Fortress Party 2021 - Planet Fitness

We bought a treadmill during the pandemic, and frankly, I didn't want to have to move it, so we built a room around it. The room became a Star Wars-themed gym, with Peleton (Pelpeton?) trainers on the big screen in front of the treadmill.

The highlight of the room was the videos themselves. There are two workouts, one led by the Mandolorian, and one led by Emperor Palpatine (which starts at 12:37 in this video.)

There was also a starship console, of sorts. 

The light sabers were taped to 5 point weights, making them "Not-so-light sabers."

Since it's a gym, there had to be a water cooler. In this case, it was water from the Bacta tank. 

This is hard to read, but it says, "Luke Warm Water." 

Finally, the walls of the room were plastered with with motivational signs. 

Nine Movies in Ten Sentences

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for January, “Pando,” is about my love for the largest and oldest living thing on the planet, Pando. Pando looks like a forest of aspens, but he Is actually a single organism with a network of underground roots throughout 106 acres in Utah.

Countdown Stories

Lauren and I have a homegrown road trip game we do with the kids. We try to tell the synopsis of a popular story in exactly 10 lines, with each line one word shorter than the last. The first line is 10 words, the second 9 words, etc., and we have to finish the story by time we get down to the final 1-word sentence.

Here are some Countdown Story retellings of some of my favorite classic movies.

Historically speaking, merpeople and humans don’t hang out very much.

“History my ass,” Ariel says, rescuing hunky unconscious guy.

She swaps her voice for... what’s that? Legs.

Calypso music, we discover, is quite romantic.

The prince learns a valuable lesson:

Never trust hotties named Vanessa.

The ship shanks Ursula

Making witch kebab.

Teenage wedding?

Sure!

Luke grudgingly befriends a hermit. They overpay a glorified cabbie.

The hermit disintegrates, but the princess with Cinnabon earmuffs

Fits Luke with a size small orange uniform.

Some X-shaped spaceships attack a moon-shaped base.

A disembodied voice tells Luke,  “Relax.

Turn off that targeting computer.

Envision murdering womp rats.”

Thanks, dead hermit.

Thanks, cabbie.

Kaboom.

A mopey beauty, whose soulmate allegedly perished, goes horseback riding.

Three guys with different accents and BMIs kidnap her.

She shoves her masked rescuer into a chasm.

A fanged capybara gnaws on his shoulder.

Suction cups leave him mostly dead.

Who will stop this wedding?

The unintelligible rhyming giant?

Either mustachioed protagonist?

Fred Savage?

Anyone?

Bilbo goes sightseeing with Gandalf’s little buddies whose names rhyme.

Though small, Bilbo outsmarts trolls, goblins, spiders, and elves

Plus, a shriveled riddler with dissociative identity disorder.

The dwarves covet jewelry above meaningful relationships.

So, as it happens, do dragons

And pretty much everyone else.

Hobbits have hairy feet,

But they’re sweethearts.

Where to?

Home.

Professor Jones is on sabbatical, doing fieldwork in South America.

Is getting tenure really worth tarantulas, boulders, and blowguns?

And when will he finish his big grant?

Never, with the Nazis constantly scooping him.

The academic world is ridiculously cutthroat

It’s literally publish or perish

And during the Depression

Funding is tight.

Aw, crap.

Snakes.

Forrest has short hair, loves God, and joins the army.

He does not embrace the excesses of the 1960s.

Jenny, however, represents everything wrong about liberal counterculture

She’s promiscuous. She’s anti-war. She uses drugs.

The lesson is hippies get AIDS.

Obviously, it’s all conservative propaganda.

Gump even wears a

Red trucker hat.

Forrest Trump.

#sad.

Doc’s time machine requires stolen plutonium to generate 1.21 gigawatts

Libyans in a Volkswagen Microbus want their plutonium back.

Marty escapes to 1955 and coaches his parents,

Preventing them from becoming alcoholic loser dorks.

He teaches Chuck Berry rock music,

Then harnesses lightning to return,

Producing flaming tire tracks.

Now where’s Doc?

Uh oh...

Libyans!

A paleontologist, paleobotanist, and chaos theorist ride a customized Jeep

It’s storming when Messy Fat Guy unleashes some dinosaurs

Who devour Samuel Jackson, except for one arm.

Aren’t they hungry enough for both arms?

Dinosaurs spit on Messy Fat Guy

Before ravaging him off camera

That’s what he deserves

Because he’s evil.

Pure evil.

Newman!

Balding psychiatrist and his wife have been growing apart recently

Because (spoiler alert) he kicked the bucket last year.

Everyone who ever died in Philadelphia harasses Cole.

He’s lucky he doesn’t live in Beijing.

Fortunately, he (spoiler alert) learns something.

I saw Haley Joel Osment

On Buzzfeed last week.

He’s no longer

(Spoiler alert)

Cute.

Mikey’s searching for One-Eyed Willy, which is not a euphemism.

Mouth speaks Spanish, Chunk Hebrew, and Data broken English.

They disarm booby traps thanks to piano lessons.

Once, Chunk feigned puking off a balcony.

Mikey uses his inhaler too often.

Mama Fratelli makes Corey Feldman

Spit out the pearls.

Sloth love Chunk

Chunk reciprocates.

Hugs.

With warmest regards,

Zach

Star Wars: What No One Else Has The Courage To Say About It

Dear Friends,

For the third consecutive month, the Hard Taco jingle focuses on levity and brevity rather than pensiveness and extensiveness. At 78 seconds, "Manchego" is so short, I will only need to spend $11.5 million dollars to play it over a blank screen during the Superbowl.

Two months ago, we treated you to an uncannily accurate prediction of the newest James Bond film. Today, I'm going to do that same breaststroke in a much more crowded pool, and offer heroic predictions about Star Wars Episode VII.

SPOILER ALERT: It's quite possible that I am going to tell it like it is, so read on only if you want the gospel truth and the no nonsense treatment.

What will happen now that Disney owns the rights to the Star Wars franchise?
As soon as The Force Awakens leaves theaters, Disney will make plans to re-release it in exactly 20 years. That's how long it will take for the technology to finally catch up with Walt Disney's original vision of the movie, in which a whistling Han Solo bobs up and down on his noodle-like legs and steers a steamboat.

Will the new Star Wars movie rely heavily on computer-generated graphics?
No. To appease the fan base, they will return to the tradition of implying awesome technology, rather than showing it. As in the original trilogy, characters will simply describe space vehicles as either "operational," "quite operational," or "fully operational," and let the audience imagine how cool they must be.

Why is Luke Skywalker not shown in the preview?
Some time in the last 30 years, Luke became a Sith. They can't show him in the preview without giving this away, because now he has one of the two stigmata of Sith-hood: Horns or a hoodie. (Also known as the "Sith Hood.")

If you watched the end of "Return of the Jedi," you may have had an inkling that Luke was destined for villainy. The most obvious clue is that he was unthinkably rude to his father's corpse. In one scene, he helped Vader remove his mask. In the next scene, he burned his father's remains, and the mask was back on! Let's not forget that removal of that mask was Anakin's dying wish. Luke waited until Anakin was dead, and then immediately put it back on his face! That's pretty damn disrespectful, if you ask me.

Imagine if a loved died after a prolonged ICU stay. Would you reattach the ventilator to the body and bring them both to the morgue to be cremated together?

That vent really helped Dad for a while, so I'm sure he'd prefer that its ashes be eternally intermingled with his own.  And while we're at it, let's take his walker and his dentures and toss those in the fire, too. They were really part of his look there, at the end.

Is Leia also a Sith?
I predict yes! But in name only.

A voice change is typical when someone turns to the Dark Side. When Anakin became Darth Vader, his voice became lower and richer. When Luke gave into his hate, perhaps he chose to mark his transformation with a saucy lisp. In Episode VII, when he sees Leia for the first time in years, he shouts, "Hey, Sith! Join me and carry on the workth of Darth Sidiuth!"

Will Luke Skywalker finally die in this movie?
Definitely. In the interest of time, let's hope he's one of the Jedi who inexplicably disappears when he dies, like Yoda or Obiwan, rather than one of the ones who has to be burned on a pyre, like Anakin or Qui Gon.

Who is the adorable little droid in the preview that rolls around the desert on some sort of gyro-sphere?
Its name is BB-8, and it was built over 50 years after R2D2. Apparently, that's still not enough time for robot manufacturers to develop a friendly sidekick droid that can handle stairs.

With warmest regards,
Zach