Yesterday Matt and I saw Revenge of the Sith. It was easily the best of the three prequels, and it was more than tolerable; I actually enjoyed it and found it quite moving – particularly the assassination of most of the members of the Jedi council. John Williams’s lush score, mixing familiar themes with some great new ones, also helped. (I’ll probably buy the soundtrack.)

It was neat to watch all the pieces fall into place for A New Hope, even down to the appearance of Luke’s childhood home on Tatooine. Matt pointed out the incongruity between, on the one hand, all the CGI-generated special effects, and on the other, the 1970s-era control panel on Darth Vader’s chest with all those big push-buttons; and there was a woman behind us who laughed whenever Yoda spoke a particularly long and grammatically convoluted sentence – it was hard to tell sometimes whether or not his dialogue was meant as parody. But overall, I enjoyed the movie.

At night, we met Mike for a dinner of Ethiopian food (which I’d never had before – pretty tasty) and then the three of us joined up with Dan, Mike’s roommate and our longtime friend, at Xth Avenue Lounge for drinks. Several drinks. We were both pretty drunk when we got back to Matt’s place; while taking off my socks, I lost my balance and landed on my ass, knocking over a couple of stacked folding chairs in the process. (My tailbone is a little tender, but it’s not too bad.)

Today we decided to go to Shake Shack for lunch, but when we got there it was closed. I was a little annoyed – its web site says it’s open seven days a week, and I even called the phone number to make sure. I got a recording, but it didn’t say the place was closed. In fact, it said something like, “Sorry, we can’t answer the phone right now because we’re busy serving up delicious burgers and shakes to our customers!” Bah. So I still haven’t had a Shake Shack burger. Maybe next weekend. Instead we walked up to the Manhattan Mall food court and then browsed at Macy’s. I want a pair of casual shoes – I have a pair of black dress shoes and a pair of New Balance sneakers, but nothing in between. That’ll be my next purchase. Possibly something like these (inspired by Other Jeff).

Anyway, hope everyone had a nice holiday! Me, I sure could use another three-day weekend.

On Friday night there was a fatal shooting on 126th Street in Harlem, and Matt and I missed it by about an hour. At around 7:30 at night we came out of the 125th Street subway station to go to a friend’s place, only to be confronted by yellow police tape, several cop cars, guys in suits, TV news vans and cameras, and a crowd of onlookers. We wondered what was going on, and I finally saw a woman with a press pass and asked her. “There was a shooting,” she said. “Oh, okay,” I responded, in my most blasé New Yorker voice.

From there we went to our destination, where we hung out with a group of friends and watched two memorable movies, neither of which I’d seen before: “Barbarella” and “Xanadu.”

Wow.

One stars Jane Fonda as a nymphomaniac space hero who wears seven or eight costumes and befriends an angel. The other involves Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, rollerskating, and 1940’s big-band music.

I’m not sure which one made more sense, but the dance sequences in “Xanadu” were pretty fanatastic. If you ever want to see a really good “bad” movie, that’s the one to see.

Just make sure to avoid any shootings.

In today’s New York Times, a gay teenager writes about being the default prom date for his female friends.

If I were a worried mother of a dateless daughter, I would scour the hip coffee shops of my town waving a rainbow flag in search of recruits. It might cause my daughter to die of embarrassment, but at least she would have a fabulous night out and wouldn’t make me a grandmother anytime soon.

Cute, poignant piece.