I know, I know, Lucas was going for iconic appearances and the costumes from Episode IV are no doubt the most memorable. Luke’s karate uniform, Leia’s nightgown, Han’s Henley undershirt with the sort of vest and boots only a Rush fan could wear with pride.

Except here’s the thing.

Remember the part where Leia was rescued from the prison block on the Death Star? It looked like she’d been in there for days. Between capture, torture, and the prison bitches of Detention Block AA-23, she probably wasn’t fresh as a daisy when Han and Luke showed up to save her. I mean, when Vader showed up with the mind probe, did you see a shower in there? Did you see a sink or a toilet? I didn’t. All I saw was a bench that didn’t look quite as comfortable as Jabba’s nice blubbery tail.

Then what happens? They all take a dive down the garbage chute. Everyone freaks out. It stinks. It’s squishy. It’s damp. And something is gnawing on their legs. The only really believable reaction to the stink comes from Chewbacca, who starts yowling and pounding on the door. I mean, think about it. It’s gonna take a bucket of Pantene to clean him up. Yet somehow when they escape Chewy’s hair isn’t matted and Leia’s dress is still white. Even more odd, when they finally gets back to the Millennium Falcon and escape the bad guys everybody is still sitting around in their dirty clothes. There should have been a death match between Leia and Chewy over the last bottle of shampoo on the ship. Yet the princess is still wearing her dirty stinking dress when she gets to the rebel base on Yavin IV, and she’s still wearing it hours later during the battle.

What’s that, you say? Perhaps she took a shower and washed her dress? It’s a remote possibility, but riddle me this: if you had fallen into a garbage chute, is there any amount of soap suds that could make you ever want to wear those clothes again? If you were a princess, wouldn’t you burn them and like, get some new robes? Hell, Leia’s mom couldn’t go from breakfast to lunch without a complete wardrobe change. Clearly she gives some kind of a crap about her appearance as she takes the trouble to have incredibly high-maintenance hair. So what’s up with the grody clothes, Your Worship?

Episode IV was by far the most realistic story in the entire Star Wars franchise. Everything seemed plausible, from Luke and Ben barely being able to scrape together cash for plane tickets to Han’s P.O.S. somehow being the vehicle that saves the day. But even amidst all the chaos and madness, somebody would have taken the time to take a shower. If C-3PO gets excited about a bath, Chewbacca ought to get amped like it’s Life Day from just looking at a bar of soap. Yet nobody cleans up until the very end, when somebody in the rebel government’s PR department probably went, “Hey, we need to do a photo op and our heroes smell like week old pastrami left in the back seat of a Pinto parked in Bakersfield.” And there they are, smiling and combed and washed and wearing something that isn’t covered in sand, engine grease, and whatever goes down the drain in space prisons.

My point is that the closing scene clearly indicates that even in the throes of a galactic civil war, someplace they have showers and a laundromat. So what the hell?

Just sayin’.

Have fun, kids!

Rebel Scum Rebel Scum is a grungy red, cream and gray theme released with a Creative Commons do whatever you want with it license. It’s for scruffy nerf herders. Right column, widgets, highly textured with lots of shadowing. Looks best on a modern browser that supports HTML5.

Dear Katie,

The world is a lot more connected than it used to be. Sometimes we focus too much on the dangers of being able to contact many people online, but your story is why the Internet is awesome. Thousands and thousands of people just like you were able to hear about your experience with bullying and show support for you. All of us geeks are out here, and we are looking out for you.

Be proud that you are adopted. Be proud because your parents chose you. There is a lot more to family than just blood. What really makes a family are people who choose to care for each other.

Be proud that you wear glasses. They help you to see the world in perfect focus, so that you can read, learn, and grow. They will help to make your mind beautiful.

Be proud that you want to express yourself. If there are things that you love and make you happy, like Star Wars water bottles, then GO FOR IT! You can do anything you want. Don’t let anybody ever tell you something different.

You rock. Don’t ever forget it. And if you ever need someone to remind you, just ask us. The Internet will be there for you.

I would love to make you some Jedi robes if you would like, so that you can show off your Star Wars pride whenever you want! If you are interested, have your parents e-mail me at stella at robotfromthefuture dot com.

Stella

The first two I made were way back in 1999, when some brothers I went to school with wanted to go as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn. They tried to persuade me to work up an Amidala costume, to which I retorted that any planet dumb enough to elect a fourteen year old girl as its ruler deserved to be invaded by robots. They were low budget costumes, but I made some lucky finds in the clearance section of the fabric store and they ended up looking a lot more lifelike as Jedis than Ewan Mcgregor and Liam Neeson ever did. (I suspect that this had less to do with my costumes and more to do with the fact that my friends had personalities.)

Many billowing polyester robes later, I’m going for this:

This will be my first non-traditional Jedi costume. In some ways it will be much easier (I don’t need to sew five layers of clothing) and much harder (how the heck am I going to make armor plating?) My friend Shawn is committed to a kickass costume, so today we planned it out and bought our first pieces. I found some cotton/poly chenille upholstery fabric for a tabard that looks like raw wool but is lighter in weight than it looks and won’t cling to other fibers. We dropped by American Apparel and bought a small long sleeved black t-shirt, and I was glad that I didn’t have to talk Shawn into accepting spandex leggings for the bottom layer. He understood, as so few before him have, that sweatpants were not an option. In the suiting section we found dark brown polyester that will make a lightweight robe that will still billow nicely and hold its shape.

To create the armor, Shawn is looking into what he could do with actual sheet metal, although I’m more inclined to buy second hand football, soccer and hockey gear, cannibalize it, and paint it. I lean heavily toward plastic parts as they don’t rip fabric, don’t make you tired, and don’t set off metal detectors at the airport, causing security to ask why there is chain mail and a morning star in your luggage. (Don’t ask.) We want the finished costume to have a nice lived-in feel, so I’ll be distressing the fabric and the armor with stains, maybe a repaired tear here or there, and blaster marks on the armor.

Tonight during two re-runs of Doctor Who I figured out the pattern and cut out the tabard. When I’ve got the whole thing figured out I’ll post the pattern here, just in case anybody else is crazy enough to try to become a Jedi in three months or less.

This is geektastic. My favorite is the Galactic Rebellion for Dummies book. Such a nice touch. On the surface, this is a great piece of theatrical silliness. But the venue chosen for the re-enactment created something a bit more meaningful for me. Look at the faces on the passengers at the beginning of the video. Then watch as they light up as the scene progresses and everyone sees what’s going on. There’s something deeper going on here.

The New York Subway doesn’t have a reputation for being populated by happy people. New York in general is thought of as an aggressive, angry city where people need to have warthog thick skin just to make it from home to work. Then mix in a dense population and congested travel lines. Thanks to religious extremists and the vogons who run the government, mass transit is about as fun as a rectal examination. No liquids. Take your shoes off. Say goodbye to your underwear. If you’re not going by private jet, you’ve got to deal with rude people, smelly people, crazy people, violent people and screaming babies. Sitting in a packed subway car is nobody’s idea of fun, especially with the added tension of constant threats of terrorism. Tension and fear is ever present in the eerie way people move around an airport terminal or a subway platform. Everyone is deliberate in their actions. They are deliberately quiet, deliberately still, and deliberately trying not to do anything that would attract the attention of the cops.

That mood is utterly banished in this video. People laugh. People smile. People forget how awful it is to get from point A to point B and they enjoy themselves for five minutes. The complicated web of religion, politics, fear, and public policy vaporizes and all of a sudden it’s just a few dozen people enjoying themselves. And if that’s not the pursuit of happiness, I don’t know what is. So hats off to you, you pack of guerrilla theater nerds, for bringing a little fun to a public space that is ordinarily devoid of joy. If people can laugh on the New York Subway, they can laugh anywhere.