leia is Luke’s sister. However, I don’t think she was the last hope Ben was talking about. After all, he clearly already knows about Leia, even if you ignore the prequels (which I most certainly do). So, to which hope was Yoda referring.

Let’s move to the opening text crawl in The Force Awakens. The audience reads Leia, “…is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help…” Notice there were no commas separating Luke from the rest of the sentence. If Luke were, in fact, her only brother then the rules of grammar would dictate the necessity of the commas. (I didn’t pick up on this the first time I saw the movie, I guess it’s been too long since I was a proofreader.) Perhaps it’s just a mistake. However, earlier in the opening crawl they use the proper grammar when referring to the First Order’s attempts to find Luke, “…will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi, has been destroyed.” Why use the proper grammar technique once, but not both times? Here, we see Leia, and Luke, had a brother. Half-brother or true brother will only remain to be seen if this theory proves true.

Okay, forget about looking at things chronologically. Rey is given Luke’s lightsaber, which calls to her. It also is an object of desire of Kylo Ren’s. But let’s not forget that it’s not Luke’s lightsaber – it was given to him by Obi-Wan in A New Hope because it was his father’s, Anakin Skywalker, a.k.a. Darth Vader. Don’t believe me, well isn’t that lightsaber blue – Luke’s, which he crafted for himself for Return of the Jedi, is green. And the lightsaber directly linked to Anakin responds strongest to Rey.

Why does it respond strongest to Rey? Here we leave evidence from the films and go into speculation. Let’s assume Anakin/Vader had a third child after Luke and Leia. Perhaps the essence of the Skywalker force was more pure with the third as it wasn’t split between twins. Perhaps that’s why Anakin’s lightsaber is more drawn to Rey.

Of course, I did have another, exceptionally goofy theory. There’s the one scene in The Force Awakens where Ren and Hux are talking of retrieving BB-8 to get the map to Luke. Hux insists his trained-from-birth storm troopers are up to the task, while Ren suggests clones may be better. What if Rey is a female clone of Anakin? Similar childhood, exceptionally strong in the force, natural pilots, etc. I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to the next two installments of this trilogy, not to mention this December’s Rogue One.

This is all just speculation, and like I said I did not do any research for this. It just came from The Jason’s Mind. And, even though I pumped out almost 600 words on the topic of Star Wars theory, no I’m not THAT big of a nerd.

Conversations With the Three-Year-Old

3-year-old: “Gimme a tissue! Gimme a tissue! Gimme a tissue!”

Daddy: “Say please, booger butt.”

3-year-old: “Please, booger butt.”

Daddy: …”Well played, sprout of my loins. Well played.”