An enormous photo of Skywalker Ranch.

It's Friday, meaning that I'm posting late and that I have little energy. I was attempting to slog through the ending of Double Suicide (103) last night, but Alex and I instead attempted to watch a documentary from the 1960s entitled, The Exiles. I don't know what documentaries were like in the 1960s, but this seemed like a poorly staged sitcom that sort of exploited the plight of Native Americans trying to move off the reservations. I slept through nearly the entire thing.

What I did do of worth yesterday was get the chance to geek out about Skywalker Ranch one of those hallowed places in all geeks mind. For those of you who didn't spend their childhood singing the Star Wars' theme to their hairdressers, Skywalker Ranch is the technical facility of George Lucas' LucasArts. One of Alex's many, many bosses is a sound-engineer there and was all too willing to give me the heads up on what exactly was going on there.

A few gleaned items:

- Turns out Skywalker Ranch is just a big sound facility. For a while they had a group of accountants and other "non-creatives" horsing around over there, but Lucas (he of the beard and flannel) thought that all those math-oriented brains were cluttering up the creatives. So he moved them to their own compound right down the road, where they could discuss macroeconomics and not dilute the brains of those trying to make, sigh, art. Lucas, you creative fascist you.

- There are no giant hedge structures of Yoda on the property. My source on the inside told me that the only prop he's ever really seen there is Luke's original lightsaber (awesome), but that he thought most of the other props from the film were "stored in some warehouse." I would like to find that warehouse.

- Where in the past I believed Skywalker Ranch to be a magical place where gods of science-fiction pieced together masterworks, instead I find that it's just a sound facility. And not just for LucasArts, but for whomever wants to rent it out. The fantastical land where I believed you'd be greeted by phaser-toting storm troopers is just an overblown recording studio. I cried a bit.

- Things at Skywalker Ranch: live cattle, an inn, an organic farm, a fire station (with two fire trucks), a reservoir, the aforementioned lightsaber, and a main house where George Lucas himself once lived. This isn't a sound studio it's a goddamn vacation home.

- It's strange to learn that a place of magic in your mind is really just a place where people work. A place were people work that I'd still give an arm and a leg to visit.

Monday: Double Suicide (103)

Look, I'm a writer! ... and other thoughts.

Look, look! I got a piece of writing on the SF Weekly Music Blog:

CREDIBILITY

Yup, the good folk at The SF Weekly have me attending some shows in the next few weeks and writing my thoughts for their early morning music review column (aptly titled Last Night). Strangely enough, as it always seems to happen, I've once again been selected as their hip-hop reviewer, thus last night I was sent out by the lovely Jennifer Maerz to review Kanye West's DJ A-Trak. The review gets across my general, slightly more positive thoughts on the whole affair, but I thought I'd share my less positive feelings in whole with you.

- I had a hip-hop radio show a long time ago. We drank Mad Dog 20/20 and I usually ended up insulting someone or some entity on air. Like most things in the early stages of music criticism career, I was in it mostly for free music and the chance to hear my own voice on the radio. The only free album I ever received was some sort of Halloween related track that talked about killing babies. My brief career as a hip-hop DJ ended after a few too many 40s and a brief, curse-filled argument with administration. I was not terribly disappointed.

- Still, this brief, volatile career has landed me a lot of writing gigs in my life, and last night's A-Trak show was just one of them. Yup, Noah Sanders - Hip-Hop Reviewer, what a strange, strange world.

- Even stranger that last night's "hip-hop DJ set" was actually a loosely defined rave, minus the candy jewelry and ecstasy, add douchey frat boys, Red Bull and Vodka and weed smoke. It could've been my fault, perhaps I came in to the evening expecting breaks, beats, and flat-billed baseball caps, and instead was greeted with house music better listened to in the early 90s. Throughout most of Treasure Fingers hour plus set, I literally cringed, my head down on my arms, acid spewing from my mouth as the crowd cheered after each euro-bass drop. If not for the presence of kindly JM, a shiny-shirted dancer might've gotten hurt last night. That's all I'm saying.

- My final thought on electronica, especially the 90s cheese house that was blasting out of the speakers last night is this: has the genre really progressed that little? Is this some sort of nostalgic revamp like 80s butt-metal had a few years back? And you, you old school electronica-heads, how can you still be supporting this shit? Oh, and you, you new school electronica fans, why aren't you listening to all the other, newer sub-genres being created every day?

Sigh, I should just stop talking about it, I never have any thing nice to say.

Here's a bit of exciting news for you. The first images for Wes Anderson's stop-motion take on Mr. Fox (with voice work by George Clooney, amongst others) is online.

Sure, the foxes look a little bit like creepy baby dolls, but I have full faith that this will be an amazing film. Any thoughts?

Still getting this thing back in to shape. Stick it out with me.