I’m in the midst of a fight with my friend about whether the end of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi had a totally sweet ending or not. The issue at hand is whether or not Ewoks–the Teddy Bear-shaped warrior race that inhabits the forest moon of Endor–are totally sweet. I know for a fact that they are. Here’s why:

My friend, on the other hand, tows the line from Clerks that Ewoks are “a bunch of fucking muppets,” an unwanted invasion from Saturday morning televisions, a foretelling of the coming of Jar Jar Binks that ruins the last moments of an otherwise brilliant trilogy of epic cinema. The house in which I live is divided 50/50 into pro- and anti-Ewoks camps, so I’ve decided to take it to the people. Are Ewoks totally sweet or totally lame? YOU DECIDE.

Don’t think I forgot about my homeboys. I found you fellas out there a little someone special:

Creative Diva Looking for Ideal Man

This 5′6″ cutie has bi-colored eyes and can’t start a conversation to save her life, but she loves getting nasty underneath the sheets. She’s good at it, too, evidently: she has four kids, all of whom still live at home. Dude, now’s your chance to start that band.

If all of that wasn’t good enough for you, Creative Diva has an identical twin. Hot city, ain’t it? The undertone of this ad suggests that Ms. Diva is the “good” twin, while the other mysterious twin is the wild child twin. I say you find out what Ms. Diva looks like, then go find her swinging sista. Maybe she has less children.

Since Ms. Diva posted her ad in Missed Connections instead of the expected Women Seeking Men section, it’s clear that Ms. Diva is either: 1) innovative in her approach to man-hunting or 2) dumb. Either works in your favor. Go get her, cowboy.

Turns out two of the ‘top-50′ UFO photographs taken world-wide in the 1960s were snapped in Woonsocket:

“1967-Woonsocket, Rhode Island. A daytime photograph of a disk-shaped object was taken in East Woonsocket UFO contactee Harold Trudel. The photograph shows a slightly asymmetric hubcap shaped object with a small dome and aerial extending from the bottom. To even the untrained eye it looks like a fake, more than likely produced by suspending a model from a string. Trudel believes he is in mental contact with space people, who send him telepathic messages as to where and when they will appear. A la Adamski, probably a hoax.”

“1967-Rhode Island. This is a real classic looking UFO. Taken in Woonsocket, Rhode Island on June 18, 1967. The photo actually appears to be from a much earlier time period as it has a strange resemblence to an Adamski ship of the 1950s. Possibly a hoax, but I personally have no evidence to make the statement without reservation.”

No wonder so much of the anti-immigrant talk radio chatter seems to come from up thataway.

The March meet-up is tomorrow from 5:30-whenever at AS220:

See what stole the buzz at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in Feb – CNN & others rave about GyPSii.

A group of seasoned RI-based entreprenaurs get together again to grow GyPSii on a global footprint in the converging markets of mobile social networking and location based services – Mobile 3.0 – GyPSii the mobile lifestyle application. Meet Shane Lennon, SVP, Strategy & Marketing, Norm Olean, Director of Product Marketing & Vikas Singh, Director of Software Development and see a demo of GyPSii in action, share in the experience, see the latest features and network with the team.

You’re gonna get bombarded with stupid questions.

Tucker’s at Trinity Brew House at 8.

And more evidence that Terry desperately misses his gig at the GCB: He’s now hosting Tuesday trivia nights at Blue State Coffee — 300 Thayer St.

[Also, any of the dozens of you jokers with admin access wanna take credit for posting the old-man porn photo here a few minutes ago?] 

If you inherit a shit-ton of money and claim to be a progressive, you should probably use it for good. And one should never send people off to the can with quite so much glee as Spitzer has  often exhibited.

And, for Chrissakes, shouldn’t a former AG understand how wiretaps work?

Once again, intuition reins supreme.

The work of comic book superstar and weirdo old man Alan Moore has a pretty nasty history of being adapted to film. The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, while fun and action-packed, really made me not want anyone to do a movie adaption of his magnum opus, the Watchmen. But the production team for the movie slated to come out around this time next year just posted these freaking sweet promo photos on the movie blog. And you know what — maybe this movie won’t be so bad.

That being said, Alan Moore still refuses to see the movie and is passing along his royalties to another creator. Heh.

Which one is Ben Stein?  Here he is in the Projo, going off on Darwinism. And here he is on O’Reilly:

Stein gets this right (while taking on the tone of the godless evolutionist Christopher Hitchens):

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

But how does that jibe with broad assertions of Creationism, predicated on nothing?

That left-wing nutjob David Segal gave us his two cents about Nader a couple days ago. Looks like Chris Maisano of the Young Democratic Socialists (a fine organization of wonderful left-wing nutjobs) is basically in agreement.

Nader represents nobody but himself at this point in his career trajectory. He is not attached to any third party, and is not the main spokesperson for any kind of existing social and political movement. All of the social forces that brought some substance to his 2000 campaign, namely students and youth, for better or worse are clearly in Barack Obama’s camp. They will not be going anywhere else, even if Obama makes no attempt to stake out a more progressive position before the November election, assuming he is the nominee (a possibility that looks more likely every day). Nader simply does not appear to have any substantive reservoir of electoral support to draw from, rendering his effort little more than a vanity candidacy. In this context, support for the Nader campaign represents a withdrawal from actual politics and an empty moral gesture. Where the hell were you the past four years, Ralph?

Ralph, in case you didn’t notice, that was the sound of your base running out the door.

Here’s my semi-annual posting about the Green Party and instant run-off voting and such.

First off, there’s a pretty solid chance that the Green Party nomination will go to somebody other than Ralph Nader, who just announced his fourth consecutive run for the presidency. In particular, it could go to (twice-) former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. She might be a much more energetic and enticing candidate for many than a tired Ralph.

In 2004, back when I was a Green, a number of us (particularly Greens who actually held elective office) pushed back against Nader, and succeeded in denying him the party’s endorsement. (With which would’ve come dozens of ballot lines, including many in swing states.) (more…)

I’m going to do something different this week so, this column won’t take its standard gush-about-stuff-from-this-week format, because I’m responding to something Newbury Comics has done in their weekly comic book and graphic novel e-mail newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. For my thoughts on this week, you can check my blog.

Okay, so down to business. Publishing 10 best comic book titles of 2007 lists from your superexploited employees (I say superexploited because people who work in Newbury Comics don’t make a lot and tend to be people who chose the work environment because of an affinity for some superfluous product the store sells–i.e. comics, cds, hello kitty dolls–and so end up spending a huge portion of their limited income at the company store. I don’t even want to imagine the kind of debt I’d wrack up if I spent 5 days a week surrounded by comics for sale. Yikes. Sorry, huge tangent.) would not seem to be a task that the first week of February 2008 would call for. I know if I were left to my own devices I would never dream of publishing a list of my 10 favorie comics from 2007 this week, but Newbury Comics had to go and do that. What’s worse is that the lists provided by these guys (and they were obviously all male) demonstrate that they are even less equipped to provide such a list to the general public than I am. In the course of human events, there comes a time when I must cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war against Newbury Comics’ tardy best of 2007 lists. (more…)

If you’ve ever felt like doing a little exploratory surgery on your video IPod, here’s where to go. I have only one question for you Ryan, how did your IPod fall into the toilet?

It’s Tuesday and it’s time for LOADED! Join Kevin Leavitt, Handsome Pete and myself at the lovely  Local 121 for the very best in britpop, indie classics, new wave, glam rock and sweet new jamz. LOADED! @Local 121 10pm, free,