Portland State Uninversity 6-25-05

Troopers!!

streaming --- PSU 6-25-05 First Half

zipped ------ PSU 6-25-05 First Half

streaming --- PSU 6-25-05 Second Half

zipped ------ PSU 6-25-05 Second Half

Got most of the second lecture recorded, except for the first couple of minutes and the last couple of minutes. The first couple of minutes was mostly set up, basically laying out the entire premise - that the Paradigm mostly treats the original trilogy as 'historical documents'.

I think I also tried ineffectually to lay some groundwork for the Empire stuff with a brief story about Alamut and The Old Man in the Mountain. This is the story of how young men were kidnapped and stoned out of their gords with hassish and convinced that they had been taken to paradise. This 'Old Man in the Mountain' would then promise to take them back to paradise upon death, thereby creating perfect assassins (hassish may be the root word for 'assassin' - neat, and maybe not true). I likened Kenobi's hypnotic manipulations of Luke to this but I think I realized this wasn't the best analogy (one of the miss-steps).

I also realized that I had no real defense for Vader's alleged child-murdering from 'Revenge of the Sith' other than the proposal that this new trilogy is a pack of FUCKING LIES! Without adequate build-up for that idea, I doubted that a 'new' audience would buy it, or even understand what the fuck I was babbling about (that was another of those miss-steps).

Then I started wondering what the hell I was doing with my life (oops, not really the time or place to start THAT shit), and then I kept thinking 'why the hell is the room only half full?' (oops, wrong way to look at that, kid). Shit. With all that going thru my head I actually did something I seldom do, I managed to NOT make a smart-assed quip when I bungled something. I started pausing, forgetting what the hell came next, what the hell I had meant to point out or say. Fuck me.

At a certain point I even thought to myself 'I'm wearing moon boots - sure that's cool, but I'm behind a podium in the fucking DARK'.

In short (hmm... maybe not so short), can't say I'm thrilled with my performance that night. It wasn't horrible, but the only other times that I fucked up the Paradigm lecture that badly I was doing nitrous and pot. Granted, unlike those occasions, I managed not to fall asleep while actually giving the lecture, but really it's the audience who suffers. And that's just unacceptable. I may be out of my fucking head, but as a performer (think of me as your personal morale officer, your very own Neelix if you will) I'm downright ashamed if the audience is not entertained:)

This second lecture wasn't a total disaster, though, so here I present the two files. I'm not big on this 'editing' fad going around so their big and raw (like I like my... oh, you've heard that one?).

And of course galleries of those awesome boys from Dark Side Troopers. True there are sexier things than white plastic armor, but they mostly involve girls in black vinyl :)

Troopers, Troopers, Troopers!!

Troopers with the crowd!!

Troopers with the crew!!