Club Jade

These products aren’t wacky in and of themselves: Who doesn’t love cookies and pancakes? It just seems a bit strange that they appear at a place like Williams-Sonoma. (Though they are a sister brand to Pottery Barn, so it’s not totally out of the blue.) Sure, $20 cookie cutters are mildly ridiculous, but we’re tremendously jaded, and at least you get Vader-shaped food out of it.

On the newstand. The 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back (and the upcoming Making of The Empire Strikes Back) lands the cover of this week’s Entertainment Weekly. The issue will be on stands (and hopefully in subscriber mailboxes) on Friday.

Prequel madness. With the release of his Attack of the Clones review, MTV has a an two-part interview with Mr. Plinkett/Mike Stoklasa of Red Letter Media for a sitdown on the reviews, copyright, mocking, and backlash. Meanwhile, Bryan Young continues his defense of The Phantom Menance.

Chartage. It’s equal mockery under the law for Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Avatar and Lost fans in the sci-fi superfan reference manual.

Younglings. Head over to Offbeat Mama for Darth Aesop’s Death Star party. The balloon sabers are particularly brilliant.

Cake! Neatorama spotlights Star Wars cakes.

Rebuttal. Big-time prequel fan Bryan Young has begun his response to the 90-minute Phantom Menace review that was going around a while back.

Presented without comment. Karen Miller, whose Star Wars books have been enthusiastically received by certain areas of fandom, wants folks to know that she’s not writing homoerotic subtext into her Clone Wars books. Okay then. (It seems the rant was inspired by this thread. Sigh.)

If we ever see an Essential Guide again… Suggestions for a book on GFFA politics. Dan Wallace is game!

Cakes! Clone Wars’ fame continues to spread with an impressive Republic Gunship and an adorable Jabba with Rotta. (via/via)

Crass fansumerism. Chewbika or soap? A bank?

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.

The internet’s favorite Star Wars cake – this week. As impressive as this Tauntaun grooms cake is, I’m not sure I’d want to eat it. Still, props to the folks at Cake Nouveau for really capturing the moment. And by moment I meant slimy tauntaun guts. (Their dazed-out Luke is amazingly good, too.)

Artoo found in Transformers 2. Are there enough oil baths in the world to get the poor droid clean after this?

Seriously? Someone is taking their dedication to authentic costuming a little too far.

Quack Vader. This unauthorized ’70′s Vader light looks like something Robot Chicken would come up with. Maybe Seth Green had one, too?

And finally… Sideshow has a site up for the customized stormtrooper figures they showed off at SDCC.

His biggest fan. Of course there was a Plo Koon cake, and of course it was eventually served to none other than Dave Filoni. (And Jeremy Bulloch. And Ashley Eckstein.)

Brains. StarWars.com celebrates the release of Death Troopers with Zombie Week. I wish I had the words to tell you how much I’m feeling Zombie Week, but I’m exhausted.

Obession corner. TFN’s Mike Barrick has collected Star Wars references on NBC’s 30 Rock, while GalacticBinder counts down the top 12 Star Wars guitar crossovers.

Charity. The Pennsylvania Star Wars Collecting Society is selling Obi-Wan medallions to help raise money for seriously injured service members.

There really is something for everyone on Etsy. I’m prepping a few posts for next week, and I ran across a Luke and Mara Wedding cake topper. (What a post-ROTJ EU pairing has to do with The Clone Wars I have no idea.) The seller, Hildoom, also has a Yoda Birthday Cake topper for sale.

Cars. Jalopnik is on something of a streak, exploring the hot rod culture of Star Wars and likening the ABT Audi R8 V10 to something that “Anakin’s coke dealer” would drive.

Back to school. StarWars.com takes a look back at the 70′s with retro class cear from Helix.

Lists. Palpatine makes #1 on Sci-Fi Squad’s top ten sci-fi deaths.

Cakes. A neat Millenium Falcon by Da Bombe Desserts.

If only… io9 suggests swapping the writing staffs of The Clone Wars and the The Venture Brothers, which may be the only way to get me to cheerfully watch the former.

Be sure to take a closer look at these great Star Wars cupcakes by Spoolsisters (Tracy & Carrie) at Flickr. (via)

I’m not sure how much posting there will be for the next couple of days, as JadeCon is officially gearing up on Thursday and I’ve got a ton and half to do before flying out tomorrow. But as always, we’ll have laptops and try our best to post from the con! (You can peruse the previous years, at your peril, here.)

Doyouloveanapple made these fantastic Mighty Mugg-based cakes for her partner’s birthday! They both feature homemade marshmallow fondant. (via)

To start us off, here are some adorable Star Wars cupcakes created by Dottylicious and photgraphed by Red Wolf.

Next, a Lego Star Wars cake by Meg, who has several Star Wars cakes to her name.

A Han in Carbonite groom’s cake photographed by Mandy Lackey.

And last but by no means least, Fionnuala & Scott Thompson’s multi-level Star Wars wedding cake. (Be sure to click through for detail shots!)

Find even more in the Star Wars Cakes group, or our own cake-related tags.