Chris Hothiceplanet

Chris "Hothiceplanet" Smith

Born May 14, 1970 in Memphis, TN, but sometimes I truly feel like my life didn't start until May of 1977. Star Wars was originally released on May 25, 1977. As a 7-year-old kid I used to go stay overnight at my Aunt Sue's house. This particular trip was a week or two after Star Wars opened. Now each Friday night that I would spend the night with my Aunt Sue, she would take me to a movie on Saturday. So my Friday came and I was sitting in the floor looking at the movies in the newspaper, trying to decide what I wanted to see. I came across this movie called "Star Wars" and it looked cool. This is what I wanted to see. Aunt Sue wanted to see it as well since she had heard good things about it. One problem: I was seven and well, Mom said I could only see a G rated movie, and Star Wars was rated PG. So I had to call my mom and ask. Who are we kidding? I had to literally beg her over the phone. Finally she gave in after talking to my aunt about it. Saturday came and sitting in a theater at seven years old seeing Star Wars on the big screen--it completely changed my life.

From that point on, I grew up in childhood eating, drinking, sleeping and simply engrossed in Star Wars. I had so many Star Wars toys that at one point my mom decided I couldn't have any other toys besides Star Wars.

During the late ‘80s and early ‘90s Star Wars went through its dark years where little new Star Wars material was released. Through these years I wandered a little away from Star Wars. With no future as far as movies on the horizon I, as a teenager and young adult, had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Through the early ‘90s during my early 20s I struggled with jobs, relationships and basically myself while trying to figure out a career path. I never went to college and well, my options at the time were limited. Nothing I ever tried seemed to make me happy. In the mid-‘90s Star Wars talk came back into the mainstream with the confirmation of a prequel trilogy of movies. To say the least I was super excited to see new Star Wars coming. Now, being an adult with a job, I could come and go as I please and really enjoy the experience of these movies being back on the big screen. It began with the Special Edition re-release of the original trilogy. I was now full-fledged back into Star Wars, full force if you will. My Star Wars life, so to speak, was just awesome with these movies and I loved each of the prequel movies.

My personal life on the other hand was not good. In 2004 I tried my hand at my own online business selling Star Wars toys. I loved it and I thought my life was finally getting on track. After a year and a half I had no choice but to close the business down. Afterwards I fell into a deep depression prompting me to enroll in a local clinic running depression study/trials. I had all but one of the symptoms; I decided to give them a try and went for a consultation. Well, needless to say I qualified and went through the trial and started to see a huge difference while on medication. While going through this I learned a lot about depression and came to realize how much depression had been affecting my life for the past twenty or so years. Through this process and over the six years since the trials, I have come to understand and have been more able to accept depression and realize when it affects me. I can control it better and make better decisions through it.

In 2006 the trials ended and I started working for Target overnights after the closing of my business. Working at Target I met some great new Star Wars friends who love the movies as much as I do. Now at age thirty-six I was faced with deciding what direction to take with my life.

At this point I had really gotten into the Star Wars online community with Facebook and Twitter. I had a lot of fun talking with fellow fans online. With my screen name of "Hothiceplanet," I really started to build up a lot of friends on Facebook with upwards of 5,000 friends. In 2009 my mother told me about an article in our local newspaper asking for submissions from collectors about their collections. I wrote up an email and submitted it about my personal collection. A week later they called me and asked if they could do an interview. Well, duh, I said yes. I had a great time talking Star Wars for a couple of hours with this guy. After the article came out I got a lot of excited congratulations from co-workers and online friends. I got so energized by this that I wanted to do more with Star Wars in the community. One thing led to another and Pete from GalacticBinder.com contacted me and, well, I started working for the website doing reviews on the Clone Wars animated series among some other things. However, I really wanted to do my own Star Wars podcast. Over the past few years I had started listening to a lot of Star Wars based podcasts. There are some really good ones out there. During this process I tried to get on a few because I wanted to talk Star Wars. After several months of trying, finally Tom & Jay of The Unknown Regions podcast let me sit down with them. I had a great time and knew this is something I wanted to do more often. I started doing a Star Wars trivia segment for their podcast for a while. I was doing Star Wars trivia on my Twitter page for awhile now and each week I was getting more and more responses to it. At this point I started on my own trivia book. I had no idea how to do this. So for two years I worked a bit here and there on questions for it.

While working with Tom & Jay it made me realize I wanted to do my own podcast and involve regular fans like myself. The concept spent some time sitting in the back of my head before the right time came. That time came when I met Matt Krienke from the Frontlines podcast, a Clone Wars based podcast and the first, by the way, solely on the Clone Wars. We met and hit it off as I was looking for someone to co-host my podcast idea with me. I spoke with Matt and he loved the idea and was always willing to talk some more Star Wars. Plain and simple this podcast was to be Matt, myself, and a fellow Star Wars fan from the community sitting down and discussing Star Wars. At this point the "Sarlacc Pit" podcast was born. I have had a great time with Matt and all the guests we gladly hosted and with whom we’ve talked Star Wars.

Last year I was getting more and more done with this trivia book. It was high time I focused all my energy into finishing this book.....and now I give you.......

Trivia from a galaxy far, far away...

Star Wars: Original Trilogy Edition