Happy Star Wars Day – May the Fourth Be With You

Happy Star Wars Day, everyone! May the Fourth be with you!

If you’re as big a Star Wars geek as I am, I don’t need to tell you what today is.  However, for the uninitiated, today, May 4th, is Star Wars Day.  It’s a day when Star Wars fans walk around and greet each other (and everyone else) with the greeting of, “May the Fourth be with you!”  Yes, it’s a geek thing.  And, yes, I will be doing this all day.

I grew up in the 80′s.  I was born at the beginning of the decade, in 1981, and pretty much spent my entire childhood watching Star Wars.  I had all the toys.  I learned to read when I was four years old by practicing with a Star Wars story-book.  My bedroom walls were always covered in Star Wars paraphernalia.  As a teenager, I spent my free time reading as many Star Wars novels as I could get my hands on.  I had a dog named Yoda.

Celebrate Star Wars Day. Or Darth Vader will cut off your genitals with his lightsaber.

Now, as an adult, I’m still addicted to Star Wars.  When the new Star Wars films came out (Episodes I – III), I forced my girlfriend (who’s now my wife) to ride around with me and help me buy up all the new toys.  I’m almost thirty years old and I have a collection of lightsabers that I keep on display.  I have a bookshelf still full of the Star Wars books that I had collected years ago.  I have all of the Star Wars films on DVD.  I have the original trilogy on VHS (though, at this point, they’re too worn out to watch).  At our wedding, my wife and I walked into the reception to The Imperial March.  As I sit here in my home-office writing this, I’m wearing my Star Wars Stormtrooper t-shirt.  And I’m wearing it to the office today, too.

Having spent my entire life obsessed with all things Star Wars, it’s with great pride that I celebrate May Fourth again this year.  Star Wars isn’t, and never was, just a movie to me.  It’s a religion.  Christians have Jesus.  Star Wars geeks have Lord Vader, as told by the Gospel of Lucas.  So, for everyone who still subconsciously holds their breath as they watch the underside of the Star Destroyer fill up the screen during the opening moments of Star Wars: A New Hope, unable to breathe until it finally passes and you see the glow of it’s massive engines, Happy Star Wars Day.  May the Fourth be with us!

And to make this Star Wars Day even more special, it has just been announced that the entire Star Wars Saga, all six episodes, will be available as a Blu-Ray set in September.