This Is Madness: Hondo’s voting guide, part II: The most important vote of all time!

Team HondoYour favorite pirate, Hondo Ohnaka, is back, slicing into this blog account, with more insightful tips on how to vote in StarWars.com’s ‘This Is Madness’ character bracket pool thingy. It’s like a regular pool, but without water. Or pool toys. Or pineapple-shaped drinks.

If you saw my picks for the first two days and did not vote, it’s your fault that Hondo’s choices didn’t advance. But you can make it up to me, and I now have allies with more firepower, as the friendly scoundrels over at JediNews have thrown their lot in with me. So help spread the word for #TeamHondo and most importantly vote for me. Or else I’ll think of a vicious fate for you, sometime later. When I’m not typing.

In the first day of voting, no one listened to old Hondo, and now Han Solo and Darth Vader have both advanced. This is an outrage. How am I supposed to beat both of them? But in the second day, the margins show that people are listening to me. Qui-Gon got a full quarter of the vote, and I think it’s due to everyone on Team Hondo and also a lot of Taken fans. Asajj did better against Maul than that cyborg general did against Vader, so again, a small victory for Hondo and his pirates. But we need a big victory. That’s better business!

So for today’s vote (get your vote in at starwars.com/thisismadness by midnight ET, or 9 PM PT, or before you pass out, if you’re like me):

  • Light Side: Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles. Hondo respects a good pilot, since they will often get you out of a jam. And these are both good pilots. But Wedge, I think, is a better pilot since he does all that without the Force. I’m still not sold on Force users, though they often fetch a good bounty. So pick Wedge Antilles. I hear he’s Corellian and that’s a good thing in my book.
  • Dark Side: Jabba the Hutt and Salacious Crumb. Jabba is a good businessman and I make it a point to try to take advantage of a good businessman every chance I get. Though he does have good taste in companions, like that Kowakian monkey-lizard of his, Salacious Crumb. I, too, have a monkey-lizard, though his name is way cooler: Pilf Mukmuk. And I make sure that my raucous friend is well tended to. Pick Salacious Crumb to irritate the Bloated One.

And on Thursday:

  • Light Side: Yoda and Mace Windu. I do not know these temple Jedi well, with their rules and serious faces and such. So I don’t really care. Except I hear that Yoda has ears like a Kowakian monkey lizard and that amuses me that someone like my Pilf Mukmuk could levitate things in the Force.
  • Dark Side: Hondo Ohnaka (that’s me!) and Cad Bane. What? Why am I on the Dark Side? Shouldn’t there be someone more like that Savage Opress or Mother Talzin on this side? I guess I’m too popular to keep out of the running. Though really I should be on the light side – I help those Jedi brats more often than not, it seems. And sometimes they even pay me. Ha! Anyway, this one is pretty obvious: Vote Hondo or else you’re not on Hondo’s team. Got it? Besides, who would you rather party with? A guy who would kill you for a hat, or a guy who actually likes a party. At least twice a day.

Again, the most important thing is to vote for Hondo on Thursday. Tell all your friends to vote for Hondo too. Better yet, pull a blaster on them and make them vote for me. On every computer you can find. Spread the word – #TeamHondo #ThisIsMadness on Twitter, because “This Is Madness!”

Hondo urges you to join him in winning ‘This is Madness’

TeamHondoHondo Ohnaka here! I have cleverly hacked this blog to let you know that I will be the rightful winner of StarWars.com’s character bracket voting nonsense, ‘This Is Madness’. There are many people who think that others like that Han Solo or Darth Vader fellow will win this vote, but really – who is more liked by anyone in the galaxy? Me. Because everybody I’ve met tells me that they like me most. Sometimes I may be holding them for ransom, but I think they prefer to be my hostages than anyone else’s guests anyday.

And now you can join Team Hondo. And you don’t even need to give me money. Just follow my votes everyday in ‘This Is Madness’ and you can share in my victory. If you don’t know what any of this nonsense is, no problem – just follow what I tell you to do. It works for my men, and they mostly end up being rewarded. Well, the ones who survive. Go to StarWars.com/ThisIsMadness and vote the way Uncle Hondo wants you to.

Today, your choices are:

  • Light Side: Han Solo versus Lando Calrissian. Now Solo is a good smuggler with his shoot-first style. But how good is he without his Wookie pet at his side? Lando has much more, as-you-say, swagger. And he does know how to dress. And looking good is half the battle. Choose Lando. If he wins, he may owe me a favor. Or at least a bottle of Necr’ygor Omic wine.
  • Dark Side: Darth Vader versus General Grievous. Hmmm.. A cyborg asthmatic against a coughing cyborg. And both wear capes even. But I think Grievous is the one you should pick, even though he sent his droid troops and shot up my base. He does have a slightly better taste in capes. As for Vader: Don’t trust a man if you can’t see his eyes. Of course, you can see MY eyes, you just have to get close.

Picks for Tuesday 3/19:

  • Light Side: Obi-Wan Kenobi versus Qui-Gon Jinn. How good can Obi-Wan be if I could capture him time and again? So choose Qui-Gon, I hear he’s more… flexible than those other rule-bound Jedi. Obi-Wan is okay for a Jedi, but today I like Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon Jinn. reminds me. my gin.. is gone.
  • Dark Side: Darth Maul versus Asajj Ventress. This is one of those things I should not tell you who to pick, simply because the other one would probably come try to kill me. That is bad for business. But Darth Maul did trash my base and try to get my men to betray me, and I don’t consider that a good sign. So Asajj Ventress gets my choice.

Is there any strategy to this? Of course there is! But just because you are on Team Hondo doesn’t mean I’ll tell you everything. Don’t even think of trying to stab me in the back, because you cannot stab a man in the back if he is shooting you first, in the front.

StarWars.com launches “This Is Madness” character bracket pool

SW-this-is-madnessWith a video from Darth Vader, the official site launches their version of the annual NCAA hoops tournament. Entitled “This Is Madness”, the system will pair up characters in daily online votes, with the winners from the light side bracket facing the winner of the dark side bracket on April 9. Check out the video from the Dark Lord and get the full bracket information for the champion of fan favorite characters.

SW-this-is-madness2

The first vote starts on March 18, with Han Solo going head to head against Lando Calrissian on the light side, and Darth Vader paired against Gonzaga General Grievous. Characters from the entire saga, from Wedge and Wicket to Mace Windu and Darth Maul to Ahsoka Tano and Hondo Ohnaka fill out the brackets. Amazingly, the pool is 1/8 female, which just slightly beats out representation by droids. Mashable predicts a Han Solo vs. Darth Vader showdown in the final.

In the video, Darth Vader describes how the game works, and then pitching for himself, with “As much as I hate democracy, vote now, vote often, and vote Vader” so he can beat both Obi-Wan and the Emperor. Personally, I’d like to put this concept in a head to head match-up with deciding to strike down The Clone Wars and Detours for “awesomest” announcement of the week.

The official Star Wars Blog is back

…Or they say they are, anyway, as there’s only one new post. (Unless you count the roundups.) But it lays out some intriguing ideas. By featuring posts by VIPs like Dave Filoni, J.W. Rinzler, Leland Chee and Mary Franklin, they can give them a better venue than Twitter and Facebook for expanding on the projects they’re currently working on.

I do agree with some of the commenters – there are multiple fan sites and Tumblrs that can cover the more fannish stuff. The official blog can – and should – be able to aim higher than that. I’m interested to see what they’ll come up with.

UPDATE: Oh hey, here’s a post from Steve Sansweet.

Everybody loves @Bonniegrrl: Last week’s best #StarWars and #SWEU tweets

When the news broke Monday that Lucasfilm has laid off Bonnie Burton, the denizens of Twitter had plenty to say… And I’m only scratching the surface here.

More Bonnie love – plus all that other stuff we usually do – below the cut. Continue reading “Everybody loves @Bonniegrrl: Last week’s best #StarWars and #SWEU tweets”

Bonnie Burton laid off from Lucasfilm


Photo By Terri Hodges.

Bonnie Burton is no longer with Lucasfilm and StarWars.com. The company has laid her off, she announced today on Twitter.

Bonnie wrote content for the website and handled social media. She was hired in 2003, during the run-up to Revenge of the Sith, and has been an outspoken force for women in the fandom ever since.

We’re a little puzzled by this move on the part of Lucasfilm, but no one is doubting that Bonnie will land on her feet somewhere!

The Stooge is on the move: To Tumblr!

With the Star Wars Blogs in their final days, The Stooge has moved his Star Wars Joke-A-Day, a long-time staple of the Blogs, to Tumblr. So fans, be sure to either bookmark StarWarsJokes.tumblr.com or, better yet, create an account and follow him!

Here a few other Star Wars Tumblrs you might want to follow to get started: Distracted by Star Wars, Professional Geek Girl, Star Wars Backstage, Retro Star Wars, Purple Lightsaber. And you can always poke around the tags to find other stuff you’ll like, though beware spoilers (and/or occasional random nudity.)

The StarWars.com Blogs have 60 days to live

Almost a year ago, the StarWars.com forums were closed for good. And now, the other shoe has fallen: Blogs.StarWars.com will be no more. I, and presumably other Ex-Hyperspace subscribers, received an email to that effect this evening. The relevant portion:

We show that you maintain or have maintained an official blog on StarWars.com as a feature of your Hyperspace membership. As Hyperspace services officially ended as of December 31, 2011, we wanted to give you the opportunity to retrieve whatever content you have posted to your official StarWars.com Blog before they are completely retired in 60 days.

A last vestige of the site’s Hyperspace subscription service/fan club, the Blog area of the site was introduced in 2005, spiking with the Revenge of the Sith hype, and has been increasingly abandoned since.

It was, nonetheless, a venue that introduced many fans to blogging – and without it, would fandom have The Stooge? A terrifying concept.

I’ve saved many of my entries (including an embryonic version of the civility post that I’d half-forgotten existed.) I urge you to do the same now, if you haven’t already.