Welshrogue

My wife is a good sport.

Not as in, ‘Is your wife a good sport? nudge nudge wink wink’ but more in the way that she understands that weekends were made for sport. Coming from the UK, I obviously have a built in enjoyment of football (or soccer depending on your point of origin). Being Welsh means I automatically love rugby, be it union or league. Since I moved over to the other side (of the Atlantic), I have become hooked on ice hockey. Throw in football (as in NFL), baseball, and maybe tennis and the weekend fills up quicker than the Titanic.

What makes the weekend truly special is that sometimes, you get a day like this….

Saturday

7:30 – Soccer game

10:00 – Soccer game

12:30 – Soccer game

2:30 – College football

7:00 – Ice Hockey

10:00 – Ice Hockey

Sunday

11:00 – Soccer game

1:00 – NFL

4:00 – NFL

8:00 – NFL

There are the weekends when the couch is my world, the remote control, my life line, and my wife doesn’t complain. She understands that men need sports the same way as women need… well whatever women need. My wife even attended an international rugby game with me and loved it. This is a seriously cool woman.

For those who are keeping count and want a laugh, these are my favourite sports teams.

Soccer: Liverpool, Cardiff City, Wales, Whoever is playing England

Rugby: Cardiff, Canada, Wales, Whoever is playing England

Ice Hockey: Colorado Avalanche

NFL: Oakland Raiders (stop laughing now)

Baseball: Detroit Tigers

College Football: Notre Dame, Alabama

I also play several fantasy teams for both NFL & NHL. It could be said that I love sports and luckily, my wife is a good sport about it.

In a galaxy far, far away…..

We all know the story of boy finds holographic girl, loses holographic girl, decides to rescue the real girl, rescues girl, kiss girl (which in hindsight is kinda icky), gets caught up in a rebellion, blows up big Imperial space station, gets medal.

This is the movie that really kicked Science Fiction back into the movies in the late 70′s – early 80′s. It spawned two great sequels and three crap prequels (well two crap and one really stupid, dumb and pointless). It generated the first truly marketed movie franchise. You can buy everything Star Wars, from T-Shirts and figurines to clocks and life size models of the cast.

Star Wars was the rebirth of all things Sci Fi after the fruitful 1950′s. It is responsible for movies such as Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Alien being made. It made Harrison Ford a superstar, who still has drawing power even now, years after his last big hit.

I once met the man who played Darth Vader, no, not James Earl “I am the voice of Darth Vader & CNN” Jones but Dave Prowse, who also played the Green Cross Code man in the UK. I asked him if there would be more Star Wars movies (this was after the original had come out) and he said yes, there was a plan for 12 movies. We got half of them and lets be honest, probably 3 too many.

Star Wars was the first movie that did fades from one scene to another in ways others than the usual fade to black. It would use a diagonal line moving across the screen, or fading to a pinprick. That made the movie feel different. Obviously the whole look of the movie was great, from the terrifying Sandmen to Darth Vaders private Tie Wing. This was a movie that made everyone stand up and take notice.

The plot is not original, some of the acting is as wooden as the scenary but the movie works because its a simple story, set against an intersteller battle and this was something that hadn’t been done before.

Right from the opening blast of music and the scrolling text, you can feel this is different. It has pomp and yet it is simply a space story. It has style yet the main characters, half the time, are dusty and dirty. Everyone has a favourite moment from Star Wars, if it is the famous “I have a really bad feeling about this” or the sight of Darth Vader spinning off into deep space, letting you know that he’ll be back. Maybe it was when the Deathstar blows, or maybe its right at the beginning when the text scrolls off into the distance. Whatever it is, Star Wars has become part of our culture. This makes it a pretty important movie.