Who Woulda Thought?: Day 11: Happy Life Day!

What do you mean you don't know what Life Day is? You call yourself a Star Wars fan? OK, OK, there was some confusion back in 1978 when The Star Wars Holiday Special was aired on November 17, people thought Life Day was referring to our Thanksgiving when in fact George Lucas was ahead of his time again. Lucas came out and told everyone that the Holiday Special is a Christmas Special and it seems that George was one of the first to bump Christmas up a month, who knew?

As promised I was going to do a complete 25 Days blog post about the Star Wars Holiday Special. I've touched base on it before, once HERE before people actually started reading my blog and once HERE just a few days ago. The Star Wars Holiday Special is a steaming pile of rancor poo-doo and this is coming from someone who is "gay for Star Wars". In fact, George Lucas was quoted as saying "I would be happy if every copy could be tracked down and burned." This is why you cannot and will not find an official copy of the Holiday Special.

I happen to be ~~lucky~~ gay for Star Wars enough to have a bootlegged copy, complete with the commercials from 1978 and yes, I have watched it several times. The Holiday Special is set right after Episode IV and Han Solo is helping Chewbacca get to his home planet Kashyyyk to see his family for Life Day. Life Day is the equivalent to Christmas but on Kashyyyk and celebrated by hairy Wookies. Naturally Han and Chewie find trouble with the Empire and are chased through the whole special by a Star Destroyer, Luke and Leia join the party of course and try to make sure Han and Luke arrive on Kasyyyk safely.

Still a hottie!

You have all the classic Star Wars characters in it like Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Han, Luke, Leia, Threepio and Artoo. On top of that, you get a chance to see Bea Arthur as a bartender of a Tattooine cantina. She is hassled by a patrol of Stormtroopers and tries to get her patrons to leave without any luck until she breaks out into a song number. Have you ever heard Bea Arthur sing? I'd leave the bar too! Art Carney is a trader who lives on Kashyykk and is friends with Chewbacca's family, he's a goofball. You are treated to a wonderful holographic show (also known as Wookie porn) with Dishann Carroll and none other than Jefferson Starship! On top of this *ahem* star studded cast, you get to meet Chewbacca's family, let me introduce them to you.

Meet Attichituck or Itchy for short. This is Chewbacca's father and a great Wookie Chieftain. He obviously aged horribly since we saw him in Episode III.

Here's Lumpawaroo or Lumpy as he's referred to in the Special. This is Chewbacca's son. You could say that Lumpy is the Jar Jar Binks of the Holiday Special.

And finally there's Mallatobuck or Malla, Chewbacca's wife. Now we see where Lumpy got his dashing looks from. If she wasn't a Wookie or hairy or eight feet tall, I'd hit it.

All in all, it's no wonder Lucas has treated this like a bastard redheaded step child, it sucks and sucks bad. He tried to make it true to Star Wars as possible while kowtowing to the general public but that just didn't work. There is one shining star amongst a sea of complete darkness with this, we meet Boba Fett for the first time in an animated short. Despite the animation sucking almost as bad as the Special itself, you get to see Boba Fett in his glory and already hunting Han and Chewbacca which makes us believe that Vader had already hired him prior to Episode V.