Weekend Update

It really is a pain having dial up but I've been watching both the prequel trilogy and original trilogy over the past week. It's so amazing. Of course, once the prequels were made, you can never watch the originals in the same eye again. I can say the same for watching the audio commentary as well--which I will do once rerun season starts. For all the fans dissing Revenge of the Sith, shame on you. This was the film many were waiting for. You needed the first two to set up the stages for Anakin Skywalker's turn to the Dark Side of the Force.

Kathryn Greenwood and Debra McGrath to appear in an all-female sketch comedy show. Both are alumni of Second City.

The two women, both of whom are Second City alumni, will take to the stage this week to perform in the sketch comedy show Women Fully Clothed. The show also stars Robin Duke from Saturday Night Live/SCTV, Jayne Eastwood from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Chicago and Wonderland, and Teresa Pavlinek from History Bites and The Jane Show.

The sketch show, which the five women co-wrote, runs Thursday, May 26 through Saturday, May 29 at the Winter Garden Theatre on Yonge Street.

The script was written before Attack of the Clones even came out. Republicans are unwise to boycott a science fiction film. However, parallels are there. The spoilers may follow so if you have yet to see the movie, well, stop reading now!

Here are two examples of what these conservatives say is George Lucas' Bush-bashing (skip the bullet points if you want to avoid any spoilers):
l When the Republic's Senate votes for Chancellor Palpatine's request for absolute power, Sen. Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) comments, "So this is how liberty dies - to thunderous applause," an apparent comparison to the U.S.A. Patriot Act.
l When Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) tells his former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), "If you're not with me, you're my enemy," it supposedly recalls Bush's post-9/11 statement "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."[...]

At a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, where Revenge of the Sith premiered out of competition last Sunday, Lucas acknowledged his saga's themes could apply to the Iraq war.

"In terms of evil, one of the original concepts was how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship," Lucas said.

When Lucas began writing Star Wars, though, the war was in Vietnam and the president playing fast and loose with the Constitution was Richard Nixon - though Lucas did say this week, "The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable."

What's more unbelievable is that Lucas planned to go after Bush with his sixth (and likely final) "Star Wars" movie. In the past, he has always tried to keep Star Wars above partisan politics (remember the unsuccessful litigation to stop the movie's name from being used to describe Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative?) and he's too savvy a marketer to want to alienate the pro-Bush part of the Star Wars audience.

Besides, as all those Joseph Campbell interviews have taught us, the Star Wars themes - good and evil, heroes and villains, an all-encompassing Force connecting all living things - are universal and timeless, not bound up in whoever currently resides in the White House.

Could conservatives be getting a little paranoid? Are they seeing too much of the current political situation in Revenge of the Sith and blaming the movie rather than blaming Bush? If pop culture is a mirror to society, the reflection often reveals less about the mirror and more about who's looking into it.

I say that conservatives are paranoid. However, I fear a country that sees to it that all power goes to the majority party. To change the filibuster would lead to a dictatorship.

Tony LaRussa is one win away from 822 wins as a Cardinal Manager. The Cardinal record belongs to Red Schoendienst with 1,041 wins. Tony needs 219 wins to take the record. Doable? Yes. Likely, I'm not sure. This is St. Louis' 5th best team.