It was 30 years ago...um...yesterday...

So, Star Wars turned 30 this past friday and at our house we made an attempt to celebrate WITHOUT flying out to Celebration IV. Airfares are atrocious these days, ya know.

We sat down and watched Episode IV on VHS. I have a copy of the first release, sans the "A New Hope" chapter title, but it is packed away somewhere unknown. That would have been the REAL deal, but alas, it was not to be.

We had milk with blue food coloring to mimic the meal Luke shares with his aunt and uncle on their Tatooine farm. With the blue milk, we had star-shaped cupcakes. Luckily no 'star-cake wars' broke out as yellow cake and chocolate icing can make quite a mess.

Watching the 'almost original' version, I found that I actually missed the cleaner, more polished Special Edition on DVD. Despite some of it's drawbacks such as Greedo shooting first and the CGI Jabba, sequences like the Death Star battle are much improved.

But, I remember fondly seeing Star Wars thirteen times the summer it was released. We sat through it twice the first time. It changed so much for so many. Film has never been the same and my children and I share a cross-generational metaphor for the battle of good against evil and a treatise on failure and redemption.

Thanks George, you have forever altered our culture by giving us all a fairy tale for our times.