The Empire Thumps Back

By and large I don’t post entertaining links out of context, mostly because other people are way better at it than I am. Still, once in a rainy while something comes along that’s so brilliantly funny that I have to join our link to the many, in this case via Boing Boing‘s watchful eye.

I’m sure everyone will be sick of this in a day or two, but for now it’s still fresh. Click along here for a 2.2 meg .wmv file download of Star Wars Kid v. Kill Bill, a video patch-up that … well, you know, just look at it. Safe for work, contains sound, rocks the world. Go Ghyslain!

(Update) Sir Ghyslain the Valorous: It occurs to me that there are people here who may not know the saga of the Star Wars Kid and so may not quite fathom that video link off the rack. In brief, it’s one of those modern-moment cautionary tales of instant celebrity gone wrong, and it goes like this.

A little over a year ago a teenager in Quebec named Ghyslain Raza was fooling around in the A/V room at school. Thinking that he was alone and thereby safe - O the lessons we learn through the years! - he laid hold of a golf ball retriever (a.k.a. a stick) and had a little get yer ya-yas out bout of fake Darth Maul stylee lightsaber duellation. (If you get this urge, you might want to build your own lightsaber at home. Or not.)

As a resourceful young man with a lively fantasy filmscape playing out, Ghyslain battled his nemeses with vigor and derring-do. And like the trusting Paris Hilton who came later, he left the video where other people could get hold of it, figuring no one would know or care or rat him out to the general public. He was, to put it mildly, wrong.

You can still find the original Star Wars Kid video here and there; it propagated fast and with cackling glee. It wasn’t long before the first remix of many added digital effects and lightsaber sounds, and the legend was out of the bag. Padawan Ghyslain was mightily embarrassed by his unlooked-for brush with worldwide admiration and scorn, which led to the inevitable lawsuit alleging humiliation and psychological damage: well, whatever. The great uncaring world also cares, a bit: thousands of dollars were raised to buy Raza an iPod and other tech toys (browse the Waxy.org site for info and links), and there’s a massive online petition - over 129,000 entries and still going strong - asking LucasFilm to cast the Star Wars Kid in the next Star Wars movie.

And that, as the JGE guy used to say on TV, is the storeeee.

About Linus

The man behind the curtain. But couldn't we get a nicer curtain?
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