Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on December 14th, 2016 in Main, Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
A few years back my dad bought me the movie posters for, at that time, all six Star Wars films. My wife framed them. I hung them in our movie room when we moved into our new house. They’re pretty awesome. When you collect “a little bit” of something, space isn’t an issue. Everyone has room on their desk or nightstand for a couple of small items. If you’re really into something, maybe you’ll hang a shelf and fill it up with trinkets. In my Star Wars room, which is approximately 10′ x 14′, every square inch of wall space… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on November 30th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
I have never been a comic book guy, neither as a kid nor as an adult. I can easily count on one hand all my childhood memories involving comic books. My great Grandma Brown had a small stack of them in her living room that I used to flip through each time we visited. One time, at a garage sale, my mom bought me a stack of horror-themed comic books. My dad had a collection of Star Wars comic books that he kept in his bedroom. That’s pretty much it. Many years ago, my dad bequeathed his collection of Star… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 28th, 2016 in Main, Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
I showed this picture to a coworker once and he replied, “That looks like your kind of store!” Then I had to tell him that this was not a store, but rather inside my house. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed by this or simply thought I was insane. Probably a little of both. In the mid-90s, after having been dormant for over a decade, the Star Wars machinery began to turn once again. Return of the Jedi, the final film of the original trilogy, was released in 1983 just as I was wrapping up fourth grade. By 1995,… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 7th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
The first electronic version of Chess I ever saw was Video Chess, released for the Atari 2600 in 1979. It still amazes me that the code to Video Chess program was 4 kilobytes in size — that’s less characters than this post contains, and that includes all the graphics and eight difficulty levels contained within the cartridge. On the easiest setting, the console was limited to ten seconds of thinking between moves. On the most difficult level, the Atari could spend up to ten hours between moves. You could almost smell the smoke at that point. As computers began invading… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on August 17th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
I don’t own many autographed items. I have one Atari 2600 cartridge signed by the programmer (Yars’ Revenge, by Howard Scott Warshaw), a show brochure I had autographed by David Copperfield in the mid-1980s, and three books signed by their respective authors: hacker Kevin Mitnick, magicians Penn and Teller, and my writing professor, Deborah Chester. The only other autographs that I have belong to people who appeared in Star Wars films. I have five action figures autographed by the people who played them in the films: David Prowse (Darth Vader), Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), Anthony Daniels (C-3P0),… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on July 27th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
Every time the word “Commodore” appears on my local Craigslist, I receive an email alert. Sometimes the alerts link to people selling cars or boats, but most of the time, it’s the computer. I received one such alert last Friday night, informing me about a computer for sale at a garage sale. I need another Commodore 64 like I need a hole in the head, and the one pictured in the ad looked pretty sad (incomplete and with a few mismatched parts), but where there’s smoke, as they say, there’s often fire. Sometimes literally. I didn’t make it down to… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on June 15th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
I have lots and lots of books in my Star Wars collection, both fiction and non-fiction for young and adult readers alike. Star Wars: The Mystery of the Rebellious Robot was published by Random House in 1979. I remember checking his book out from our school’s library. This copy also came from a school library, although not my school. Unsurprisingly the story begins with Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca and R2-D2 playing Planetary Poker, and C-3P0 running around like a maniac. First it’s R2-D2 that begins acting rebellious, although soon many of the droids, robots and machines down… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on June 1st, 2016 in Main, Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
Wearing Star Wars clothing is a fun way to tell people around you that you love the greatest trilogy of films ever. Or, perhaps it’s a way to tell them that you’re a giant dork. Either way, I have several Star Wars ties and shirts that I wear on occasion, but one item that gets more wear than any of them is this baseball cap. I struggle to find more to say about it than “it’s a baseball cap that looks like a stormtrooper’s helmet,” but I’ll try. I bought this hat several years ago at the mall. I’ve had… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on May 4th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
Happy Star Wars Day, everyone — May the Fourth Be With You! I’m pretty sure I stated that my 1977 Bradley Watch was the first Star Wars thing I ever owned. If it was, this was a close second. The Star Wars Storybook was a Scholastic Book that I purchased through my school’s book club when I was in kindergarten. The school didn’t traditionally bring the Scholastic handouts to kindergartners because most of them couldn’t read, but I could, and someone must have provided me with one. On the first page, readers are treated to a “who’s who” of the… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on April 27th, 2016 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday 
During the late 70s, there was no such thing as “rarity” when it came to Kenner action figures on the shelves. By 1978, Kenner was manufacturing 3 3/4″ action figures just as quickly as they could. If Walmart didn’t have the figure you were looking for, chances were Service Merchandise, TG&Y, or some other local retailer did. Despite that, there were rarities, or at least figures that not everybody had. Most of these were figures that came bundled with playsets. The Blue Snaggletooth (included in the early Cantina playset) is the most well-known early rarity, but another one that few… (read more)
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