To our Eye on Soaps readers who don't already know his work, I would like to introduce my son (in whom I am well pleased), David Humphrey. David is a wonderful writer with a wry, often dark sense of humor that I have enjoyed his entire life (yes, he was a viciously funny baby). I am honored to share it now with our EOS audience.  Many of our readers enjoy off topic commentary and Dave's is a specific genre of cynicism and biting wit.   Here, I will post, with his permission, a number of my favorites in his body of work. 

Katrina Rasbold
Eye on Soaps Webmaster &
Dave's Very Proud Mom

This really happened.  Actually, this is only a hypothesis backed up by only a skeletal structure of actual fact, constructed solely to bring peace to the minds of people who don't want to think George Lucas is completely insane

In the year 2000, George Lucas was navigating a twisty road in the southern Rocky Mountains, on vacation with his two adopted children (but not his wife, whom he'd divorced six years earlier). He'd eventually adopt a third, but for now, it was just the two. He was taking a vacation from writing the Young Indiana Jones series and enjoying the success of The Phantom Menace, to bring his kids to a good, snowy spot he knew of, a place his father had told him about when he was growing up on a walnut farm in Modesto, CA. He'd gone there many times both as a child and as an adult, and he knew the route well.

Suddenly, a car coming down the mountain road swerved too far out of its own lane to make a turn, and Lucas had to pull his own car against the railing to avoid a collision; after all, even though he was George Lucas, he was a mortal man, and had kids in the car to protect. Unfortunately, the railing didn't stand up to his minivan, and it went tumbling down the rocky slope. He was a good father; all the children were buckled safely.

The minivan struck a tree and hung there. Lucas was knocked out, and his children were unable to free themselves because of the way the minivan was positioned, and the way the snow-enjoyment supplies in the back seat were scattered about. The rocks that has been loosened during the slide and the crash began to pick up speed and carry more, a sort of rocky snowball effect, and began to knock the van away from the tree, closer to the 200-foot drop just a few yards away.

The man who had been behind Lucas going up the mountain stopped his car, and quickly scooted his way down the mountain to get to the wreckage, bringing along a little bit of rope (as he was an experienced cliff climber) and the first-aid kit he'd snatched from his car. He got to the minivan and, thinking quickly, roped the axle in place as best he could and tied it to the tree, which, though precariously close to being dislodged by the impact, was sturdier than nothing at all. He leaped on top of the minivan, broke the driver's side window, and unlocked and opened the door. He woke Lucas, tested the extent of his injuries, and pulled him out before crawling in and unbuckling the children, seeing to it that they got out of the vehicle safely. They got out none too soon; the minivan and everything in it soon slid down the rest of the mountainy slope, yanking down the tree as it went.

Lucas was unfathomably grateful. He loved his children deeply, and he cared very much for his own life. As the stranger was giving them a ride back down the mountain to inform the insurance company (as cell coverage didn't work in the mountains), he asked if there was anything, anything at all that he could to do repay him. George Lucas, at the time, was by no means a poor man, and made every offer he could think of, but the stranger would not accept a monetary show of gratitude. Still, Lucas was insistent. His life, and the lives of his dear children were saved, and he had to express his heartfelt gratitude somehow, even if it meant chopping off his own hand.

Finally, the stranger relented, and told Lucas of the one time he'd ever experienced love....a love which, to him, was truly deep and profound beyond anything Shakespeare could have written about. They had been married, and had a son, before they began to see problems between themselves, and draw tragic irreconcilable differences, ones the stranger had made every attempt to remedy, but his wife was deaf to his concerns. She had grown to love another, a devilish rogue whose charm had won her womanly heart and soul. Unfortunately, this person she'd so loved, was entirely fictitious.

It turns out that the stranger's life had been ruined by the character Han Solo. The stranger bore no resemblance whatsoever to the character, and thus, his wife had rejected him and left him and his son.

Lucas was dumbstruck by the twist of fate that had led him to be saved by this man whose life he'd inadvertantly ruined. The man gave Lucas a few requests and asked him to choose one, but Lucas, being a grateful man, implemented all of them.

First, the stranger suggested that the Han Solo character be made much less rogueish. The stranger was very rigid and law-abiding and kind to everybody, and that was the major trait his wife had grown to despise, for Han Solo would shoot anybody to save his own skin...at least, in the beginning of the series. He asked that Lucas remake parts of the movie to make him seem less "desperado," and more like a person acting in self-defense. Thus, in A New Hope, the scene in the Mos Eisley Cantina with the bounty hunter attempting to apprehend Solo, now includes the bounty hunter attempting to shoot him, instead of Solo simply blasting him because it looked like he wasn't going to listen to reason.

Second, the stranger's son, who, it was later revealed, was approximately four times uglier than sin, had taken his mother's love for Star Wars, and had embarked upon an acting career for the sole purpose of one day having a role in a Star Wars movie. He requested that Lucas put his son in some small part, maybe on a video game, as a minor role. But no, Lucas was much too grateful for that....this was the son of the man who saved the lives of his little girls. So he immediately fired the person slated to play Anakin Skywalker for the next two Star Wars movies, and cast this spacey-eyed, bitch-lipped kid who looked nothing like the kid in the first movie, despite that this person obvious faces a severe allergic reaction to both charisma and talent.

Third, the stranger's father had been murdered by Sebastian Shaw, who had played Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. Upon learning this, George Lucas put forth plans to have Sebastian Shaw removed from the ending sequence of Return of the Jedi, to be replaced with the image of his new Anakin Skywalker, Hayden Christensen, for the DVD releases, and all subsequent releases.

Lastly, just as a stab to the stranger's ex-wife (whose name was Jarisa), he asked that the next high-budget movie that Lucas made include a speech-impaired, overtalkative, incessantly annoying character who shared his ex-wife's nickname (Jarjar). A character who, despite being more than moderately retarded, somehow managed to be in the right place at the right time to make it look like he or she wasn't the incompetant little freak he or she was with a hope that she would see the movie, see the character, and know that she was being spited.

Let it never be said that George Lucas is not a grateful man.

I know this to be true, as do all of us who have searched this vast and seemingly infinite universe to find some trace of some kind of explanation as to how one man can be so inclined to rub his stinky old-man balls in the faces of so many millions of once-adoring fans. I hadn't seen it until I heard what changes were being made for the DVD release, but now that I see it, I have become something I truly hate....a geek who feels betrayed when somebody takes a gigantic shit on sci-fi classics.

Til Next Time!