One day at the movie rental store

Klonie Jordan

Two questions:

1.) What exactly is a Sith?

and

2.) Why is it seeking revenge?

If you stay informed on the new movie releases out there you know that George Lucas is about to release another Star Wars movie. This one is called Star Wars: Episode III — The Revenge of the Sith.

While I do enjoy a good science fiction yarn, I’ve never been much into this space-war baloney. I didn’t much care for the original Star Wars movie, mostly because it started with a screen of rolling text that read “Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away...”, or something like that. I kept expecting to see an intergalactic Goldilocks but instead I got a Princess Leah with a rams horn hairdo. Color me disappointed.

The Statler Brothers had a hit song out several years ago entitled “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?”

You probably don’t know who Randolph Scott was and you might not even be familiar with the song, but the concept was that the singer longed for a good old-fashioned cowboy yarn, something G-rated with an easy-to-follow plot and a nonviolent happy ending where the hero rides off into the sunset, maybe even playing a guitar as his faithful steed lopes down the dusty trail.

I love movies, always have and always will. I used to go to the movies a lot but I don’t get there much anymore because I just don’t seem to have the time.

So I have instead become a faithful movie rental-type person. I go to the movie rental place once or twice a week and grab me a movie or two and am even on a first-name basis with a couple of the people over there. One of them is named Vincent, an amiable and helpful fellow who tolerates my cornball attempts at humor. When I first met him and noticed his name tag, the conversation went like this:

ME: “Hey Vincent, wassup?” (People who wear name tags on their jobs have just GOT TO HATE IT when someone they’ve never seen before sees their name on their shirt and talks to them like they’ve known them forever).

HIM: “Hi, how you doing?”

ME: “Listen, Vincent. What if, hypothetically speaking, you bought yourself a nice van and you souped that thing up, you know, gave it a killer paint job and a new engine and made it a real lean, mean, eye-catching babe-magnet kind of machine. And say it was the fastest thing in town. You would just zoom up and down the street in that sweet ride (I later found out that people don’t say “sweet ride” anymore unless they’re middle-aged people trying to sound cool) and everybody noticed you and wished they had your vehicle. You know what they would probably say?”

HIM: “What’s that?”

ME: “They would say, ‘Look at that Vincent van go.’ Get it? Vincent van go. You know, like the famous artist — Vincent van Gogh? Hah-hah (me slapping my knee and drawing stares from other customers in the store, some of whom are calling directory assistance on their cell phones to get the number for the emergency psychiatric recovery unit — the guys with the nets and straight jackets — just in case).”

Vincent pretended to be amused.

I can’t really take credit for the play-on-the-name thing though because I sort of borrowed the technique from Eddie Murphy in Trading Places when he was talking about the snail who suddenly became rich and bought himself a big fancy luxury vehicle and had the letter “S” painted very large on the doors.

You know why a snail would paint a big “S” on his car doors?

So when people saw the car going down the street, they would look at it and say, “Man, look at that S car go.” Get it? S car go. Like escargot. The edible snail appetizer.

Oh man, that’s funny.

Trading Places. That was a good movie. I laughed and laughed.

And not a Sith to be found.

(Klonie Jordan is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger. You can contact him via e-mail at klonie@gaffneyledger.com)