Rebels: "A Princess on Lothal" (Ep. 2.12)

-- In our position, you take what you can get, Kid.

Fuuuuuccck! When the Empire deploys AT-ATs, they just drop them! They DROP them! That explains the legs on them, I suppose.

My son couldn't buy it, though. Me, I was willing to give them that one. It was when Kanan -- see picture above, which is really cool -- went running at the AT-AT with a lightsaber THEN cut right through its legs (yes, two of them!) as if they were butter that they lost me. I mean, they had just dropped the AT-AT from a spaceship and the legs had supported the drop! But Kanan can just slice through them as he runs by? I don't think so. Go back to Phantom Menace and how long it took Qui-Gon to cut through one of those doors on the Trade Federation ship. Oh, wait! He wasn't able to do it in time. AT-AT legs have to be at least that tough.

Anyway...

This episode features a certain princess, and it's a pretty decent episode. You know, except for the bit mentioned above and that Leia seems to be unable to connect with people. Hmm... Actually, I suppose that's just Leia, so it makes sense when Kanan tells her that she should talk to Ezra because she understands what it's like to be young and have a lot of responsibility that she kind of just fails at that.

This is Leia before she's a senator. At least, that's what I'm assuming because her father is the senator from Alderaan. It's interesting to see her from this perspective, but it's more interesting to see the Empire's view of Alderaan. It gives a little insight on why Tarkin becomes so willing to blow it up.

"Wait, why does she get to give orders? I don't get to give orders."

Rebels: "Relics of the Old Republic" (Ep. 2.04)

I'm a bit reminded of Howl's Moving Castle with this pair of episodes. The clones live in an old Republic tank, travelling slowly around the desolate planet they live on. There are things, like laundry, hanging off the outside of the tank. Being just a 20-minute show, they don't spend much time delving around the innards of their home, but there's just enough there to make me wish that they had. The fact that Gregor's kind of crazy just heightens that desire. I mean, who knows what kind of stuff he has stashed in odd corners inside that thing.

The only problem in all of this is that someone called the Empire. "Hello, we have a Jedi here..." As if Kanan didn't have enough against the clones already.

But it does give us a chance to see the clones scoff at and make fun of their first AT-ATs. That was a fun moment. Oh, come on, it's not anything people haven't said before, so it's good, I suppose, to see the creators making fun of their own thing. And what do AT-ATs care?

All of that, and a new Inquisitor is coming to town...

So far, season two is shaping up to be far superior to season one. The themes being introduced are much more mature and interesting than the rather juvenile season one. Which is not to say that I don't expect there to be more juvenile hi-jinks, because even Clone Wars had its more juvenile moments.

Don Quixote -- Part One (a book review post)

I'm going to start by pointing out the obvious: Don Quixote is a long book. My copy, which is in small print, has more than 1000 pages. This is the main reason why it's taken me so long to read it. Not that I'm daunted by long books, but I would look at it and look at my other books and think that I could read so many other books in the same time it took to read Don Quixote, and that's what I would do. [I had the same problem when I was a kid collecting Star Wars toys. There would be some big item I wanted, like the Millennium Falcon or an AT-AT, that I would save up money to get but, when I got to the store, I would look at that one thing and realize how many action figures I could buy with the same money and end up buying the action figures.] I'm sorry I waited so long to read it.

Don Quixote is a great book full of laugh out loud moments. Now, understand, this is a book that was written 400 years ago. What this tells me, which is something I already knew but this serves as confirmation, is people don't really change all that much. I mean, you have everything here, from Quixote and Sancho puking in each other's faces to political satire to ripping on other authors' popularity despite poor quality writing to statements about the human condition. The book is compelling and a surprisingly fast read. At least it was for me.

Just the basics in case you don't know them: Quixote (not his real name) is a minor Spanish noble in love with chivalry and everything to do with it, so much so that he decides to become a knight. Let me be clear about this: He just decides to become a knight. This would be like just deciding to become Batman. You go out and buy a Batman costume and a bunch of gadgets and start stalking the streets in hopes of finding bad guys to beat up. Essentially, this is what Quixote does. He puts on some armor, gets his nag of a horse, and hits the trails looking for bad guys to defeat in honorable combat. Needless to say, hi-jinks ensue. And a little bit of crazy. Okay, a lot of crazy.

The crazy is best summed up in the whole tilting-at-windmills scene but only because, if there's anything people know about Don Quixote, it's the bit where he tries to joust with the windmills. He thinks they're giants. This is far from the best or funniest scene in the book; people know about it because it happens early. It's like how everyone knows about the Lilliputians from Gulliver's Travels even though the first section, the section in Lilliput, is the least of that book.

Quixote's friends don't like what he's doing and decide that he's gone crazy and needs to be cured. Their method of curing him is to burn all of his books. Books, see, are bad examples. At least, the books about chivalry that Quixote loves are bad examples, so they decide to remove the source of his illness by burning the books. Of course, before they burn them, they go through them and keep for themselves all of the valuable ones or the ones they just happen to like. It's really pretty horrible.

It's also Cervantes method of dismissing authors he thought were hacks (for lack of a better word) and uplifting authors he admired. Including, or maybe especially, contemporaries.

Look, there's a reason that this book is still considered one of the greatest novels ever written. I wish I hadn't waited so long to get around to it. It's well worth the time even if it does look long.