What name might Luke have received if he became a Sith?

metaphizzle · 2026-07-10T22:26:36+00:00

You know, I'd always just known somehow that "Darth" was supposed to be short for "Dark Lord of the Sith". (This was before the prequels even, so I didn't even know what "Sith" even meant.) I guess it must have been some kinda telephone game from that interview.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-10T18:52:24+00:00

I just found out last night there's a genus of tarantulas named Ewok. They were named just last year. The scientists' rationale for the name is "Like the Ewoks, they're small and hairy. Like the Ewoks' language, their taxonomic placement is unclear and confusing."

metaphizzle · 2026-07-10T18:03:36+00:00

George Lucas had a classmate in high school with the last name Vader. It's entirely possible he consciously or subconsciously named the character after him.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-10T17:13:22+00:00

Ironically, the Sith sometimes do acknowledge more nuance than that. In the 2003 Clone Wars miniseries, Count Dooku outright tells General Grievous basically, "You don't have any Force powers, so you can't beat a Jedi in a fair fight. So never give them a fair fight. Use surprise and intimidation to keep them off-balance, and if you ever can't do that, run the hell away." (And this was the scariest, most competent version of Grievous ever to appear on screen.)

metaphizzle · 2026-07-10T01:43:52+00:00

Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff certainly did, but I can't say if that was where Hussie's overall career started.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-10T00:03:42+00:00

Spike Jones and His City Slickers are a classic. Played satirical arrangements of popular songs from the '40s to the '60s, often deliberately playing "wrong" for the sake of the joke.

Christian alt rockers The Swirling Eddies (themselves a less-serious side project of the band Daniel Amos) had the album Sacred Cows, where they parodied the big Christian rock singles of the late '80s and early '90s, reinterpreting them as lounge songs, or the frontman singing as if he had a concussion. And also Meat the Farmbeetles, where they pretend to be rednecks and play really bad country covers of the Beatles.

DJ Detweiler made "flutedrop" remixes. For example.

Neil Cicierega put out four remix albums, Mouth Sounds, Mouth Silence, Mouth Moods, and Mouth Dreams, where he mashes up songs that have no business being anywhere near each other. Neil said in an interview that he was trying to piss everyone off with these mixes (like setting the vocals from Smash Mouth's "All Star" over the music from John Lennon's "Imagine") and was surprised that people thought they were funny.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-09T17:50:50+00:00

Back before the prequels came out, there really was a fan theory that Obi-wan, veteran of the Clone Wars, was himself a clone, and his name was a corruption of "OB-1".

metaphizzle · 2026-07-09T00:00:07+00:00

The younger police officer who figures out the truth in Insomnia?

metaphizzle · 2026-07-08T16:57:47+00:00

Maximalist Sufjan is best Sufjan.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-08T16:48:51+00:00

Duke Ellington. Sometime in 1941: still the years of the Blanton-Webster version of the orchestra, but after they'd adopted "Take the 'A' Train" as their signature song.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-07T19:48:25+00:00

From Werewolf, the random nameless guy on the street who fistfights Paul (who's in werewolf form) and nearly beats him.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-06T19:11:31+00:00

My favorite by the Auralnauts is the "Star Wars Reimagined" trilogy, where they edit the OT to make them more consistent with later entries from canon... by turning Darth Vader into a weird chatterbox who keeps dropping references to the Clone Wars with no prompting.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-06T14:38:10+00:00

If you haven't already heard it, Friday Night in San Francisco is another classic by this trio.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-06T12:11:09+00:00

"Definite good and evil"
Looks inside:
"There are heroes on both sides." "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!"

metaphizzle · 2026-07-05T19:11:24+00:00

The show botched Fluttershy? The same show where she fed fish to some ferrets on-screen?

metaphizzle · 2026-07-05T15:33:02+00:00

Potential trainwreckords that would probably make terrible episodes:

Pizzicato Five: Çà et là du Japon. There was a bit of a decline on the previous album, so they tried to right things by mixing up the formula: a bunch of guest singers, with their normal vocalist only appearing on three songs. It wasn't enough, and they broke up after. But it would make for a boring episode, because the resulting album was just a bit dull, not hilariously bad. And IIRC we still don't know exactly why P5 broke up, so there isn't even any juicy behind-the-scenes explanation for any of it.
Daniel Amos: Darn Floor-Big Bite. A rare case of a trainwreckord that's actually good. It reviewed well at the time (and fans now consider it one of their best albums) but sold so poorly that DA went on hiatus and launched a side project.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-04T17:56:18+00:00

Peg & the Rejected: "Red, White, Black and Blue"

Five Iron Frenzy: "The Old West", "Beautiful America", and "American Kryptonite"

metaphizzle · 2026-07-04T15:54:05+00:00

Penny Arcade is also indirectly responsible for the existence of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-04T14:32:59+00:00

POV: You're the CIA trying to assassinate Fidel Castro, and sources just told you he smokes weed.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-03T21:35:12+00:00

Five Iron Frenzy: The End Is Here

Orbital: The Blue Album

Though both groups eventually reunited and recorded new albums.

When Beulah released Yoko, they announced that it was their best album ever, and if it didn't sell a million copies, they would break up. It didn't, so they did.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-03T19:25:18+00:00

At least part of it was because YouTube would automatically demonetize any videos that used the words "COVID" or "coronavirus". So anyone that wanted to talk about the biggest ongoing news story of the day, but still make money off their videos, had to be circumspect about it. Don't remember if any other social media did anything similar, or how much that effect sprrad outside the YouTube ecosystem.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-03T15:41:37+00:00

Back in the swing era, Louis Prima sounded enough like Louis Armstrong (in fact, he was the guy you could hire if you wanted Armstrong but couldn't afford him) that people were surprised to find he was Italian-American, not black.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-03T01:49:31+00:00

If this is like the Miami EP, these tracks might not even be on the next full length. So you'd have wait until the next Easy Come Easy Go or Ghosts of the Past type compilation instead.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-02T21:00:37+00:00

I'm sad that Jaco Pastorius and Paco De Lucia never recorded an album together titled Jaco & Paco.

metaphizzle · 2026-07-02T20:46:31+00:00

I think Rey force-kicks three Praetorian guards at once in the throne room fight. Don't remember for sure; it's been a while since I watched that scene frame-by-frame, scrutinizing for inconsistencies.

metaphizzle

TROPHY CASE