Calixte points us to an article signaling a fan's return to Star Wars fandomania with AOTC. From The Guardian:

Star Wars is back - and the force is strong again with cinema's most obsessive army of addicts. Lori Majewski, who saw the last episode 33 times, explains the appeal.

Like most high-powered New York women magazine editors, I have a weakness for anything Marc Jacobs, a penchant for apple martinis and a guilt complex whenever I go more than a month without a Brazilian bikini wax. But there is at least one major way in which I differ from my ultra-polished, manicured-pedicured colleagues: I have a 300-pound man inside of me. And not in a good way.

Just as the Incredible Hulk only bursts out of Bruce Banner when he's angry, my inner internet fan-site freak only appears when there's a major Star Wars event occurring. This being the weekend of the worldwide opening of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, I've been seeing a lot of him.

That's more than I can say for Manhattan media glamour gals Anna Wintour, Kate Betts and Plum Sykes. Their likes were nowhere to be found at the Clones preview I attended on May 7 (a full nine days before the film's ofcial release date, let it be noted). There was also a real dearth (get it?) of women at the 10:30 showing on Thursday's opening night. Come to think of it, there was never a plethora of females any of the 29 times I saw The Phantom Menace in the theatre either. Not that I'm complaining. A Star Wars flick is one of the few places where there's no queue for the women's loo.

My obsession with Star Wars dates back to the summer of 1977. I was six years old when my Uncle Mike (himself a 300-pound man) took my two brothers and me to see Episode IV: A New Hope. My uncle had planned on making it a boys' night, but since my mother could really do with a quiet, child-less night in, she begged him to take me too. Big mistake. From then on, with Carrie Fisher as my heroine, I whined and whinged until my mother allowed me to go out in public sporting Princess Leia's infamous donuts 'do.

A few years later, so besotted was I with Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, that I convinced my best girlfriend to put on a Star Wars opera in her garage for the neighbourhood kids. After a few sold-out shows (OK, it was a small garage), we parlayed the act into a singing duo: the New Hopes. Our first single was The Eye Of Chewbacca, sung to the tune of Survivor's Eye of the Tiger:

"It's the Eye of Chewbacca/ He's the king of the fight/ Rising up out of the Falcon in the Death Star/ He's helping Han, Luke and Leia to escape in the night/ He's so hairy/ A Wookie/ The Eiiiiiiiiiiye/ Of Chewbacca."

Sadly, it failed to chart, and the New Hopes split soon after. However, the song - which we sang a cappella and recorded on cassettes and sold for 25 cents each - did get the attention of many a guy in my class. No doubt they also loved the fact that I had doubles of every action figure from the original series.

Now it's 2002, and with the same certainty that I face my monthly bill, I've been awaiting Episode II and the 300-pound man's arrival. I knew the time would come that I'd temporarily stop frequenting painfully trendy Sex-And-The-City-style bars like Butter and the Hudson Hotel and start prowling supermarket aisles at 2am looking for Clones-approved packaged foods. (God, I love this new Episode II cereal with its Yoda- and lightsabre-shaped marshmallow bits.)

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