star wars

Chris Knight's avatar

In case anyone’s wondering, this is not like the “Star Wars kid” video. That was cruel and tasteless, because the young man in question never went looking for that kind of attention. That’s something that still bothers me to this day, that it happened.

This video is altogether different. Entering a contest like this makes you a public figure and whatever you choose to do on stage, it becomes wide-open for observation and scrutiny. That’s just the nature of the beast. In this case, this young lady opted to perform the “Star Wars theme” on a trumpet, while clad in a black unitard with silver-fringed sleeves.

Here she is: “Star Wars Trumpet Girl”!

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Search Engine hosted by Jesse Brown is a show on CBC Radio One (“CBC” being the Canadian Broadcasting Company). It’s about issues pertaining to the Internet and it’s heard by our good friends all across the Great White North. Last week Jesse phoned all the way down here to Reidsville, North Carolina and interviewed me about my recent situation with Viacom and the supposed “copyright infringement” on YouTube involving my first school board commercial. The segment is running on this week’s installment of Search Engine and you can listen to it as an MP3 podcast here....

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Remember the story a week ago about the X-Wing Fighter from Star Wars, that was an almost life-sized replica built by Polecat Aerospace? Well, a few days ago they actually launched the thing!

So how did it do? The X-Wing got off the launch pad and remained intact for about 3 seconds of flight before disintegrating spectacularly over the California desert.

Mash down here to watch 2 videos of the carnage. In spite of the destruction, this was still an awesome effort by the Polecat guys and it sounds like everyone had a great time!

EDIT 3:01 pm EST: Here’s a YouTube video of the X-Wing taking flight…

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An outfit calling themselves Polecat Aerospace in California has built an almost full-sized X-Wing Fighter from the Star Wars movies. It’s 21 feet long, has a 19-foot wingspan, and it really flies!

It is made of wood and some aluminum, and is propelled by four solid-fuel rockets. It even has an Artoo unit that can rotate its head by remote control. And to top it all off, the wings can adjust position in flight just like a real X-Wing would!

Polecat Aerospace is going to launch it next week. Can’t wait to see the video of this thing in action!

More details about the X-Wing here....

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It all started a little over a month ago, and the very strange tale of how we wound up with a life-sized statue of Yoda in our home. Bear in mind that Brian Hodges wanted it to go in his new office at Mercer University and since he’s teaching cello, he was going to replace Yoda’s lightsaber blade with a cello bow. But he didn’t have enough room and so Yoda came back to North Carolina from Atlanta (after already coming up from Florida) and ended up in our “foster care”.

The thing is that even at life-size, Yoda takes up considerable space. Lisa and I didn’t really know what to do with him. But then an idea came to us. Or to be more accurate, the notion came to mind to “adapt” Brian’s original idea…

Let’s put Yoda in Lisa’s music classroom at school! That way Yoda would have ...

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Look at what wound up in our living room earlier this afternoon…

This is a life-sized statue of Yoda, made of industrial-strength plastic resin. It is heavy and despite his realized stature it is positively huge! Without a doubt it’s the biggest Yoda collectible that I’ve ever wound up having in my possession.

Here’s the statue along with my vintage Yoda vinyl hand-puppet (circa 1981) and a “Star Wars Buddies” Yoda that Lisa gave me for Christmas a few years ago, to give you a sense of appreciating the scale of this thing (and that’s an Artoo-Detoo cooler that Lisa got me for Christmas before last too, in the background)…

Not even these pictures can convey the full sense of how massive this statue is.

How did this thing come to be under our roof? Well, my good friend Brian Hodges AKA Darth Larry brought it over today. ...

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A few days ago was when I first heard that Web Junk 2.0 on VH1, in an episode titled “Animals & Other Crap”, had a segment featuring my first school board commercial. Here’s the clip, which includes some pretty hilarious commentary by Web Junk 2.0 host Aries Spears (I was literally in the floor laughing while watching and listening to his witty remarks) …

Speaking of the school board ad, Tom Finnigan at The Heritage Foundation had some really nice things to say about it on the foundation’s blog two days ago…

The ad has been featured on VH1’s Web Junk 2.0 and in The New York Times, Raleigh News & Observer, and The Charlotte Observer. Knight deserves kudos for promoting a fiscally conservative message to a diverse audience in a novel and entertaining way. Judging by the almost 60,000 views and overwhelmingly positive comments, it’s possible that Knight

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A short while ago Wendy Inman – one of the members of the group opposing the school uniforms – told me that her daughter Rebekah (who’s been one of the most passionate and articulate speakers against the uniforms at the board meetings) woke her up in the middle of the night to tell her about something she saw on VH1. Seems that the VH1 show Web Junk 20 was running an episode called “Animals & Other Crap” and one of the videos they showed was my “Star Wars”-style school board campaign commercial! I haven’t seen it yet but it seems to be airing several times through most of the month. It’s coming on again in a short while at 10 a.m. EST.

So ummmm… I’m now being seen on VH1. Never, ever saw that one coming 😛 Thanks to Rebekah and Wendy Inman for the heads-up!

EDIT 9:37 ...

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