These next few days will creep by slower then me trying to run a 50-yard dash.  Think I'm kidding?  When I was in high school and the years that followed I was quick, but not fast.  I like to think I was like Dick Butkus in the fact from sideline to sideline there weren't many faster, but as far as running up and down field, go ahead an order a pizza because I might be a while.  I swear, I move with the grace of a drunk bull.  And now that's its been a few years since those days, I can't imagine how slow I've become running...especially with a very bum knee and a big toe that doesn't bend.  Oh you should see the big toe on my right foot...I dropped a big piece of wood on it at a job once when I was about 17 and basically flattened the middle joint, so now it doesn't bend.  If only I had gone to the doctor it might be normal today....*sigh*.  Anyway, enough on injuries.  So why will the next few days go by so slowly?  It's time to close it all out...to finish the saga.  It's time.

First however, here's a little news on my Senate campaign.  Friday I finally got some answers...FINALLY.  I was told to contact the National Republican Senatorial Committee and then contact the Secretary of State for Tennessee.  I called the NRSC and spoke to someone about my intention to run for the US Senate and gave them my contact info, and they're supposed to get back to me in another day or so...so I'm sure I'll be calling back in a few days...hahahaha.  What they do I have no idea.  I guess they're the ones I have to talk to so I can be an "official" Republican.  What that entails I really don't know...maybe it's like a secret club???  After that I called the Secretary of State for Tennessee and spoke to someone on the election board and was given all the info I needed as far as filing goes.  It was nothing...all I have to do is get a petition signed with 25 registered voters and file it....that's it.  Of course I first have to be associated with a party and I guess that's why I have to speak to the NRSC.  Petitions for candidacy can't be accepted until January 6th of 2006, so I have time...I just want to get the official affiliation over and done with so I can get listed on the Republican website as a candidate and get my website up so people can see I'm a dude with a little vision and some solutions.  Hopefully in my next Buzz I'll have more details and I'll share them then....along with maybe the location of my campaign website.  It's funny because I'm sitting here listening to Ice-T's "Original Gangster".  How many Senators do you think could make that same claim?

Ok, now to the matter at hand.  This week is the opening of the 6th and final installment in the "Star Wars" saga - Episode III, "Revenge of the Sith".  I can't believe someone wouldn't know this, but if you don't, the first three "Star Wars" movies were chapters 4, 5, and 6.  George Lucas went back in 1999 and started making chapters 1, 2, and 3.  Now we know that in Episode III that young Annakin Skywalker makes his transformation to Darth Vader and tons of Jedi Knights get slaughtered and everything, but it's going to be soooo cool seeing how it all unfolds I can't wait.  Oh I'll admit it, I am a HUGE "Star Wars" geek.  Funny thing is I really don't dig science fiction as a whole...I never got into Star Trek at all.  So why do I love them so?  Allow me to take you on a little journey.

It's the summer of 1977.  I was in-between second and third grade and living in Birmingham, Alabama.  My best friend at the time was David David...yes he actually has the same first and last name.  If I still knew him now I'd probably call him "D squared" or something.  Anyway, we were really good friends because of our mutual love for the band Kiss.  Oh yes, in second grade I was a Kiss fanatic...all due to Cynthia Monroe who was the older sister of Tim and Steve...they were twin brothers who lived above us in an apartment building that I was good friends with.  Anyway, Cynthia had a 45 of "Calling Doctor Love".  Tim got it and brought it down and we listened to it on my record player which was one step up from a close-n-play.  It was pretty cool...I really dug the song and I turned it over and REALLY loved "Take Me".  Then Tim showed me a picture of what they looked like and that was it...I was hooked.  Man Cynthia was cool...she was actually the first girl I kissed...I mean a real kiss.  I was 8 and she was 10....several of us got together in the laundry room and played spin the bottle.  She liked me at that time and I thought she was hot.  It's weird...I was NEVER one of those "ooooh....girls have cooties" boys...I dug girls in the first grade.  Little did I know that she rigged the game a little bit to where we had to kiss a lot.  Wow...I haven't thought about this in a long time...huh.  Anyway, at school me and David were best buds...I went to a different school then Tim and Steve so I only saw them at home.  So now it's the summer and we moved into a house.  David now just lived up the road from me so I would walk over to his place sometimes.  One afternoon his mom was going to take us to the movies.  There were three of us...me, David, and some other kid he knew.  We went outside for a little bit and discussed what movie to go see while we did our favorite summer pastime - skateboarding.  Oh yeah, back then I LOVED skateboarding....until I wiped out horribly one day and never did it again.  So we're talking about what movie we're gonna go to.  David wants to go see "Star Wars"...he had already seen it and wanted to go again.  The other guy really wanted to see the new James Bond movie...I think it was "The Spy Who Loved Me".  I was the deciding factor...whatever movie I chose would mean majority rules.  We go back in and David pulls out a magazine...I think it was "Starlog" and starts showing me all the pics from the movie.  It looked too cool to pass up so I said "ok...let's go to Star Wars".  Now being a little kid back then meant you didn't get to go see too many movies.  Remember, HBO wasn't out and VCR's were an item I had no concept of.  Heck if you had cable channels 2-13 everyone wanted to come to your house.  This was a monumental decision I made...it basically formed my childhood.  We go and I was completely hypnotized.  Everything about it appealed to me...the good guys, the bad guys, the ships, the laser guns, the light sabers, everything.  In fact, I think we spent the next few months having light saber duels with yardsticks while making the noises with our mouths.  All my toys were instantly converted to the Star Wars universe...my Planet of the Apes figures and my Bionic Man assumed the roles of various Star Wars characters.  The allowance I was getting for doing my stuff around the house went to magazines about Star Wars...I couldn't get enough.  It had anything a kid could want in a movie...seriously I don't think there has ever been a movie since that contained all those fantasy elements that a kid could watch and fall in love with.  My favorite character was Han Solo.  He was just unbelievably cool.  Cocky, arrogant, but a dude you would definitely want on your side in a fight.  I think that's would had me so hooked on "Escape From New York" years later because of the similarities of Han and Snake Plissken...except Snake was much tougher.  A few months later we moved to Nashville, Tennessee and my friends were made by two criteria - did they love Kiss and Star Wars?  If so, we were buds and I found a few that did.  I was in 3rd grade now and the figures started coming out.  I can't remember which one was my first figure, but I do remember how mesmerized I was with them.  The fact that I could have Luke and Vader have a light saber duel kept me occupied for days.  As more toys came out, I would do stuff around the house to earn money so my mom would go pick me up a new figure.  I'll never forget that feeling of coming home from school and seeing the package on my bed containing another figure from the movie.  Slowly I was able to build the primary cast and re-enact scenes.  Little did I know anything at that time about sequels, but I would learn shortly.

Fast forward to the summer of 1979.  I'm in between 4th and 5th grade.  I was playing little league baseball and one day our coach told us "ok guys, you win this first playoff game and we'll cookout at my house and watch Jaws and Star Wars".  See, he had a betamax and somehow got some black market versions.  I didn't understand how all that worked at the time but I didn't care.  One would think with that inspiration I would have gone out and knocked 5 home runs and single-handedly won the game....wrong.  I sucked...I was the kid who played the mandatory one inning stuck out in right field.  We won though, and went back to his house for hot dogs and movies.  We all watched Jaws because none of us had ever seen it.  One Star Wars was put on, the other kids started messing around outside or whatever, but not me, I was the only one watching it.  This was only the second time I had seen this remember.  My mom came to pick me up and I was like "hang on mom...they're about to blow up the Death Star!!!"  So she sat down and waited for Luke to complete his launching of the photon torpedoes.

And now it's the summer of 1980.  I was going to Alabama to see David, and was informed of a NEW Star Wars movie coming out called "The Empire Strikes Back".  It was too good to be true...more Star Wars!!!  So we go and I was again mesmerized.  The Hoth battle, the introduction of Yoda...all of it.  I still to this day feel bad whenever I see Han get encased in the carbon freezing chamber...I really do.  But the moment no one saw coming was the ultimate swerve in any movie ever made...ever.  I will never forget sitting there and hearing this-

Darth Vader - "Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father"
Luke Skywalker - "He told me enough...he told me you killed him"
Vader - "No....I am your father"

As Luke screamed "NOOOOOOO!"...oh man was that a defining moment of life.  I couldn't believe it!!!  It was that moment that taught me about swerves in stories...the big "a-ha!" moments...the unexpected twists.  Let me tell you how much that scene impacted me.  My dad had promised he would take me to see Empire again when I got back in town...he won't admit it but I know he wanted to see it after he watched "Star Wars".  Anyway, I got back into Nashville and was running around in the front yard with a homemade light saber and he pulls in from work.  Now I've been gone a week...do I say "hey dad" or anything like that?  No...the first thing out of my mouth when he sees me is "DARTH VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER!!!".  He's like "well thanks for letting me know before I saw it".  I swear, to this day I still get goosebumps when that scene plays...it honestly taught me to expect the unexpected, you know?  After Empire a new slew of figures came out.  The great thing was Christmas back when I was a kid consisted of new Star Wars stuff.  I had so many battles between the Empire and the rebels when I got my Millennium Falcon and Death Star it isn't even funny.  Oh sure, I may have been too old as a kid to play with that stuff, but I didn't care.  To this day I still have my Darth Vader head case filled with all my figures...and I only play with them when no one can see me...hahahaha...kidding.  The talk on the first day of school in 6th grade was all about Empire...no joke.  I wish I could describe what all that meant to us as kids...it was our life.  Now it was with Empire I learned about sequels...not because that one was a sequel, but it ended without closure so you knew another movie was coming.  So that meant I needed to know about the next movie...and this was before the internet kiddies...we just had to sit and wait.  And then the news broke...the summer of 1983 would contain the final installment of the trilogy - "Return of the Jedi".  Now I don't know if it was because I was growing up or whatever, but it didn't appeal to me the same way even though I did really like...just no staying power like the previous two.  However, there is one thing I will never forget -

Oh man...I'm 14 years old when I saw this and the image of Princess Leia in that gold metallic bikini is FOREVER etched in my brain.  People were talking about Ewoks or the duel between Vader and Luke and Vader dying and all that...but I'm all about Leia as Jabba's slave girl.  That had about as much effect on me as "Charlie's Angels" did in grade school...but when I watched Charlie's Angels I would be like "I'm feeling things and I don't know what it is" while absolutely being in love with Jaclyn Smith.  Carrie Fisher had a profound effect on my formative years.  You know, I always wondered why I dig dark hair so much.  I think it has to do with Jaclyn Smith and Carrie Fisher...I really do now that I think about it.  Man I was in love with Carrie Fisher when I first saw "Star Wars" so you can imagine what a boy at the age of 14 is going through when he sees this object of his desire clad in the outfit she was wearing.  Ok...no more on that...I'm 36 and it still gets to me...hahahaha.  Anyway, Jedi was good but not great...yet it did wrap everything up nicely.

In the 1990's George Lucas re-released the originals with added stuff and all that.  I really didn't care because I thought the originals were just fine.  I had my VHS box set and was content...yet I had to go see them in the theater.  I went opening weekend to see the original "Star Wars" re-release and was LIVID.  No lie...I was furious.  Why?  They changed one of my favorite movie scenes ever.  In the cantina when Greedo confronts Han Solo and Han blows him away was altered!!!  Lucas said he never liked how it made Han look so cold-blooded so he digitally altered it to where Greedo shoots first and Han fires in self-defense.  It ruined it for me...it really did.  After that I wasn't real excited about seeing Empire when it was released but I did...after it was out a few weeks.  And then when I heard Jedi had tons of music and dance crap added I skipped it.  Yeah, even I skipped a chance of slave Leia on the big screen...hahahaha.

With the internet being invented thanks to Al Gore (riiiiiight pal), I started learning about Episode I coming out...and was pretty excited.  It's the summer of 1999 when it hit, and I went to see it with some reservations knowing it wouldn't capture the magic of the originals.  I gave it a week to let the crowds die out a little, then me and this girl went.  Oh she knew I secretly was dying to see this thing.  When the lights went out and the music kicked on and the text started scrolling up the screen, she grabbed my arm and goes "It's here Bo...this is it" because she KNEW how much I really wanted to see this.  Now I know "Phantom Menace" didn't live up to expectations, but it wasn't horrible.  It did give me a little bit of that feeling of being a kid again...a little bit.  A year or so later when it came out on DVD I bought it, but then wanted the originals on DVD even though they weren't out, and the rumor was Lucas was only going to issue the re-releases on DVD which I didn't want.  Thankfully ebay was there and I scored some originals from Malaysia.  They're basically laser-disc copies but so what.  Episode II came out as "Attack of the Clones" and was MUCH better...but still didn't have that "wow" impact I was looking for.  This week however will change all that...I know it will.

I've read many reviews for the new one and can't find many that have a bad thing to say about it.  When Kevin Smith says it is awesome I know I'm in for a killer movie.  To get myself in the mood I watched all three of the originals this weekend, even still was able to appreciate Carrie Fisher in "Return of the Jedi".  I'll watch numbers 1 and 2 in the next few days leading to the weekend where it all comes together  - the birth of Darth Vader.  My hope for this movie is to be able to feel like a little kid again.  I know that sounds goofy, but Star Wars and Kiss was my childhood for the most part...which is why when I listen to old Kiss I love it...same thing with the original Star Wars movies.  I just want to feel young and innocent for a little while and not think about all the garbage in the world.  I know I wrapped everything up here pretty suddenly, but it's later then I thought it would be by now.  I just really hope this movie puts it all together...and from everything I heard it really delivers.  Think about it - Annakin turns to the darkside, slaughters all but a couple fo the Jedi Knights and becomes Vader...how could it be bad???  And just knowing that I get to hear new Darth Vader dialogue will make it all worth it because he has probably the best dialogue of any movie character ever.  Too bad Leia won't be in this one.  Natalie Portman is cute and all, but she could never top Leia.

Well, here's hoping that in the next Buzz I can tell everyone how awesome "Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" is.  I can't wait to see this thing, I really can't.

The circle is now complete...when I first met you I was but a learner...now I am the master.