Thanks, HP3.

And it occurs to me that the Yankees have a further advantage (besides payroll, etc.): if they end up in Minnesota or some other cold place, they can shelter inside of CC Sabathia.

OK, I’m done.

As usual, wikipedia may provide the answer to the Luke/Leia kiss mystery:

In an interview with TheForce.net, producer Gary Kurtz described an early outline for a nine film series. He stated that the original plan for Return of the Jedi was for Han Solo to die and Leia to become “Queen” of her people. Leia was not originally planned to be Luke’s sister. “Episode VII” was to focus on Luke Skywalker’s life as a Jedi, while “Episode VIII” marked the appearance of Luke’s sister (which was not Leia), and “Episode IX” was to be the first appearance of the Emperor. [11] In a later Film Threat interview, he stated that the idea for a third Star Wars trilogy “was very vague. It was Luke’s journey really up to becoming sort of the premiere Jedi knight in the Obi-Wan Kenobi mold and his ultimate confrontation with the emperor. That was the outline of it and all that happens.” [12]

If Leia wasn’t supposed to be Like’s sister, then the kiss makes sense.

There was so much Star Wars disinformation in these replies that it made this girl sound like a Lucasfilm scholar, by comparison. 

Here’s the scoop in a nutshell (to mix food metaphors):

1) The reason Luke and Leia kissed in ESB is because the Lucas hadn’t yet decided that they were siblings when it was made.  When Yoda says “There is another” in ESB, Lucas wasn’t sure who he was referring to, but there were vague plans to introduce a new character in the next movie (ROTJ) who would be Luke’s twin.  Although this has been documented in quantiplicate (despite a few apocryphal comments Lucas makes about his ‘Star Wars’ “vision” as though it comes to him through divine inspiration), the screenplay and the deleted passionate kiss in this trailer further demonstrate it.

2) The obvious explanation for Leia’s impossible recollection of her mom, Padme, is similar to the one above: Lucas hadn’t yet written ROTS when he wrote ROTJ.  When it came time to write the prequels, he decided that it would be most dramatic to have Padme die in childbirth (although there were some early thoughts that Padme would live in exile herself for several years).  Lucas was willing to sacrifice the continuity for the sake of the drama.  (Some fans elect to ret-con the inconsistency by saying that, since Leia was Force-sensitive, her memories and feelings were so heightened that she could even remember being born.  No dice, for me.  I’m content to just accept the flaw and move on.) 

3) There are not now, nor have there ever been, episodes 7 thru 9 written. 

4) Lucas had not written the prequel trilogies when he made the original trilogy.  In fact, he hadn’t even written the first and second sequels when he made the first one.  He did have a few small elements of the prequels sketched out, much the same way all writers write down biographies of their characters, but it wasn’t intended to be a movie.  The primary prequel element that was indeed written from the very start was that Obi-Wan Kenobi had defeated Darth Vader in a battle near a volcano which forced him to wear his life-support suit forever afterward.

5) If you’re interested in the evolution and backstory of Star Wars, I can’t recommend the book ‘The Secret History of Star Wars’, by Michael Kaminski, highly enough.

6) As long as you’re thinking about ‘Star Wars’, make sure to watch my ‘Star Wars’ mini-documentary and to share it with all your friends!

The really sad thing about the SW prequils is they totally ruined the franchise.  If they had never been made we’d always be able to think about how awesome they would have been, but now that they had, it kind of exposes the first three as a little hacky.

The same thing happened with all the “Highlander” movies.  The first was way more enjoyable if you never saw the sequils.