Kids still love Star Wars, and now there's a girl Jedi for them to love!

I recently got to watch a class of fourth-graders release tiny steelhead trout they had raised from eggs into a creek.

“May the Force be with you,” many of them said to the fish, hoping it would help them make it to the ocean, then eventually come back to spawn.

That was cool.

As someone who remembers seeing the first batch of Star Wars movies when I was their age, I love that kids still love Star Wars.

And I love even more that girls now have a girl Jedi to admire.

I remember playing with Star Wars action figures with my best friend and having intense arguments about whose favorite character was the hero, Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. I argued for Luke, she argued for Han.

But if the action figures we were playing were from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we wouldn’t have been fighting over who the hero was. We’d fight over who got to play her. 

Will Lyle Lovett ever play "Creeps Like me?" Why concertgoers should be able to pay extra to hear their favorite songs

My CD of "Road to Ensenada."

I don’t have the patience for concerts. Even if I’m enjoying the music I usually can’t sit through more than a couple of songs, so I rarely buy tickets for live shows.

But I made an exception for Lyle Lovett’s current acoustic tour with Robert Earl Keen. I thought if Lovett didn’t have his Large Band with him, I’d be more likely to hear the slow songs I favor: “Road to Enseñada” being at the top of that list.

So I paid $75 for a ticket and made the long drive to U.C. Davis’s Mondavi Center in the hopes of hearing that song. And about an hour in, he played it. As many times as I’ve listened to a recording of that song, there was definitely something magical about finally hearing it performed live.

That was cool.

But … it also got me thinking about how disappointed I would have been if he hadn’t played it. And about all the other songs I’d love to hear; the more subversive ones like “Creeps Like Me” or “Sonya” that likely aren’t crowd-pleasers.

So I’m wondering if musicians can offer persnickety fans like me a way to add requests to our ticket price. I have to admit, I left soon after Lovett played the song I wanted to hear. But if I knew he was going to play another of my favorites, I would have stayed longer.

I don’t care where I sit, I was sitting as far back as you could get and the acoustics were still great at that venue, so I don’t need to pay more to sit closer. But I do care what songs I hear, so I would happily pay more for the chance to hear a certain song.

I’ll let the artists or the promoters work out the details. Maybe if at least 20 people pay $50 extra for a song, it will be added to the set list?

Just think about it. Thanks.

Best Claire Underwood line yet: "Do you regret having them?"

My favorite part of Season 4 of Netflix’s House of Cards, other than the return of Paul Sparks as writer Tom Yates, was when Claire Underwood is asked whether she regrets not having children. Her response: “Do you ever regret having them?”

That was cool. I thank whichever of the writers came up with that.

Even when asked between two childless women, that’s an incredibly personal and potentially heartbreaking question, since one could have tried desperately to have children while the other never wanted them.

But in that scene, I think the woman asking the question was really saying, “Don’t you wish you had my life?” which can often be the subtext behind that question, along with a secret desire by the person asking it to have their life choices validated by the other person admitting they regret theirs.

Instead, Claire lets her know that she likes her life just fine, thank you.