'Star Wars:' Course of the Force Zooms Into Santa Monica

R2-D2 rocks out with Spazmatics
Star Wars invaded the Santa Monica Pier Friday.

Course of the Force, the charity relay race transporting a lightsaber from Skywalker Ranch to San Diego Comic-Con, brought Wookies, Droids and Storm Troopers with it. The event celebrating the race's fourth day also included Jabba’s Sail Barge, though the infamous alien was nowhere to be seen.

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R2-D2 held a lightsaber onstage during a set from new wave cover band The Spazmatics, while fans posed for pictures with a Chewbacca replica. For meme-lovers, there was a photobooth dedicated to Vadering, courtesy of Qualcomm.

Sitting in front of Jabba’s Sail Barge, the Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick and his Course of the Force cohort Ashley Eckstein recorded a message for fans. Hardwick joked he ran into some confusion when escorting the lightsaber Thursday night by plane, where he flew from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles International Airport.

When checking in, Hardwick said he was asked if “Mr. Saber” would be joining him – as if the lightsaber was another passenger and not an object.

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The L.A. leg of the charity race featured a number of stars, including Ty Simpkins (Tony Stark's young helper in Iron Man 3), Kevin Shinick (Robot Chicken), Aimee Teegarden (Friday Night Lights) and Danielle Panabaker (Friday the 13th).

The inaugural Course of the Force raised more than $100,000 for the Make-a-Wish Foundation last year, with the help of thousands of runners. More information on Make-a-Wish can be found at its official website.

Use the Force, Luke -- And Maybe a Library, Too

Sure, the Rebel Alliance may have managed to overcome the Galactic Empire and free the universe from the grip of despotic tyranny through its never-say-die attitude, can-do pluck and a helping dollop of midichlorian-led destiny, but there's one question about the good guys in Star Wars that you've probably never asked yourself: Could they read?

Tor.com's Ryan Britt would like to suggest that the answer is no. "Not once in any Star Wars movie does someone pick up a book or newspaper, magazine, literary journal or chapbook handmade by an aspiring Jawa poet," he explained in an essay titled "Most Citizens of the Star Wars Galaxy are Probably Totally Illiterate". "If something is read by someone in Star Wars, it’s almost certainly off of a screen (and even then, maybe being translated by a droid), and it’s definitely not for entertainment purposes."

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His argument is that, thanks to technology that allows transmissions and recordings of three dimensional holograms, the Star Wars galaxy has become, essentially, illiterate. "Surely, for these cultures to progress and become space-faring entities, they needed written language at some point," he suggests. "But now, the necessity to actually learn reading and writing is fading away. Those who know how to build and repair droids and computers probably have better jobs than those who can’t. This is why there seems to be so much poverty in Star Wars: widespread ignorance."

As one who'd never really considered poverty in the Star Wars universe -- wretched hives of scum and villainy, sure, but actual poverty? (Note: I try to forget everything that happened in the prequels as matter of habit, so any mention of slavery, etc. is lost on me) -- this seems a little bit too much of a stretch, but the realization that all the characters rely almost solely on icons and pictures does raise a whole new question about the entire series for me: If the Star Wars galaxy is all about visual representation instead of literary transfer of information, how did no one notice that Senator Palpatine and Darth Sidious were the same person? "Widespread ignorance" indeed …

Twitter: @sajilpl

Will Force Choke For Food: Darth Vader Returns to Sell Pringles

The Force, it seems, is strong in one well-known snack brand.

Jim Vs. Vader isn't just a new commercial for Pringles that features a guest appearance by a particular Dark Lord of the Sith and a lightsaber battle that's at least as good as Obi-Wan's showdown with Darth in the original movie (We can all accept that that looks a little tame with hindsight now, right?); it's also the winning entry in a contest that tasked independent and fan filmmakers to create their own Pringles/Star Wars mash-ups.

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The contest used Tongal, a company that pairs creatives and brands by essentially crowd-sourcing the pitch and development process, turning each stage of ad development into a contest where the best or most successful ideas moves forward at the end of each "round," from initial 140-character pitch to development and, finally, finished video funded by the brand in question.

This particular contest -- dubbed "Force for Fun" -- took six months to evolve, according to Tongal co-founder James DeJulio, and this winning entry came from Erik Beck and Justin Johnson, who both claim long-time love of George Lucas' movie series: "Erik’s first prop was an AT-AT walker built from shoe boxes he made when he was eight, and one of the first movies I made as a child was a recreation of the Battle of Hoth in the cold Wisconsin snow," Johnson explained on the official Star Wars site.

As an ad for Pringles, Jim Vs. Vader is relatively subtle, and as a Star Wars short, it's fun enough. But as a Star Wars commercial, it's got some way to go before beating this one:

That said, does anyone else feel like they could do with some chips right now…?

Floods force 100,000 from homes in Canada

CALGARY, Alberta  -- Calgary's mayor warned Friday that the worst of the flooding is yet to come after a significant portion of his city's population spent the night pulling back to higher ground. Officials have estimated that as many as 100,000 could be out of their homes.

Entire neighborhoods all along the Bow and Elbow rivers have been cleared of inhabitants as many downtown neighborhoods were ordered evacuated in Calgary, a city of more than a million people that hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said early Friday morning he's never seen the rivers that high or that fast.

Low-lying areas along the river started to flood Thursday night and there was water filling up some underpasses. There was water in the streets of the Bowness area in the city's northwest. The city has not said to what extent any homes have been flooded.

Police urged people to stay away from downtown and not go to work. All schools - both Catholic and public - are closed, while Catholic schools in the communities of Chestermere, Airdrie and Cochrane were also to be shuttered.

The Calgary Zoo, located on St. George's Island, closed its gates and started taking steps "to secure and move animals to safe locations."

Contingency plans called for big cats, such as lions and tigers, to be moved into prisoner cells at the Calgary courthouse. But the city said that hadn't happened yet.

The Calgary mayor spent Thursday night and Friday morning hours touring all the affected areas.

He said it appeared that the smaller Elbow river had reached its peak. The same could not be said for the larger Bow.

The province reported that 12 communities were under states of emergency.

It had been a rainy week throughout much of Alberta, but on Thursday the Bow River Basin was battered with up to 100 millimeters (4 inches)of rain. Environment Canada's forecast calls for more rain today in the area, but in much smaller amounts.

Calgary is not alone in its weather-related woes. There were flashpoints of chaos from Banff and Canmore and Crowsnest Pass in the Rockies and south to Lethbridge.

Torrential rains and widespread flooding throughout southern Alberta have also forced the closure of the Trans-Canada Highway and isolated the mountain resort towns of Banff and Canmore. The flooding washed out roads and bridges, left at least one person missing and caused cars, couches and refrigerators to float away.

Officials in High River estimated half of the people in its town have experienced flooding in their homes. People had to be rescued from some rooftops by boat or in buckets of heavy machinery. Others swam for their lives from stranded cars.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police called in the military, which sent two helicopters and a Hercules aircraft to help rescue those stranded in areas where roads had been washed out.

Pictures from inside the mountain town of Canmore also a raging river ripping at the foundations of homes.

Bruce Burrell, director of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, said water levels on the Bow River aren't expected to subside until Saturday afternoon.

"Depending on the extent of flooding we experience overnight, there may be areas of the city where people are not going to be able to get into until the weekend," he told a news conference.