Monday, September 27, 2004
 
Fwoom! Fwoom!
I survived the teardown/cleanup night at my kid's school carnival thinger. Not much to say about it except it was chaotic as hell, which is what you can expect from anything completely run by volunteers. They always start out with the best of intentions but end up with self-righteous you-can't-question-me-because-I-volunteered martyr/infallibility complex that is impossible to either endure or penetrate. The only other option would be for me to volunteer myself and then fix it all.

OK, it's ten minutes later and I just stopped laughing.

No, what I want to talk about today is yet another step I've taken toward irrevocably ruining my children's lives. We bought the Star Wars Original Trilogy DVD set this past week. We spent the better part of this long weekend (my wife took Monday off) watching the old things again, all five of us.

Sitting through dinner tonight at the World's Greatest Mexican Food mini-chain (the Pops Burrito, sadly, was not named after me, I must admit) my oldest boy starts busting out movie-line quotes in between bites of his arroz y frijoles.

I sort of shrunk myself down, trying to hide between my own shoulder blades lest people from Child Protective Services were anywhere within earshot.

I've started my kids down the path to geekdom. That's got to be a form of child abuse, right? I mean, it's not like beating them with a curling iron, but it sure as hell can't be helpful.

Of course for my children, geekdom is at least partially inevitible, depending on how you weight genetics versus environment in the development of a personality. I likey my Star Wars. Mrs. Pops don't mind it either so there was really no way around it. I've managed to keep my appreciation for the films in some kind of perspective (I have never worn, for example, a stormtrooper outfit nor have I been in relative proximity to anyone else wearing a stormtrooper outfit), but I know the brink my boys are teetering on leads to a steep, steep drop.

I also know from observation that, if left untreated, Science-Fiction Appreciation can lead to serious side effects in boys including stunted growth, pale and clammy skin, acne production, inability to lose/gain weight (depending on your starting point... they come in either tubby or scrawny and nowhere in between), post-pubescent hairlessness and a marked lack of contact with the opposite gender.

The opposite side of that, of course, is that if they were able to get that One, that one hot chick who was totally into Star Wars, they would live their lives in perpetual bliss until the end of their days. But after 30 years on this earth, I have yet to see a live specimen in captivity. They remain as elusive as Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster or Paris Hilton's sense of personal dignity.

Either way the die is cast. The only thing left for me to do is to learn how to fight so I can teach them how to fight and thus avoid the many schoolyard poundings they have in their futures.

Changing the subject slightly (and one hopes, briefly) there is one observation I'd like to share. It's a conclusion one can only reach when seeing all of these three George Lucas films in close temporal proximity.

First let me point out that I read Dan Savage's Savage Love sex advice column over at The Onion AV Club every Tuesday. I know there's a place out there for every kink imaginible, a fetish for everything that's fetishizable, which includes... well, everything. Threesomes, animals, feet, bondage, what have you. Not only do they exist, but there are always chat-rooms devoted to them and t-shirts you can buy.

I recognize and, because I'm a Democrat and therefore a spineless, watery moral relativist, I don't judge.

That said, the only conclusion I can reach is that George Lucas gets some kind of raging, uncontrollable sexual pleasure out of seeing people and/or sci-fi animals get their right arms/hands cut off. It can't just be coincidence. In every movie it happens; it's always the right hand or arm and usually by a swinging, glowing phallus disguised as a "lightsaber". It can't just be laziness in storytelling as the incidents happen too often for them to be coincidental.

In Star Wars Alec Guiness cuts off Pig-Nose dude's arm off in that cantina. In Empire Strikes Back, Luke gets his hand cut off by his dad. In Return of the Jedi, Luke gets caught by a Bumble, his escape from which requires that he... cut off its right arm and then later in the same film the only wound Luke endures is getting shot in the same hand. Then if you go to Episode II, surfer-dude/Jedi Hayden Christiansen gets his right arm cut off by Saruman.

What other logical explanation can their be for this kind of repetition? It's a horrifying image, but the only thing I keep coming back to is a the horrible image of a marathon Lucasian crotch-massage session every time he's able to work said image into one of his films. God help us, there's a chat-room somewhere filled with similarly bent individuals trading pictures of that teenage surfer girl who got her arm bit off by a shark.

Creepy, but such is life.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.6


Pops

Comments:
And didn't Luke cut off Darth's arm at some point in the original trilogy--most likely Empire Strikes Back. Could have been the right one.

Okay. I may just be that elusive, geeky Star Wars/Star Trek female, although I've never dressed up as a character and find pleasure in laughing at those who do, but I did go to a Star Trek convention once and my dog's name is Spock. She's a girl. I also own most of the Star Trek and Star Wars Hallmark ornaments and proudly display them on my tree every year. I no longer buy them because they are doing the stupid Scott Bakula series with the theme music that makes me gag, plus I have 2 kids and no longer have any disposable income.

Laugh it up, fuzzball. (Oh, I quote them too.)
 
Ach, I can't believe I forgot one.

The numbers of girls with geek tendecies have definitely increased over the last several years, so there's some hope for my kids yet.
 
We scifi lovin' girls are coming out in droves. :) I've been a nut for ST and SW since I was a kid. The first movie my dad ever took me to was SW. I still attend scifi conventions for ST, Farscape, Buffy, X-Files (when they had them) and Roswell.

I'm such a geek. Loved this entry. I was LOL.
 
Hey, where were you chicks when I was in high school? Well OK, in high school I was admittedly hard to find under a table in the library trying not to be seen nor heard, so it is possible that it might--just might--have been my own damn fault.
 
Hi Blogger There I was just cruising the web looking for info on wind forecasts and I happened upon your site. It looks like you have put a lot of work into this post and congratulations, but I'm really looking for info on windsurfing.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home
|

Powered by Blogger