The Way, Way Back (2013)

Tagline:
Everybody has a summer that changes their life.

Wide Release Date:
July 5, 2013

Directed by:
Nat Faxon, Jim Rash
Written by by:
Nat Faxon, Jim Rash
Produced by:
Kevin J. Walsh, Tom Rice

Starring:
Steve Carell
Toni Collette
Allison Janney
AnnaSophia Robb
Sam Rockwell
Maya Rudolph
Liam James
Rob Corddry
Amanda Peet

The Way, Way Back

PREGAME THOUGHTS

As I make my through some coming-of-age stories, the Internet recommended The Way, Way Back since I liked The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

I haven’t seen a movie starring both Steve Carell and Toni Collette since Little Miss Sunshine! How’s that for some trivia? It’s almost as if I’ve seen movies before.

THE 700(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Duncan (Liam James) is not a young Shawn from Psych, not this time. He’s a young teenager from upstate New York who gets dragged to Cape Cod to spend the summer in his mother’s (Pam, Toni Collette) boyfriend’s (Trent, Steve Carell) beach house. Throughout the movie, it’s funny to hear Steve Carell exasperatedly say “Pam” a lot in a different context.

The Way, Way Back

Hi there! I’m the saddest of sacks.

Duncan is so awkward that he’s uncomfortable to watch, which means he plays the part flawlessly. He hunches his shoulders and keeps his head down and wears jeans to the beach. Trent is complete asshole to him, and his real dad isn’t much better. It’s like he needs a good father figure! I hope it happens!

Their neighbors are the perpetually tipsy Betty (Allison Janney) and her teenage daughter Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), and married couple Kip (Rob Corddry) and Joan (Amanda Peet). Duncan fancies Susanna, but he’s really bad at talking to girls and makes a damn fool of himself. Susanna finds it barely endearing.

Not content with just sitting around the beach house, Duncan takes a girl’s bicycle (complete with a basket and a bell) and rides into town. He meets Owen (Sam Rockwell), a water park staff member who is playing Pac-Man at a pizza place and pretending he’s never even seen a video game before. Duncan visits the water park, where Owen shows him around and introduces him to other members of the crew: the exasperated Caitlin (Maya Rudolph), the laid-back Roddy (Nat Faxon), and the rather schlubby Lewis (Jim Rash). Owen takes Duncan under his wing and treats him like a little brother, culminating in Duncan taking a part-time job at the water park.

The Way, Way Back

Never mind, I’m the saddest of sacks.

His second life spending his summer days at the park causes Duncan to slowly build confidence, something he’s been struggling with his whole life. Meanwhile, at the house, he continues getting belittled by Trent and ignored by his mother. Trent also has a daughter living in the house with them, but who cares. Eventually, Susanna notices that Duncan is having a hard time and starts inviting him to hang out a little bit. It’s awkward for a while, but he slowly starts coming out of his shell. One night, on his way home from hanging out with Susanna, he spots Trent and Joan kissing. Pam suspects that Trent is having an affair, but she avoids the notion completely to cope. Trent, of course, claims that there’s nothing going on between him and Joan.

During a night party, Duncan confronts Pam loudly in front of friends neighbors about Pam’s unwillingness to acknowledge the affair and stand up for herself, which causes a physical altercation between him and Trent. Duncan runs away and Susanna follows to help him feel better. He tries to kiss her, she backs away, he feels even worse.

The Way, Way Back

Just a group of sad sacks playing Candy Land, nothing to see here.

The water park staff is having a going-away party for Lewis, who has quit a handful of times already and always comes back. Duncan stays out all night and refuses to go back home the next morning, leading Owen to get involved and ask what’s going on. Duncan basically says the water park is the only place he has ever felt good. He doesn’t want to leave. Owen gets it, but tells him that he doesn’t want to be stuck at the water park like a smelly, fat loser. Owen had a similar situation with his own upbringing and advises Duncan to do what he can do be himself and go his own way.

After Duncan gets home, he is told that the family is packing up and leaving immediately. Susanna kisses him goodbye. Sullen, he piles himself into the car and mopes while Trent drives away. While stopping for gas across from the water park, Duncan bolts out of the car and says one last goodbye to his friends. Pam, Trent, and who-cares Trent’s daughter follow and witness Duncan’s daytime summer existence. After one final hurrah on the Devil’s Peak waterslide, he introduces Owen to his family. Owen helps Duncan stand up for himself against Trent.

At the end, Duncan hugs Owen, says goodbye, and leaves with the family. Pam climbs to the backseat, away from Trent, to join her son in the way, way back of the car.

The Way, Way Back

Things are looking up!

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — Sam Rockwell

Sam Rockwell stole the show. From the moment you see him playing Pac-Man to the moment he says goodbye, every single scene he’s in is wonderful. Since Trent is a complete, unapologetic dickhead, and Duncan’s father (presumably) wants nothing to do with him, to see this guy killing it as a father figure without an ounce of schmaltz was what made the film for me. I was wary at first, certainly, because I’m always wary when an older man befriends a young kid. What the fuck were you doing with Marty, Doc Brown? But Owen didn’t have a creepy bone in his body.

Owen’s progression from the audience’s point of view was believable and well-paced. Being a guy in his ’40s working at the waterpark, you’d expect a man-child with emotional developmental issues. And that’s exactly what you get for a while! But when faced with serious situations, such as Caitlin finally bubbling over about Owen’s desire to treat everything as a joke, he reigns it in with honest heart. When Duncan admits that the waterpark was the only place he felt happy, Owen doesn’t spare the bluntness. Basically, it’s a “don’t end up like me” speech, but you can tell that Owen is exactly the kind of person one should end up like. IT’S TOUCHING. Leave me alone.

The Way, Way Back

“Hey kid, stop being a sad sack and go down this fucking tube.”

TOPIC 2 — Spending the Summer at a Beach House

Other than cottages for weeklong stays, I’ve never stayed at someone’s beach house for an extended period of time. However, I do have some stories about when I was a teenager and I was forced to stay a week at a trailer park during two separate summers.

My grandmother/grandfather and my aunt’s family both owned trailers in some sort of “vacation” trailer park in a bumfuck hick Michigan town where no one is smarter than a cantaloupe. I had my cousins around in both years but the female cousin my age was just looking to get boned, the male cousin my age was destroying property in the pavilions, and the younger male cousin was too young to really hang out with but he was the best of the three.

To maintain partial anonymity, let’s call the hooligan Bryan. Bryan had some burnouts and Hot Topic sluts as friends, and he’d spend his days bouncing from trailer to trailer finding girls to hit on or trying to get pot from the older kids and younger adults. One guy, probably in his forties, made me and Bryan touch our fists together so that he could tap his cigarette ash between them and “whoever moves their hand first loses”. I’m proud to say that I won!

There was also this kid who wore the same Misfits shirt every single day, and Bryan launched bottle rocks at him and lacerated his arm. I don’t know what happened to him, but I’m sure there was some gross clinic trailer somewhere near the park entrance.

I have other stories, but the bottom line is that it was all very miserable. I had the most fun hanging out in the dilapidated arcade and watching South Park marathons on my grandparents’ TV. I didn’t have a fucking waterpark to sneak away to and develop friendships with people who actually had jobs. Duncan had it made, man.

The Way, Way Back

Have you ever felt like… God himself is a sad sack?

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

In an interview, writer/director Jim Rash said the script’s main inspiration was the opening scene, inspired by a similar conversation he had with his own stepfather when he was 14.
Steve Carell asks Duncan in the beginning of the movie how he would rate himself from 1 – 10. Duncan settled on 6. Carell told him he thinks he’s a 3. I’d also rate Jim Rash a 3! That’s mean! I don’t really mean that! Dean Pelton is my favorite character on Community!

In order to save money, the filmmakers decided to not get trailers for the actors, and instead decided to rent a house for the duration of filming (approx. 6 weeks), where the actors could go between takes. The house turned into a popular hangout spot for the cast and crew, and they would often go to the house even during weekends or days off.
Can you imagine how much fuckin’ went on in that house?

Sam Rockwell would often improvise and joke around on the loudspeaker during scenes. One time, forgetting that there were children around, he made an inappropriate joke about herpes, which upset the owner of the park. Rockwell had to go and apologize so that they could continue filming.
The owner of the park almost turned the car around on the filming of The Way, Way Back. What if Sam Rockwell was like “fuck no, I won’t apologize”. The movie would have died of herpes.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Yeah, this movie was great. It’s a feelgood coming-of-age film that doesn’t get too sappy and stupid (the breakdance scene overstepped it a little bit), and Sam Rockwell’s performance alone is worth the watch. Just don’t look too hard at Nat Faxon’s shitty teeth and everything will be juuuuuust fine.

The Way, Way Back

Presented without comment. But really, fuck this scene.


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January 2, 2003 – Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

Note: I do not have any download links to any shows. Don’t be a dingus. Refer to the Phish Spreadsheet for that.

January 2, 2003 – Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

Set One

Chalk Dust Torture — 14:50
Ahhh, chalk dust torture. My favorite kind of torture! It’s like waterboarding, right, except you throw chalk at the dude and start jerking off right in front of him. College was good times.

Trey is just so happy to be doing shows again. He giggles a little bit here and there as he sings through the opening, launching into a tight jam at around 3:30. It gets weird around 6:00 and then gets slow and weird around 10:00. Usually the first song is something stupid like “Wilson” or a shitty 7-minute “Chalk Dust Torture”, but this is a fantastic start! If this is like waterboarding, then sign me up!

Bathtub Gin — 17:23
A 17-minute “Bathtub Gin”?! Have I died and gone to Cool Hell? I mean, listen to this thing. Page is slamming the keys with his extremely large penis and it sounds fantastic!

Then Trey’s little pre-jam bridge is sloppy and uninspired, all sorts of “dooooo, doo-doo-doo-doo doot doot doo-doo-doooo…” etc. And then the jam is fun, but it doesn’t really TAKE YOU PLACES, you know? Not like a heaping chalice full of deliciously warm bathtub gin. I’m drinking it right now, and let me tell you. It’s stripping the wallpaper right off my esophagus.

It’s Ice — 7:58
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TOM HANKS!” Trey yells before launching into a standard “It’s Ice” with Page’s typically out-of-tune voice. Then things SLOW DOWN at around 5:00 and Page punches some of them keys in the high register.

Yo, what did the glass of ice say to the can of Pepsi? “It’s ice.” I just made up that really good joke just now.

Back on the Train — 11:57
Gettin’ groovy now, son. The mid-tempo “Back on the Train” keeps it real, yo. Just cruising along like the Amtrak train that takes me between Detroit and Kalamazoo in roughly 17 hours. That’s a 3-hour car trip.

The jam never really goes anywhere, but it’s pleasant enough. Kinda like the first 13 hours of the Amtrak train trip. Only not as full of dirty, filthy hobos! Unless you count Trey.

Round Room — 6:09
This is a very underrated song off of the album that shares its name. It’s beyond my understanding why this has only been played six times, with four of those in 2003. Maybe it’s because Mike sings it and his voice is even worse than Page’s.

This song is very bouncy. Even bouncier than “Bouncing Around the Room” and that song has “bouncing” in the title. It also has “round room”. Anyway, “Round Room” is a pleasant listen and NO ONE APPRECIATES IT THE WAY I DO.

The Horse — 1:04
Oh fucking boy, “The Horse”. I bet “Silent in the Morning” is next.

Silent in the Morning — 5:01
Oh fucking boy, “Silent in the Morning”. Usually every “Silent in the Morning” sounds like every other “Silent in the Morning”, but this one is particularly bad. It’s full of flubs and wrong notes and that higher octave noodling from Trey that starts at 4:00 is sloppy at best and really, really sloppy at worst!

I hope something good is next!

Stash — 12:28
Hey, I love “Stash”! This one starts off like complete shit, though. Trey’s guitar is puking notes that are full of unsavory chunks. The audience does better at the hand claps than anything the rest of the band is doing.

Nah, it’s not that bad. But these composed sections need to be TIGHT or else nerds like me listening over 20 years later will bitch and moan on his blog that no one reads. And why would Phish want that? Exactly.

Jam is fantastic and tense! I like a good “Stash” that isn’t afraid to rip and roll, my friends. And you can take such a thing to the bank, I say.

Water in the Sky — 6:03
More like my Penis in your Butt. What a boring fucking song this is! It makes me want to get up and dance as long as I’m present at yo mama’s funeral and I’m dancing to the dirgiest dirge.

Nah, it’s not that bad. It has that bluegrass shuffle that they like to use once in a while, which is fun! It’s fun! I’m serious. Take me seriously once in a while.

Character Zero — 8:17
Hey, check it out, it’s a “Character Zero” set closer! That shit never happens! Never at all ever! Someone take a picture of this moment before it doesn’t happen again for the next 999 out of 1000 shows.

Nah, it’s not that bad. But it is this time. It starts out so weak and unconfident that I’m shitting my stupid pants right now. Jesus Christ, guys. Get it together.

Huff. Sigh. Set Two coming up. Let’s hope for some tasty extended jamming.

Set Two

46 Days — 21:06
The debut of “46 Days” gets all hell of jammed out, but it’s not like crazy jamming. It’s like “I’m sitting on the couch in the basement stoned out of my gourd on pineapple edibles and noodling around on my dad’s old Stratocaster while Fraggle Rock is on TV”-type jamming.

And that’s not a bad thing! People need a nice breather after waiting in line to use a disease-ridden portable toilet during the intermission with the other filthy hippies and degenerates!

Phish!

Simple — 10:28
“46 Days” kind of peters out into nothing and then Trey decides to start a half-assed “Simple” riff to get out of it. Like, hey guys, I could’ve hung onto your “46 Days” jam for another 15 minutes, but instead I have to hear you sing about saxophones and skyscrapers. Thanks.

My Friend, My Friend — 6:29
I was going to give them shit for putting such a mid song like “My Friend, My Friend” smack dab in the center of Set 2, but this is a pretty good version and I’m embarrassed to have jumped to such an early conclusion! I’m also embarrassed to be listening to Phish!

The thing about “My Friend, My Friend” is that it’s sing-songy while still being proggy, and there aren’t many of those types of structured, short-form songs in their repertoire. Usually it’s just sing-songy and insufferable (“Bouncing Around the Room” or “NICU”) or just proggy and insufferable (“Guyute” or “Reba”), but here we have insufferability in a joint package! Impressive!

Limb by Limb — 10:24
“Limb by Limb” is one of my guilty pleasures, because I like the whole “limb by limb by limb by” thing while Trey and Mike vocals. And usually these jams are knotty and cool, and this one is no different. Right around the 8-minute mark, Trey starts high-pitch shreddin’ like he’s dicing tomatoes at a family reunion potluck! And if that analogy makes any sense to you, come over to my house and try to explain it to me.

Thunderhead — 7:08
This tune was so recognizable to me as it kicked off that I couldn’t believe it has only been played live seven times. Then I realized that it was because I’ve listened to the Round Room album more than any other human being on this Earth and I am chagrined to report that I like it.

I’m the only idiot Phish fan who listens to their studio albums. What a fucking dingus.

Run Like an Antelope– 12:11
If you’ve heard one “Run Like an Antelope” then you’ve pretty much heard them all, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Usually they don’t get too strange with this one, but Trey puts on his best guitar face while fretting his way through the section at around 7:30, which makes this one pretty fun. Normalcy returns at 9:40 and finishes off with your standard RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN etc.

If there’s one thing about running like an antelope, it’s that you gotta do it out of control, man.

Cavern — 5:42
A DICKHOLE CONNECTOR
A BOTTLE DIRECTOR
A JIGSAW ERECTOR
A TV PROTECTOR
A DILDO CONVECTOR
A FRUSTRATED SPECTRE
A NONSENSE FUNCHECTOR
A PICTURE OF NECTAR

Encore

Mexican Cousin — 5:51
This song is apparently about getting so drunk on tequila that the four ugliest people to ever start a band kissed your Mexican cousin. And guess what? They’re ready for more! Isn’t that nice?? Right on the pussy.

Listen, this has been fun. Let’s meet up again for another sexy Phish show another time, shall we?


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Ouch, Man – The First Session

Chronicles of the Tattoo - Me

It’s all wrapped up and oozy and inky and leaky and gross right now, but there’s the gist.
[Photo Credits: Tom in his shitty bathroom.]

The studio smelled like Bactine and Vaseline. A young blonde woman with pimples was getting a calligraphy tattoo of her dog’s name on her ribs. Another young, impossibly skinny woman with blue hair and huge headphones was getting tattoos of a sun and a moon on her hips. There I was, sitting the cold room in a black tank top. I hadn’t worn a fucking tank top since I was ten years old! I was wringing my hands nervously while my artist prepared the stencil. All I could think of was, “What the hell am I doing here? This is crazy! I’m crazy! I’m taking seven hundred pills for anxiety and depression and I’m having a manic episode! Help! Help, there’s no way out! There’s no way out! The walls are closing in on me! The walls are padded and they’re closing in on me and the only way out is through that return air vent up there! Maybe if I sneak away very slowly, slither on the floor, and do a backflip eight feet into the air, I can make my escape with none the wiser…”

I got over it pretty quickly. Once I took a nice, long look in the mirror (admiring my stunning physique, of course), I decided that the tattoo placement was sublime. LET THE TATTOOING COMMENCE!

I had to sit in a folding chair with my arm draped across a slanted arm rest while I watched four other people get their tattoos while lying down on massage tables. After a couple hours of uncomfortable shifting, I became rather green with envy at these motherfuckers who got to basically sleep on a bed. That was approximately half of the tattooing discomfort. The other half of the discomfort was getting a cluster of needles jabbed into my tender flesh at 200x per second.

If you’ve been an avid reader of my Chronicles of the Tattoo feature, you’ll know that I already have a small tattoo on my left arm. So, verily, I’m no stranger to the process of ink-in-flesh. Of course, that one only took about 30 minutes. This monstrosity is going to take 20 hours, with the first five hours (give or take) covered in the initial session. When that needle first touched my skin, I immediately remembered, oh yeah, this is rather painful. There are two kinds of sensations: 1) when he traces outlines, it feels like a very sharp toothpick is being dragged, with much force, across the skin, and 2) when he fills in color, it feels like a blunted toothpick is scraping my fucking skin right off. Needless to say, anyone who tells you that getting tattooed doesn’t hurt is full of fart-inducing beans.

The process felt like it went by more quickly than I had ever imagined. I took exactly four five-minute breaks, wherein I slurped down hefty mouthfuls of delicious orange juice and gulped down hefty mouthfuls of quenching and nourishing Smart Water. At one point I used the bathroom and checked the tattoo progress out in their enormous mirror. I looked quite handsome! Also, besides that obvious fact, the tattoo was looking really cool. At no point did I feel like there was a lack of congruency between how how I looked, how I felt, and how the tattoo looked on my body. I always think I look like some dork who can’t pull off the look, but I think that shit works on me. Thank God.

After getting tortured for hours on end, my session was finally over. Another quick look in their full-length mirror and I was immensely satisfied. I was pleased that I made it through the whole section without freaking out and having a complete panic attack over mutilating half my arm for the rest of my life. The artist applied Tegaderm to the tattoo, and that stuff is the shit. Look it up, it covers wounds while allowing them to both breathe and trap leaking fluids, and you can literally leave it on for five days. After that time, just apply lotion as needed, son. It makes the healing process infinitely easier, since without it you need to wash it twice a day with scalding hot water and spread some incredibly gross and slimy Aquaphor healing ointment on it to keep it from drying out. No one wants to do that! It makes you wonder why anyone would bother getting tattoos in 3370 BCE with nothing but a shitty bottle of Aquaphor. Crazy.

It felt like I had the hugest sunburn of my life for the rest of the day. I went to bed at 6:30pm and didn’t wake up until 7:30am! What a weird day all around!

So now that you’ve feasted your eyes on what is literally one session’s worth of work, you’re probably wondering the same thing I’m wondering: what the hell still needs to be done that will take another 15 hours? Good question! I don’t know, exactly! But I trust the process. For one thing, there’s a very large chunk of my inner arm that haven’t been touched yet. For another thing, my artist said he will need to redo a lot of spots that will likely fade. We need these areas of ink to be like the blackest of nights. The color of the world behind your eyelids.

In any case, I’m very pleased with it and I’m looking forward to avoiding the sun until January. Here’s to Session 2 on September 22.


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Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #3 – “Book I: Vader (Part 3)”

* Part 3 of 6 of the Book I: Vader storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #3 – “Book I: Vader (Part 3)”! In the previous installment, after having taken a licking by Emperor Palpatine for that whole exploded Death Star thing, plus a weapons ship stolen by space pirates, Vader gets an assistant named Oon-Ai to keep a very close eye on him for the task of destroy the space alien base.

It turns out Oon-Ai was a mole planted right under Palpatine’s nose! Vader makes short work of him and we move on.

Has Vader gained back Palpatine’s trust? Has Palpatine bought enough concealer for his dumb white face? TIME WILL TELL, FRIENDS.

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #3 [May, 2015]
Written by: Kieron Gillen
“Book I: Vader (Part 3)”

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #3

Looks like some woman with a simple biomech tattoo and a barely working belt is going to show up to SHAKE THINGS UP a little bit here. Will Darth Vader want to bone her, or did his penis fall off along with his limbs back on Mustafar?

“Hmm,” says this new lady. “Surveillance already bypassed guns, but no new triggers.”

This is Quarantine World III in Kallidahin Space, which means nothing to me but maybe after about 15,000 more Star Wars comics it’ll start coming together. “Just an empty room,” she continues.

She considers just traipsing along the corridor of this empty room of this quarantined world, but she pulls out some magic dust first to check out if any security lasers will be ready to zap her to smithereens and/or call in the flamboyant protocol droids. Lasers are there. She shimmies under them and enters a vault of interest.

She finds a computer chip that she refers to as a the “triple-zero personality matrix”, one of which is probably installed in Luke Skywalker’s brain right now. Ha! This thus-far unnamed woman removes the chip from the vault with tweezers and shimmies her way back from whence she came. Verily.

Whoops! Whoopsy-doodle! She trips one of the lasers and a large robot starts chasing her down the hallway shooting his own lasers. It’s Laserfest 2023. Or Laserfest a Long, Long Time Ago, rather.

Anyway, she makes it down the corridor and through a closing door at the last minute. The comic is already almost half over.

“Doctor Aphra… you are an irresponsible and troublesome woman.”

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #3

Nasty, even! Into the binders with you.

This little robot who calls the now-named Doctor Aphra is named Utani Xane, and he/she is reprimanding Aphra for attempting to steal the triple-zero personality matrix. It has been quarantined for centuries for a reason! And… it’s… uh… I dunno, something about a coronavirus.

Doctor Aphra calls it “beautiful” and it shouldn’t be locked away any longer. It should be in an armory, not in storage. Utani Xane retorts that Aphra should be in prison (again), not running free like some… non-prisoner.

One of Utani’s henchman informs it that a TIE fighter is headed their way to land on the planet. It’s Darth Vader. There wasn’t much build up to this, so you don’t get one from me either!

Vader clearly isn’t allowed here for reasons related to treaties and protocols, but he doesn’t give two rancid shits! He does his Force thing to blow most of the robots back while Utani scrambles away. He’s here to get the triple-zero personality matrix, so hand it over! Papa needs to triple-zero his current double-zero personality. However, the chip is dropped and topples off the platform they’re all standing on. “Oh no!” Aphra says. Oh no indeed! OH NO! Nooooooo! *burp*

Aphra grabs onto the edge with one hand and grabs the chip with the other. Vader plunges the business end of his red glowstick into Utani’s back. “Doctor Aphra,” he says boomingly (I imagine) to the precariously dangling woman. Brace yourself, he’s about to say something rude or mean, probably.

“I have need of you.”

Brrrt! Well, how about that? Darth Vader needs someone! What a fucking loser.

This Doctor Aphra, she’s a huge fan of this smelly, dark helmeted one. She invites him to her lavish ship, the Ark Angel. “This is a private business,” Vader tells her, getting right to the MEAT AND POTATOES of the matter at hand. “I recently destroyed some of your reactivated droids. They impressed me.”

Cool! This guy is not easily impressed, and he once saw Padmé Amidala’s sweet, sweet erection.

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #3

It also slices and dices! It can cut this shoe in half!

Doctor Aphra is after the chip because “it speaks languages no one else does, and that’s what I need”, so she needs to spend the next few hours busting the code on that before she can help anyone! Especially present company. And furtherm–

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” she asks, turning her head to see Vader walking away. She turns back and the codes hath been busted. It’s unlocked at any rate, probably because of some voodoo magic that Aphra knows nothing about. “…how did you do that?”

She verbally fellates Vader’s alleged wonderfulness and continues her task of installing the chip into one of her “impressive” protocol droids. It’s eyes light up red. “Oh, hello,” it says.

AHA! ENGLISH! The most inscrutable of languages! A language so mystifying that only the dumbest people in the universe speak it.

“I’m O-O-O or Triple-Zero, if you prefer. I’m a protocol droid, specialized in etiquette, customs, translation, and torture, ma’am.”

Aphra’s tattoo is sexy. Now back to our regularly scheduled protocol droid-in’.

“As there’s no one here to murder presently, how may I be of assistance?” O-O-O asks politely. Aphra wants O-O-O to kickstart this nearby astromech droid, which Vader finds befuddling. All that work for a lousy trashcan? Surely there are other things more pressing than that? Like this game of Parcheesi that they still need to finish?

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #3

It’s too bad that it has the word “BLASTOMECH” engraved in huge letter on the back of its head.

So, this trashcan can kick ass. That’s good too. Beats C-3PO and R2-D2, those pussies. These robots can actually do shit, it seems.

It used to be a product of the Tarkin initiative base, but then it jettisoned itself after blowing it up for some reason. Aphra found it, but she can’t get it to wake the fuck up. It only speaks the language of the base, but that’s lost. That’s why the chip is important, see? This is why O-O-O is here to jibber jabber and such.

“BT-1, wake up.”

“BLEEP!”

Well, that was easy. Now it draws out a few weapons and gets ready, much to Aphra’s chagrin. “No, BT-1! No! You can’t possibly do that!” O-O-O yells, shielding Aphra and Vader. “They are our masters!”

All right, we’re all on the same page here! Looks like Vader got what he wanted, I suppose he can just leave Aphra there and go about with his busy day then.

“There was a time I had armies at my beck and call. That time has passed. I need resources of my own. Private resources,” Vader says rather absent-mindedly if I do say so myself.

“I was abstractly meant to be delivering these two to the droid Gotra. They had another mission lined up… but you’re my next mission, aren’t you? And the next. And the next. You’re what I’ve been looking for all my life,” she says to him, doe-eyed and mysterious-like.

So Vader gets to have the droids! What else does the benevolent, frisky one need? “I need troops of unquestioning loyalty.”

Sounds good, boss! I know there’s a Rebel Alliance out there full of people who would gladly—ooops, that’s not right at all! Silly me!

Aphra knows where to find an army of droids! “The droid Gotra wanted me to recover an… unusual droid factory. It’s under close watch by you Imperials – plus not-exactly-friendly locals. Best bet…” she turns to him with a wry grin, “…how do you feel about a secret mission to Geonosis, Lord Vader?”

Vader stares vacantly. “I have no feelings regarding Geonosis.”

“Good,” she responds. “Then we need to move. I won’t let you down.”

“Wise, Aphra. That would be a mistake.”

Final Thoughts

I like this Doctor Aphra! She’s not in the movies, right? That must mean she gets killed early on in the comic book canon? Maybe a Hutt falls on her head.


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