Look who's back!

The Hand of Timothy Zahn returns to the keyboard to crank out a new novel featuring his favorite characters: Mara Jade, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and some people named Luke, Leia, and Han. There's no title yet but it's due out in 2011 and will take place after Allegiance.

Unlike many of you reading this, I don't mind Zahn though he tends to favor his OCs and doesn't particularly like Vader. At least it takes place long before the EU timeline gets into its current quagmire.

More on The Senator theater in Baltimore, MD

Last year I posted about the landmark The Senator theater in Baltimore being in trouble. Now it's in HUGE trouble. The bank is going to foreclose on the 70-year-old movie house (one of the few theaters that has shown all 6 SW films in their first run) and put it up for auction on April 20 unless someone coughs up the $900K the theater owes the bank.

There's more about it here:

http://www.senator.com/

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/movies/bal-senator-theatre-0323,0,6548157.story

With the economy being what it is, the weaker businesses go belly-up first. The Senator might be one of those things everybody in Baltimore holds near and dear but not enough people see movies there. It's a massive single screen theater. I'm not 100% certain, but The Uptown in Washington, D.C. is smaller, and unlike The Senator, it has been owned by a national theater chain for years. The Uptown is right off of a Metro stop and it's in a neighborhood with a mix of stores, offices, and residences. The Senator is kind of out of the way in an aging neighborhood, unless some gentrification happened since my last sojourn there in 2002.

I liked the mom and pop indie feel of the theater. It was fun to see its unique SW posters, tickets, and t-shirts. But it's not a business model than can survive over the long term. And I don't think it's up to the City of Baltimore to save it. Let the theater go up for auction and find somebody who can turn the place into something usable, like a multi-use venue where they can show classic movies and feature live music. There's an old time theater down the street from where I live that is a Barnes and Noble bookstore. Beats tearing it down or keeping it an abandoned condo for rats.