“Tire irons? Sure, I got tire irons. Got more than I know what to do with, I suspect. Thought I’d be out of business for good when the place burned down. Blew up, more like, but that raises questions I ain’t sure I wanna answer even now. Anyways, turns out my niece got the place covered. Insurance got things up and runnin’ again, I guess, but it were the money from the Jasper Improvement Society’t made it what it is. Now I’m up to my eyeballs in tire irons. Hell of a thing. Who can explain it. Ah, I’ll tell you: Frank Tilghman, that’s who. When the smoke cleared after that bad bit o’ business with Brad Wesley, look whose name was on the Improvement Society’s paperwork? Oh, it’s all legal-like. Stipulation in the contracts saying whoever owned Jasper’s most lucrative business owns the Society too, lock stock and so on. Well, with my place in ruins, and Strodenmire still vacuuming up the shattered glass from what went down during Wagon Days, and Emmet’s moonshine distillery up in smoke, the Double Deuce was the last place standing. He gave me the loans, made the place ten times bigger and better than it ever was, and all I owe him is a piece of my soul. Makes you wonder how much ol’ Frank knew when he hired that boy Dalton to clean house. Him? Good kid. M’niece, she thinks he hung the moon and stars. Couldn’t come through in the clutch, though, when the time came. Left it to me and the other old farts to finish what he started. Then again, maybe that was part of Tilghman’s plan too. Make us all complicit, if you don’t mind me usin’ a Sunday puzzle word. Blood on everyone’s hands, so to speak. We’d’a gotten nowhere if it hadn’t been for Dalton taking out Wesley’s goon squad. Maybe that was the plan all along. Now instead of me kicking Wesley some money under the table, Frank Tilghman reaches across the table and takes it right out of my pocket. Thought about bringin’ it up with Dalton during a family dinner, but the kid had about as much as he could take, losin’ his mentor and all. Who’s gonna tell him he did it all for a worse villain than Wesley was? Not me. I seen enough men broken down to ever relish the idea of breakin’ down another one. Hell, I see one every time I look in the mirror. Don’t that beat all. In fairness, Frank lost someone close to him too. We all seen the way he looked at that Pat McGurn kid before things went south. Don’t know why he felt he had to keep it a secret. We’re a forgiving bunch. When the fire department discovered Emmet’s collection of hand-drawn erotica, why, we all just let it slide. Didn’t even tell him the Milo Manara influence was too pronounced, and that woulda been the god’s honest. And hell, when I was married, how do you think my wife found the ugly man she left me for? “The lifestyle,” that’s what we called it. I don’t know about the style part, not when the fella’s wearin’ crushed velvet shirts every damn day, but it was a life alright, that it was. Worked out for the best, I suppose. They’re ugly ‘n’ happy together, just like Dalton and Elizabeth are pretty ‘n’ happy together. ‘Together,’ that’s the important thing I guess. God bless ’em. Not that I’m a religious man, you understand. Been doin’ that tai chi with Dalton in the mornin’, though. Clears the head. Maybe that’d be the time to tell him about Tilghman. Hell, I dunno. That’s a sacred time, if you ask me. Probably best just to let it be. Like I said, some questions don’t want answerin’. Valvoline’s in aisle three.”

30. Porgs! (Episode VIII: The Last Jedi)

What’s a four-letter word for “cute little calico penguin puffin pug owl cat hamster Ewok Mogwai Tribble Furby Pikachu hybrid thing”? Ask literally any child you know and you’ll get the answer. These preposterously adorable critters, designed by Jake Lunt Davies, are so insanely marketable and merchandisable that Disney may as well have fired them via drone strike under every Christmas tree in the country (for a fee, of course). Even so, it’s hard to begrudge these island dwellers, several of whom take up residence in the Millennium Falcon, since they really are as delightful as advertised. The scene where Chewie can’t bring himself to chow down on roast porg will do more for vegetarianism than a million naked PETA ads.

With Star Wars: The Last Jedi now in theaters, I revisited and revised my list of the greatest Star Wars moments for Vulture, incorporating the new movie and cutting it down to a nice round 50 entries.

Just for fun, here’s how the list breaks down, movie by movie:

20th Century Fox theme for Episodes I-VI 1

The Phantom Menace 3

Attack of the Clones 2

Revenge of the Sith 6

Rogue One 3

A New Hope 10

The Empire Strikes Back 9

Return of the Jedi 10

The Force Awakens 4

The Last Jedi 2

Does the number for The Last Jedi tell you anything about how I felt about the movie? Hmmmmmmm.

A Long Time Ago: The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

This New Year’s Eve, ring in the coming year the old-fashioned way: Listen to Sean and Stefan talk about George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy for 80 minutes! For the final BLAH of 2016, we’re tackling one of our most frequently requested topics and going long on Episodes I, II, and III of the blockbuster franchise: 1999’s The Phantom Menace, 2002’s Attack of the Clones, and 2005’s Revenge of the Sith. An all but universally accepted punching bag for much of the decade since it brought the curtain down on the early adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker et al, the prequel trilogy has seen something of a change of critical fortune at since dawn of the Disney era and its crowd-pleasing kick-off The Force Awakens. With another prequel, Rogue One, now in theaters (though Stefan hasn’t seen it, so shhhhh no spoilers), we thought it would be the perfect time to discuss Lucas’s uneven but ambitious auteurist prequel saga in depth, movie by movie. Are they the Fall of the Republic–level disasters they’re made out to be, or do they have an artistic Force worth reckoning with? Listen in and find out!

DOWNLOAD EPISODE 57

PLUS! With this episode of BLAH, our 14th this year, we’re pleased to announce the start of a new series of subscriber-only mini-episodes beginning this January! For the low low price of a monthly $1 contribution to the Boiled Leather Audio Hour Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive monthly podcasts focused squarely on A Song of Ice and Fire (with a bit of Game of Thrones mixed in, we suspect, but mostly the books) and derived from listener questions. It’s our way of saying thank you to those of you who’ve subscribed this year and thus made recording these so much easier for us—and, we hope, a tempting offer for those of you who haven’t yet taken the plunge. Visit our Patreon page, pitch in, and get in on the ground floor! And now back to your regularly scheduled BLAH. Happy Holidays!

Additional links:

Jesse Hassenger’s essay on the prequels for the AV Club.

Roderick Heath’s essay on the prequels for Ferdy on Films.

Sean’s list of the 57 Greatest Star Wars Moments for Vulture (warning: Rogue One spoilers).

Sean’s list of Carrie Fisher’s 10 Greatest ‘Star Wars’ Moments for Rolling Stone (warning: Rogue One spoilers).

Our BLAH episode on The Force Awakens.

Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour.

Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).

Our iTunes page.

Mirror.

Previous episodes.

Podcast RSS feed.

Sean’s blog.

Stefan’s blog.

57. Dude, where’s my theme music? (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story)
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away … nothing! Just a wide-vista shot of an unknown planet’s rim, a slightly off-brand variant of the first few notes of John Williams’s classic score by Lost composer Michael Giacchino, the words “ROGUE ONE,” and that’s it. Disney honchos had already indicated that director Gareth Edwards’s stand-alone “Star Wars Story” would jettison the traditional opening sequence as a way to set it apart from films set within the main saga’s trilogy framework, but hearing about it and witnessing it firsthand are two different things. After a lifetime of watching Star Wars movies, what didn’t happen in Rogue One’s opening seconds was nearly as striking as anything that did happen afteward.

I gave my list of the Greatest Star Wars Moments for Vulture a post–Rogue One update. Check it out!

4. The Yub-Nub Song (Episode VI: Return of the Jedi)
Accept no substitutions: The original Ewok song of celebration that ends the first trilogy is the only Ewok song that matters. For reasons beyond comprehension, George Lucas and John Williams replaced this charming, percussive, gibberish-based hoedown with corny pan-flute New Age–isms when Lucas re-released the trilogy decades later. But no viewing of Jedi in my house was complete without dancing around the living room to those gleeful “yub-nubs,” the xylophone made of captured Imperial helmets, and that final choral sweep into the closing theme. For me, this was Star Wars.

With Rogue One hitting theaters, I ranked the 50 greatest moments in first seven Star Wars films for Vulture. I had a lot of fun, boy oh boy.