Club Jade

Here in the U.S., Spike is celebrating the holidays with a Star Wars marathon as well: Prequels today, original trilogy tomorrow.

Stormtroopers and stockbrokers will be mingling this morning at the New York Stock Exchange as Lucas Licensing’s Howard Roffman and friends will be on hand to ring the opening bell. I’m going to guess that our favorite Ewok wasn’t invited.

UPDATE: Here’s the video:

Start at StarWars.com for some sneak peeks at the upcoming Star Wars shoes from Adidas. Looks like there will be some clothing as well!

Even putting the Ewoks aside, fanmade Star Wars and other sci-fi themed teddy bears are nothing new, as a quick search on Flickr (and CJ’s own Lissy) will tell you.

But now we have something from the official realm to make it easier to please kids and collectors: Star Wars costumes from Build-a-bear Workshop. Currently they only have Clone Wars-inspired Anakin, Jedi (totally Obi-Wan,) and Rex, plus a Darth Vader and a themed pajama set. Will we see more movie-inspired styles? I suspect the Christmas sales rates will tell us… Dressed bears cost $40-$35, and the costumes alone go for $15-12. The Vader outfit is currently one of their top 20 products! (via)

Yippee-ki-yay. Star Wars is SpaceWestern.com’s #1 most influential space western. Please spare us all the argument about how it’s totally not a space western; It’s an amalgam, silly. (Also, while I don’t think anyone can deny Firefly, isn’t it a bit early to rank it quite so high on a list that’s supposed to be about influence? Far as I can tell, the only thing that it’s inspired so far is a funny clip of Castle and Fox renewing Dollhouse.)

Art or something like it. io9 collects the greatest velvet paintings of science fiction. (As Wookieepedia is to Cracked, Google Image Search is to io9.) Giant Samurai Vader was a big hit on Twitter, and the official site gives us another peek at Visions featuring some of Club Jade’s favorite things (non-alcoholic division.) Dude, we get it: It’s a Star Wars fine art book, right? Enough teasing already.

Contain your shock. Darth Vader is Lawful Evil. No!

Baked-good corner. Two extremely well-made Star Wars cakes – Jabba and Darth Maul – from L.A.’s Rosebud Cakes. For the 30-year-old child party moll in all of us. As for something we can all achieve, take a cue from the sarlacc bundt cake.

Collecting. The ten most embarrassingly collectible Star Wars toys of the 90’s. Why didn’t I sell my Special Edition Luke when it was actually worth something? WHY?

At random. Power Droid gots to get his money.

There’s another version at CNN iReport.

This Himalan vinyl toy customized by Leecifer photographed by zincsaucier442 seems very much in the spirit of the season. There are more shots at his Flickr.

So it’s technically the ‘Birth of Darth Vader Battle Pack,’ (battle pack?) and it’s probably one of those dealies that only collectors are going to buy but you know, still. Nothing says fun times like the Imperial burn ward!

Will it blend? Saturday Night Live’s Kristen Wiig wore a Darth Vader meets Kiss of the Spider Woman dress to the Emmys. Sorry, Bonnie: I’m pretty sure she full deserves that D. But at least we get blog content out of it.

IMMA LET YOU FINISH. Congratulations, it’s a week-old meme in Star Wars form!

Talkies. If you’re in the mood for some old school audio drama, Star Wars en Direct’s Dany Pépin is starting some aural fan fiction, ‘In the Shadows,’ next month.

Lists of dubious (and not-so-dubious) honors. Luke is #1 on Spike’s list of the top ten white trash heroes of cinema, while Lando is one of io9’s ten most corrupt mayors in science fiction. Uh, thanks? I guess. On an entirely different note, A New Hope tops Paste’s ten most iconic opening scenes. (via)

Nonfiction corner. StarWars.com talks to Ryder Windham and Pete Vilmur about The Complete Vader. On a related note, take a peek at Draw Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Death Troopers. Did you catch all the Purge letters? No? Well, here are the direct links: DeathTroopers.com, StarWars.com, Star Wars Action News, NJOE, RebelScum, TheForce.net, and ours.

Podcasts. Jason Fry and Daniel Wallace are on the latest Fictional Frontiers with Sohaib. (Warning: auto-pla.)

Blogsided. Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff on the pool of knowledge and Star Wars as part of the vernacular.

Ye Olde Databank. New or expanded entries for Jocasta Nu, Cad Bane, and Cato Parasitti. And hey – Ben Skywalker is in there now. That’s new! Newish. Wait, don’t tell me: They added him with the Backlash cover, didn’t they?

Sweet mockery. Checked in with We Hav to Take a Trip with Jacen Solo lately? Havac is currently working his way through Legacy of the Force.