Piccolo Spoleto, Boba Fett and everything in between

For the last few weeks, Charleston has been hosting the Spoleto Festival and its companion event, Piccolo Spoleto. It's a pretty neat thing and worth reading about if you a) don't live here or b) if you are like me and were guilty of not taking advantage of these opportunities before.
My parents, being the jet-setters they are, moved here in March and promptly set out to take advantage of all the cool stuff here in Charleston. This means that by the second day of the Spoleto Festival they had surpassed the number of Spoleto events that Thomas and I had collectively taken advantage of in the combined eight years we have lived here. Shame on us. Way to go, Mom and Dad!
Last Wednesday, at their prompting, we attended the One Man Stars Wars Trilogy show in the American Theater on upper King. The venue was pretty awesome in itself--a revitalized art deco room with lots of old movie posters. And the show was hilarious, if you are familiar with/enjoy knowing too much about Star Wars. To our amazement, a few people in the audience had never seen a Star Wars film, meaning that the performance to them must have been nothing more than an hour of mouth noises, strange storylines and bizarre names. It felt like that to me, too, but fortunately I could sequence everything together and appreciate the guy's sheer talent (if this is the right word) for imitating R2D2's noises, jabba the hutt's mouth and best of all, mark hamill's whininess and hilarious 80s hair. So, if you ever get the chance to see this show--the dude makes his living travelling around and performing Star Wars and Lord of the Rings--you should jump at it.
Following the performance, we walked over to the gelato store on John Street. Given the store's teeny tiny size, we were in close proximity to the other customers, and the kid standing behind us in line piped up with a "hey! You sat by us in Star Wars!" in a cute, "r's turned into l's," New York accent. He was wearing a Star Wars t-shirt and was super excited to tell us that he was destined to like the trilogy because his middle name is from Star Wars. We start throwing out names--Luke, Han, Leia ("no way! I'm a boy!"), Lando--but we can't figure it out. The kid proudly informs us that his middle name is Boba Fett, the bounty hunter who captures Han. He's the sort of character that if you took a bathroom break, you may have missed his entire performance in the movies.* The dad, somewhat sheepishly, confirms the truth of this by saying that it's printed on his son's birth certificate. If you're ever put in this situation, I think it's best to remain positive--"wow, that's so cool! I'll bet no one else has that for a middle name!"--while inwardly you wonder WHAT THE PARENTS WERE THINKING. Were they in a galaxy far, far away when they were picking baby names?
Can't you hear the high school graduation ceremony now? Or see the wedding program? The resume header? The college roommate letter?

*strangely enough, Boba Fett has a huge cult following

Litterbugs

I never realized how much people litter until I started walking Sullivan every day. Said dog is the ultimate magnet for trash--I can almost hear his little doggie mind producing thoughts like "oooh a beer can! oooh a gum package! delicious trash!"
Trash is, of course, second only to his actual favorite thing to pick up while we are walking: poop. Bird, beast, bug, it doesn't matter. It's all delicious defecation. Usually I attempt to steer him away from those tasty treats, but I have determined it's impossible to prevent all ingestion.
The picture was obviously taken on the beach and Sullivan is dominating (or attempting to dominate) some seaweed. Note the batlike ears, the ferocious look of determination, the crooked tail (ultimate sign of happiness) and the muscular stance of this goofy animal.