“The thing about Star Wars for me is the characters. They feel so real to me, like you could know them if you met them. Like I’m talking to you. I always knew I’d talk to you one day. I don’t know how I knew, I just did. When I first saw you in A New Hope—and when did they start calling it that anyway, when did it stop being just Star Wars?—it was like I’d seen you before. No, not in Shampoo, I was too young for that, but you were so familiar. Not in a creepy way familiar, but familiar like . . . like family familiar. Hey! Those words are practically the same, right?
“See, it’s stuff like that! Stuff you didn’t know you knew till . . . till it was like you’d never not known it. That’s how I felt about Star Wars. About all of you guys in Star Wars. You were my family. Sure, your branch of the tree was more special than my actual family, but because of you being amazing, maybe I could be amazing one day. And even if I wasn’t, I was still related to awesome. To you.
“I saw myself in you, and that’s why I can stand here and talk to you. Why I got over being nervous so fast. Because—well, I just said why. Because of the Force. Because it moves through you and around you and into the person standing across from you. It’s like this thing my mom used to say: ‘I salute the light of the God within you.’ That’s the Force for me. I salute the light of the Force within and without you. The light that shines away from the dark side. Whatever it is that the Force wills, I will. I will its will. Its will, not mine, be done. Give me the knowledge of the all-knowing Force—give me the power to carry out the will of the Force. I thank the Force for empowering me with the light that shines its forceful rays on me, through me, and to infinity. May this force be with us all.
“Sorry, I know I must sound wacky—to some people I sound wacky, to others I don’t—but I can see that light in you, the light of the Force that unites us and binds us to see that we get to the next place. The one that waits for us, and that waiting is what many of us call safety. I feel the Force take my will and move it slowly and evermore its way, move me ever so radiantly into the next thing or things.
“And one of those things is Episode VII. I am a part of it just as it is of me. I’ve waited for it for a very long time. Those prequels weren’t Star Wars—Jar Jar Binks, God! But VII is the epitome of Star Wars. I do its bidding and trust its direction. I pulse with each beat of the Force. Its strength is mine.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go on like that. It happens when I get excited and . . . I don’t? Well, I am. I mean, initially I was but then I must’ve gotten comfortable—for whatever reason I feel comfortable around you. The weird thing is that a bunch of my friends say I look like you. No, I know, you’re not blond, but we have the same eye color—yeah, hazel. No? I thought they were . . . that’s funny. Maybe I’m getting you mixed up with your mom—I read hers were green, but they look hazel in a bunch of her pictures. Did you know that only men can be color-blind? I didn’t either!
“See, it’s stuff like that. Almost everyone I know knew that, but I didn’t, and now you didn’t, too! You get a bunch of little things like that and it adds up, which might be why I remind my friends of you. When you were fat, I was fat, too! And then we had to lose weight—huh? No, Disney didn’t send me a trainer. I guess they were just worried about you, they didn’t need everyone who looked like you to lose weight, too. Did you also get that pre-diabetes thing? No? Maybe you still will—not that I hope that, I was just seeing how else we could be similar.
“The biggest thing for me was that it was because of you I tried to become a lawyer. No, in the end I didn’t, but at the time I thought, ‘Hey, if Princess Leia can do everything she does, why can’t I go to law school?’ I had to do something that was the equivalent of when you yelled at Luke and Han, ‘Put that thing away or you’re gonna get us all killed!!!’
“Ooooh, sorry. I didn’t think it was gonna be that loud—I was just trying to do it like you. Yeah, I did, didn’t I? I mean, was. I was as loud as you. Did it feel good when you did it? Okay, then! There’s another thing! We both dieted, neither one of us is color-blind, and we feel good yelling. See, enough things eventually add up and—right, no girls are color-blind, but that doesn’t matter ’cause so are we.
“Just like both of us having dogs named Gary! I didn’t? I thought I told you that right away! Oh, well, then this is me telling you now. I have a dog named Gary, too! When? I don’t know exactly but around the same time as you got your Gary. Maybe a little after, but I hadn’t known about your Gary when I got mine. Or at least not consciously. You didn’t Twitter it, did you? I thought not. All’s I know is I had this crazy impulse one day to get a dog, right? I’d been super sick with really bad bronchitis—I had this really high fever, which made me get those super-vivid dreams, and in one dream I was with you and we both had this French bulldog named Gary. The weird thing was I didn’t think I’d ever heard of that type of dog. Anyway, I dreamt we had this black bulldog and the next thing I know, my dad gets me this dog. Trippy, right? A lot of people thought I’d copied you, like always. But how could I have copied you when it was my dad that bought him for me based on a dream I can barely even still remember having?
“So that’s just one more thing. You have to admit, there’s something kind of spooky, no? We look alike, we have the same dog, almost the same hair color and weight issues. It adds up after a while, you have to admit. Some people might say it’s coincidence, but even if it is it’s a trippy coincidence.
“Hey! Maybe we can mate our Garys!!! No, my Gary is a girl, so it could work. Wouldn’t that be awesome? I mean, that would be the perfect outcome to this whole snarl of amazingness! He is? Well, those things can be reversed, can’t they? No? A dog can’t be unfixed? But if you really believe he can, then he can! We could use the Force to unfix him, then have puppies we sell on Twitter! Or not sell. But announce the miracle. The Second Coming of . . . the Mating of Gary. Gary He and Gary She. Gary WE! We as in oui, which in French (as in French bulldog) means yes! So, yes! Bring on the bulldog babies!”
? ? ?
i saw where someone was complaining about how much celebrities charge for autographs at these events, and in our defense someone said, “Well, you know, it may cost that much now, but when she dies it’s really going to be worth a lot.” So my death is worth something to some people. If I had enough pictures signed someone could put out a hit on me.
Of course I also still sign autographs for free. At screenings, for example, where the professional autograph hounds follow you around, braying and nipping at your heels, waving photos under your face until someone whose signature is more valuable (or more current) shows up, at which point they abandon you until that brighter star escapes into a car or through a door, and then they come scampering back to you.
“Miss Fisher, please, I’ve flown all the way from Newfoundland!”
“Miss Fisher, please! I’ve been in love with you since I was a little boy!” (This man is in his sixties.)
“Miss Fisher, I was almost in 9/11.” Well, then, you think, of course. This person could’ve been killed. Where do I sign? But then . . . wait. You think a second. What does that really mean? She was in the World Trade Center but somehow managed to escape? She was on the downtown subway stuck in midtown when the first plane hit? She’d interviewed for a job with Cantor Fitzgerald but didn’t get it? She had a job there but slept through the sound of her alarm and so wasn’t there at her desk when . . . And on and on and on.