This weekend, the Force was with me. And vice versa, I guess.
With a couple of high school friends, I went to the historic Tennessee Theater downtown to see Return of the Jedi on the big screen. It was only eight bucks, a comparative bargain. We had lunch beforetime at the Downtown Grill & Brewery, now celebrating its 30th anniversary, although it's operated under several sets of owners, and names, in that time. It's been under present management for the longest – about 20 years – and that's the best, although I do kind of miss the cigar-and-single-malt room upstairs tha the original version had. It was Knoxville's first microbrewery and I remember being so excited. Now I literally couldn't name all the breweries in town off the top of my head. Progress!
I don't think I'd seen Jedi since it was in theaters, and it struck me quite differently now. When I saw it before, the explosions and the space battles, the destruction of Jabba the Hut, etc., seemed to be the big story. But watching it again I realized that the real story was Luke's effort to – literally – save a man's soul, in this case Darth Vader/Anakin's.
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