Last night Ben and Boriss came over and helped me move a baking project out of beta. We ate the 1.0 launch of beer wine bacon chicken pie and celebrated with a screening of Black Dynamite. Here’s the recipe for your dining pleasure:

Ingredients

• Olive oil
• Up to 2 tbsp of your favorite seasoning blend for chicken. I recommend Weber Grill Creations Kick’n Chicken. (Seriously that stuff goes good on just about anything.)
• 2 cups of chicken, cut into 1″ cubes or smaller
• 1 1/2 cups of onions, chopped
• Crushed garlic
• 3/4 cup of celery, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 3/4 cup of carrots, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1/2 cup of frozen peas, thawed
• One 12-ounce jar of chicken gravy
• One 22-ounce bottle of a good quality amber ale
• One bottle of cheap quality red wine
• Corn starch
• A package of two pre-made frozen pie crusts
• One package of bacon strips. Do not get thick cut and look for bacon that isn’t too fatty or your pie will be a big greasy mess.

Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 F. Keep the cat away from the bacon.

Step 2: Heat a large frying pan to medium hot with a few tablespoons of olive oil. Put the onions, carrots, and celery in the frying pan. Sautée for a few minutes, allowing the onions to get lightly scorched in a few places. Add up to two tablespoons of rosemary, thyme, or a blend of herbs for chicken. Add a heaping tablespoon of crushed garlic. Add some beer and half as much wine to prevent the vegetables from drying out while they cook. Reduce heat, cover the pan, and simmer the veg for an hour or until tender to the bite, stirring and adding more beer and wine as needed to keep moist.

Step 3: Remove one pie shell from the freezer.

Step 4: When the vegetables are thoroughly cooked, bring the heat back up to medium-hot. Make space in the middle of the pan and add a splash more olive oil. Add the chicken pieces. Quickly sear the meat on all sides then immediately go to step 5.

Step 5: Pour the jar of gravy into the pan. Fill the same jar with beer and add to the mixture. Fill the jar halfway with red wine and add that as well. Stir and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat and allow the mixture to bubble uncovered for a few minutes to allow it to reduce. Begin adding corn starch about a teaspoon at a time, thoroughly mixing it before adding more. The pie filling is ready when it is the consistency of very thick stew.

Step 6: Stir in the peas. Immediately transfer the filling to the pie shell. If the stew is thick enough you can overfill it slightly, but don’t overdo it or you’ll have a hot mess inside the oven. You will probably have leftover pie filling, which keeps well in the refrigerator for a quick lunch. Stick these in a tupperware for a quick microwaveable stew. Just make sure you cook the chicken thoroughly when you use the leftovers.

Step 7: Weave a lattice top for the pie using long strips of bacon. Trim the bacon so that the ends of the strips only extend about an inch beyond the crust. Tuck the edges down into the pie.

Step 8: Place the pie tin on top of a baking sheet. Bake the pie at 350 Fahrenheit for 40 minutes. Twice during baking, open the oven and gently blot the top of the pie with a paper towel to absorb excess bacon grease. If the bacon starts to get too crispy, put a layer of foil over the top of the pie to deflect heat.

When serving the pie, abandon all hope that it will look pretty once you cut it up. This pie is a big hot yummy mess. There also isn’t much point in preparing side dishes to go along with it as it’s incredibly filling. The pie goes well with a glass of the same beer that went into the gravy.

You can try lots of variations on this theme. A Guinness-beef stew might go nicely, or if you’d like the chicken to be very, very tender you can always marinate it in beer overnight and then cook it in a crock pot before stirring it into the pie. The important part is booze + pie = nom nom nom.

The 2008 show and Friday’s show were very different experiences. The MGM Arena in Vegas is a killer venue for any concert, and the audio and visuals were perfectly synced. At AT&T Park in San Francisco the video and audio were out of sync, likely due to the technical constraints of being in a stadium designed for baseball, not concerts. There were also three massive towers on the field to house the projection units, which mostly didn’t get in the way but at times obscured action on stage. AT&T Park also had the psychotically stupid notion that people coming to see The Wall would enjoy having guys walking up and down the aisle shouting “HOT chocolate” and “PEAnuts HEEEERE” in the middle of the show. Given the amount of weed people were smoking, I was amazed at the level of vitriol being directed at these buzz killing sales guys. A note to the managers of AT&T: if you do not understand the difference between a ball game and performance art, please do not host performance art at your venue.

Despite the downsides of the venue this weekend, the show itself has been tweaked nicely over the past two years to keep it fresh and relevant. Unlike the performance in Vegas, the wall itself was used to project footage from the stage so that you could see slight facial expressions and more subtle movement along with a more panoramic view.

Truly great art goes through three phases. When it first arrives on the scene, it is terribly, awe-inspiringly shocking because it pushes the envelope with its message and form. Next, it provokes a great amount of discussion and controversy as society disputes whether or not it has a place in this world. Last, the naysayers inevitably lose and works of great art are enshrined in preservation mode. This last phase is bittersweet. When groundbreaking art achieves its goal of providing human beings with a new idea, it renders itself obsolete. It ceases to be inspiring or thought provoking and becomes merely respectable. In some ways this is good as it makes room for new art to step in and push the envelope forward once more, but in other ways it’s sad as the chaotic moment of birth can never be recaptured.

Unfortunately, I think this is what has happened to The Wall. When I was an undergraduate double majoring in history and humanities, I knew I was probably destined to manage a very fine Taco Bell some day, but I harbored distant hopes of being a museum curator. I even managed to land an internship at a museum my junior year. After spending hundreds of hours carefully brushing ancient slabs of marble with an itty bitty toothbrush, I realized that the conservation of art isn’t quite as interesting as the creation of art. The Wall is still relevant and breathtaking. It’s still poignant and meaningful as an eloquent statement against war. But I can’t help but realize that it isn’t surprising. I would have loved to have been at the show’s very first performance in Los Angeles and heard the breath leave every audience member the first time they saw David Gilmour standing atop the wall during “Comfortably Numb.” It’s still impressive to see today, but it isn’t a surprise. It’s expected, the way the “surprise” chord is fully expected in Haydn’s Surprise Symphony.

Speaking of which — most palpable in these modern tours is the absence of David Gilmour. Hearing other people sing and play his part was entertaining, but it was a bit like looking at a museum diorama of George Washington crossing the Delaware. Wooden dummies dressed in the right clothing give you an idea of what it might have been like, but it’s not the same as seeing the real thing. Gilmour’s singing was handled by one guy and his guitar parts by another. Two other dudes weren’t half as good as one Gilmour.

I felt the sincerity and intensity of the performance, but not any sense of urgency. Funnily enough, the closest I got to feeling what it must have been like for Pink Floyd back in the late seventies was when Roger Waters was forced to relive his historic annoyance with obnoxious arena audiences. The rowdiness of stadium crowds first inspired him to do a show where the band would be shielded from the audience by an actual barrier. He got a bit of a reminder of that experience when the giant floating pig came out to drift over the crowd during “Run Like Hell.” The audience got ahold of the pig when it drifted to close to the ground. They ripped one leg to shreds, taking bits of the vinyl home as trophies in the same way that tourists visiting monuments collect stones from the ground to be displayed on dusty shelves at home. In a way it recaptured some of the chaos and tension between performer and audience, and in another it was just kind of sad.

I loved the show. I love the emotion it generates and its unabashedly oversimplified message. But I also feel sadness, since I don’t know if music like that can be written any more. The early eighties signified the death of a lot more than disco. The groundbreaking era of musical exploration heralded by the invention of the electric guitar was over. Probably only Eddie Van Halen continued to carry the torch, pushing the limits of the instrument beyond anything any of us thought was possible. But I have a feeling that to see truly epic bands like those most active around the years 1968 to 1972 we’re going to need another new disruptive musical technology, and I’m not talking about autotune. Beethoven needed the pianoforte. Elvis needed the electric guitar. The artists of the future will need . . . something. I’m just not sure what it is yet. And that’s good, because it means I’ll get to see it when it’s being played and not just being hung up in a Hard Rock Café.

My first playthrough I didn’t import a character. I wanted to see how the game held up as an individual unit, and it did just that. Lots of people made rageface over the somewhat puzzling ending, and I’m pleased to see that Bioware is going to attempt to make amends through DLC that will expand the ending and make it less confusing/pointless. The ending of the game was puzzlingly flat. The Crucible ends up being just some silly McGuffin, which is out of character for the Mass Effect series. Even worse, the choices I was presented with didn’t seem to make any sense and all had the same end result. For a game that has captivated its fan base with a multiverse setting based on personal choices, Shepard’s actions and choices at the very end of it all were weak. For example: if you find out that the entire galaxy is controlled by a megalomaniac computer, you should blow up the computer. You should not select one of the choices it offers you because it has got to be lying.

My second playthrough has been much more satisfying so far. Seeing all the characters I worked to hard to shepherd (ha ha — get it?) through the first two games has been fun. Bioware really went out of their way to provide fan service to those of us who have followed the series from the beginning and who worked hard to get an ideal story line set up for Mass Effect 3. The experience this time has been rich enough that I will be considerably less annoyed when I reach the end of the game and am forced to choose between dying, dying, and dying.

I have only one complaint about the story, and that is the Mysterious Case of Thane Krios.

In Mass Effect I romanced Liara. I had to romance somebody because there was an achievement involved. Liara was really the only option, as I found Kaidan to be a boring whiner and Ashley to be a catty biznatch with a chip on her shoulder. Plus it just seemed super unprofessional to date a coworker that reported to me.

In Mass Effect 2 I had every intention of staying true to Liara. I’m no skank and since I was apparently her first love I felt I owed it to her. However, two things quickly put me off this plan. Firstly, Liara isn’t the sweet yet spicy nerd girl we knew and loved. After two years working in the information mafia, she’s kind of a bitch. There’s Shepard, back from the dead, and Liara dismissively greets her and then goes on about some other guy she wants to rescue from her mortal enemy. Yeah. I missed you too, baby. The Shadow Broker DLC package added something to their relationship, but it felt too much like Liara had moved on. It definitely felt like she wasn’t as into Shepard as she was into herself. The only reason I hooked up with Liara at the end — against my inclination — was because I felt I had to. There was an achievement at stake.

However, I had also found my real motivation to ditch the blue bitch and move on: Thane Krios, the mysterious, raspy-voiced, terminally-ill assassin with brains, brawn, and an emotional depth that exceeds any other character in the Mass Effect universe thus far. His romance story line was complex and fascinating, and Keythe Farley’s voice work was ably matched by solid character design and artistic execution. I looked forward to seeing what would happen with him in Mass Effect 3. There were so many open questions. How long did he have to live? Would he be able to fight with me? Would there be any time for Shepard and Thane’s love to continue?

Thane was given a very honorable sendoff. Although he’s been dying in a hospital and is no longer battle-worthy, at an hour of great need he springs into action and holds his own against a younger, healthier assassin who’s come to topple the government. He’s fatally wounded, and Shepard goes to his side in time to watch him slip away. That scene was remarkably touching — by far the most emotion I’ve felt from a video game since hearing Cortana tell Master Chief that it was an honor to serve with him. Later Shepard receives a posthumous e-mail from Thane full of the sort of love and depth that he always radiated as a character. And then Shepard can move right along to a “real” Paramour achievement.

Wait — what? How is Thane not achievement-worthy? How is it that his death just causes him to vanish from Shepard’s emotional spectrum? At the risk of straying into writing fan fiction, here’s how Thane should have been handled.

1. Thane should have counted as a Paramour achievement if he had been romanced in ME2
   Shepard shouldn’t have been able to hook up with anyone else once she’d locked in with Thane. Allowing Shepard to hook up with Thane and then move on is just . . . wrong. You don’t use a terminally ill dude for a booty call. You just don’t, especially when that dude is madly in love with you. Once Shepard locked in by passionately kissing him and then bedding him for the last time, that should have locked out other options.
2. Shepard should have been more into Thane
   After Thane is stabbed, it would have been nice to hear some alternate audio from a Shepard that was romancing him. Something with a little more concern and fear. As it is, there’s just one reaction, and it’s perfunctory. This poor guy is bleeding out, and Shepard doesn’t betray a flicker of concern.
3. A tiny bit more development time and this romance could have been epic, not just good
   Thane’s death scene was beautiful and touching. It felt odd that after the fact Shepard only gets an e-mail from him. Of course when a company is trying to ship a game they’ve got to prioritize what they are going to bother to develop in terms of cutscenes, but it would have been much nicer for Shepard to receive this message in the form of a vid, alone in her cabin on the eve of the final battle, a single tear going down her cheek as he tells her he loves her and will see her on the other side. Mass Effect 3 addressed the trouble of moving on from a departed loved one in the character of Steve Cortez, and that was a great plot line. It would have been nice to see how Shepard dealt with a personal loss she couldn’t ignore.

There. I’m done kvetching. I have fulfilled my duty as a fangirl. Where was I? Oh yes. Plugging Cerberus operatives with headshots.

See, I’m one of those Star Wars fans that got a lot of closure from watching Plinkett’s breakdown of why Episodes One, Two, and Three sucked so much. When my family went to go see Episode 1 in theaters, literally the only one of us who was entertained and was not horrified was my baby sister, who spent the entire time giggling at Jar-Jar Binks, drooling all over my cell phone, and shitting her diaper. I wandered dazed out of the theater with the other viewers, some of whom were weeping. Others were screaming for their mothers. Some had simply collapsed into a fetal position below their seats and weren’t discovered until someone came to sweep up the popcorn. We formed a support group, but I still spent the next several years in a confused stupor, trying to figure out where it had all gone so wrong.

Things got better when one day I was at Fry’s Electronics looking for a more ergonomic keyboard tray and I found a copy of the genuine Star Wars trilogy sitting quietly beside the more ostentatiously packaged Episode 1-3 trilogy, which came complete with an Amidala-themed tin of the same brand of roofies that they spiked Natalie Portman’s carrot juice with to get her to sign on to and film the movies.

Clearly there is an angel of mercy somewhere at Lucasfilm, because nestled quietly on the bonus discs of this boxed set of the digitally enhanced movies were the original, unadulterated, pure, Dark Side-free versions of the films. I was able to watch Star Wars again.

But I came to a sad realization today as I was watching Return of the Jedi while crocheting a beanie that looks like Princess Leia hair. The Prequels aren’t just bad on their own. They are so bad that they force me to acknowledge that Lucas was already making mistakes way back on Jedi. It’s so painful for me to admit this, so please bear with me. The first two movies were fantastic. A New Hope was great because it was so focused and tapped into storytelling archetypes that gripped the mind and took it for a wild ride. Empire was even better, adding depth and humanity to the story. Why were these movies so good?

Because George Lucas didn’t control them completely

Lucas came up with the treatments for the stories, but Gary Kurtz, Leigh Brackett, Lawrence Kasdan, and Irvin Kershner made them great. Kurtz and Kershner departed after Empire, and at that moment Lucas lost his Yoda and Obi-Wan and went over to the Dark Side.

I’m not saying Jedi is bad; it’s a very good film, although considerably less focused than its predecessors. However the abominations of Episodes One, Two, and Three didn’t pop out of nowhere, and now when I watch Jedi I can see the roots of the tensionless war between armies I don’t care about, the evolution of Jar-Jar Binks out of the Ewoks, and the future lines of bland, meaningless dialogue between characters I’m told I should love rather than feeling that I should love.

Before the prequels, I was able to overlook the rough edges on Jedi and enjoy the redemption of Darth Vader and the victory of the rag-tag underdog army. But now the mistakes are so glaring I can’t avoid them.

Most importantly, no important good guys die. Gary Kurtz wanted to kill off Han Solo, but Lucas wanted the big happy ending with everyone gathering around the campfire to pose for a photo Luke could use on his next Life Day card that he sent to friends back on Tattooine.

For war movies to have a real impact, you need to get a sense of the sacrifice and loss that a people go through in the struggle for freedom. In Jedi, nobody dies who didn’t deserve it, except like this one little Care Bear on Endor whose name we never learn and who we haven’t ever connected with as an audience. Struggles against brutal totalitarian states are not without a cost. Jedi had a satisfying ending, but it would have been downright Shakespearean if, fatally wounded, Han had whispered “I love you” to Leia, only to have her respond “I know” as he died in her arms. Instead, Lucas makes it clear that Han and Leia don’t know how they feel about each other at all until the very end of the movie when Leia decides that boinking Han is a better choice than boinking her brother. Han doesn’t look passionate or overcome with amorous joy; he looks confused.

Because of being exposed to the horrible, loveless, awkwardly unbelievable “romance” — note the conspicuous use of quotes around “romance” — between Anakin and Padmé, I can see how even back in 1983 Lucas had serious difficulty creating believable romantic relationships between characters. I mean, we are talking about a man who literally put a giant sandy fanged man-eating vagina in his movie. It’s not hard to see he must have issues.

Of course, once you’ve started down this road you can see the most glaring problem Lucas has: rehashing old material. Episodes One, Two, and Three try so hard to replicate the original films, right down to the colors the characters wear, that the whole thing feels completely unnatural. I’m not saying that the movie didn’t work, but . . . it’s just . . . another Death Star? Really? The first Death Star had to be knocked out because for the rebels it was a matter of survival. The second movie is about looking inward during a period of intense struggle and finding out what you’re really made of. The third one lacks a sense of urgency in the battle, because like the painfully horrible sight of baby Anakin playing around in a battle like a kid with a model spaceship, you don’t ever get the feeling that there is any real danger that the rebels might not succeed. I just can’t believe that the only story line Lucas could come up with on his own was to build another Death Star. Because the audience has already seen A New Hope, we ALREADY KNOW that the Death Star is not invincible. It is possible to hit a small thermal exhaust port two meters across. We know this. So nobody is on the edge of their seat to see if the rebels can manage it a second time.

For all my complaining, I could overlook the mistakes if it weren’t for the entire first act of the movie. Having now been exposed to the confusing convoluted mess that is Qui-Gon Jinn’s interaction with everyone on Tattoine, I can now see the roots of Lucas Logic in the plot of Jedi. You can give yourself a brain hemorrhage trying to figure out what’s going on in Episode One. Qui-Gon needs to get his spaceship fixed, but then he wants to pick up this annoying bratty kid with lots of Force bacteria in his blood, so he makes bet after bet so Lucas could have a three-hour boring as hell podracing scene, and somehow this bizarre plan works out. He’s supposed to be a Jedi master, but his logic in hatching a plan has me scratching my head.

The same thing happened in Jedi, only then we were all too innocent and naive to notice. Han’s a prisoner of Jabba the Hutt, who lives in an isolated palace protected by mercenaries. A good plan would consist of landing some badass commandos on his roof, grabbing Han, and getting back to the war. But instead Luke comes up with a plan whereby Lando gets a job working for Jabba, Leia brings Chewbacca in for the bounty, Luke gives Jabba the Droids, Leia gets caught, and finally Luke turns himself in as well. In one short day the merry band of brothers has gone from having one dude imprisoned to having all of them imprisoned. Ingenious. And what was this mess building up to? You got it. The light saber. When in doubt, Lucas grabs on to his light saber with both hands, especially when a giant fanged vagina is waiting below to swallow you up.

The only good thing I can say about the whole Jabba’s Palace interlude is that when Luke fights that giant cave troll in the pit below Jabba’s throne room, he didn’t use a goddamn light saber. Had Lucas made Jedi today, I guarantee you Luke would not have used the force and a big rock to save himself. He would have had a light saber and the cave troll would have had six tentacles, each one armed with a double-tipped light saber.

I never thought I’d say this, but I now have to admit that there are really only 2 1/2 Star Wars movies. It’s an awful realization, and it will take me some time to come to terms with this and understand what my life will mean now that the firm shell of protection I’d encased my love for these movies in has a giant crack in it. I don’t want to believe that the hole in the fabric of these movies goes farther back than Jedi. At least I’ll always have Empire, the last bright spot of hope before the franchise became an evil empire forever.