Luke Be A Jedi Tonight - no, you're not in a fugue state, there really is such a thing as Star Wars: The Musical Edition, which will be making its big-stage debut at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where else?) starting January 31st and running until February 8th. Now there's a funny story behind this Friday afternoon link. In ancient times, aka 1990, I arrived at MIT as a wide-eyed freshman, and promptly began to have the intellectual snot beat out of me, in what must have been one of the worst semester performances for an incoming student in 'Tute history. During this six-month period of hell, I became fast friends with someone who found himself in exactly the same situation as I had, and I'm happy to say our friendship endured, even after we both escaped from MIT and found our own separate ways in the world. This friend of mine happens to be the set designer for the upcoming Star Wars musical. A happy coincidence and little more, this I'll admit. But that's only half of the tale. After surviving a harrowing first year at MIT, I decided to take refuge in music, something that I'd neglected during my freshman ordeal. I joined the Chorallaries, an acapella group that combined a lot of skits and song parodies in with more traditional covers of contemporary songs. The Chorallaries are now a venerable institution, having been around since the 70's, and it wasn't unusual for long since graduated alums to show up at post-concert parties and sing a couple old standbys with us in between the obligatory drinking, of which there was a lot (remind me to tell you about Windex and Liquid Kermit sometime). One of these old alums turned out to be half of the duo responsible for Star Wars: The Musical Edition. I remember him now talking about noodling around with turning Star Wars into musical theatre, but at the time we just laughed, since skit-writing is what we all did, and we knew damned well that stretching a nice gag into something substantial was usually more trouble than it was worth. Well, I guess he went to the trouble of finishing this thing. I'm afraid to see it, but given the circumstances, how can I not? Pray for me.