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Gaz (minutes 31-35)

Hey it’s me, your buddy Gaz! I’m an animator and sometimes comic artist. I own 29 different versions of Luke Skywalker in figure form. One year for Halloween they were out of Star Wars costumes except for a Chewbacca outfit with no mask. I wanted to be a Star Wars character so bad I made my grandmother get it for me. She took a wolfman mask from another costume, and later used a sharpie to make the nose black and enacted other superficial changes to my lupine Wookie mask. I was temporarily Mollified, and the next year I was Darth Vader. My last name is Gretsky, and my website is here: www.gazbot.com

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Damon Ciarelli (minutes 36-40, 61-65)

Hi, I’m Damon and like everyone else, Star Wars changed my life in lots of ways but this one I’m going to write about is probably slightly unusual. These days I make a living as a programmer but not so long ago, I was an animator and had only limited knowledge of computers. The reason I became a programmer is….and I’m not lying about this even a bit… this really happened and it’s slightly embarrassing, and Pete, I know you don’t like mentioning the prequels… but back in 1999, I was in the movie theatre watching the Phantom Menace for the first time. After being up for 3 days straight waiting on line for tickets, and during the first 5 minutes of the movie, before much had happened, and it still seemed like maybe, just maybe, it could actually be up to the expectations we all had been building for 20 years…ha. Well anyway, during the first five minutes of The Phantom Menace, this was the first time we had ever gotten to see Jedi in their prime. They weren’t old men or half machine or whiny farm boys… They kicked ass! And I thought to myself… “hmmm, I wish there was a mystical energy field that bound our galaxy together and whose ways I could learn cause I want to be like them!” And it was obvious… The Internet. It surrounds us, it penetrates us… So I decided right then and there… I would quit my job as an animator and master the ways of computers and the internet. This is right before we met the Gungan whose name I won’t mention and our excitement collapsed into a pile of crumpled up gum wrappers… But I still went through with the plan I came up with during those first five minutes.

Another decision I made during the first 5 minutes of The Phantom Menace is that cloaks are really cool and I would start wearing them from then on!

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Mars Wong (minutes 41-45)

Mars’s name was chosen at the last minute over “Vader”.  In hindsight, probably for the best.

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Mike Dawson (minutes 51-55)

In addition to his work as a graphic novelist Mike is a seasoned podcaster, hosting the interview show TCJ talkies and co-hosting THE INK PANTHERS PODCAST. He denies that his son is named after Ewan MacGregor.

 

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Ryan Haupt (minutes 56-60)

is an actual scientist and host of the podcast Science… sort of. In episode 26 of the show, they cover the aerodynamics of astromech flight. Whether in the lab or the real world, he often annoys his friends by getting overly excited about the most recent fan conspiracy theory fixing plot holes in his favorite pieces of nerd culture. To get a photo for Pete and Alex, he had to go to a toy store and wait for all the other kids to stop hogging the lightsabers.

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Leslie Gornstein (minutes 66-70)

is an entertainment journalist. She’s the author of The A-List Playbook (Skyhorse, 2009) and the host of the Fame Fatale podcast, available via iTunes. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Jackie Kashian (minutes 71-75)

Jackie’s comedy is like listening to a really racy episode of All Things Considered. She is comic, writer, and occasional actor… she just did her first late night set on the Conan O’Brien show, has a half hour special on Comedy Central and has recorded an episode of This American Life with Ira Glass, Her latest CD, “It Is Never Going To Be Bread” was one of the top ten comedy albums of the year on Amazon. She hosts a weekly cult fave podcast called “The Dork Forest” where she creates a safe space for people to admit that thing they dork out about more than anyone.

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Joe Mazel (minutes 76-80)

has been babbling about movies, music and comic books for close to four decades, much to the chagrin of everyone he knows.

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Doug Benson (minutes 81-85)

is a stand-up comedian and host of the popular podcast Doug Loves Movies. He is also the star of Super High Me  and The Greatest Movie Ever Rolled.

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Adam Santiago (minutes 86-90)

is a guy, due to an event involving a Y chromosome over thirty years ago. After spending seven years as a comic book retailer (alongside Pete The Retailer), he decided to try new things, leading to a new non-retail job (again, alongside PTR), as well as his role as the co-host of Nerd Geek Dork, a pop-culture podcast (once again, alongside PTR) and his latest podcasting project Your Favorite Album. He does other stuff too, just feel free to ask him about it.

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Songe Riddle (minutes 91-96)
is an illustrator and animator of things.  Once in 1998 he met Dennis Muren at a lecture on the special effects created for the then imminent release of The Phantom Menace (sorry, Pete) and told him with a wistfully romantic cadence that he taught Songe how to dream.  Mr. Muren replied awkwardly that he “hopes they were good dreams”.  Indeed they were!

No single event influenced Songe’s desire to create than his introduction to Star Wars in 1979.  It is his first memory and will probably occupy his final thoughts.

At some point in the mid-nineties, Songe resolved to weed Star Wars out of his thoughts, by first  trying to go a day without a quote or reference to it.  As of writing this, it has not happened.  We have to take things one day at a time.

He’s sorry he couldn’t do better, but he’s got problems of his own.

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Tony Thaxton (minutes 101-105)
toured the world for 11 years as the drummer of Motion City Soundtrack. He now spends his time teaching drum lessons, occasionally playing drums in The Pride of Erie PA, and frequenting or thinking about Disneyland.

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Joe Dator (minutes 106-110)
is an award-wanting cartoonist whose work appears in The New Yorker magazine with the thumping regularity of a savage drum. Star Wars has never left his bloodstream since he was first exposed to it as a 10 year-old in 1977, so perhaps it is not surprising that Meco’s “Disco Star Wars” is a permanent selection on his mp3 player. What may be surprising is that Steely Dan’s “Peg” is too, primarily because its ubiquity on the AM radio of the era has left it permanently affixed to images of moisture vaporators and holo-chess in his brain. He enjoys coffee, avoiding the beach, public transportation and coffee, and can be found online at joedator.com and at twitter.com/joedator.

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Tim Kreider (minutes 111-115)
is the author of the essay collection We Learn Nothing and the cartoon “The Pain–When Will It End?” He saw Star Wars in its original theatrical release at age 10.  That’s him on the right.

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Mike Norton (minute 116)
is a Chicago-based cartoonist and creator of the award-winning webcomic, BATTLEPUG. Whenever Star Wars is on TV, he HAS to watch it. It’s a sickness.

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John Kovalic (minute 117) has drawn over 4,000 cards for the popular game Munchkin and political cartoons for the New York Times but his work on the comic Dork Tower  which earned him many, many awards.

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J.K. Woodward (minute 118) started his professional comics career in 2003 when he collaborated with A. David Lewis on the indie comic Mortal Coils and Michael Colbert on the Digital Webbing Presents series Crazy Mary where he still does covers. IDW noticed his work on Crazy Mary and offered him a gig doing a CSI:NY limited series and he followed in short order with a standout story in BOOM! Studios’ Zombie Tales series. When Peter David was re-launching his creator owned series Fallen Angel at IDW, James was a natural choice for Peter’s dark world of magic, violence and redemption. His painted work eventually caught the attention of Marvel editor, Mike Marts(now an editor at DC Comics) who chose him to illustrate X-men Origins:The Beast which was released September 2008. He recently relocated from Long Island City in Queens, NY to Long Beach, CA and still illustrates Peter David’s Fallen Angel as a reoccurring miniseries for IDW as well as various other work for IDW and BOOM! Studios.His latest project is the Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover, Assimilation2.

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Christian Dumais (minute 119) is uncomfortably writing this in the third person. He is a writer. You probably never heard of him, but you might know him as @DRUNKHULK. He lives in Poland, where they say Gwiezdne Wojny instead of Star Wars. Before moving there, he spent most of his life drinking only out of collectible Star Wars glasses from Burger King. He has twins (a boy and a girl), but whether they will bring balance to the Force or not is still up in the air. His website is www.cadumais.com.

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Jeff Ayers (minute 120) is a Bronx, NY native and the Administrator of a facility called Forbidden Planet NYC where he has worked since 1995.

 

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