Star Wars

10.18.04 (7:19 pm)

I went and bought the new DVD set of Star Wars episode IV-VI a couple of weeks ago. I finally had a chance to see if over the weekend. Watching it brought back a lot of fond memories from the 70s. I remember in 1977, I was in 8th grade. Star Wars episode IV came out that year and my friend Matt's mom took a bunch of us to the Coronet theater in San Francisco to see it. I have never really seen a Sci-fi movie before, except for the cheesy black and white movies from the 50s (made with a minimum budget and they showed it). I remember sitting in the 2nd row of the theater (Coronet theater had one of those large curvature screens so you were almost surrounded by the movie in the front rows) and just being awed by the movie from the first shot. I never forgot the first line of the movie spoken by C3PO "Did you hear that?" I remember the scene near the end when all of us were leaning to one side in our chairs to the direction of the X-wing fighter as it swooped down in to the trench. It was a truly a magical moment for me. Those were the innocent times I miss now days. I don't remember hardly any crimes in school. We never had metal detectors at the door. No one brought a gun to the school, let along shoot anyone. May be it happened in other schools but not at schools I attended. Maybe we were too innocent and naive. Our idea of good time was getting together on Saturday night to play poker, drinking root beer and eating cookies. Worst things we did was to toiler paper our favorite teacher's house. Well, there was this one time toilet papering Russian Embassy (or was it a consulate) in San Francisco but that's whole another story. If any of you watched the movie Dazed and Confused, you probably can understand what it was like in those days. Althought I rarely took to the vices of those days, others have. Drugs? Yes, there were drugs in those days. Drinking? Yes. Fast cars? Yes. Sex? Yes. Violence? Not much as I remember it. I think that is one of major difference between now and then. Too much violence in schools. Anyways, it was a nostalgic moment about the whole thing and gave me a good, glowing feeling for the rest of the weekend. - eben