Tag: Star Wars

Posted in Women Who Wow Wednesday

Wyldstyle

Posted on by Jack Flacco

I grew up with LEGO. I love LEGO. Can I make it any plainer? Now that I’m older, and maybe somewhat wiser, I play the LEGO video games. Yes, I’ve played them all. The incomplete list includes Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, and Batman. I say incomplete because if I were to list them all, we’d be here all day. Thank me for sparing you the inconvenience of my prattling on to infinity and beyond.

The LEGO Movie's Wyldstyle
The LEGO Movie’s Wyldstyle

All right, enough with the introductions. This week’s Women Who Wow Wednesday focuses on Wyldstyle, the female character extraordinaire featured in The LEGO Movie. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it. Know this, though, I’m a massive LEGO fan, hence, keeping tightlipped about the movie may prove to be a challenge for me. Nevertheless, I will not spoil it. I promise.

Where do I start? It’s an awesome movie. How’s that for a beginning? Really, it’s that good. I dare the skeptics to prove me wrong. The story’s awesome, the characters are awesome and it’s hilariously awesome (you didn’t think I’d pass up another opportunity to use the word awesome again, did you?)

Wyldstyle's funky hairstyle
Wyldstyle’s funky hairstyle

Let’s talk Wyldstyle. Who is she? What does she do? In a quick summary, she’s one of the movie’s lead characters with a funky hairstyle. When I mean funky, I mean two streaks, magenta and cyan running across her bangs that fall just above her right eyebrow, and a cool ponytail dancing from the left side of her head. What’s more? She sports the darkest hair and leathers that would stop a construction worker in mid thought.

Wyldstyle rocks the house
Wyldstyle rocks the house

There’s more to her, a lot more. She sees the potential in a situation without getting excited about it—understatement. Actually, when she finds something that works, she’ll keep at it until she exhausts every available means at her disposal to make things right.

Wyldstyle is headstrong, confident and never minces words whenever she’s in a tight spot with guns blazing overhead. She’s a true friend as well, keeping a confidence and being honest with whomever she meets. If an idea seems bad, she’ll say it’s a bad idea. She doesn’t hold back and she doesn’t hide her feelings like other tough girls. If she sees it, she says it.

Overall, Wyldstyle has her issues, like not following instructions, but if anyone were looking for a best friend, she fits the role to perfection.

If you haven’t caught her at the theater in The LEGO Movie yet, now’s your chance. Have at it and prepare to laugh like never before.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

Have you seen The LEGO Movie yet? What did you think of it and Wyldstyle?

Posted in Freedom Friday

Blue

Posted on by Jack Flacco

The color blue is everywhere in my life. It’s in my jeans. It’s on my desktop. It’s even in my dreams. But I’ll tell ya, it’s not my favorite color. Not by a long shot.

The color blue
The color blue

This is my Freedom Friday post about the color blue.

As I was saying, blue is everywhere in my life. I search for it when I’m online, when I’m walking to the Main Street coffee shop, and when I’m browsing at the mall. Blue is everywhere.

I really can’t help it. When Avatar came out, I basked in the glory of blue. The movie had segments filmed in nothing but blue. The floating things made me feel warm and fuzzy all over for the things that bring me happiness.

Blue excites me while I drive my family home from visiting my parents late at night. A building stands tall and erect that resembles the final act of Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. I always say to the kids, as we pass by it on the highway, “Look, it’s the Star Wars building!” They gawk, ponder and wow as we continue on our merry way. The glow of the roof’s cerulean lighting is enough to keep me entertained for the rest of the journey.

The color blue, too
The color blue, too

My desktop has nothing but blue. I search for blue wallpapers. I search for blue themes. I search for blue mouse pointers. When I find them, they quickly hit my computer without a question. I don’t know what it is about the color blue. It brings out the best of my creativity. It replenishes my soul. It gives me the feeling of nostalgia that I can’t get anywhere else.

Then there’s the feeling of blue. You know, feeling blue? I don’t feel it that often. I know it’s there. I know people feel it. I know it affects people in different ways. I just don’t feel it often. I don’t wish I could feel it either in order to relate to some folks. I suppose something unpleasant would have to happen for the feeling to come. For now, I’m thankful I can only go with what others have told me. Feeling blue is awful.

You know what? It’s never too late to see another color. Like I said, blue is not my favorite color. If you know me well enough you’ll probably figure out what my favorite color is. The fact of the matter is how can we enjoy our favorite color and enjoy the color blue without feeling we’ve betrayed our soul?

[Author’s note: I wrote this post more as a compositional challenge to prove that anyone can write about anything and still have fun doing it. Although I wrote about the color blue, I had the surprising revelation that certain shades of blue unlocked memories I’d forgotten I had. In other words, I even surprised myself.]

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, now on sale.

Do you have a color that dominates your world? If so, where do you see it?

Posted in Monday Mayhem

Indestructible Zombies

Posted on by Jack Flacco

Let’s talk about something serious for a change, something that has been on my mind since the summer. If I could call it a great disturbance in the force, I would. But then I would have to admit surrendering to the dark side for taking the Star Wars universe out of context. Okay, so I’ll call it a logic problem. Then again, that may prove too pointed of a statement. How about this for Monday Mayhem: Since when have zombies become indestructible?

World War Z's Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane
World War Z’s Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane

I’m a huge fan of World War Z, and for those folks who have read my stuff since the beginning, you will know I’m also a fan of George A. Romero’s zombies. You know the ones, slow, dragging, lurching, not much intelligence. What they lack in aptitude they make up in multitude. In other words, they may be slow, but if they corner you in an alley with no way out, it’s lights out for Thursday night bowling—permanently.

It took a while for me to warm up to the notion zombies could run at the pace of a Kenyan sprinter. I attribute the sudden surge in velocity to an adrenalin rush fostered by the zombie virus, whatever that zombie virus might be. I accept it. It would also account for the incredible behavior change in the undead’s muscle stability and lack of flaccidity. Add to the laundry list a slow decomposition rate instead of the typical mortis states, and we have the making of fast zombies.

I’m okay with that idea. It makes logical sense.

World War Z's destroyed cities
World War Z’s destroyed cities

Where things start getting out of hand is seeing zombies crash into immovable objects at blunt-force-trauma speeds. When a head attempts several times to smash through a windshield, wouldn’t said head sport a few scars of the incident? Perhaps a concussion or two? Even more so, if a zombie attempts to scale a massive wall and other zombies use its body as a footstool, wouldn’t it be fair in saying said zombie would break a few bones in the process of its journey? And how about after scaling the wall, which I’m assuming thirty feet high, wouldn’t the zombies plunging to the other side land on the ground in a big huge splat?

Guide me here, folks. Sometimes I miss things along the way. I’m willing to suspend disbelief up to a point, but when the laws of physics run amok in a film—a zombie film, not a superhero comic book film—I’m not sure if I can accept the latest twist in zombie resilience. Anyone have a reasonable explanation for the undead’s sudden ability to fend off broken bones, torn ligaments, shattered faces and lack of rotting in World War Z?

So many questions, so little time.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale October 22.

What’s your reaction to World War Z’s superhero zombies?

Posted in Monday Mayhem

Classic Films Zombie Style

Posted on by Jack Flacco

I love action movies, and now that World War Z has proven the undead belong in Hollywood A-list films, I’m excited to see where the next crop of fast zombies will appear. However, the beasts shouldn’t show up just anywhere. Producers and directors should think about expanding the zombie universe by perhaps including these creatures in remakes of multi-million dollar hits. Yes, it’s a stretch, but imagine what fun it could be.

Obi Wan Kenobi Zombified
Obi Wan Kenobi Zombified

For my Monday Mayhem series, I’ve explored this idea before with my posts Classic Literature Zombie Style and Classic Literature Zombie Style II, adding the undead to such classic tales as Sherlock Holmes, Alice in Wonderland, and Romeo & Juliet.

Yet I’ve never done it with movies.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Below are three movies I think would be interesting to watch as remakes with a zombie twist. No one can say no one has ever thought of this. Let’s have some fun!

Jurassic Zombieland—In a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica, the government is conducting experiments in dinosaur cloning. Preliminary successes yielded the birth of Triceratops, Apatosaurus and the formidable Tyrannosaurus Rex. But something goes horribly wrong. Human DNA accidentally creeps into a Velociraptor gene pool and the next batch of clones pops out as stillborns, half-dinosaur and half-human. Before scientists could purge the dead batch, the legion of Zombiesaurus spring to life, eat the humans then battle for island supremacy against the other dinosaurs. Who wouldn’t want to visit this as a theme park?

Star Wars: Attack of the Zombies—A virus is taking hold of the planet Naboo rendering all Gungans as zombies. When Gungan Ambassador Jar Jar Binks appears before the Galactic Senate, unaware he’s a carrier of the dreaded disease, he infects half of the senators. Palpatine, whose clear ambition is to wrestle control from the senate in order to become all-encompassing ruler, requests aid from the Jedi to eradicate the Gungans. While the Jedi are away, he proclaims himself emperor and uses the virus as grounds to destroy the senate with his newly formed clone army. All would have gone according to plan except for one thing—Palpatine himself turns into a zombie.

Indiana Jones zombified by MK Luis
Indiana Jones zombified by MK Luis

Zombies of the Lost Ark—On an archeological expedition to unearth the ark of the covenant, Indiana Jones travels to Egypt where he encounters an army of the undead ravaging Cairo. Unbeknownst to Indy, the golden idol he had stolen weeks before from a temple in South America carried with it a curse. Whoever possesses the idol ten days after its removal from the temple would have a zombie plague unleashed on him and all those in his charge. Indy’s arch nemesis, René Belloq, has fallen under that plague, and now is wreaking havoc throughout the Middle East. Will Jones find the Ark in time before the great apocalypse spreads further?

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale October 22.

Do you have any other movies you’d like to see zombified? How do you like the idea of E.T. as a zombie?

Posted in Freedom Friday

Technology Love

Posted on by Jack Flacco

I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I mean, I enjoy playing with new toys and all, but the effort to get them to work exactly how I want them to work kills my love for them. Especially when I find they’ve suddenly become obsolete. Here’s a brief narrative of my experience with technology as part of my Freedom Friday series.

Hogan's Heroes (Photo Credit CBS)
Hogan’s Heroes (Photo Credit CBS)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Whoops, wrong narrative. Let’s try this again.

Back in the Eighties. Gosh, that does sound like a galaxy far, far away. Anyway, back in the Eighties, I became a lover of the VHS tape recorder. I’d get excited knowing I could tape my favorite program and watch it over and over again. And over and over. I can’t forget how many times I watched a certain episode of Hogan’s Heroes. Why? Well, because I could, of course. I treasured that tape. Looked after it. Coddled it. Then again, I was a geekboy with very little friends. Not really, but you get my point.

Then I discovered I can actually record programs without my being home. I couldn’t believe the instruction manual. All I had to do was program the timer on the display and I can enjoy an evening out playing mini golf with friends while the VCR taped an episode of David Hasselhoff’s Knight Rider. Yeah, yeah. Laugh. I liked the show. What can I say?

David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider (AP Photo/NBC)
David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider (AP Photo/NBC)

That evening the mini golf was a bust. It had rained. I then thought, well, at least the evening wasn’t a total loss. I still had my Knight Rider. I eased in the comfort of my couch, flicked the remote, dimmed the lights, and greeting me was a documentary of the lifespan of a wasp. Fascinating. Where’s my show? Maybe I forgot to click on the TV/VCR switch. Am I getting PBS? Nope. I can see the timer on the display going forward. Second by second. Where’s my show!

It wasn’t the first time I had missed what I wanted to watch because of something that went wrong on the device. It wasn’t only me either. My dad would sometimes forget to change the timer from A.M. to P.M. He’d get lovely shows like three-hour marathons of Korean infomercials spanning the length of the tape. Livid? It isn’t the word I’d use to describe the nuclear meltdowns the VCR would initiate in our household. Oh, and let’s not ignore the chewed-up, mangled tapes the little sucker would spit out those wonderful days whenever the tracking heads were dirty. You might as well have placed crime scene tape at the entrance of our home.

No matter how bad those memories sound, I haven’t described the worst of the worst. If anything stuck in my mind as the epitome of time-recording nonsense in the VCR age, I would have to say it was Daylight Savings Time. All I wanted to do was record my program after 12:00 A.M.. Nothing complicated. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Huh, did I have a lot to learn. It wasn’t until later years that I learned the phrase “spring forward, fall back.” Before then, I was at the mercy of the programming lords of the universe.

For instance in Canada, DST doesn’t kick in until 2:00 A.M. I chuckle knowing the pain this caused. Every Spring and Autumn I was all over that timer. I was always an hour either late or early. Could never figure it out. Of course because it was late at night the programs recorded were less than appropriate for family consumption. The next day, I’d find things on my tape like catching the start of Buxom Bikini Babes from Biloxi staring at me. Believe me, not fun when your mom’s in the same room waiting for a classic movie.

Good golly, thank goodness we now have the internet where we can stream anything we want whenever we want. I don’t know how I survived the early days.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale October 22.

Do you have a technology mishap you’d like to share? Any other memorable moments?

Posted in Freedom Friday

Rain

Posted on by Jack Flacco

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always loved the rain. The pitter-patter of the water on the ground. The smell of it in the summer just as it starts to thunder. I’m in awe to think after all this time the rain still excites me. That’s why I’d like to dedicate this Freedom Friday post to my favorite weather—the rain.

Overcast day at Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia
Overcast day at Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia

One of my fondest memories of the rain takes me back to when I was fourteen. As a teenager growing up in the late seventies, early eighties, I enjoyed my place in high school as a student council representative, a wresting athlete, and a music fan. In my world, the biggest band on the face of the earth was Led Zeppelin. They were gods to me. The album Led Zeppelin III featured a song called Gallows Pole. Every time I hear it today, it brings me back to the instant I sat in my room for the first time listening to it. How can I forget that hot summer afternoon? The rain began to pound outside my windowsill. The thunder rumbled the sky. And here I was, listening to this song that starts off quiet but ends in a good ol’ fashioned, down home, country jamboree. I still get shivers whenever I listen to it today.

At that age, I also had my first job working at the city library. They hired me as a page. I never really knew what that meant. It wasn’t until I got older that someone told me a page is a gofer. Go for the books. Go for the librarian. Well, you get the picture. I spent most of the time putting books away. I digress. Late one fall evening, as I sat in my usual spot near the window sorting my books, the rain began. I stopped my sorting and just sat there watching. The traffic lights made a reflection on the street as they changed from green to yellow to red. People scattered to the nearest store looking for shelter. Where I sat, it was a carpeted bay window. I remember how peaceful it was to look at the water coming down in the middle of the street.

The Empire Strikes Back movie poster
The Empire Strikes Back movie poster

Seems I’m remembering a lot from those days. The major movies to hit the theaters were Rocky II, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Saturday Night Fever. Not necessarily in that order. Saturday Night Fever especially gives me pause. When it came out, the guys who I’ve known most of my junior high year, the cool guys, all of a sudden liked disco. I almost choked on my saliva writing that. Yeah, it devastated me. Hard core Zeppelin followers turned from the fold to worship a dance craze where guys pointed their fingers in the air like they just didn’t care. Someone turn me into a zombie so I can go back in time and eat their brains.

You know what, though? The rain is good.

One fateful afternoon, when I worked for the school newspaper, I covered our junior high dance. The disco traitors, I mean kids, came in full force. They sported their polyester shirts and slacks, pointed black shoes, and their array of gold jewelry, enough to weigh down and beach a whale. You know what’s coming. As the kids trickled in, the sky turned angry and the water began to fall. Hard. Those kids arriving, being cool and all, dashed from their parents’ car thinking, it’s only a little rain. A few seconds is all it took. The finely greased hair turned to mush. The polyester shirts and slacks retained every ounce of water drank. And the kids? The kids were dancing to Disco Inferno, tossing water everywhere doing the John Travolta moves.

I love the rain.

What about you? Do you like the rain? Do you enjoy listening to the wonderful sound of water hitting the rooftop on a cold, blustery night?

Posted in Women Who Wow Wednesday

Princess Leia

Posted on by Jack Flacco

Erupting from the screen for the very first time, Princess Leia Organa confronted the evil Darth Vader head on. With a determined resolve, she fights to the last until captured. Women Who Wow Wednesday wouldn’t be the same if I’d never written about the courageous Star Wars damsel.

Princess Leia Organa
Princess Leia Organa

I love Princess Leia. She was one of my first boyhood infatuations growing up. I don’t think any of us guys sat still watching Return of the Jedi at the theater. Who other than Princess Leia could have slaughtered the vile Jabba the Hutt in their bikini? It was every teenage boy’s dream.

Born to Padmé Amidala at Polis Massa, twins Leia and Luke went their separate ways, not by choice, but from fear. Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda thought it would have been better to keep the children away from their father Anakin Skywalker. The torn Jedi Knight, corrupted by hatred, turned to the dark side of the force and became the feared Sith Lord Darth Vader of the newly-declared Galactic Empire.

Princess Leia
Princess Leia

When Darth Vader captures the beautiful princess on the ship Tantive IV, he has her tortured in an attempt to have her reveal the location of the secret technical plans of the empire’s newest weapon, the Death Star. The brave princess does not succumb to the Sith Lord’s interrogation methods. But when Grand Moff Tarkin, the Death Star’s commander, threatens to destroy her home planet Alderaan, she lies, still revealing nothing to the insidious members of the empire.

Remaining steadfast, Princess Leia shows little weakness other than her precipitous romance with gunslinger Han Solo. Even then, her emotional fortitude continues beyond the destruction of the Death Star. How does this princess of justice come to kill one of the most powerful Hutt gangsters in the galaxy?

On the planet Tatooine, the villainous Jabba the Hutt holds Leia’s Hans Solo captive in carbonite. In a strategic bid to rescue him, she poses as an Ubese bounty hunter named Boushh. Her offer: Chewbacca the wookiee for Hans Solo—while she holds a thermal detonator. Amused, Jabba let’s her stay the night as her guest. He later discovers Leia’s true identity and captures her, fits her with a chain around her neck and a metal bikini around her body. It isn’t until Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker rescues them that Princess Leia seizes the moment and strangles Jabba with the very chain he had bound her.

Unwavering in her beliefs, strong in her convictions, Princess Leia Organa stands against injustice against those who take it upon themselves to wish their will on others. She is a true Star Wars hero.

What do you like about Pricess Leia? Did you ever see Star Wars in the theater?