Clone Wars -- "The Hidden Enemy" (Ep. 1.16)

-- Truth enlightens the mind, but won't always bring happiness to your heart."

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This review will be full of spoilers. You've been warned.

Many of the early episode of season one dealt with the individuality of the clones, that they were not all just copies. Each of them had their own thoughts and feelings that stemmed from their individual experiences. They had preferences that were unique to each of them.

And, yet, they were still all similar. They tended to think the same, respond the same, be loyal the same.

Which is why it's so surprising when one of them betrays the rest of the clones, his brothers.

The question, of course, is "Why?" "Why" is a very good question in this circumstance. Why would a clone, who are basically programmed to obey the Jedi, go so far afield as to become a traitor to his brothers.

The Sith do have something to do with it; Ventress has convinced the turncoat that he's a slave to the Jedi, and he wants to be free. He also wants his brothers (the clones) to be free, and he's willing to hurt them (kill them) to get them to see that they are slaves.

All of this brings up a very good question: Are the clones slaves? They, other than the traitor, do not feel as if they are slaves. They do, after all, have free will. After a fashion. Well, it's not that they don't have free will; that's the point in having a clone army: having troops that can make independent decisions based upon circumstances rather than just blindly following an order or a program the way the droids do. But, yet, the clones are genetically programmed to be obedient to the Jedi. There is still, though, a component of choice in their obedience despite the programming.

It's an interesting conflict that's brought up in  this episode. I hope they explore it further (because I don't actually remember if they do or not, though I did remember this episode quite vividly once I put started it up. It had an impact on me the first time I watched it, too.

The next question is whether the traitor, Slick, is justified in his actions, actions that resulted in the deaths of many of his brothers, whom he professes to love. The other clones are understandably horrified at what Slick has done and can't believe that he would both turn traitor and cause the deaths of his brother clones. Slick sees the deaths as necessary.

Neither of these questions is brought to conclusion in  this episode, which I think is a good thing. Difficult moral questions should be brought up and pointed out, but it is often a mistake to try to answer a question like that in a 22 minute television show.

Parcivillian -- Part 4 (a local color post)

Technically, I know the above photo does not qualify as a successful photo, but I really like how it looks, so it's the one you're getting. Well, and the one below, too.

The photos are from a recent performance by Parcivillian and, whereas I would love to talk about that performance and talk about the rehearsal session I sat in on (which was fascinating!), I need to finish up the interview. The part I skipped over. See, being a writer, I felt compelled to ask the guys about, well, what kinds of things they read. In relation to that, I found it really cool that the name of their band comes from a book (see last week's post).

Me: The next question I'm going to ask is going to seem, possibly, weird or offtrack because it has nothing to do with music.

Elliot: How many pets do you have?

Me: No... [And that did make me laugh.] I'm a writer, and a lot of the people who follow my blog are writers, so, as a writer, do you read and what do you read?

Someone, at that point, said, "Oh, boy!" but I can'd tell who it was.

Me: Or have there been any influential books you have read? Even if it's like The Monster at the End of the Book.

Delek: John Steinbeck is my all-time favorite writer. I've read every book he's written.

Me: What's your favorite Steinbeck?

Delek: Actually, Cannery Row. Or, no... I always forget the name. The one about the pirate. That's my favorite one. [There followed a discussion where we (Delek, Elliot, and I) tried to figure out the book, but none of us could come up with which one he meant. I'm still not sure, because I haven't read whichever one it is.] Bukowski, too. I love Bukowski. [I redirected back to Steinbeck through some questions about Steinbeck's King Arthur stuff, so the next comments are about Steinbeck.] Mainly the things about California. And people. How he writes about people. His knowledge of what makes people human is probably what attracts me to his writing.... He's probably my all time favorite writer, but I've read countless books, and I'm still reading countless books. Some stuff in science, some in history. I just read this incredible biography about Benjamin Franklin. It's like music; I read a lot of stuff. I used to read a lot of fantasy.

Me: I went through high school reading fantasy.

Delek: Do you know David Eddings?

Me: Oh, yeah! The Belgariad, after The Lord of the Rings, I think is the best fantasy series ever written.

Elliot: I read that, too.

Delek: I liked that. I liked that actually better than The Lord of the Rings. I liked his writing a lot.
[There was some more discussion about Eddings (during which I do entirely too much of the talking), after which Delek turned to Stav and said, "What do you read?"]

Stav: That's the weird thing; I actually don't read that much. And it's weird because I love writing lyrics to songs but, as far as books and novels, I just don't do it.

Me: They're completely different beasts.

Stav: Yeah, that's right. I did read the Harry Potter books when I was a kid, of course. Those, I loved. They were great. Read books for school. But I'm a very slow reader so, as far as school goes, I kind of struggled through the books, so that's kind of where I'm at. But I love poetry, even though I don't know many huge poets. In school, I loved analyzing and studying the poems. As far as literature, I love poetry, and that's what I try to do when I write songs.

Me: As a song writer, I'd be surprised if you didn't have some kind of attachment to poetry.
[There was a bit more general talk of poetry before we moved on to Elliot.]

Elliot: My all time favorite book is The Pastures of Heaven by Steinbeck.

Me: I haven't read that one.

Delek: That one's amazing.

Elliot: It is. It's the most incredible perspective I've ever seen on the human being. [There's some discussion about Pastures and what it's about.]

Me: Y'all are going to make me have to pick back up on Steinbeck after this.

Elliot: Lately, I've gotten into more novels. Actually, this is a funny story [points at Delek]; he taught me how to read.

Me: Yeah? That's cool!

Elliot: He gave me the first Harry Potter book and worked through about the first chapter with me, I think, and said, "You're on your own." Then I read the whole thing.

Delek: That is a funny story.

Elliot: Yeah... I got into David Eddings. I got into Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett...

Delek: Yeah!

Me: Good Omens.

Elliot: Exactly. [There followed a back and forth discussion of Gaiman and Pratchett.] Somewhere after eighth grade, I got really into Shakespeare, including the poetry. I love that stuff. [Then, there was a discussion of Hamlet.]

Interestingly enough, this all moved into a discussion of the book Parzival, which is the book they took they name from (which you know if you read last week's post (link above)), but they didn't mention the connection at that point. They (Elliot and Delek) just went on and on about how good it is. Stav will have to read it this year, so he hasn't had that experience of it, yet.

Elliot: Of course, I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Actually, I like The Hobbit better. I've read [it] three times.

There was some other discussion about The Hobbit during which I talked way too much, and that's where we left the discussion of reading and went back to music. It was great for me to talk to them about what they've read and what's influenced them, and, really, I may have to pick Steinbeck up again. It's actually something I've been meaning to do anyway, so...

And that's a look inside an up and coming band. I hope great things for these guys. They're music is great, and they were a pleasure to meet and hang out with. I'm sure you'll hear a bit more about them from me in the future. They have a concert coming up, so it's not too unlikely that there will be a post about that. Until, then, check out "Lonely Road."

Roller Derby! (a local color post)

My wife and I have very different relationships with skating, both roller and ice. I grew up skating. Roller skating, that is. There was no such thing as ice skating where I grew up in the south. The nearest ice skating rink was in Dallas, nearly three hours away. And, when I say I grew up skating, I don't just mean I knew how. One of the things I did during high school (and after) was work the recreation programs at my church, and we did roller skating. I often wore skates five or six hours a day, three or four times a week. More on Saturdays. Sometimes, I had to adjust to just walking around. I think it's like having "sea legs." Or something.

Despite the lack of ice skating in the south, I made a fairly decent transition to it. Ice skating is more like inline skating, I think, except easier. Yeah, I have not enjoyed my experiences with inline skates, mostly because they just hurt. It's the way they hold the ankles. Just trust me, okay.

One of my wife's early experiences with ice skating (this was just a few years ago) involved having some kid do a power slide into her feet and her bashing her head on the ice. Yeah, she hasn't been back out on ice again since then.

We do go roller skating sometimes, though, and it's a thing my wife wants to be better at. All of which is to say that my wife has a kind of fascination with roller derby, and it's a thing we've talked about going to see for years, especially since a local league was started about four years ago, the Resurrection Roller Girls. Well, we finally went to see a match!

If you noticed the picture at the top, that was on the skating floor where the seats were set up because, yes, there is seating on the skating floor. We, of course, sat in the front row right behind that sign. But no one ran over us. Not this time, anyway. The couple sitting next to us, who were veterans of going to see derby events, did tell us to take the warning seriously because, although it didn't happen often, having players fly into the crowd is not unheard of.

Talk about excitement!

Roller Derby, at least the variety that we were seeing, flat track, was different than we expected. It was slower and had a lot more strategy involved in it. It took us a little while to figure out, at least the parts that we did figure out, but it was very interesting once we did, and we picked up a few favorite players (from our local team, the Cinderollas) by  the end of the night. Our team lost, but it was still very exciting.

I'll be covering some more roller derby stuff coming up in the next few weeks, but, for now, I'll leave you with some pictures of the match we saw.

Clone Wars -- "Trespass" (Ep. 1.15)

-- Arrogance diminishes wisdom.

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The episode opens with Obi-Wan, Anakin, and company investigating the loss of communication with a clone base on a Hoth-like planet. Obi-Wan's comment that they're in the planet's tropical zone was amusing. They find the helmets of the clone troopers hanging from spears that have been driven into the ground. As they move on and find the same thing with droid heads at a Separatist base, my son said, "Well, this is weird and creepy," which is almost exactly what I'd been thinking, that they'd done a really good job of making the opening creepy. It's something you don't often see in Star Wars, and it was well done.

Of course, it didn't last very long before they got to the actual story, but it was a very well done opening.

The actual story has to do with the leader of the people from a moon in the same system trying to claim the planet as belonging to his people. The problem is that there is an indigenous population on the ice world, and the chairman wants them wiped out. He's trying to use the Jedi and the clones in a war against the Tal so that his people will have claim to the planet.

The other problem is that, supposedly, no one knew about the indigenous population until they came to find out why they'd lost communication with the clone base.

So I think there are some unspoken things going on in this episode, because it's the only way the episode actually makes sense. The first of these is that Chairman Chi Cho knew about the Tal already. Chi Cho is the one who insisted upon a base being put on an otherwise unoccupied planet and, apparently, one that is fairly worthless. Which makes you wonder why Chi Cho so desperately wants to lay claim to the world, but they don't ever discuss that. All of this reduces Chi Cho to a very two-dimensional character who wants all the things and wants all the things in his way to all the things to be killed.

However, the political maneuvering in the episode is interesting, especially following the assumption that Chi Cho knew about the Tal and was putting the Jedi and the clones in a position to go to war with the Tal for him. The episode explores the bounds of authority the Jedi have, and we get to see, primarily, Obi-Wan doing some political maneuvering of his own to bring about the resolution he wanted.

Politics is a big thing in the Star Wars universe. You don't really see a lot of it in the original trilogy, but you know it's there, shown in the dissolution of the senate by the Emperor. Politics is at the center of the prequels, though (and is probably a reason people didn't resonate with them as much), and it's interesting to get to see some of that, especially Jedi politics, in the Clone Wars series. Jedi politics are not much dealt with in any of the movies. Obi-Wan's skill in manipulating the situation is fairly impressive.

Another thing of note:
Somewhere between this episode, in which the Tal are not space-faring, and A New Hope, the Tal take to the stars, because there is a Tal in the cantina on Tatooine. Yes, a Tal, from a snow world, hanging out in a bar on a desert planet. I'd really love to know the story behind that!

Parcivillian -- Part 3 (a local color post)

Stav Redlich

Delek Miller

The pictures above are from a rehearsal session I went to with the band Parcivillian (Elliot was not there, but their temporary drummer was there). However, this post is not about that. This post is continuing the interview from last post. I just wanted to have different pictures this time.

So let's get back to it!

The other big question you probably have (well, it was the other big question I had) is, "Where did they get their name?" I think that's a valid question. It's one I'm always curious about, so I asked them.

Me: Where did you get your name and how did that happen? [There was a lot of laughter at that point.] Have you told this story to anyone before?

Stav: Yes, I have, recently.

Delek: Not really, though. Not many people.

Stav: Yeah, not many people.

Elliot: I've never told it to anybody.

Me: So it's going to kind of be a debut on my blog, then?

[Everyone agreed to that.]

Stav: We used to be The Turn, but we didn't like it, so we were looking for a new name. I was in my herbal studies class and said to my teacher, "Hey, we're looking for a new name for our band," and she was, like, "Ooh! Let me think about it. I'll get back to you."
[There was a lot of laughter about that and comments of "yeah, right" and the like.]
And I thought, sure, [she'll] get back to me with names like Leafblowers [and a lot more laughter about other names they thought she would come up with, but I can't actually make any of that out on my recording. You'll have to just trust me that it was funny. She actually came back with a list of ideas, some of which  he mentioned, but, again, laughter, so I'll pick up after that.] ...and then she says Parcivillian, and I was, like, whoa. That just clicked.

So what it is is there's this book called Parzival
[Note: Parzival is part of the King Arthur mythos and is another name for Percival. This particular book dates back to the 1300s. Also to note: This book is required reading for every student at their school.]
and what I've thought about it and what it means to me is that it's the story of the journey of a hero...

Delek: He's just an average guy.

Stav: He's also just a civilian, an average guy. Put those two together, you have Parcivillian, and that's what we're kind of striving to be, too. We're striving to be the best that we can be...

Elliot: Exactly.

Stav: ...and be as great as we can be, but we're still just three normal guys, just three guys that you can go out to coffee with and have a laugh.

Delek: Also, there's no one else in the world with a name like ours.

Stav: The short version is our herbal studies teacher came up with it.

Delek: Actually, it has a lot of meaning for us.

Elliot: It does.

Delek: That book represents Waldorf education, and that's something we've all been in our whole lives. And we've also had that teacher our whole lives. It's part of who we are. The name [Parcivillian] in some ways is just part of our journey through life.

Stav: And it stands for if we do get big, if we do make it, we don't want to be those assholes that blow off just anybody. We're still just people and we still wake up and brush our teeth every morning.

Delek: Which a lot of people forget. And a lot of people who listen to music forget, too. Everyone who plays music is just a normal guy. Instead of making your coffee, they're playing music for you.

After that was some discussion about how they were going to work out rehearsing with two of them going off to college. But Stav had some more words about his future plans which I want to include because some of it's about writing.

Stav: For me, just finish up high school. Keep writing. That's what I do everyday when I come home. Keep trying to have as many diverse experience as possible, because that's what influences my writing. You can't write just from sitting at home all day. [Emphasis is mine.] You need to have experiences and you need to experience emotion.

Elliot: And beauty.

Stav: And beauty. And that's what I'm trying to do all the time.

Me: I know lots of people who think they can write just from sitting at home all day.

Stav: No, you gotta go out into the world...

Elliot: You have to go out and sit at the coast for two hours and watch the sunset.

Delek: That's not just for writing lyrics. That's for writing songs, too. Like just music. I just go for a walk by myself and I start singing, and I'm like, "Let's work with that." Sitting at home is rarely that productive if you're just home all [the time].

And that brought us to the end of the interview. BUT! I'll be back next week with a part I skipped over but which may have been my favorite part of talking with these guys. I'm sure when you find out what it is (next week!) you'll understand.

Accordion Absence (a local color post)

We just had the 25th annual Accordion festival recently, but I don't have a lot to say about it this year.

The Great Morgani was, of course, there, but I only got pictures of him in this one costume, this year.

But I managed to get one of him with my daughter and her accordion teacher, so that was cool.

Speaking of my daughter, she did play again this year. I have a video. Actually, I have two, because she played two songs. I'll try to get them configured or something so that I can make them available on the blog.

Other than that, though, we didn't listen to much music. Not actively. My family mostly hung out together and my daughter accordion shopped. This year was the first year for that! We almost even bought one, but that's a story that I'm not going to tell, right now, mostly because it would be anti-climactic.

At some point after we were home, I said to my oldest kid, "I feel like we went to the festival, and I didn't listen to any music," and he said, "Yeah, me, too." Because most of what he did was watch his young cousins. He did, however, listen to the German guy who played some video game themes on his accordion.

So, anyway... The accordion festival did happen; I just don't have a big write up about it this year. I'm sure I'll do a better job next year. Because the only way I could do it worse than this year is if we don't go next year, but that's not actually very likely.

Clone Wars -- "Defenders of Peace" (Ep. 1.14)

--When surrounded by war, one must eventually choose a side.

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I suppose I'll start with the fact that George Takei does a bit of voice acting in this episode. It's too bad it's just a one-shot performance, because he has a distinctive voice that they really could have built a character around.

The previous episode, "Jedi Crash," poses the question, "Does fighting for peace justify fighting?" You should go back and read my review for that discussion. This episode carries that question one step further: If an aggressor is going to attack and kill you despite your declaration of non-violence, at what point do you defend yourself?

The show does not handle this question as well as it did the previous question, because, I suppose, of our American sensibilities, the writers couldn't help but provide an answer to that question. I think providing answers to questions like these is pretty much always a mistake.

So here's the scenario (and the rest of this will be all kinds of spoilery):
The Separatists invade the planet of the peaceful people that helped Anakin and his crashed team in the previous episode. The invasion has nothing to do with the Jedi, but the head of the village wants the Jedi out so as not to provoke the Separatists. He believes that he declares their peaceful intentions that the Separatists will leave them alone. However, the Separatists have come to test a new weapon against the peaceful colony, a weapon which will be the genocide of the people if it works.

Despite the fact that the Separatists lead an unprovoked attack against the village wherein they declare that the village is now under their control, the leader of the village insists upon not fighting back. He believes that they should all be willing to die rather than to fight. He also insists that the Jedi do not come to their aid, because it would be better to die than to have conflict and violence in an effort to protect them.

And this is where it falls apart when dealing with the question: not everyone in the village agrees with the leader. Rather than reducing this question to a personal decision, they try to make it one person's choice for a whole body of people. And, of course, the Jedi come to the aid of the village anyway, because Anakin is not willing to allow genocide to take place just to assuage the the beliefs of the leader of the village.

The whole thing ends with some of the village choosing to fight and, of course, the Separatists are defeated... And the leader comes to the Jedi and thanks them for their help. Everyone is happy. It removes the weight of the question completely.

It's not a bad episode, but it was bad handling of a difficult philosophical question.