How do I get to Carnegie Hall?

A reader asks a good question:

How much should a 10-year-old trumpet player practice daily?

As in all such things, it depends. Such guidance should really be given with the advice of the kid's music teacher, who knows a lot better than I what kinds of material are being practiced, what skill level the kid has reached at this point, and so on.

For instance, 10 years old put a kid roughly in the area of 5th grade, which likely means they very likely have no more than one year of trumpet playing under their belt. That's not a lot. If they started in 4th grade and have been playing a year, then twenty minutes a day is probably reasonable. If they're just getting started this year, then twenty minutes a day is probably more of a goal to reach by the end of the year than a perfect starting point; for beginners, fifteen minutes is probably a good starting point. I would try to get to twenty minutes by the end of the year, and then try to reach 30 minutes a day by the time they've reached junior high. If they're still playing in high school, and if the kid is showing real interest in playing, then the target should be an hour a day. And all this might well be tossed out if it turns out that the kid has some serious passion for music, because then they'll want to practice more than any arbitrary goal anyway.

Studying a musical instrument is something that requires discipline, but it also requires motivation. It's easy for practice, especially for beginners, to settle into a drudgery that's just something to get through as quickly as possible. For most kids, music lessons start as a social thing, in school, as part of a band; the act of sitting in a room by oneself "practicing" isn't really something that a 10 year old kid has a great deal of experience with, so it's hard for them to get the habits down, and learn how to practice. My own experience was that I spent the better part of a year or two just flailing around, not really practicing much, until teachers and my older sister took some time and showed me how to practice. Giving a kid a piece of music and saying "Work on this" is well and good, but if the kid doesn't know how to work on it, then practice time becomes a boring exercise in playing through a piece badly a few times and then putting the horn back in the case.

I had a teacher once who had me working on some concerto or other -- maybe the Haydn, maybe the Arutunian -- and he said to me, "You can play this concerto just as well as Maurice Andre can. (Maurice Andre was one of the greatest trumpet players of all time.) You can play every note just as cleanly and precisely as he can. You know what the only difference is? He can do it faster than you can." This teacher taught me to slow a piece down to the point where I could play it perfectly, even if that meant slowing it down so much that it was unrecognizable. Then, he said, gradually increase the speed. If you find you can't play it perfectly at a certain speed, back it off again and work at it until you can. Eventually you get it so you can play it up to tempo. (And at the same time, this process develops all the various skills along the way so the next piece won't take so long to get to tempo.) That's what I mean by teaching how to practice. This guy, Mr. Rudgers at the Bristol Hills Music Camp, showed me a good way to work at a piece. It helped.

Another thing is that you never know if, or when, the motivation is suddenly going to strike. A kid might frankly suck at the trumpet for two, maybe even three, whole years before they wake up one morning and decide that they'd rather not suck anymore, or that Wow, that other kid is really good and hell, I can be just as good as that kid if I work at this and hey, maybe practicing isn't so bad in the first place. I know that can happen, because that's the way it was with me: I was a shitty trumpet player and got made fun of relentlessly by the other kids in band because I was shitty until I decided "OK, I am now going to work on not being shitty." That's not a decision you can make for your kid. Eventually everybody decides they're going to be good at something. If it's music, great. If not, then at least they'll hopefully learn enough to have a greater appreciation for music in the future. And besides, a person can be passionate about more than one thing. My active life in music is long over, and occasionally that's a source of rare regret for me, but had I stayed in music, it well may be that a couple of princesses never take to the stars. Who knows.

I'd also suggest that parents should not treat practice time as a daily home recital. All the parent should really do is enforce the agreed-upon duration of the practice session, and that's about it. Unless you're a musician yourself, don't say anything, other than an occasional "Hey, I can hear that your sound is getting a lot better!" Do not say anything like "Gee, Timmy, that one piece you played sounds like you need to work a lot more on it." Believe me, Timmy knows, and shame is not the emotion you want Timmy carrying into his interactions with music. And even if you do know a lot about music...back off anyway. It's really for the best. Parental expectation is also not a great thing to have to struggle with when you're also trying to remember the fingerings for D-natural and A-flat. (Along these lines, unless the instrument is the piano and therefore the thing is wherever it is, let the kid practice in their room or some other room with a door. Don't make them practice in the living room while you're there paying bills or watching the evening news or making dinner in the adjoining kitchen. Practicing should not be done with an audience, and the only reason practicing should be heard by parents at all is to know that it's getting done.)

Let's see, what else? Oh, yeah -- when I say "twenty minutes a day" or "an hour a day", I don't mean each and every day. Practicing seven days a week isn't wise, in my opinion. Now, passion may arise and then the kid will practice every day because they love playing, but even then, I'm of the view that a day off is good. It's good mentally, for what I hope are obvious reasons, but it's also good physically. Playing an instrument involves the use of muscles, and in quite a few cases (especially among the wind instruments), the muscle use is strenuous indeed. If you don't believe me, watch a great trumpet player sometime, or a horn player, or an oboe player, or any instrument. Making air vibrate the way it's supposed to inside a wind instrument requires making the muscles of one's face and neck do things that they don't normally do. Those muscles are collectively referred to by the word embouchure, and like all such muscle groups, they can be overstressed, injured through misuse, and worn out. The effects of a hard practice session or rehearsal on a trumpet player's embouchure are similar to the effects on a weight-lifter's muscles after a lifting session, so for the exact same reason, wind players should take a day off here and there, or if they do play, it should be something low-stress, like long tones in the low register. That's more the equivalent of stretching than exerting. I always found, though, that after a week of playing several hours a day (between group rehearsals and practice sessions), taking a day to not play at all (often Saturdays while I was in college) made me a lot stronger when I played again on Sunday.

For a 10-year-old, it's probably best to set a daily time as practice time, as much as that's possible. Eventually it will hopefully become sufficiently ingrained that they'll practice on their own, but to start with, the expectation that every day at, say, 5:30 they are to go practice for their fifteen or twenty minutes will help. Maybe let them not practice on Fridays or Saturdays, or some other weekday if they're on a soccer team or something like that.

And finally, maybe try not calling it practice. I once knew a drummer who said, "I don't practice. I play." The word "practice" just has the sound of required daily boring routine. Saying "Hey, Timmy, it's 5:30! You need to go play your trumpet for a while!" simply sounds better than "Hey, Timmy, it's 5:30, you need to practice." Practicing sounds like what you do until you're good enough to play. Maybe we'd have better luck with our kids and their music lessons if we enforced the idea that it's all an act of play. I have a notion that we call it practice because in that way we can trick our ever-so-Puritan American minds that we're not actually wasting time learning to play music, and I say, the hell with that. It's all play. Playing is good.

So let your kid play.

Something for Thursday

Want to hear something pretty today? Sure you do. Here is Sarah Chang performing Massanet's Meditation de Thais.

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

You know, I still have people telling me how much sentence-diagramming rocks? You people got issues, man.

Onto the next thing. By way of a writing update, here's some wisdom from Mr. King:

It seems to me that every task, even things we just love doing, has some component that we just don't look forward to and grind our way past because the entire task is enjoyable on balance, even if that one part of it stinks. For me and writing, it's proofreading. Full-on editing, I like, but proofreading is like a weeklong trip in the company of Ms. Dully McDullerson. Important and essential work, but I'm never gonna enjoy it. (Plus, reading the book basically twice in two months is tough, although there is a benefit in that I'm bursting with ideas for the future volumes in the series now, which is nice.)

So there's the question: what's the "dull dreary drudgery" part of some task that you otherwise love doing?

Well, there's one "Aerial Dancer" off the streets....

Well, thank God that's over.

Seriously, this was just a terrible season of MasterChef. There were some fun moments and some contestants I liked enormously, but as the season ground on, it really took on an air of relentlessly shuffling toward a preordained conclusion: the coronation of Courtney. That's pretty much exactly what happened.

Look, I wasn't there and obviously didn't taste the food, so it's entirely possible that Courtney really did get through the entire season of MasterChef competition without ever making a single misstep. But the constant adoration piled upon her by the judges, coupled with her unimaginably irritating displays of self-love, got more and more annoying with each successive episode, culminating in last night's finale. Joe Bastianich, of all people, turned in the most incoherent commentary of praise for Courtney of the season when he praised a dessert that Gordon Ramsay panned, saying that her dish of meringue cookies with some sauce and cherries with a bit of salt added "pushed the limits of a dessert". Umm...OK, Joe. The whole thing reeked of desperation on Joe's part to continue the season-long tongue-bath of the most irritating contestant in the show's history. (And that's saying something. You know I love you, Joe, but ye Gods.)

Of course, none of that might have even come to pass had my favorite contestant, the borderline-manic Leslie, not mistaken salt for sugar in his final cake. Oops. (Although this confuses me -- would a cup of salt instead of a cup of sugar result in a cake that one can chew thoughtfully and then swallow with a look of puzzlement, as Gordon Ramsay did? I've no idea, but it seems to me it should have resulted in a case of "GAHHH get this out of my mouth ptoooie!"

Anyway, as I say, thank God that's over. This does mean, however, that we're going to see Courtney sporting her insufferable Dolores Umbridge-in-her-twenties act at least once next season, so there's an episode I'll make sure to attend with lots of reading material. I'd also like to see the show get away from the team competitions, particularly the ones where they run a kitchen someplace. I watch Hell's Kitchen to see chefs trying to run a kitchen; I don't care if any of these "home cooks" can run a kitchen. But if they're going to have team competitions, I'd like the losing captain to not be able to save themselves from elimination. That's pretty bogus, and it did provide the moment the cemented Courtney as an asshole in my opinion this year, when she saved herself after helming the losing team; she said something like, "Well, our problem was clearly not the fine leadership I provided, so I'm saving myself." Ugh.

So anyway, there's that. Not the best year for MasterChef, alas. Not every season can have the greatness that is Monti Carlo, but still -- did I have to endure the cooking competition show's answer to Boston Rob?

(Don't forget to delurk, people! Say hello! Say something!)

Unlurkify thyselves!

I haven't done this in a while, so here goes: it's Delurking Week! Say something. For the next few days I'll open things up to anonymous comments (although if spammers start swarming, I may need to cut things off early). I'll still leave the moderation on and CAPTCHA thingie on, though. One can't be too careful.

Say hello!

(No politics, please -- just spread some good cheer. Thanks!)

What a bunch of A-holes.

If I were to offer a capsule review of Guardians of the Galaxy, it would be this: It's the first movie that I have seen twice in a theater since Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. That means something, folks. I don't get to the movies very often anymore, because it's become a significant enough expense that it has to be something I most definitely want to see. Yes, there have been movies I've wanted to see again, but until now, none of them actually managed to get me to again.

Guardians of the Galaxy did.

Like many a person who went to see this movie, I never really heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy until I learned that this movie was in production. I did read some of the comics on a catch-up basis, and I enjoyed them, although I admit that I was a bit confused as to how this property would translate to the screen, especially being a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

OK, for those out there not up on this jargon at all, here's a brief explanation. Marvel Comics, like DC Comics before it, had a bunch of successful comics featuring popular superheroes. They quickly realized that they could make their entire line more successful if they had their superheroes team up with one another on occasion, which meant therefore that the Fantastic Four existed in the same "world" as Spider Man. Over time, the Marvel Universe got really big, with lots of heroes and hero-teams doing heroic stuff all over the place.

Interestingly, some of these titles had their own internal "mythologies" that were also part of the larger mythology, and there were differences in focus, too. Spider Man pretty much stuck to New York City most of the time, but then you had the X-Men occasionally going off to space, and the Fantastic Four facing giant cosmic threats, and so on. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a filmed approach to this same notion, albeit with scaled down numbers of characters. Here, too, you have different things going on: Iron Man seems to exist in the techno-spy-thriller arena, whereas with Thor we have a hybrid of Norse myth and space opera. And with Guardians of the Galaxy, that's straight-up space opera.

So that's why I gravitated to Guardians of the Galaxy, obviously: because it's a space opera, straight-up. Aliens, spaceships, ray guns, lost artifacts on deserted planets, space prisons, a bad guy who apparently sits on a rock in space as he plans, a peaceful happy planet under threat of annihilation by a villainous alien who has found a cataclysmic weapon. To quote the movie's talking raccoon, "Oh, yeah."

And yes, this is a movie that sends you out into the night quoting a talking raccoon.

When I was reading comics, the X-Men titles were written by Chris Claremont, who was good at creating a big sense of scale with very high stakes in his stories. Guardians of the Galaxy, as a franchise and now as a movie, seems to me best described as a good Chris Claremont story...as directed by Chuck Jones. Guardians of the Galaxy is full of heart and good cheer, creating a cast of flawed characters who have their own reasons for feeling like outcasts, and who then have to come together in order to save everybody else. What this film does in terms of its characters is a pretty amazing achievement.

The tone is struck early on. Before we even get the flipping-comic-pages Marvel logo, there's a scene in which a ten-year-old boy has to say goodbye to his dying mother minutes before a spaceship comes to whisk him away. After that we cut to this same kid, now an adult, landing on a mysterious, damp, and rocky planet. He's clearly looking for something, but before he does, he has one bit of business to attend to. He puts on a pair of earphones from 1985, clips an old Walkman to his belt, presses "play", and as the strains of "Come and Get Your Love" by Redbone take over, he enters the cave in a sequence that feels partially reminiscent of the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, only our hero, Peter Quill (who reasons we won't find out until the very end of the movie also calls himself "Starlord") seeks out the artifact he's been hired to find. Only he does it in dance-step to the song, kicking rodents out of the way to the beat and then grabbing one to use as a prop microphone. That's what kind of movie this is: a space opera about a thieving outlaw whose emotional center is the mixtape his mother gave him years before.

Guardians of the Galaxy does very little exposition that isn't part of something else happening, which is part of how it seems shorter than it is. The film has very few infodumps, and really, it only tells you exactly what you need to know to understand what's going on. Other than that, it's illuminating to look back at the end and realize just how much the filmmakers have held back. Is Groot's species ever named? His planet of origin? Rocket cries that he didn't ask to "be made", but who made him? We're never told. Do we need to be? Probably not, because who hasn't known what it's like to carry around a burden that's all your own, that nobody else understands?

A lesser movie might have given long flashbacks to some, or all, of the characters. We might have seen Peter Quill growing up on Yondu's ship. We might have seen something of a raccoon being made sentient and, therefore, a freak. We might have seen where Groot comes from, and we might have seen Drax's family being killed. We don't see any of those things, because the film's script keeps its eyes on the prize the whole way. That's not to say the story isn't complex, because it is, but the story is very tightly constructed. Each thing leads logically to the next thing that happens, and each character's motivations are mostly clear. There is some muddiness, mainly in the villains' backgrounds and motivations. No one, in any of the Marvelverse films, has yet asked the million dollar question, "What does Thanos want with all the Infinity Stones?" I imagine we'll get there eventually.

What this film has to do, along with all the other Marvelverse movies, is set itself into that larger universe where this smaller story is a part of something much bigger that's going on. The Marvelverse films all seem to be slowly laying the foundation for an eventual cataclysmic encounter with Thanos, and I wonder how that's going to go – is there a Really Big Movie slated for, say, 2019, in which everybody shows up? I suppose we'll see. For now, we've got this one. One thing that was always so great about Marvel comics is that they always acknowledged, at their best, that they took place in a larger world, with which the main characters or heroes had to interact. That was always what informed their desire to do good, motivating all the world-saving they did. And there is a larger world in this movie, with real lives that intersect with those of our main heroes.

What I ultimately liked most about Guardians is that it tells a story depicting a cheerful world. The main planetary setting is bright and sunny, and even some of the other "darker" locations aren't entirely dystopic horror shows. This movie, along with the two recent Star Trek films (even with their faults) make me wonder, and hope, if a shift toward a brighter tone of storytelling may be in the offing.

Guardians of the Galaxy is ultimately, for me, a movie that gets everything just about completely right. It's hard for me to find a real flaw in it, at least, anything that really stands out. I love how the team comes together – the criminals that get arrested together end up staying together out of sheer desperation, only admitting toward the end that there's any kind of factor involving liking one another. Peter Quill becomes a leader without ever having any Big Moment In Which He Confronts His Own Darker Nature, which I appreciate. That's what this movie does so well: it's a nearly perfect example of what might be the most often-cited bit of advice for writers.

Show, don't tell.

Guardians of the Galaxy shows things. It doesn't slam on the brakes to tell you things.

A few random thoughts:

:: People who whine about "soulless CGI effects" whilst pining for the good old days of rubber costumes and model spaceships really need to shut up after this film, which proves, I think, that effects themselves either have "soul" or don't on the basis of the screenplay, and not the effects. The most emotional moments in this movie involve a purely digital character whose dialogue consists of just five words. From now on, if you want to talk about soulless CGI, there's the door. Talk about soulless writing.

:: Space opera movies should be a visual treat, and this one is. It has a look all its own, with swirling clouds of space gas and ships with neat geometry.

:: There are a couple of scenes where Rocket responds to Groot as if he's said something other than "I am Groot", which makes me wonder – is this like a Han-and-Chewie thing, where Han can totally understand Chewie's grunts? Is Groot actually saying things, or is Rocket just plugging in meaning where he sees fit? Interesting.

:: Tyler Bates's score didn't impress me the first time I heard it (before I saw the film), but when heard in the proper film order, with the classic rock songs mixed in, it becomes a very entertaining listen indeed. This isn't great film music by any means, but it's fun to hear. Those songs are perfectly chosen, by the way; each one hits the mood dead-on when it comes up in the movie. If you want to program a playlist for the score and songs in proper order, someone on the FSM boards figured this out. I knew there was a reason I still visit that site a couple times a week!

:: Great details abound in this movie. When the Guardians do their stereotypical "slow heroic walk down the corridor", Gamora is yawning, Rocket is adjusting his nethers. Also, there are so many tiny character moments that add up to great stuff. Frequently these involve Rocket, such as when he throws a damp blanket on Drax's self-pity, a favor which Drax returns at the end of the film when Rocket is suffering his own brand of heartbreak. And notice Rocket's response: it's like he's never had his fur stroked at all, which he probably hasn't. When Gamora starts to dance, it's not a full-fledged dance, just a slight rhythmic swaying. And when Peter gives Yondu the orb, it's interesting to me that Yondu waited as long as he did to see what was inside. Judging by his smile, he seems to have known – and not only that, he seems to be just a little bit pleased. Yondu is presented as some kind of father figure to Quill, and there’s something in his smile that says, “Yeah, that little shit turned out all right.”

:: Yondu’s pretty interesting on his own, and that’s something I always liked about the Marvel comics: the way the heroes could fight the villains one issue and have to team up with them the next. The line between hero and villain is more interesting when it’s moving around, isn’t it?

:: So where do the Guardians of the Galaxy go from here? In all honesty, I hope they stay where they are: out on the far-flung frontiers of the Marvel Universe, only having the briefest and most tangential contact with the rest of it, if any at all. It’s a big Galaxy, after all; somebody’s got to guard it!

I'm not interested in being "normal".

Let everybody else be "normal". I ain't got time for that! I'm just gonna keep right on being weird, thank you very much.

Some Random Pictures From Tumblr

It's a lazy morning and I'm trying to jumpstart my brain...meanwhile, here are some nifty pictures....

Costa Del Terry! Pegulaville! Marina del Kim! Otisburg....Otisburg?!

Lots of football news of late. Not all of it is depressing, but quite a lot of it is.

:: The most positive story is that, pending NFL approval, Terry and Kim Pegula are set to become the new owners of the Buffalo Bills. This is, well, huge. Worrying about the team's future viability in Buffalo has been one of this region's favorite pastimes for years, going all the way back to the late 1990s, and maybe even earlier than that. Ralph Wilson fueled some of this by deftly "convincing" local officials to pony up lots of money to renovate county-owned Ralph Wilson Stadium, and by stalwartly insisting right up until the end of his life that he had no secret backup plan to secure the team in Buffalo. Wilson maintained until he died that the team would be put up for sale to the highest bidder, and that's what happened.

It didn't help, in the late 1990s, that a bunch of NFL teams really did move for more lucrative cities: the LA Rams went to St. Louis, the LA Raiders went back to Oakland, and the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore. That last, however, did give the league enough pause to promise Cleveland an expansion franchise in a couple of years, and they even went so far as to declare the newly moved team a new franchise in terms of the NFL record books, so the Ravens can't count Jim Brown among their historic greats. Nobody ever thought the NFL would make any such motion to keeping football in Buffalo, and then the team started playing one game a year in Toronto, supposedly to help make money, but which felt like the first step in what would be a long, slow move.

The Pegulas are enormously wealthy, having made their fortune in the natural gas industry. Interestingly, no one around here had even heard of the Pegulas, despite their ties to the region, before Pegula announced his desire to buy the Buffalo Sabres a few years ago. It was the scenario that only the most optimistic people dared voice: "Oh, I don't worry about the team. When Ralph dies I'm sure some rich guy who used to live here will step up and buy them to keep them here." Well, that's pretty much what happened.

Is it a good thing that the Bills are staying? Sure it is. I'm not nearly as convinced that the team is as essential to the local mindset as some are. If the Bills moved, it would be a body blow to the psyche around here, but things would heal, in time, as they always do. I don't think the team leaving would be anywhere near as bad a blow to the economy as many do, but it wouldn't be good news, certainly. It is nice to know that people around here no longer need worry about that. The Pegulas' ownership of the Sabres has been a bit rocky thus far, and there's the fact that their fortune springs from fracking for gas, which is less than environmentally sound. But, for good or ill, the Bills are here. My personal fandom may be on the wane, but that doesn't mean I wish for them to leave and break the hearts of a lot of people I know. I do wish that the football team didn't command so large a presence in our community's emotional life, but that's the way it is.

:: I see that Penn State students still think that they and their football team were the real victims. I couldn't invent a more perfect example of the degree to which a sport's emotional hold over its fans can become toxic if I tried.

Someone on Metafilter pointed out the following: "In NCAA math, l'affair Sandusky (2-year bowl ban, 20 scholarships) is now officially less egregious than Reggie Bush taking money (2-year bowl ban, 30 scholarships)." Child molestation is second to a player taking money he shouldn't have taken. But then, that shouldn't be surprising, because...

:: ...Then there's Ray Rice, whose wife-beating was originally judged by the NFL to be not-so-bad a violation of its internal morality as smoking marijuana. Of course, then the rest of the video got released, forcing the NFL's hand because of public relations reasons.

It interests me to see the NFL taking such a hit over this one, to the extent that Roger Goodell himself is feeling a lot of heat. Quite well he should, since it's absurd to think that the NFL was genuinely surprised to see the entire video recording or Ray Rice punching his wife. (I continue to be confused as to why no charges have been filed in this matter. Obviously I'm no expert, but in a case like this, can it really be that if his wife declines to press charges, none will be filed? Is that really how it works? "We have video of a crime being committed, but the victim says 'No', so we don't pursue it"?!)

One person said on Twitter that it's important to remember that the NFL didn't act when they saw the video, they only reacted when you saw the video. That's right, and it's saddening, but again, not terribly surprising. What I think happened here is that Goodell figured the national media would pretty much do the same thing they did when he "investigated" the New England Patriots during the Spygate scandal: just say "OK, Mr. Goodell, thank you for your time" in response to his "I've investigated and handed down a punishment and we're done here." This time, though, it wasn't the national media that was driving the story, but rather TMZ, an outfit somewhat notorious for not really giving a shit.

I hate that it takes a woman being beaten to make it happen, but I'm always happy to see the NFL's image get tarnished a bit. The league holds too much power and mystique in this country, for what is essentially a rich kid's club.

:: The Bills are 1-0 and hosts Miami Sunday. Go Bills, squish the fish! (I know, they're not fish. "Pummel the mammals" doesn't do it.)

Something for Thursday: In Memory

It's amazing how banal it can be, when we learn the world has changed. I was sitting in a Tim Hortons drive-thru.

The following piece of music is the first music I was able to listen to after those events. I performed this piece with the concert band in college, as a freshman. It's a deeply powerful and meditative work that always seems to me an exploration of death and the vigor with which life struggles against it, with hints of liturgy and hymn throughout. I actually uploaded this piece some years ago, but when I consolidated some accounts, this piece went away, so here it is again: "Elegy", by Mark Camphouse, performed by the United States Marine Band.


The following is a story I wrote a month or so after 9-11-01. I repost it here every year on this date.

"The City of Dead Works"

There is never any rest for me, the Ferryman of the Dead.

I pole my barge across the black waters and up to the pier. So many wait this time, many more than usual. I wonder what has happened, what event has sent me this many. "Come aboard," I say. "I will take your coin for passage." One by one they file past me, each handing to me the coin that they never knew they had. It is the coin which determines where they shall be taken to rest, its metal shaped and determined by life. The coins of these dead are gold, every one of them purest gold. Six thousand come aboard my barge, and each has passage for the farthest and greatest of destinations. In that moment I know that something truly dark has happened; the gold coins are always forged in moments of darkness. I am the Ferryman. I can give them no answers to what lies behind their haunted, questioning eyes. I can only take them on this, the last of all journeys.

When they are all aboard I take up the pole and push away from the pier. The barge always feels the same, no matter how many stand upon its decks. Whether six or six thousand, it is all the same to me. I guide us out onto the River Styx. Some of the people look worried, but there is no need for fear. This river can do them no harm. They are already dead.

This is to be a long journey, I know – it always is, to this destination. As I guide the barge through the black waters, I look on the faces of those who have come to me. As different as these people all look, they all have the same expressions of shock, disbelief, and withering sadness. Here is a man of business, talking into a cell phone. He is trying to call someone, anyone, who will tell him that it’s all a dream, that it didn’t happen, that he didn’t die in a blast of fire, smoke, glass and steel. There is a mother who is explaining to her daughter that they won’t be going to Disneyland after all. And there, a group of firemen stand together, realizing that soon they will meet all their brothers-in-arms who have gone into the infernos before them. So many now – colleagues once in business and now colleagues in death, people who have never before met but now have the gravest thing in common. As the current takes hold, I look back at the pier. There are more gathering there. There are always more. They will wait. Time does not exist for the dead.

"Please," a young man says as he turns to me, "I have to go home to my daughters."

"You are going home now," I reply. "To the home where all eventually return." Two black rocks slide past on either side, the rocks that mark the passage of the circling Styx.

"This can’t be," a woman cries out. "My mother needs me."

"She will be with you soon enough."

"When?" Her voice pleads, and yet there is no solace that is mine to give.

"I cannot say," I reply. "The Ferryman has no hand in Fate."

The tears come then, tears from the six thousand that run over the gunwales and into the river which has been fed by tears for centuries. All tears are born in the River Styx.

"Where will you take us?" someone asks.

"To the place you are promised," I answer. I recall the words of a poet: Will there be beds for all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.

One our left we approach the Hills of the Damned, an endless stretch of shattered lands which reach away into the blackness. The waters echo with the cries of all those who have been taken to the Hills for the agony they have brought on the living. I consider the bag of six thousand gold coins, and I realize that I will have to journey to the Hills this day. There will be a person, perhaps more, who will pay me with a coin of black tin; but not on this journey. As the hills recede behind us, the unending cries of the damned become fainter and fainter until they are drowned out by the lapping of the waters upon the sides of the boat and the marker stones that we pass. The six thousand fall silent, each realizing that it is not a dream. I would offer solace, but as ever I cannot. I am the Ferryman.

We come around a particularly dark bend, and before us lies a very wide expanse of water, as if the Styx has become an ocean – which in some sense it probably has. And beyond that expanse are the thousands of twinkling lights that I have come to know so well. One man, a fireman, sees them too. "What is that?" he asks.

"It is the City of Dead Works," I reply. The lights of the city glow on the horizon, and every one of the six thousand turns toward them as the Styx impels us onward. As we come ever closer to the city, the glittering lights reflect off the black water.

"I don’t understand," someone else says. "The City of Dead Works?"

"Aye," I reply. "Behold!"

From behind us, golden light: the Sun of the Dead is rising as it always does when the dead come near the City. Above us the firmament is turning purple, then blue; soon the light of the Sun will illuminate the City of Dead Works. As the sky lightens, the true scope of that city becomes plain: it stretches away into the land, farther than any eye could see. Not even the highest-soaring raven, cavorting in the breezes and zephyrs of the dead, could take it all in. It is bigger by far than any one city ever built by the hand of men, because it encompasses some part of all of them. Perhaps it is bigger than all of the cities ever built. Now the sun’s first rays come up behind us, and the first buildings can be seen down by the water.

"That one looks Egyptian," a woman says.

"The Great Library of Alexandria," I tell her. "Once the greatest repository of learning the world had ever seen, now only a memory to the living and a reality only to the dead."

A man points to a building high upon a rock. I nod.

"The Temple of Solomon," I say.

"There are ships in the harbor," says another. Thus for him I name the ships: Arizona, Indianapolis, Lusitania, Bismarck, Wilhelm Gustloff, Cap Arcona. And many, many others. I scan over the impossibly vast city and spot Dresden, as it was; and beside it the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And how many smaller villages, tucked into the hills beyond the City? None can say. The Sun of the Dead shines upon those hills now, and the great stone statues in the likeness of Siddhartha Gautama.

"I don’t understand," a young man says. "Why this City? Why here?"

I only shake my head as we continue to float by the City. I do not point out the fairly small, nondescript office building that sits near the water. It is not a particularly remarkable building; nor was it, really, until the fuse was lit. The six thousand almost don’t recognize it.

Almost.

Not one word is uttered as we slide past the Alfred Murrah Federal Building. Then we turn away from the City of Dead Works, and head again down the waters of the Styx toward distant hills and the place where these people will join their brethren.

"Who lives in that city?" It is a priest in a fireman’s coat.

"No one lives there," I tell him. "The City of Dead Works is not for people. It is for the buildings and the ships. It is for the books and the music, the sculptures and the paintings which are gone forever. It is for everything destroyed by craven people in the name of foolish wars, for everything judged forfeit in the face of transitory desires."

The Styx takes us into the Golden Hills. Soon we will be there, and the six thousand will go where they belong. And then the Styx will complete its circle, taking me back to the pier where more dead await.

"We will be there soon," I say. "Soon we will be at the Elysian Fields, where all heroes go – for that is what you all are. It is what you have bought with your lives, with the shaping of your coins into gold." No one replies. We near the last bend now, and before us lie the Elysian Fields, where peace reigns and where heroes dwell; where all is light and voices are always raised in song. The Sun of the Dead shines warmly on Elysium.

But they do not see it. They, the six thousand, all gaze back behind us upon the City of Dead Works. It will soon be behind us forever as we round the last bend of the River Styx into Elysium. I know they all need one last look upon that City, and I do not grudge them that. For myself, I do not look back; the eyes of the Ferryman are ever forward. But I know. I know that the City of Dead Works is different now. I know that it has changed. I know that the people who come with me now to Elysium, the dead around me, look back on the two soaring towers of steel that now rise above the City where there had been no towers before.

I know these things.

I am the Ferryman of the Dead.

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Your favorite word of four or more syllables. GO!

Overdyed Overalls

So, over the years, my obsession with overalls has led me to the realization that they're not really known for color. There really aren't a lot of options: blue, mostly. Hickory stripe, too. White is also an option, but the problem with white is that it's used almost exclusively in "painters" overalls, which for some reason means that the bib pocket is an odd triangular shape, which doesn't thrill me all that much.

When I branched out into Carhartts, that yielded a few new colors: black, a couple shades of brown (although I don't own the lighter shade of brown yet), and a hunter-green pair. This last took some searching, as Carhartt doesn't make the hunter green anymore. Key used to make overalls in a fabric called "herringbone", for which I've been prowling eBay, but what I've really wanted was a nice pair of overalls in a burgundy red.

Which eventually led me to remember this old blog post by a fellow traveler in the world of overalls, and I thought, "Hmmmm...I could do that!" For some reason, I never thought of just dyeing a pair into a new color. Whenever I saw some different color of overalls out there in the world, I always assumed for some reason that the company made those for a while but then they stopped...not unlike this pair of Key overalls Anne Hathaway rocked in the movie Love and Other Drugs:

I figured, at some point Key actually made overalls like that, and hey, for all I know, maybe they did. I own a pair of black Dickies that are essentially overdyed hickory striped overalls.

But after learning, and remembering, about overdyeing, I set out this weekend to do just that. I used three hickory-striped pairs, which looked liked this to start with:

My dyes are from Dharma Trading, and I followed their instructions for tub-dyeing. I did two colors: Maroon (two pairs) and Forest Green (one). I was hoping for a burgundy outcome on the maroon pairs; the idea is that the white stripes take on the dye color while the blue just darkens a bit. The entire process took a few hours, from immersion...

...to rinsing.

The results? Well, the maroon dye didn't turn out burgundy so much as purple, which is not quite what I was looking for. But I do like the result:

That last photo actually makes them look more purple than they really are, but they're pretty purple. Luckily, I like purple!

The forest green pair looks pretty nice, though:

I'm pretty happy with those.

I suspect the purple/burgundy ones will look better with dark solid tops; pairing them with tie-dye will likely make me look cartoonish. Well, more cartoonish than usual!

I won't be doing this often; I'm not looking for an entire rainbow of overalls in my wardrobe. But a few new options is nice, and the process was fun to do.

Banging out the Words: A Writing Update!!!

So, where do we stand on various projects? Here's where!

:: Princesses In Space!!! (not the actual title) is whisking right along toward November release. I've already had one proof copy come back with some mark-ups, so I'll be able to fix those errors and then generate Proof Copy #2, which I will then go over with a fine-toothed comb. Once that's ready, the book will be locked.

Meanwhile, October will see some exciting stuff! On October 1, the book trailer (revealing the ACTUAL TITLE!!!) will go live. A week or so later I'll unveil the cover art, and then the next three weeks after that will see the release of sample chapters. Then, boom -- the book will be available for purchase, likely on Tuesday, November 11. (I was going to release on November 9, but after consideration, I don't want to release on a Sunday.) After that I'll get the book ready for Kindle release; that will go live a couple of weeks later. Other platforms will wait until after the new year starts.

(A word of warning: I am likely to be obnoxious in October and positively insufferable in November!)

:: Princesses In SPACE!!! II: The Wrath of the Princesses (not the actual title) will get its second batch of major edits in either December or January, which will be followed by formatting. Princesses II will likely be out Tuesday, November 10, 2015.

:: I'm leaning toward making Princesses In SPACE!!! III: The Search for the Princesses (not the actual title) my NaNoWriMo project for this year. I need to get a draft written before the end of April, so I can launch the edits in August 2015. Princesses III's target date is November 15, 2016 (a week after election day that year).

:: Just in case you're wondering, I'm planning a year off from the Princesses series in 2017, so I can get ahead again. But by the end of 2015, I want to be starting Princesses IV.

:: As soon as the edits for Princesses II and the draft for Princesses III are done, I will do the first round of edits for GhostCop (not the actual title). I do not have a planned release date for this one yet, but I'm hoping to start that one as a yearly series at first as well, off-setting Princesses with spring releases. Not sure yet, but I'll also need to get a draft of GhostCop II going at some point. These books are shorter, though, which helps. I haven't forgotten that book or series, in case anyone's wondering why I haven't mentioned it in a while.

:: Finally, Lighthouse Boy (not the actual title). This is kind of the odd-book-out for right now, but I'm squeezing it in someplace. There's less urgency since it's not really a series book; this one's a one-shot. There will be other books set in the same world, but not an actual "series". This one is turning out to be very long, though, and I'm wondering about how to optimally package it. One notion I'm kicking around is that when I have it ready to go, instead of publishing it all at once, I'll serialize it, maybe at around $1.99 for three chapters at a time. I like this idea, given that part of the book's genesis is that it's a Dumas-esque adventure tale (albeit in a fictional world), with no magic and a lot of derring-do involving usurper kings and lost treasures and that sort of thing. Guns, muskets, and villains wearing big hats with poofy feathers in the brim. Oddly, The Muse just dropped in the other day to solve the place I'm at in the book right now, so that's cool. I haven't been writing in that book much at all, what with all the work on Princesses I. But I should be able to get back online with that one, although I'm sure I won't finish it before NaNoWriMo starts, and I have to get Princesses III going. We'll see.

So, that's where we are right now. As you can tell...well, I'll let Prince Humperdinck explain it.

Onward and upward! Zap! Pow!!

Sentential Links

Hey, want some links? Well tough shit, you're gettin' 'em anyway.

:: It’s not our fault that someone as an issue with us. We don’t owe anybody an explanation for our life choices, especially some stranger we neither know or respect.

:: In hindsight, I should have known. I didn’t mention the case, but the defendant was accused of assaulting a police officer at 3:20 a.m. nearly a year ago. I was undoubtedly bumped by the defense attorney because I was still thinking about my victimization, AND because I was perceived, I’m thinking as too pro-cop. Not the way I see myself, but there it is. (I think I'm due to get called at some point in the not-too-distant future. Last time, I got out because The Wife and I were working opposite schedules which would have left a three-hour window during which we had no one to watch The Daughter, who was only six or seven at the time. I was always impressed that the judge was understanding about that, and in all honesty, I found that the Erie County jury-selection process really is designed to be as pleasant as possible, given that nobody especially wants to be there. Next time, we'll see what happens! I wouldn't mind serving, actually.)

:: Oh here’s a good one: The Ice Bucket Challenge is a Satanic Ritual. And Oprah is Satan. (Crap, wish I'd have known about that before I dumped the water on my head.)

:: It's hard to admit I'm happy, but I really am. (Well, they say the first step to solving a problem is admitting...wait, that's not the response called for here...hmmm....)

:: If you ever begin a post with the phrase “In today’s society…” you fail the class immediately.

There. That should take care of that.

You’re welcome, America. (Yeesh. In today's society, profs are jerks!)

:: As I go about my day here in the Queen City of the Lakes what I'm seeing is something quite new to me in my time here: economic activity.

:: It’s a poison place filled with poison people; it makes Reddit look like a circumspect garden party by comparison, and that is indeed the very point of the site, to allow people to wallow in this sort of thing anonymously with no consequences. (Every new story about the rampant sexism in the gaming world gives me pause, because The Daughter's favorite hobby is gaming, and she's actually mentioned it as a field she'd be interested in pursuing later in life.)

More next week, unless I decide that there won't be. In which case, well, you know....

Sunday Burst of Oddity and All-Around Foolery!

Stuff!

:: I like to think I won't be too incensed when any of my books gets a bad review or two on the Internet. In fact, I'm planning to read as few reviews as possible...but just in case I need a reminder of how not to respond to a negative review, here's just such a reminder. The review is the body of the post, and then the author shows up in the comments. And by "shows up", I mean, he moves in with a couch and everything.

:: If the kids in Stand By Me had thought of this, they would have been home in time for dinner. Just sayin'.

:: I'm loath to admit this, but...I was never a fan of Joan Rivers. I get where her humor came from, but a lot of the time -- and especially in the last ten to fifteen years or so -- her humor, which always struck me as firmly rooted in anger, stopped being humor at all and just became pure anger. However, I grant that my familiarity with Rivers is mostly a series of snapshots, and for the most part, she only came on my radar when she got noticed for saying something mean, so I concede that my impression of her is less than fair.

However, I must salute her thusly: one time in the 1980s, she had Soupy Sales on her late-night talk show, and she uncorked this fine moment:


More next week!

Adventures on Twitter: #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly

That was the hashtag someone unleashed upon the world last night, and it resulted in a lot of fun tomfoolery as you tried to sum up film plots, in 140 characters, in ways that don't really do very good justice to the movies. Here are my submissions!

Guy with awful taste in meat helps FBI catch a guy with awful taste in clothes. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly

— Kelly Sedinger (@Jaquandor) September 6, 2014

This dude alternates between abiding and making sure the aggression does not stand, man. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly

— Kelly Sedinger (@Jaquandor) September 6, 2014

"A ghost and a prince meet, and everyone ends in mincemeat. " (Apologies to the songwriter) #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly

— Kelly Sedinger (@Jaquandor) September 6, 2014

Bored convalescent photographer eschews all his other windows. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly

— Kelly Sedinger (@Jaquandor) September 6, 2014

Farmboy gets aunt and uncle killed; atones by saving the Galaxy. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly

— Kelly Sedinger (@Jaquandor) September 6, 2014

Adventures of a cop who solves murders and helps build barns. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly

— Kelly Sedinger (@Jaquandor) September 6, 2014

I don't feel the day was entirely wasted!

Fixing the Prequels: Revenge of the Sith (part ten)

Previously:

nine
eight
seven
six
five
four
three
two
one
So! When last we left off, Anakin had finally stopped wandering around the pitcher of Palpatine’s Kool-Aid and just picked it up and drained it in one swallow. What’s left now is the ramifications of the great attack on the Jedi, who never saw it coming, never realized, never had any idea of the danger they were in – the danger they themselves walked into.

Much of the rest of the film is nearly perfectly done, really. The entire third act of Revenge of the Sith, starting with Anakin’s turn and the attack on the Jedi, is utterly great, and this entire portion of the film is one reason it always pains me to hear people dismiss the entire Prequel Trilogy in one go, as if there was nothing of value to be found within it. Well, there is; there’s a great deal, and this is where George Lucas’s hand is the most steady. There are very few major changes I’d make to all this; just little things here and there to clarify or tighten things up slightly.

Where I’d left off, Anakin had just reached the most distasteful part of his duty in cleansing the Jedi Temple: the slaying of the younglings. We’d cut at this point to Padme in her apartment – as I’ve written it, arriving home after trying to fly to the Temple – where she looks out across the cityscape and, in one of the film’s many haunting images, sees only the smoke-and-fire shrouded haze of the Jedi Temple in the distance.

INT: Coruscant – Padme’s apartment.

PADME enters, where she is greeted by C-3PO.

C-3PO: Senator! We’ve had some problems--

PADME: What happened here?!

She sees the shattered glass everywhere.

C-3PO: Master Anakin had to make a rather dramatic exit. It seems something is amiss at the Jedi Temple. Could that be why?

PADME looks out the window, across the cityscape. In the distance, shrouded by flame and billowing red smoke, is the Jedi Temple. Horror overtakes her.

C-3PO: He’s quite resourceful for a human being...I’m sure he’ll be all right.

PADME breaks into tears.

At this point Bail Organa arrives at the Temple:

EXT. CORUSCANT-JEDI TEMPLE-LANDING PLATFORM-PRE-DAWN

The Jedi Temple is on fire. Large plumes of smoke billow toward the sky as BAIL ORGANA lands his Speeder on a Jedi Temple platform. FOUR CLONE TROOPERS stand guard at the entrance to the Temple. They lower their guns as BAIL gets out of his Speeder and walks toward them.

BAIL ORGANA: What's going on here? What’s happened to the Jedi--

CLONE SERGEANT: There's been a rebellion. Don't worry, sir, the situation is under control.

The CLONES bar the Senator from entering the Temple.

BAIL ORGANA: But the Jedi--!

He tries to push through, but the CLONES lift their weapons and aim them at BAIL.

CLONE SERGEANT: It's time for you to leave, sir.

BAIL ORGANA: And so it is.

BAIL reluctantly heads hack toward his Speeder. Suddenly, several SHOTS RING OUT. BAIL turns and sees a ten-year-old Jedi, ZETT JUKASSA, fighting the CLONES. The YOUNG JEDI cuts down several CLONES, including APPO, before he is overrun and shot.

BAIL ORGANA: No!

He starts forward, but the CLONES fire on him. He dives back into his speeder and takes off, only barely managing to regain control of his craft before crashing.

CLONE SERGEANT: Let him go! Stop firing! He’s a Senator!

Now we cut to Utapau:

EXT: Utapau – underwater – caves.

A group of CLONE TROOPERS on speeder bikes fly over the water, searching.

CLONE TROOPER: No one here, sir. He must be dead.

CLONE TROOPER #2: Let’s get back.

They fly off, and when they’re gone, OBI WAN KENOBI pops up from beneath the surface, his rebreather device in his mouth. He climbs up onto the rocks and looks himself over; he is bruised and bleeding in several places but not seriously wounded. He draws his lightsaber and attempts to ignite it, but it is waterlogged and fizzles. Stowing his rebreather back into his belt, he begins climbing up and out.

[This bit echoes back to my TPM series, in which Obi Wan had some trouble early on with a waterlogged lightsaber. Meanwhile....]

EXT: Kashyyyk – beach – battleground – night.

A group of CLONE TROOPERS is searching through the remains littering a battlefield on the beachhead.

CLONE TROOPER: No sign of him, sir. Just dead Wookiees.

CLONE SERGEANT: Proceed to the east. He must be here somewhere.

EXT: Kashyyyk – hillside overlooking the beach.

Two Wookiees, TARRFUL and CHEWBACCA, arrive on the hilltop, where TARRFUL lets down YODA from his back. YODA waves his hand, using the Force to toss aside a pile of vegetation that had been concealing a small emergency ship.

YODA: Thank you. Fear for your planet’s safety I do. A dark time is upon us. Goodbye, Tarrful and Chewbacca!

The two WOOKIEES howl in reply, and YODA boards his tiny ship and flies up and away from the planet.

INT: YODA’S SHIP.

YODA: Emergency channel, activate.

EXT: Coruscant – docking bay.

BAIL ORGANA lands his speeder near his ALDERAANIAN CRUISER, where he hops out and throws his cape over his shoulders. Two OFFICIALS approach.

OFFICIAL: Senator?

BAIL ORGANA: I have business offworld. Emergency business in the name of the Senate.

OFFICIAL: Very well.

He strides past them to his ship, whose thrusters are warming up.

INT: Alderaanian cruiser – corridor.

BAIL ORGANA is met at the entrance by CAPTAIN ANTILLES.

ANTILLES: Senator? What’s going on?

BAIL ORGANA: I don’t know. Did you get a Jedi beacon?

ANTILLES: I did. It’s a complete mess over there. The Clone Troopers are going wild. I’m not sure anyone’s really in command.

BAIL ORGANA: That will change soon. This is just the beginning. Get us into space. As soon as we’re out of Coruscant’s transponder range, activate that beacon and get us to Polis Massa.

ANTILLES: Polis Massa?

BAIL ORGANA: You heard me. Hopefully we can stop a few Jedi from walking into this catastrophe.

EXT: Coruscant – sky.

The Alderaanian Cruiser lifts off and leaves Coruscant.

[Now, did anyone besides me get really excited at the sight of that ship and the familiar white corridors?]

EXT. UTAPAU-SINKHOLE WALL-LATE DAY

OBI-WAN hides from a group of CLONE TROOPERS.

CLONE CAPTAIN: Start loading your men on the ship.

CLONE TROOPER: Yes, sir.

OBI-WAN tries to sneak back to the secret platform, down a flight of stairs.

EXT. UTAPAU-SECRET LANDING PLATFORM-LATE DAY

OBI-WAN makes his way out of the cave and onto General Grievous's secret landing platform. He runs to the Starfighter and climbs into the one-man ship. The Starfighter takes off and disappears into the sky.

EXT. UTAPAU-SPACE

OBI-WAN flies away from the planet Utapau in General Grievous's tiny Starfighter.

INT. GENERAL GRIEVOUS'S STARFIGHTER-SPACE

OBI-WAN activates the controls on the Starfighter. He punches in several coordinates and codes. A BEEPING SOUND is heard. It quickly speeds up until it is a steady tone. OBI-WAN speaks into his comlink.

OBI-WAN: Emergency Code Nine Thirteen ... I have no contact on any frequency. Are there any Jedi out there? . . . anywhere . . .

A BURST OF STATIC is heard- and a FUZZY HOLOGRAM image appears.

BAIL: (hologram) . . . Kenobi . . .

OBI-WAN: (continuing) I've locked on. Repeat.

The FUZZY HOLOGRAM image comes into focus, and it is BAIL ORGANA.

BAIL ORGANA: Master Kenobi??

OBI-WAN: Senator Organa! My Clone Troops turned on me ... I need help.

BAIL ORGANA: We have just rescued Master Yoda. It appears this ambush has happened everywhere. We're sending you our coordinates.

OBI WAN: Acknowledged.

BAIL’s hologram fades. OBI WAN settles back for a long flight.

OBI WAN: What is happening?!

The ship here, General Grievous’s starfighter, is an odd ship indeed. I’ve never been able to decide if I liked it or not. It’s got this old-car-from-1959 vibe to it, almost as if Lucas is paying a visual homage of sorts to American Graffiti.

Meanwhile, back on Coruscant, Anakin checks in with Padme:

EXT: Padme’s apartment – speeder dock.

A speeder arrives, and ANAKIN jumps out. PADME comes running out and throws her arms around him.

PADME: Oh Anakin, I was so worried! What’s happened at the Temple?

ANAKIN disengages from her embrace.

ANAKIN: It’s as I always feared. It’s why the Jedi have been shutting me out. They were planning to strike against the Chancellor and take control of the Republic.

PADME: What?!

ANAKIN: They tried it, Padme. They really tried it. They failed.

PADME: I can’t believe it!

ANAKIN: I was there. I saw it all. Master Windu tried to assassinate the Chancellor.

PADME: Is...is he....

ANAKIN: Windu is dead. As are most of the rest of the Jedi. They’re traitors, Padme. I always sensed something wrong with the Order....

PADME: What about Obi Wan?

ANAKIN: If he’s not already dead, he’s a traitor too.

PADME: You can’t believe that!

ANAKIN shakes his head.

ANAKIN: I don’t know what to believe, really. I’m afraid for Obi Wan. I pray he is not a part of this plot.

PADME stares at him as he goes inside. There is something very different about him now that she can’t quite put her finger on. She follows him to the fireplace, where he stops and looks into a mirror. The reflection staring back is dark, distorted.

ANAKIN: I’m sorry about your window. Obi Wan and I are bad for your windows....

PADME: Anakin.

ANAKIN: I have to leave now. I’ve been given a very important mission.

PADME: By who?

ANAKIN: Chancellor Palpatine. At least one Jedi is still loyal to him. He has intelligence that the Separatist leaders are on Mustafar. I’m going there to end this war once and for all.

He steps forward and takes PADME’s hands.

ANAKIN: Soon it will all be over, my love. No more war, no more Senate, no more Jedi order telling us who we can be. Soon we’ll be in your Lake Country...just you and me and our child...I will teach him how to use the Force.

PADME: Or her.

ANAKIN: Or her. We’ll make a new Order, free of Jedi poison.

PADME: Anakin....

ANAKIN: I will return. When I do, it will all be better. You’ll see.

He puts something down on the end table. It is his old lightsaber.

ANAKIN: It’s all right. I have a new one. This one is for my son. Or my daughter.

He kisses her, and then he leaves. PADME is deeply disturbed. She knows that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

One thing lost, slightly, in the finished film is Anakin’s failure to recognize that in the end, he is largely just a pawn in everything. He’s still trying to maintain some semblance of control over his destiny, and his realization of how badly he’s lost it comes far, far too late. He still thinks that a happy ending is possible, a happy ending where he goes off and lives with Padme and teaches his kid about the Force. Anakin is swirling down the rabbit hole now.

We cut now to Bail Organa’s ship, where Obi Wan rejoins Yoda. One tiny nitpick I have with this sequence is that there isn’t enough discussion along the lines of “What the hell just happened to us?!” So, here’s my version:

EXT: Space – Alderaanian Cruiser.

OBI WAN flies his stolen starfighter into the Alderaanian cruiser’s landing bay.

INT: Alderaanian cruiser – corridor.

OBI WAN emerges from the landing bay to meet YODA and BAIL ORGANA.

YODA: Hurt you are, Obi Wan.

OBI WAN: Not badly, Master. What happened? We had the battle won, and then my own clone troopers fired on me!

YODA: Betrayed, you were, along with all the Jedi. Controlled from outside, the clones are. The Dark Side....

BAIL ORGANA: I saw thousands of clone troopers attacking the Temple. That’s why I had my Captain steal a transponder. I had hoped more would answer the call.

OBI WAN: Are there no others?

YODA: None who have answered. Perished, or gone into hiding, they have.

BAIL ORGANA: The Temple is now sending a signal for all Jedi to return. It says that the war is over.

OBI WAN: A trap. Darth Sidious is behind this, isn’t he?

YODA: Indeed he is...and unmasked now is he.

OBI WAN: Who is he?

YODA: Mind your thoughts, Obi Wan. Power over the armies of the Republic?

OBI WAN: Palpatine.

YODA: Hidden from us, the entire time. Weak we became. See him, we did not.

OBI WAN: But if Palpatine is a Sith Lord, then Anakin is in grave danger!

Yoda nods.

OBI WAN: We have to go back!

YODA: Beyond saving, your apprentice may be....

OBI WAN: We have to try...and besides, we have to deactivate that signal from the Temple. Any stragglers going back will be captured and killed.

YODA: Agree, I do...but beware your feelings, Obi Wan. More to reveal, the Dark Side has.

It makes sense to me that Obi Wan would be worried about Anakin, who it turns out has been left in the very thick of things. He doesn’t know yet, he hasn’t even begun to suspect. Has Yoda? Possibly. I suspect he would. He knows that the Sith come in pairs, after all.

And what’s Anakin up to? He’s arriving on Mustafar, which is one of my favorite planet settings in all of Star Wars. Seriously, look at this:

That’s amazing. It’s just brutal hellscape from one horizon to the other. Inside the mining facility, the sniveling Separatist conspirators are all together in one place, and Darth Sidious tells them (via hologram) that his new apprentice, Darth Vader, will take care of them. And sure enough, he arrives just a bit later (as Bail Organa arrives back on Coruscant, with Obi Wan and Yoda, just in time for the Chancellor’s special session of the Senate). Anakin/Vader’s entrance here is just perfect. He walks in, face shrouded by his hood, and gestures the doors closed. It’s truly chilling. The Separatists have absolutely no idea what’s about to happen to them, and why would they?

This entire next bit is thrilling, as we intercut between Palpatine’s speech to the Senate, in which he rallies public opinion against the Jedi and support for his having won the war to justify declaring himself Emperor, Obi Wan and Yoda’s infiltration of the Temple, and Anakin’s brutal slaughter of the Separatist leaders. Lots of amazing visuals here, from Yoda throwing his lightsaber into a clone trooper’s heart, to Palpatine’s messianic proclamation, to Anakin’s final, devastating turn. There’s such a brutal finality to Anakin’s actions here, particularly when Nute Gunray, the Trade Federation leader whom we met way back in the opening scenes of TPM, is protesting that Sidious promised them all peace...and Anakin cuts him down in midsentence.

Of particular interest is Obi Wan and Yoda finding the dead younglings. I would relocate this to the library, in keeping with the previous entry.

INT: Jedi Temple – library.

OBI WAN and YODA enter...and find the bodies of the slain younglings. OBI WAN looks as though he is going to be sick.

OBI WAN: Not even the younglings survived?

YODA: Not cut down by blaster fire. Lightsaber wounds, these are.

OBI WAN: Sidious has a new apprentice, doesn’t he? Who could it be?

And cut to Anakin, killing the Separatists and enjoying it.

Yup...Anakin has gone well and truly around the bend.

Other things I like in this sequence? Well, Padme’s line about “So this is how liberty dies – with thundrous applause.” Palpatine didn’t take over the Republic; instead, he made it want to go where he wanted it. That’s how it works, a lot of the time.

The only major change I’d make in all this is this next scene, when Obi Wan watches the security recordings and learns the truth.

INT: Jedi Temple – security and computer center.

YODA keeps watch as OBI WAN works with the computers.

OBI WAN: That should do it. I’ve recalibrated the message to warn Jedi to stay away.

YODA: A long time it will take for them to discover the change. Come. Go, we must.

OBI WAN: No.

He turns to another console with a large viewscreen.

OBI WAN: We have to learn what we’re facing.

YODA sighs.

YODA: Only pain you will find, I fear.

OBI WAN turns on the screen and plays the recording. It is hazy at first, a scene of chaotic destruction as CLONE TROOPERS surge into the Great Hall, blasting Jedi. But then, in one corner, a glimpse of something...a red light, flashing back and forth.

CLONE TROOPER: Form up behind Lord Vader!

OBI WAN: Lord Vader? Focus here.

He touches the screen and the scene shifts to center on the red light. It focuses...the red light is a lightsaber, flashing with dizzying speed, its wielder shrouded in dark robes. OBI WAN watches for a moment as YODA stands near, staring at the floor, shaking his head.

OBI WAN: Freeze image!

The screen freezes on a shot of the SITH APPRENTICE.

OBI WAN: No....

It is unmistakably ANAKIN.

OBI WAN: No! It can’t be!

YODA: Screen off.

The monitor goes dark.

OBI WAN: Anakin...no!

YODA: Feared this, I did.

OBI WAN: You never said anything!

YODA: Hope for Skywalker, I had. Hope that was misplaced. Much failure here. Much of it, mine.

OBI WAN: We pushed him into Palpatine’s arms!

YODA: A Sith he is, now. And destroyed they must be.

OBI WAN: I will confront Palpatine. I cannot attack Anakin. He is--

YODA: Anakin he is, no longer. The young man you knew is dead. Only this creature remains. Darth Vader he is now.

OBI WAN: I can’t do it!

YODA: You must. Not strong enough to confront Sidious are you, and only two are we.

OBI WAN: I don’t even know where he is!

YODA: You will.

And, it turns out, he does....

INT: Coruscant – Padme’s apartment – day.

OBI WAN meets with PADME.

PADME: The Chancellor is a Sith Lord?

OBI WAN: He deceived us all.

PADME: Is there hope?

OBI WAN: Little...but we have to act. [pause as he gathers his courage] Padme...where is Anakin?

PADME: You need him to defeat the Chancellor!

OBI WAN: No...Anakin is in grave danger.

PADME: From the Sith?

OBI WAN: From himself.

PADME: I don’t understand.

OBI WAN: This is so hard to say...but...Anakin isn’t in danger from Palpatine’s apprentice. Anakin IS Palpatine’s apprentice.

PADME recoils.

PADME: What?

OBI WAN: Anakin has joined Palpatine. He has joined the Sith.

PADME: He wouldn’t--

OBI WAN: He has turned to the Dark Side, Padme, I’m sorry, but it’s true. I have seen the security recordings from the Temple assault. Anakin led the Clone Troopers. He helped slaughter every Jedi there.

PADME: No!

OBI WAN: Including the younglings.

PADME: No! He wouldn’t do that! You’re wrong! You’re wrong....

She sits on the couch, stricken with horror and grief. She knows it’s true. OBI WAN joins her.

OBI WAN: Padme...I must find him.

PADME: (through tears) You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?

OBI WAN cannot answer ‘Yes’....

OBI WAN: He is...a grave threat. To the Republic...to you...to himself.

PADME is exerting every bit of control she can muster, and still, her cracks are showing. Finally she shakes her head.

PADME: I can’t. I don’t know where he is.

OBI WAN sees that she is lying, but he doesn’t press her. Instead he rises and walks toward the exit, stopping on the threshold.

OBI WAN: Anakin is the father, isn’t he?

PADME cannot reply.

OBI WAN: I’m so sorry.

He leaves, and he is barely out the door before Padme breaks down...but only for a moment. OBI WAN flies off, and PADME looks across the room to the table where ANAKIN’s old lightsaber rests. She gets up, walks over to the table, and picks up the lightsaber.

PADME: C-3PO? Call Captain Typho. I need my ship.

INT: Mustafar – mining complex.

PAN THROUGH the complex, across the bodies that still lay where they fell when ANAKIN struck them down, and finally to ANAKIN himself, standing at an overlook, surveying the hellish planet. His eyes are crazed, and a tear rolls down one cheek.

This scene, the bit between Obi Wan and Padme, is one of the best in the entire Star Wars saga, and I only change it to reflect my own previous changes. The scene is brilliantly acted by Ewan MacGregor and Natalie Portman, from his refusal to actually say that he needs to go kill Anakin, to her denial of what she’s hearing but the look on her face which makes clear that she knows how true it is. And that cut to Anakin, standing on the overlook with his dead behind him...the look of insane rage, leavened with the single tear...that’s pretty amazing, and it’s all tied together by John Williams in one of the saga’s most compelling bits of scoring. The music for this scene, starting with Obi Wan’s arrival at Padme’s apartment, can be heard here, at the 2:24 mark:


This is music of grim realization. As you listen to it, you can hear all the dark pieces of the puzzle falling into place.

And that’s where we’ll stop. Next time...it all ends.