hypertwink

Friday night, I took the train to Huntington - the only train they hadn't cancelled, apparently, so it was packed - and met up with my sister, my niece, and my niece's boyfriend's mom, to go see a "Back to the 80s" show with a band called Jessie's Girl at the Paramount.

It was a lot of fun, though there were some things we'd probably do differently if we were to do it again: 1. miss the terrible opening act - it was a DJ who was just really bad at being a DJ despite playing lots of great 80s music. He was just. So. Bad. And I definitely would have gotten at least a bottle of water, since we were upstairs in the seating area and there were so many stairs none of us wanted to go back down to the bar, so I was SO THIRSTY by the time we got back to my sister's, and I woke up with a dehydration headache even though I hadn't had any alcohol. I mean, I hadn't had anything to drink from when I left work at 5 pm to when we got back to Marg's at midnight. That just ain't right.

Anyway, the band was really entertaining, though some of their song choices were puzzling to me (why "Hot for Teacher" of all the Van Halen songs you could have picked?) and there were a few glaring omisions, imo: no Duran Duran! No Pet Shop Boys! No New Order! No "Relax!" No "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go!" No "What I Like About You!" And since they did do "A Little Respect," which I think is more obscure than any of the others (I mean, not to me - it was one of the songs of my senior year of high school - but Marg and Alyssa didn't know it, and Alyssa knew almost every song despite not even being alive in the 80s), and "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" while dressed up like the dude from Dead or Alive, I don't think the other songs are too much to ask for. Certainly they could have replaced "Sunglasses at Night" and "Somebody's Watching Me" and "Physical" with better songs! but Alyssa says they do a lot of shows so they probably rotate things in and out of the set list.

While the upstairs where we were never filled in, the dance floor was pretty packed with drunk middle aged white ladies, which is pretty entertaining in and of itself.

So we did a lot of dancing, which my knees were not happy about, especially after all the stairs, so yesterday was kind of a painful day.

But because we cover a wide range of enjoyable activities, we went to tea in Port Jeff at brunchtime, and it was lovely, as it always is. The tea shop was all decked out for fall and our reservation was for when it opened, so we had the place to ourselves for most of our time there, which was nice.

In keeping with the 80s theme (not really but it sounds good), I had the Pretty in Pink tea ("a blend of green tea, pomegranate, flowers, nuts, acai and yumberry make up this fruity pale pink tea") iced, and it was both pretty and pink and also delicious. And the scones of the day were apple raisin walnut, and all of the little sandwiches and tea cakes were delicious (except for the grilled goat cheese rounds, which we felt were a mistake, but if you like goat cheese on toasted wheat bread, you'd probably like them).

By then I was exhausted but all the Port Jeff and Ronkonkoma line trains were screwy because of track work (estimated travel time: 2 hours and 39 minutes one way!!!) so Alyssa dropped me at the Islip station on her way home and I took the Babylon branch instead.

I got home and took a two hour nap, and then went to bed after the Yankees lost, so I feel less exhausted now, but I woke up with a cold. My nose won't stop running and my sinuses ache. Bah. I just really want some soup.

But it was a great weekend. A++ would dance and drink tea again.

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I meant to link to this yesterday: 5 things Obi-Wan should have told Luke instead of lies. #obi-wan's casual relationship with the truth

Leaving aside all Doylistic reasons (i.e., that at the time, Lucas had no idea Obi-Wan was lying about anything!), given canon as it currently stands, I feel like I can only blame Obi-Wan for not clearing up 1 (Darth Vader is your father) and 5 (Princess Leia is your sister). More on that below but first, I will quickly dispatch the others:

- 2. Owen was Anakin's stepbrother and they only met once is irrelevant to Luke's situation, because Owen and Beru raised Luke and loved him and were his family in all ways that matter. Otoh, this part: Obi-Wan could have saved himself a lot of time by just telling the kid that he was hidden away to protect him from the Empire, and now it's time to step out I can agree with. That would have been perfect and not in any way set Owen and Beru up against Luke's father's 'ideals,' whatever those were meant to be at the time/according to Obi-Wan.

- 3. Yeah, it would have been great if Obi-Wan gave Luke some background on the Jedi Order, but I feel like there was time for that later, in ghostly chats during downtime or while training with Yoda. I don't know if you lead with philosophy and history when rescuing the princess and destroying the planet-killing space station are the top two things on your to-do list. And Luke spent a few weeks with Yoda so we don't really know what else he was taught aside from all the running and the handstands. He seemed to be doing all right in RotJ anyway, some Force-choking aside.

- 4. I don't think Obi-Wan was advising Luke to bury his feelings forever and ever. Luke may have interpreted it that way (certainly Anakin seemed to, despite ten years of Jedi training), so much as he was saying, don't let them overwhelm you while you're fighting the Emperor and Vader, because they will use your feelings and Leia against you if they can. And he's not wrong - Luke does get overwhelmed when Vader picks up on the whole 'sister' thing, but then he masters himself and wins out, at least in terms of 1. not dying and 2. bringing Vader back to the light. I feel like Coach Taylor lays it out best: "Every man at some point in his life is gonna lose a battle. He's gonna fight and he's gonna lose. What makes him a man, is that in the midst of that battle, he does not lose himself."

Now, the two lies that actually did some damage and Obi-Wan should have pulled on his big boy pants and told the truth (speaking from an in-text/Watsonian perspective):

1. "Darth Vader is your father" - I absolutely understand to some degree why Obi-Wan couldn't bring himself to tell Luke this, especially not early on. And I don't need to rehash all the reasons why for Obi-Wan it was not even really a lie! Why he could weasel around with "from a certain point of view" and still look his ghost-self in the ghost-mirror. I mean, I can if you want me to! I'm happy to discuss Obi-Wan at any time! but I feel like it is, like, 93% irrelevant to this particular discussion, because once Luke was leaving for Bespin, it was CRUCIAL that he have all the facts going into that confrontation, and he didn't and it cost him dearly. It didn't even need to be Obi-Wan who told him! he could have kept on with his "I'm not mad I'm just disappointed" bit as Luke left if he really needed to for his own peace of mind.

But Yoda should have done it instead of being cryptic and discouraging, and while I'm not anti-Yoda as so many people are, I do think he made a huge mistake there, and did so willfully instead of genuinely. I think it shows on both their parts that they continued to misunderstand what drove Anakin Skywalker (despite, on Obi-Wan's part, knowing him really well) and also a real unwillingness to question their own worldviews despite having them upended so terribly. I mean, twenty years of meditating in the desert/the swamp over everything that went wrong (and no doubt with a side order of routine self-flagellation for Obi-Wan, at least), and it never occurred to either of them to think, well, Anakin never did anything the way we expected, so why should he be a Sith in the expected way? (and remember, he's not actually that great at being a Sith.)

5. "Leia is your sister." I mean, I guess he'd been alone in the desert for 19 years, so maybe it wouldn't have occurred to him that cute teenagers in adrenaline-fueled and dangerous situations might end up kissing and stuff! Especially when BOTH of them were Skywalkers. I mean, he knew Anakin met Padme when he was 9 and was like, "She's the one for me!" and ten years later, actually made it happen, so I don't know what he was thinking when he neglected to mention that the girl currently inspiring Luke to radical notions of overthrowing the Empire was none other than his sister. It would have at least avoided some awkward situations and the potential for a very different sort of family tragedy, anyway. ("One more date and we would've had a Greek tragedy on our hands." - Soapdish) I guess he was just really confident in Han Solo's charms to win the princess's heart in the end? *g*

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