The Great Star Wars Director Dave Filoni: Thoughts about Clone Wars Season Five and beyond

One of the only television shows that my wife and I watch on a regular basis is Star Wars: Clone Wars that broadcasts each Saturday morning on the Cartoon Network.  For science fiction based cartoons, I find them deeply entertaining, and exceptionally dramatic.  They are also quite intelligent, and gorgeous to look at as separate pieces of art.  I enjoy the sights, sounds and morality displayed within the Star Wars universe, particularly The Clone Wars animated series.  I love them all, but recently after a particularly powerful episode in the middle of Season 5 director Dave Filoni proved that he’s not afraid to display his skills and episode leadership into an epic direction that I don’t think has ever been done for a show directed at children.  They didn’t make cartoons like this when I was a kid, that’s for sure.  After the February 2, 2013 episode arrived at 9:30 AM, which I displayed the press release sent from Lucasfilm, (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW) Dave and the cast and crew had a Google Hangout meeting where fans of the show could chime in and learn more about what is in store for the rest of Season 5 and Star Wars in general.  You can see that hour long meeting in full at the video below.


The episode they spent so much time talking about in the Google Meeting is called The Lawless.  It was quite spectacular.  It’s hard to believe that Dave and his crew was able to cover such a large expanse of story in just over 20 minutes, but the results are exceptional by any standard of cinema endeavor.  I hope Star Wars: Clone Wars sticks around for a while, because after 5 years of broadcasting, they are every bit as good if not better than when they first aired in the late summer of 2008 with the feature film of the same name.  Dave Filoni is a wonderful Star Wars director that in the context of history will give J.J. Abrams a run for his money in the magic and lore that has become the Star Wars Mythology.  I am looking forward to many more future episodes so I can watch them with my grandson and introduce him to such a vast wilderness of ideas that is Star Wars in a morality play that is unequaled in the history of the world.


Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Winning at ‘Survivor’: Maintaining the rarity of toughness to gain an edge

I get the typical questions still almost every day I do it, wondering why I ride a motorcycle in the harsh cold and falling snow.  During the span of days where 6 AM temperatures hovered around 15 degrees in early February, 2013 through black ice and drifting snow I rode my motorcycle as I always do to the inquisitive curiosity of many.  They don’t understand why a 45 year-old man is riding such a vehicle and suffering through the painful cold when I clearly don’t have to.  My answer is one that many can’t understand logically, but it has to do with maintaining a Survivor mindset, one that does not falter under harsh conditions and can continue thinking when a physical reality is filled with pain.  That answer leaves even more people scratching their heads because they don’t understand why such skills would be necessary in today’s world.  But over the years I have done a very good job at surviving anything that has come my way, and I have been so good at it that my family has always joked that I should be a contestant on the TV show Survivor.  In fact, half-way serious back during the third season of Survivor when they were going to Africa I actually tried out for the show.  I was only 33 years-old at the time and went so far as to obtain my passport to appear on the show.  Below is my audition tape that I sent to the producers.  Their criteria at the time was to pick one item that I would want to bring with me on Survivor and describe why.  I picked my 12 foot bullwhip.

The fun thing about watching that old video now is that I haven’t changed that much from then to now.  My oldest daughter was just a little girl at the time as she held targets for me like she always used to.  I filmed that little audition tape while my wife was making breakfast with her mother on a brisk November morning mainly because I wanted to send a message to my kids not to be afraid to try anything even if the odds are very much against you.  Often the fun is in the journey, so it was delightful to assemble those clips with my daughter and allow her to take an active part in helping me try out for such a large television production while at the same time giving me a creative way to tell her the back history of how I came into using bullwhips as a hobby.

By now there is over a decade of Survivor episodes so we all know how the game has been played.  Even though I haven’t played that particular game on that particular show I have played the game in real life very effectively.  Some who know me best have seen to what extremes I am willing to play the game of Survivor in real life.  I’ve had to do it with several companies, personal triumphs, also with politics and in hindsight I had very good instincts to try out for Survivor all those years ago.  Watching the kind of people who have won over the last decade and studying how they’ve won I would have had a good chance at winning the million dollar prize, which is why that show has always been so popular.  The large financial incentive in the game pits many different types of personalities against each other in a successful duplication of reality.  After all, we all play Survivor in our everyday lives in some form or another, so we enjoy watching the show as it strips away all the masks that such competition hides behind.  In the TV game Survivor the settings are always exotic and primitive with the basic human condition exposed under the rugged conditions and easy for viewers to study—which is why the show has been so successful.

Even though I didn’t get the opportunity to be on that show I have survived many personal episodes over the years, and you might be surprised dear reader how many times my use of the bullwhip has bailed me out over that span.  Much of the time it is knowing when to be intense, when to form an alliance, when to break an alliance, when to be unpredictable, when to be predictable, when to show your cards and when not to that dictates who wins and loses in the game of Survivor which we all play every day.  Being good at Survivor requires an understanding of who is scheming against you and who is simply trying to use you to get closer to their eventual goal of which you share with them the final prize.  Much of the time alliances are formed with those you know eventually must be taken out before the game ends and you must detect when they are going to make a move against you so that the aggression can be headed off before hand.

In that regard the game of Survivor that we are all playing is not for a million dollars or even to survive in corporate America.  The game of Survivor we are playing now is one for all the marbles in American philosophy.  For the reasons that John Boehner has sided with Barack Obama in many cases while publicly pretending to dual with him is to maintain the alliance the two have formed along the lines of what George Soros recently revealed about a strategy against the Tea Party being played out in Davos, Switzerland.  Boehner wants to protect machine politics as does Obama, so they both have that trait in common and find the Tea Party as a threat to their personal philosophy.  They may not agree on much else, but they know they must get rid of the Tea Party before they fight each other, so they form a union, just like in the show Survivor.  CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR MORE.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/03/soros-obama-trying-to-split-the-republican-party-push-the-tea-party-out-into-the-wilderness/

The weakness of the Tea Party movement is that they are inheritably honest by nature so they find themselves often on the short end of the stick when playing against deceitful competitors.  I too have the very same problem.  It took me a long time to work through this handicap, which I figured out in my teenage years.  I cannot be as deceitful as the typical politician and cannot change sides so quickly as others with less ethics have proven so capable of.  The Soros/Obama plan is to provoke that honesty prevalent in the Tea Party “into the forest” as they put it, so that they can regain control of the two-party system.  Locally we have seen traditional Republicans move away from the Tea Party for this very reason, because they are betting that the Tea Party will not survive, and they fear exposure.   This trend is so popular that even education reformers like Governor Kasich are quickly changing their tune.  He has formed an alliance with labor unions designed to earn his re-election and a run for President in 2016 by turning against the Tea Party ideas that he ran on.  Kasich may not philosophically agree with the labor unions, but he will side with them now so that he can advance to a political level where he can betray them at a future tribal council—(metaphorically speaking).

What is required if you are a Tea Party supporter is a change in strategy that “they” don’t anticipate.  As we move forward with fighting school levies, preserving the Constitution, and maintaining fiscal responsibility in government, it will require new alliances and a will to cut up the old ones into little pieces so that they cannot betray us in the future.  If a deceitful manner is not an option for the Tea Party, which I know before hand that it’s not, then it requires a toughness that the opposition does not have to beat them.

I have learned over the years that the willingness to be “tougher” than a rival can provide leverage over the more manipulative in the game of Survivor.  Opponents who play “politics” and believe they can outspend, outsmart, and outwit a competitor while sitting in the safety of their homes or their luxury cars are ALWAYS at a disadvantage to a rival who is not afraid to bleed, fight in the trenches and rip off the masks of those who desire to remain hidden behind them.  In this way it is possible to always gain the upper hand on a rival who desires to play Survivor from a level of comfort.

If I had been on the show Survivor all those years ago, I would have done well using my athleticism to win a majority of the immunity challenges, and I would have done well otherwise by created and dismissing the proper alliances at the proper time.  And the reason to this very day that I still do push-ups every day, and ride my motorcycle in the extreme cold, the snow, the rain, the intense lightning storms is to remind myself to never get comfortable, to always be ready to make an adjustment in alliances to one that is successful and will allow victory in the game of Survivor.  Typical politicians like Barack Obama, John Boehner, John Kasich and financiers like George Soros are playing the real game of Survivor with the standard “outwit, outplay and outlast” motto.  To win, all those elements are important and cannot bring victory to someone who doesn’t excel at all those traits.  However, I would add “toughness” to that motto.  The ability to be “tougher” than your opponents with all other things being equal proves that victory comes to the tougher player who plays as honestly as possible nearly 100% of the time.  “Toughness” beats all the billions of dollars that people like George Soros spends on politics nearly every single time in a head to head competition of wits.  That is the short answer to why I ride my motorcycle in the cold February months and leave the car in the garage 95% of the time.  “Toughness” is not something you can purchase; it has to be earned the old-fashioned way, and is the extra boost that any competitor can use to defeat their rivals with assurance.

If the Tea Party can maintain their sense of toughness while all these alliances change hands then it will be possible for a handful of tough-minded rebel rousers to dismantle all the billions that George Soros and his minions have spent to advance a global “progressive” society, and it can dismantle the two-party buddy system that is modern politics.  Weak minded competitors who can be purchased because of their love of comfort do not make good allies for the mentally tough anyway, so there is no loss when they abandon us in favor of George Soros type’s power and money.  In the end, honesty, toughness, and tenacity added to maintaining the ability to outwit, outplay, and outlast is a winning formula that will take the Tea Party into the real life finals in the game of Survivor.  The above formula will give the Tea Party a chance to do what many think is impossible—to save America from the advancement of global progressivism.  The real game of Survivor is not on TV but is being played out right here right now in this time and the winners will be those who play it best, and last to the bitter end.

As for me, since the time that I first made that video for the third season of Survivor and now I have survived many, many, many metaphorical tribal councils—enough to have won the TV game many times over.  Some of those real tribal councils have been every bit as vicious as what can be seen on that television show each week for over a decade now.  I anticipate that over the next decade I’ll survive even more that are every bit as ferocious.  There will many alliances that are broken, many tears that are spilled, and there may even be some blood—but in the end, it’s all about “outwitting, out playing and outlasting” competitors with my personal addition of playing with honesty, toughness, and tenacity.  I am confident that I’ll win far more immunity challenges than I’ll lose because at 6 AM in the morning through the pouring rain, the drifting snow, the black ice and extreme cold, I’m the only one on a motorcycle, which is why I do it.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com