2020. I think most of us can just say those numbers and think about how crazy this year has been. I know my life has been changed due to Covid, with my son and his wife not being able to move to New York for his new job. My daughter's senior year, like so many other's, was a complete mess with no prom and a very odd graduation. I lost my job due to the new normal in the business world and I had to move on to a completely different field of work. With all that, 2020 has still been one of the best in my 49 years of life and Star Wars has been at the heart of it. My son, Joey Mulinaro, and I decided to start a Star Wars podcast. Rule the Galaxy started in January and for a few months Joey and I Ruled the Galaxy as father and son. We had a great time and Star Wars became a core part of our relationship. He got a great job and we had to put the podcast on hiatus. Then...Covid showed up. Like so many others, my wife and I spent a lot more time at home watching everything we could on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+. One of those great viewings was Clone Wars season 7. What a fabulous ending to that series. Dave Filoni is a genius. I added the Libby app to my phone. Wow, little did I know I would read 12 books during quarantine, EU, new canon and everything in-between. I consumed the Darth Bane Trilogy and discovered one of my favorite stories that I had missed over a decade ago. I had plenty of time to look at the internet, sometimes that can be a bad thing but over this time period I was lucky enough to remind myself how much I missed collecting Star Wars action figures. I started Covid with one Rubbermaid tub full of toys that I had kept from when I was younger and that I had purchased for my son growing up during the Power of the Force days and the Prequels. Mercari, Ebay, Facebook Marketplace and Entertainment Earth opened my eyes to the 6 inch Black Series and to all the wonderful Clone Wars and Rebels characters that I missed out on the first time around. I started with zero 6 inch characters...I now have a full collection of all my favorite characters except for Thrawn, Kallus and Ventress. (Working on that!) I had no Clone Troopers and I have slowly built a small army. For an Original Trilogy fan, I am now proud to say I have a wide array of some of my new favorites, Ahsoka, Prequel Obi-Wan, Kanan and Captain Rex. My Action Figure obsession actually went to another level. It caught my wife's attention. At first I thought she would see it as me attempting to recapture my youth. Instead she said it gave us both something to do together and before you knew it, she was searching sites for toys and getting my older daughter to come over and help us remake her old room into my office, future podcast studio, and my miniature Star Wars museum. We redecorated with posters, artwork, bookshelves and floating shelves covered with books, collectibles and figures. It is now my happy place. The calendar turned to June. Things started to open up a little as long as you wore a mask. I went to my son and asked for his expert opinion. He stated that since Star Wars and the podcast were still something that I had a passion for, that I should keep Rule the Galaxy going. I reached out to some friends and family that I knew loved Star Wars to see if they would be interested in being a part of the podcast and the response was more than I could have asked for. My little brother, Tony, was the first person to join. I introduced him to Star Wars 25 years ago. Ryan Massingale, my friend that I grew up with, was just a fan of the Original Trilogy and my goal for having him on the podcast was to open his eyes to all of the other Star Wars he could consume. Vinnie Smith, a family friend that loves the Empire and Star Wars gaming brings a great perspective to the show. Brent Dikeman, another family friend, let me know of his love for his Star Wars right before the Rise of Skywalker. We had an extra ticket for the first day for him and ever since then we have been talking about the Wars. He brings a passion for Legions and Rebels. The last two regulars of the show are two of my cousins. I grew up with Alfie Mulinaro and we had not seen each other in years but I knew his love for Star Wars and his knowledge of everything related to Star Wars. Last but not least, Nick Scheske, is a cousin that I had only met at a few family functions but some of our relatives let me know how much he loved Star Wars and man were they right. We joke that we are not sure which cousin is more of a Star Wars encyclopeida. So instead of Covid keeping people apart, it has actually brought this group together, much of it through text messages and Zoom calls. Brent says it best, we are a diverse group at different stages of our lives and with different beliefs and backgrounds, but it feels like we have known each other for years and Star Wars has made us the closest of friends.
To go along with those great bonds being built we have made so many friends in the Star Wars Podcasting and Twitter community. There are so many great people that produce great Star Wars content. The amount of great Podcasts that fill my work week is phenomenal. Thank you to the people that follow us on Twitter. Thank you to the people that subscribe to our podcast. I do not deserve your time and attention but I truly appreciate it. Last but not least, Star Wars has brought my wife and I closer together even after 28 years of marriage. It started with Clone Wars, it continued with watching all of the Star Wars movies. We have had many conversations about this saga. She helped me search online for figures and toys. I had her on a Girls Night Out episode of Rule the Galaxy. She helped me turn an old bedroom into a Star Wars room because she knew how happy it made me. We started taking trips together (with masks) to flea markets, antique malls and toy stores across the Midwest. Last but not least, even though she hates theme parks, as our family took a recent trip to the beach in Florida...she took the hour and a half drive with me over to Hollywood Studios and Galaxy's Edge. While it was not a perfect day because I could not get on Rise of the Resistance and we could not eat at Oga's Cantina, we still had so much fun together and made me feel like I was in Star Wars. Now if we could have just taken a few pics without our masks.
So 2020 and Covid has not been great. We can all agree. But I am a bigger Star Wars fan than ever before. I am closer to my wife than ever before. I have an entire new set of very close friends that do not always agree but all love Star Wars and will always be there for each other. Star Wars = friends, family and fandom. Here is to an even bigger 2021!
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