Lolita: And now--The Word of the Week:
Chair
Because Fanime's almost here. God bless otakus.
FMI, if anyone can locate the original site where I took the Bishonen quiz, I'd be much obliged. Upon clicking on it later, I was taken to a "Ring" fansite. While I do admit that it was one hell of a movie, I find that it would disturb the normal everyday reader (all of, what, two?) to look for a Bishonen quiz and finding a pic of Sadako/Samara and her ripped out fingernails. For those who like that kinda stuff, all power to you and never mail me please. But for the Layman reader of Random Lunacy, this is quite disconcerning. Any info on where the old site went will be welcome.
Inha: And now--Syndelin's movie review.
Syndelin: Well, just recently, we were treated to a select viewing of the infamous Star wars Holiday Special. For additional info or reviews, the best one would be here at X-Entertainment:

http://www.x-entertainment.com/stuff/featureholiday.html

X-Entertainment being a site that we frequent constantly. For all those who have not seen or heard of the Photog/Bitner revolution should check...the May 28 post for the blog entry. I believe the heat may be dying down but sign the petition, as always. For all your 80's pop/underground culture needs, X-Entertainment is the place to go!
Back to the review...to get some of the humorous opinions and the story for this monstrosity, see Slashdot Radio's show Geeks in Space, Episode 16 found here (at the bottom):

http://www.thesync.com/geeks/archivesframe.html

Lex: Gee aren't we having a lot of shameless plugs this post.
Syndelin (beats Lex senselesswith rubber chicken): Bite me. Here's the short skinny: so back after the first (I think) Star Wars movie (Ep. 4)--'round '78--and everyone back at the Lucas farm decided to make what was a hot medium back in the late 70s-early 80s: a holiday special. This is where the horror started. After seeing how crappy this thing was, rumor has it that Lucas disowned it 5 seconds after it aired.
Diz: Probably 5 seconds *into* it.
Syndelin: Seriously. After that, the original footage was lost/disappeared. Some guy back then taped it and then it was copied/dubbed/ etc. and now it could be found in the oddest places, eBay being one. And I had the wonderful experience of watching this shlock. The "Plot" is that Chewbacca isn't gonna be home in time for the Life Day Celebration (or Lucas' PC Christmas) so his wife Mala (WTF?), his father Itchy (WTF?!) and his son Lumpy (WTF?! to the 3rd) are contacting various denizens of the SW universe, trying to locate thier breadwinner.
The whole thing has wookies. Wookies speaking Wookie. And there's no substitiles. Given that these segments with the said wookies are the *longest* segments, you can feel the pain. Most of this is just people in hairy suits jumping around grunting. It was pretty stupid. I think that the only thing that could hurt more is listening to that song "Loving You" ten decibals above my tolerance.
Diz: "Loooooving yoooooooouu....is the only thing......"
Syndelin: Diz, if you don't stop singing, I'm gonna send you to American Idol to have your dignity and integrity stripped from you like the skin from dressing a deer.
Diz: I'll be good.
Syndelin: Not only that, there's also an animated segment that features, for the first time, Boba Fett-the only bounty hunter named for an Asian drink. Personally, Boba was the *only* good thing about the animation cuz in addition it it being horrible washed out because the tape was something like a fifth generation dub, it had no point for existing. Well, so did the whole special in general but the cartoon really was off in another tangent, much like our blog. One moment, storm troopers were raiding the wookie household. The next Lumpy's watching some cartoon about his dad and Luke getting zapped by a talisman that makes them fall asleep, so that Chewbacca needs to hang 'im upside down like some sick sorta Life Day ornament. I suppose somewhere in the writers' minds this all made sense. Granted, they must have been on Speed or something, but come on! WTF is going on here?!?!? Why must we be subjected to pointless, washed out cartoons while we are tortured by grown men in suits grunting like neanderthals?! Why, God, Why?!?!?!?
The hour (or maybe it was longer but I lost track of time because 1) it was a tape and I fastforwarded past the mind-numbingly horrible parts and b) I lost all concept of time from watching the wookie segments) of stupidity was broken up by things like vid-phone calls to people like Luke or Leia and CP30, and way out tangents like 4-armed transvestite tv cooks, stupid cartoons, how-to segemtns with malfunctioning hosts and singing musical parts from talents like Bea Arthur. All of these were half a step up from the wookie parts, all happening at the drop of a hat. After some five to eight minutes, the writers would insert some random stupidity segment and go with it for ten more minutes. I fast forwarded through all of them, except Bea Arthur's seg but I'll get to that in a minute. Check X-Entertainment for the 4-armed transvestite, cooking, and irate wookie housewives. Its mindless, stupid, and so bad, its not even funny. Seriously. Itchy gets a gift that something like a holograph porno thing with some chick who looks like an anorexic Haley Barry (spell check?). First there's a kalidoscope trippy sequence that's followed by our said porno star with sequens glued to her hair and wearing a sparkly sheet. She spouts off some stuff about how cute she thinks you are (I am not kidding), and this it then followed by her singing. Well, I think it is, I got so tired of her talking like a golf announcer that I fast forwarded through it. It was like being on Valium or NyQuil or something. Dionne Warwick? I dunno, but maybe its the drugs.
Thinking back on it, any segment sans wookies were musical/singing segments. Ugh. I sat through a SW special that had SINGING? What the hell was I on? That's the last time I eat Baby Bottle Pop sugar and Pixie Sticks at 9 in the morning. But I digress. Back to Bea Arthur. I have no fscking idea why she's running the SW cantina but I do know that she can sing WAY better than Carrie Fisher. Again, i fast forwarded through the actual singing, as it was really bad and I already own the MP3 on iTunes. Upon thinking back on it , it wasn't that bad but the scene was full of her parts with her musical "talent" sanwiched between stock footage of the cantina from the first movie. Come to think of it, most of the movie was stock footage, especially the parts with Han Solo and Chewbacca in the Millenium Falcon, trying to escape the empire. It was pretty bad.
FYI, Mark Hamill was in a terrible car accident just before they started filming so in order to hide the fscked up after-effects he had to wear more make-up than the tranvestive in accounting. Wow, I must have used the word "transvestite" like four times already. I'm having a good post.
Carrie Fisher/Leia has proved to all of us that she wasn't singing for a reason in the actual movies. My opinion was that she was heavily sedated with elephant darts to take some of the pain away from the torture that Lucas was running. The good thing is that she didn't have to watch it...maybe she did and that's why we haven't heard from her in ages. For some sound clips--X-Entertainment, as usual.
I could go on about this but I realize that I really shouldn''t. I've tortured/tantilized you all, with this review. When I had heard of this from both Geeks in Space and X-Entertainment and I was stoked to see something this bad. i figured I get a few laughs from it. I was wrong. Horribly wrong. Not only was the most painful thing to sit through, next to Sweet Charity (which will be reviewed as well soon). At least this time I didn't have to pay $10 to make my eyeballs bleed. But it didn't have any Magical Disco Fairies, unless you count the porno holographc chick . Well, it had a holographic Cirque du Soleil ripoff so that works just as well. I never want to see this movie ever again. Screw "The Ring"; the "Star Wars Holiday Special" is truely the tape of cursed footage. I'm now ready for Carrie Fisher and Daleigh Chase to come out of my tv and kill me. I am forever haunted by Bea Arthur's singing talents. I hope that none of you will be subjected to this...until I get my own copy and torture all of you. Mwuh ha ha.
I give the SWHS -50 stars out of 5. I would rather have my skin flayed as my head is set on fire with a bllowtorch and then put out with a sledgehammer. Sweet Dreams.

*Till next time Lunies*