Chorus of TIE Fighter Pilots (off-stage)

A rollicking band of pilots, we
Who, zooming through space so fancy-free,
Will zap any X-Wing that we see
With lasers bright and flashing.

Biggs: Look out! The TIEs appear to guard their station.
            What made us pick this for our avocation?

Chorus of TIE Fighter Pilots (nearer) 
We fly along at a goodly ( Read more... )

 A Space Operetta by Jana C. Hollingsworth
with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan (especially Gilbert)
copyright 1977-78
(Enter Vader, with his light saber activated.)

Vader: You may be knowledgeable, Obi-wan, but you were never much good in an actual fight.

(Obi-wan activates his light saber. He and Vader duel. The Stormtroopers leave the ( Read more... )

(Enter Samuel)

Recitative -- Princess Mabel 
Hold, monsters! Though for liberation we have tried
And failed, this setback we perceive as slight.
For bear in mind that we've the Force upon our side,
And we're protected by a Jedi Knight.

Samuel: This news, my dears, won't put us to the flight.
               I don't believe he is a Jedi Knight.

Women: Yes, ( Read more... )

(Mabel disappears and the Jawas exit. Obi-wan enters.)

Fred: Obi-wan! We were just going to go look for you. But what good will it do to audition you if I can't get the Princess Mabel, too?

Obi-wan: But I know where to find the Princess.

Fred: You do!?

Obi-wan: Yes, she's being held captive by the evil Lord Vader aboard his Death Star ( Read more... )

A Space Operetta
by Jana C. Hollingsworth
with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan (especially Gilbert)
copyright 1977-78

(Enter Fred Skywalker.)

Fred: You have a pretty good mezzo-soprano, for a droid. I'll take you.

3PO: But what about my counterpart, R2-D2?

Fred: With his voice? Forget it! We might as well let our librettist sing.

3PO: But sir, I need him ( Read more... )

Chorus -- Jawas

Climbing over rocky desert,
Where the rockes our toeses hurt,
Please remember that we are the Jawas.
            Please remember we're the Jawas.
Same thing that our ma and pa was.
No, Sand people we are not
            No, we are not
They have faces just like quiches;
We're a kind of Munchkin species,
            We're a kind, a kind of ( Read more... )

A Space Operetta by Jana Hollingsworth
with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan (especially Gilbert)
copyright 1977-78
(Scene: on board the Death Star, Grand Moff Samuel and a chorus of Stormtroopers are celebrating the completion of the space station.)

Opening Chorus

Zap, oh zap the rebel planet,
Zing, oh zing the asteroid.
Into dust we'll turn its granite
( Read more... )

• Will Rogers’s best-known line was jokingly intended for his epitaph. He said he wanted his headstone to read: “I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn’t like ( Read more... )

• The Brokenberg, a mountain in eastern Germany, is, according to legend, the site of wild witches’ revels. That “legend” goes back to the late 18th century when Goethe used the mountain for the setting of the Walpurgisnacht scene in Faust. Before that, the mountain had had no association with witchcraft at all.

• The 18th-century sage Samuel ( Read more... )

• In the early part of the twentieth century, an explorer in the Amazon rain forest made first contact with a hostile tribe called the Nhambiquara. At first he couldn't even approach their camp without a fusillade of poisoned arrows coming his way, but he eventually won them over, luring them into his camp at night by playing the operas of Richard ( Read more... )