Reflections after Having Seen Revenge of the Sith

To take my mind off the fasting I had to do before my butt-oscopy (see Journey to the Center of My Colon), I decided to take in a movie-one that I wouldn't have to think too much about. I hadn't seen the Revenge of the Sith, and am a Star Wars fan (note: not obsessed, just a fan-otherwise, I wouldn't have waited so long to see it).

I liked it much more than the two previous ones. Jar-jar, luckily, made only a brief, silent appearance. Padame, or whatever her name was, had a pretty thankless waiting-at-home kind of part. Her death, as well as Anakin's conversion, was hard to believe. I actually felt like they could have left out the first episode and most of the second and just fleshed out this episode more. It would have made a better trilogy. That, and I wouldn't have to keep thinking about how Anakin and Padame met when she was queen and he was a small boy. Something about that is just creepy.

The action was good, but, anytime the characters started talking, I got kind of bored.

Anyway, it reminded me of my old friend Larry.

Larry was the kind of guy who gave in easily to his most compulsive behaviors. He smoked too much weed, made huge purchases on impulse, using credit cards, and let his imagination rule when common sense would have served him better. He would go through economic binge and purge cycles. He would buy lots of toys on credit, lose his job, and have to give the stuff back or sell it for cash. The cars and motorcycles useless enough and he didn't need them. But Larry was an aspiring photographer. He would buy elaborate camera get-ups, just begin to be productive, and then lose it all at the end of each cycle so he couldn't ever take pictures, even when people were offering jobs.

The funny thing is, he knew when he was doing something stupid. What's more, I could always tell when he knew. He had this look in his eye, this expression on his face, and this tone in his voice. His favorite expression just before he did something really stupid and self-destructive was "I know what I'm doing." If Larry said that, you knew that what he really was thinking was "I know what I'm doing and it is a big mistake."

I went and saw the very first Star Wars movie with Larry, who was a big Sci Fi TV and movie buff. He loved Star Trek and Star Wars.

Never any books though. Larry didn't read.

Another favorite expression of his was to say that his teachers always told him that he was much smarter than everyone thought he was. One favorite anecdote of his was when our 7th grade English teacher told him "You have the potential for genius-just not the personality for it." I'm not sure if she really said that, or what she might have meant by it, or what it could possibly mean. I just know that Larry had more imagination than brains.

Back to the Star Wars connection. I may have seen the first one twice. I think I may have seen all three of the early films twice each. I liked them. Thought the special effects were cool. But I always felt like George Lucas had trouble coming up with satisfying endings. In fact, this last episode had the strongest ending of all the films, but even this one had a rushed quality about it, story-wise.
For the first three films, I'm pretty sure that each time I saw them, it was with Larry-who saw each of them so many times that he had the dialog memorized.

Larry took the films much too seriously. He felt that they were some kind of quasi-religious experience. He would often say things like "I think that George Lucas has communicated with beings from another galaxy."

What was even more odd was that Larry was a fundamentalist Christian. I don't know how he ever reconciled these two extreme concepts of his.

As I said, Larry had a hard time controlling his impulses. He dropped out of college before the end of his first semester. He held commissioned sales jobs at a couple of department store chains. He eventually worked his way up to department manager. He stole some prints from a wedding he had photographed. He had no money, as usual, and the customers wanted to see the prints and make their order. Got fired. Had to return his car and motorcycle to the dealerships from which he had purchased them.

And, of course, he had to sell his camera equipment.

This sort of thing happened several times before he turned thirty.

The last binge and purge cycle, he had been working at a motorcycle shop. Of course, after a couple of weeks, he had purchased the most expensive motorcycle in the shop. One day, he took a customer out for a test drive. He skipped the usual procedure of taking the guy's driver's license and. The customer hopped on the bike and took off. Larry followed on his own bike. When Larry signaled the customer to head back, the guy kept going and was never seen again.

Larry lost his job, etc.

This was about the third or fourth time this sort of thing happened to Larry. The boss insisted that he had to pay for the stolen bike. Plus, when he tried to return his own bike, the boss found a major ding on it and insisted that he pay for that too.

Larry was rescued by his father, who drove in with Larry's mother from Texas. Larry, Sr. had inherited a ranch in Texas and was doing pretty well. Most of the family followed him there and worked and lived on the ranch.

Larry, Sr. went with Larry to each of his creditors and offered to help make up the debt if they would cut Larry some sort of break. They all turned him down. The last creditor was Larry's ex-boss at the cycle shop.

"God-Dammit!" he said, pounding his desk. "That kid of yours is lucky I don't have him arrested."

The next day, Larry was spirited away to Texas. None of the creditors ever collected another dime.

I was in college as this all took place. I was usually the guy that went with Larry to return his various repossessed goods. Whenever we discussed my life, Larry would always tell me, "You know, I've already been to school-the school of hard knocks."

As I look back, Larry was kind of like an Anakin Skywalker, without the light saber or the Force stuff. That, and he wasn't put on this earth to bring balance back to it.

But, oh, the things he could have accomplished if he had stayed away from all of the crap he brought on himself.