Today, something that I've been - well, not waiting for, but expecting, for some time - occurred. My wife and I had a personal tour of Skywalker Ranch.

Thanks to a connection we share, the automatic gates of this prestigious entity were opened to us.

For years I'd marveled at George Lucas' savvy in placing his prestigious complex right smack dab in the middle of Marin County's Lucas Valley, a name-stealing up there with New Yorkers putting New York exactly on top of where New Amsterdam used to be, all without giving credit to the DUTCH! Little did I know that once IN Lucas Valley (named back in the mists of Marin County History, and having nothing at all to do with ol' George, but you won't know that 100 years from now) we'd have to drive another 2 or 3 hundred feet further into another completely different valley-within-a-valley. Genius.

A short stop at the entrance, a short stop at the guard house, and a short drive up a winding road, led us to the main building of George Lucas' empire, a three-story white behemoth of a house. I've attempted to find the name of the style of this house but came up with bupkis. I hit a site that had some better pics than mine of the front of the house and in the caption called it a 'ranch house' but I defy anyone to actually agree with this as nomenclature. It's a kind of Victorian Queen Anne-but-not Craftsman-but-not turn-of-the-century-thingie which is definitely American but blah blah blah. It's huge. It's beautiful. It's where I want to die.

My wife and I drove up right past this thing
(which looks like this)
and then behind and below it to the underground parking structure.

We got out, walked up the decidedly non-technologically-bound driveway (no elevator I could see. Go George! Yay Exercise!) and wandered around with our guide, looking for her husband, the person who actually works on the Ranch and "has access."

We found him wandering around in a suit and sweater (very chic) and asked us where we'd rather eat. There are two places to dine at The Ranch: The Dining Room inside the Main House and in the gym (where there's another dining room and the gift shop). Even though the fare as described sounded more 'lunch'-y down at the gym, the sound of 'eating at the gym' left our group drooling for the Spinach Tart and/or Ribs dishes. Also, we were informed that the chances of a George Sighting were much higher at the Main House. We chose the Main House.

Since I've been back in Marin, I've seen George Lucas - in public, obviously - approximately 10 times. Mostly driving right past my house on one of the main arteries with which my home intersects. He's got a morning commute just like the rest of most of you, and he's usually with his daughter. Therefore, the chance of 'seeing' George isn't all that amazing to me, nor, did I think, to my wife, but we were 'in the vicinity', so there was a teeny bit more of a charge than 'not being in the vicinity' so to speak.

The dining room in the Main House was lined in dark wood, and was cozy and sweet. Hard wood tables and chairs were crammed into a small space, probably the size of your modern 150-seat movie theater. One larger table for your sporadic group meeting along the back windows and a table with several steam trays, plates, utensil-trays and bread bowl. The line would form there, culminating in the meeting of a woman (in a green polo shirt with the Skywalker Ranch logo emblazoned on it ) at the cash register. She was very nice, if dry, and I was put in the thought of this woman having to go to The Ranch every weekday of her life and never ever get a chance to delve into it's 'magic'. Possibly, she never 'thought' about 'the magic' and to her - basically a member of the custodial staff, servicing the appetites of the upper-echelon workers - 'the magic' was 'the paycheck', a bimonthly reminder of her very corporeality. Possibly, the rest of the humans at her place of work were nothing more than rotting meat on a hook and she felt strongly that she definitely had the upper-hand in all this: her job was secure...

Or was it?

The fact that The Ranch has had to give up hundreds of its workers to San Francisco and The Presidio doesn't necessarily mean that The Ranch will die. In fact, there is no proof WHATSOEVER that Lucas' empire will NOT strike back, so wipe that sithy look off your face. Ahem.

The Men chose The Ribs, and The Women chose The Spinache (sic) Tart. Water was chosen by 75% of the members of our party. One chose Coke: the Choice of A New Generation. The ribs were...weird.

I'm the first one to acknowledge the fact that ribs are weird in general. The comparative lack of actual meat, the strings of beef lodging in teeth, and the mess, God, the mess! But these were what I guess you'd call Dinner Ribs, or White Person's Ribs: De-fanged of all bone, and fat to take its place. Rubbery and full of flabby fat chunks, I was bowled over with their inedibility. I only had one small Coke to wash the steer down with but needed three. I had gotten two ribs from the steam tray but wished I'd gotten only one. The sign at the food table stating that entrees were $3.00 had gotten me all excited even though the meal was paid for, so I figured I'd get my host's money's worth and grab as much as I could swallow. Never again. I was able to make up for my empty belly-space with some cookies, but that part of the story comes later.

While eating our meal, I noticed the line (which was nonexistent at the start, a fact noted and used to get us in the dining room as soon as possible by my host) to the food growing from zero to about 15 people. The line consisted of several black-clad post-teen geeks with piercings and cute haircuts, a couple of metro-sexual engineering types, two or three secretarials and administratorettes, along with the requisite number of lower-level functionaries one might find in any industrial village. I couldn't glean any unifying theory between these individuals, so I gave up trying to build one.

The line bumped up against my wife's back and I remembered that I'd left my digital camera hanging from the back of the chair closest to the end of the line. As she went to grab it, I saw a short woman with curly brown hair corral her young daughter into a seat at a table. I knew this woman from a recording session I did a couple of years back for a friend, where he'd written a chart that needed three celli. I got to play one of the parts, but after a couple of minutes it was obvious that my abilities were less than my desires. I sucked, so I barreled through and took my lumps. The woman behind the recording console at this local recording session was now in front of me at Skywalker Ranch, her career arc at its zenith, nothing left for her to do - locally, that is - except go management or fired/laid-off. Congratulations to her.

I made my presence known and gave her props for her advancement. We smiled and greeted, shook hands and moved on. Nothing much to say to each other but hey. My hosts were impressed that I knew somebody there. Cool. Scoring points off near-strangers!

The meal finished, dessert not ordered nor cared for, we ventured off on the 'tour' proper. I was not expecting much, as there really isn't much one should expect to see of a working, functioning, super-secret laboratory built for the express purpose of reconfiguring the memories of present and future citizens of the New World Order, Mach 3, and I was not disappointed. I didn't get much. But it was still nice. Better than Disneyland, for an adult.

Although what I got was nice, it was very much like the tour one would get at Virtucon: on 'this' side of glass. I didn't see a recording booth, the 'big room' at Skywalker Sound, nor a mixing bay. I didn't see an editing booth, a screening room, nor a famous actor. It wasn't until later - as we were driving away, reading the not-so-small print on the day-pass we received upon entering Skywalker Ranch - that we discovered that we had actually followed - to the letter - the 'script' for what was and what wasn't available for viewing on any personal tour of the compound. Cool!

We did see some of the bottom floor of the Main House, the road leading up - down - to the tech house (which is lined with a small, functional vineyard and circles a small lake in the middle of the valley-let, which I only found out during research for this article is called...now don't barf...Ewok Lake. Whatever.), the inside of the tech house (which I will make mention of soon), the boat landing (can't imagine it ever being used, the lake is so small), and the gym complex.

On the road to the gym is the Tech House, and it's a beaut. Tall, Rusticy, and Vineyardesque. Love at first sight.

We went inside the brown building (here's a fan page that shows the building better than any of my pictures turned out...fourth from the top on the right.) and total and utter brain freeze occurred.

Where on the outside, the building looked exactly as one would imagine a vineyard home to look, the inside was a movie set of the front room of a country kitchen, circa 1900. White colonial furniture, blue gingham curtains and tablecloths, and a completely odd cheap retro reproduction in the style
of some beer-ad-type painting
of some kid and some animals near a torpid creek. Psycho! But Cool!

Continuing on past the ersatz front room, we hit a hallway leading to the center of the building. The hallway was decorated with original, large (4' x 6') full-color original (obviously) movie posters of American films from the 20s and 30s. The thing is, either he bought an entire collection from some movie house in Napoli, or he prefers European versions of American movie posters from the 20s and 30s. These things are beeeyouteeful and huge, framed and crazy amazing. Museum time, kids. Probably about 30 of them. My wife's favorite was a huge poster for Bambi, in French. C'est Magnifique!

During the tour, one hears that George is something of a landscape architect, having designed the entirety of Skywalker Ranch himself. One hears that the small rise full of trees that one walks 'behind' on the way down the road to the gym complex was 'built', and the area was originally flat as can be. One of George Lucas's design concepts was that one should not be able to see another building on the property from any other building, and at once, he noticed that the gym complex could be seen from his second-storey office space from the Main House. This wouldn't do, so he had a 10-foot berm ("A manmade mound or small hill of earth") constructed and pine trees planted to block the view of his otherwise wonderful building from his other wonderful building. Cool!

We walked through the gym cafeteria, and a pang of hunger and regret passed through me like a tranq dart: these people were eating and laughing and having fun, sitting AWAY from the Main House. What did they know that my host didn't know, living his life away up on the hill, away from 'the action' of the...well, the GYM. What the hell am I thinking? Who cares!?

Anyway, we went down the stairs to where the gift shop is, walking past it with some speed, pausing only enough to view a picture on the wall. A small conversation followed as we walked out the door concerning the art at Skywalker. It's rotated around the buildings periodically. Cool!

Our leetle tour continued back up the main road from whence we originated on our entrance, up past two rusted-ass contraptions of indeterminate agricultural necessity. My two photos are a) killer and b) depressingly out of focus. The general idea is that a) these items were originally on the ranch and were moved to these parts for strategic art purposes or b) these things were used til they could be used no more and were left there to rot til the cows literally came home or c) they were bought at auction from a wildly unbelieving farm owner from the deep Midwest who was flabbergasted at the mulit-million-dollar fee paid by some California faggot driving a BMW and chaperoning some corn-fed blond teenager with a yen for donuts for the two pieces of cow dung in rusted-ass metal form that couldn't fetch two dollars at the Mitchelson's Scrap Heap and Beauty Parlor, run by his cousin, Belial.

Once back in the security and near-post-tour funk of the Main House, our trip turned intense as my wife nudged my arm (which was scooping up some several cookies from the three cookie platters filling up the Northern Sector of the foyers table) and pointed at the giant Tara-sized staircase upon which trod the very foots of George himself. I have seen his back many times, and this time was no different. He was recently found to have 'lost some weight' so I was not surprised to see his belly floating above his belt and not below it. Cool! Yay, George!

I turned to my wife to say something pithy and sweet but when I turned around, he had magically disappeared...rising like a spector up to the second floor office space.

It is said that when one accidentally 'lands on the second floor' in the elevator, one does NOT get off for ANY reason. George was now on that second floor. He was probably already watching people (through a specially-constructed mirror system [see, it IS all done with mirrors!] ) constantly stand rigid with fear at the rear of the elevator (before which he's constructed a berm so as not to view ANY other elevator from any given elevator in the entire Skywalker Ranch complex).

We were then shown a memorabilia chest in the hallway that contained...uh, memorabilios, I guess, from many of George's movies. The gold statue from Indiana Jones/Ark Covenant; guitar from Howard/Duck; light sabres and other items from that other movie; and my favorite: the blue and yellow mud-splattered license plate from American Graffiti which contained these items from the alpha-numeric element list: 1t1h3x8. Fans of George's first film clap hands.

On the other end of the hallway was a room with three Santa hat-wearing Skywalker Ranch employees at a table handing out white boxes with the Skywalker Ranch logo emblazoned upon it. The white boxes contained a leather shoulder bag with the Skywalker Ranch logo emblazoned upon it. I knew that because one of my hosts fellow employees opened the box and showed us the item.

After my host got his white box (Christmas present from Skywalker Ranch), I went to the aforementioned foyer table to eat of many more cookies (the ribs just didn't do it for me, belly-filling-wise), when who did I meet but two friends of mine from the audio department, Dee and Shannon. My host's wife mentioned that I knew more people at Skywalker Ranch than she did, and this was after ten years of her husband's employment!

I jived with my two friends, giving them many moments with which to contemplate the multiple absurdities inherent in seeing my wife and I at such a place as their...place of employment. They'd never think to invite me on a tour, you see. Tirebiters...

My host and his wife were therefore allowed to see me in my element, joshing and being hokey with my home-boys, laying down the perfect bon mot with aplomb. I left them all in a haze, choking on my dust.

The tour ended soon after, but not until we went up to my hosts office and viewed his workspace. Cool, I thought. Here is where it all goes down. Wow. Harsh that things were so dead around there, what with all his co-workers having to brave the now-hour-long commute instead of riding their bikes in the Marin County morning air.

We drove away from the Ranch with smiles on our faces and new memories in our hearts. Thank you George, and our host!