Star Wars: Get Fucked!

I have to say it: Star Wars blows. It is just contrived, hacky dreck that is the most overrated franchise in movie history. Yes, it was a neat conceit towards the tail end of the 70's era of gritty realism. But that's it. Set against 'Bad Lieutenant', it's optimistic. But any other time, its pure unadulterated schmaltz. It's as if "Dude Where's My Car" spawned 6 films and infinite product tie-ins.
Lucas' license to print money became just that with the prequels, engulfing even the modicum of heart the original 3 had.
And so, here I present to you the Top 3 reasons why SW sucks.

1) The woodenness

In the first film, Lucas imagined, and shakily realised, a galaxy made of rock, sand, plastic and metal. Nothing was wooden - except the dialogue. The characters in the first film don't so much hold conversations as stand there like cavemen, lobbing chunks of monologue at each other. As Harrison Ford said to Lucas in a moment of majestic exasperation: "You can type this shit, George, but you sure can't say it."

The first plausible exchange in the sequence comes some way into The Empire Strikes Back, when the superfluous verbiage melts in the face of the steam rising between Ford and Carrie Fisher, or perhaps Lucas's sheer ignorance of human relationships. At moments like this, Ford turned into an unofficial script doctor, notably when Leia tells him she loves him (as you do, seeing someone you've got the hots for about to be frozen in carbonite). In the script, Han replied "I love you too," which was both predictable and implausible - he's supposed to be a bastard, albeit one slowly disclosing a heart of gold. Ford changed it to "I know," which is smug and shallow, but at least in character and free from monosodium glutamate.

2) The hollow centre

Star Wars was "a conscious attempt at creating new myths," Lucas said. So how do his stories and characters stand up against, say, those of Homer? It would be harsh, and hard, to pit five movies against 24 books of epic poetry, but there's a realistic yardstick available in the shape of last year's attempt to do Troy the blockbuster. Troy was widely regarded as a thin and patchy version of The Iliad, but it is more involving than any of the Star Wars films. When Achilles kills Hector, you can feel it hitting the audience hard. The first wince on that scale in Star Wars comes (look away now if you haven't seen The Empire Strikes Back) when Darth Vader slices off Luke Skywalker's hand. And the hand is duly mended. If Achilles had been dreamt up by George Lucas, he could have taken his injured heel to C-3PO, who would have fixed it in no time. Star Wars has assumed a myth-like place in contemporary American culture, but it lacks the edge, the depth and the resonance of the real thing. Its most mythical moment is when Darth Vader says to Luke Skywalker, "I am your father" - which is borrowed from Sophocles. Bland and calculating, Star Wars is a McMyth.

3) The arrogance

Some of the acting is so stagey, today's audience takes it as camp. In 1999, an interviewer made this point to Lucas. He didn't like it all. "It's not deliberately camp. The film is based on a Saturday-matinee serial from the 1930s, so the acting style is very 1930s, very theatrical, very old-fashioned. People take it different ways, depending on their sophistication ... Cinema has only been around for 100 years or so - not long enough for people to really understand it." Up to a point, Lord Vader.

Contemplation

I was buying blow at Outback the other day when I realized something: Where do handicapped people park at the Special Olympics? Do they just manage to wing it from 30 yards away? I can't believe they have special buses just to walk across a parking lot. I mean come on, if you are competing in the Olympics you should be able to crawl/bellyroll that few feet into the front door.

Then I had some of that warm bread they serve. Hey, it's free.

History-icity

They say that Los Angeles is the city of dreams, a place where ugly is made beautiful and skinny is made fat. From knowing exactly how many hairs on britney's twat to the presidency of Mitt Romney, the influence of Hollywood's morals on society at large is immeasurable. But, in my experience, it's the small things that define a larger truth. (That rule also applies to my sex life.) Here, it is the wishful thinking of the signs on the highways that crisscross the valleys like a Peter North face-painting. The most obvious are those that declare a certain, (inevitably bland and depressed) area, as "historic." LA County has, according to my scientific analysis, added that moniker to "Filipinotown", "Arroyo Seco", and "JewTown." (The latter being historic since they have all moved to Brentwood.)

If you have to put the term "historic" in front of anything, then it most definitely is not historic. In fact, it is probably relatively new and largely ignored, except by politicians who want the votes of the people in the area. And what does "Historic" really mean? It seems to imply that the area used to be described as "full of filipinos", but is now full of EZ-Lubes, massage parlors and car dealerships, with the aforementioned filipinos lost to the sands of history, like the dodo bird and a rational foreign policy.

How about this for a sign: "Historic Lake View Terrace." It is famous for nothing other than being the town where Rodney King got the mother of all beatdowns circa A.D. 1992. Of course, this is not that great of a history. But, and some of my best friends are filipino, but I'm sorry, a lot of them living in one area, then moving away when they could afford something better, is not great history, either.

Having the government officially designate places as "historic" leads to a slippery slope of false-naming; We could have signs such as, "Silicon-Free Chatsworth," "Class/Color blind Malibu," "Safe & Clean Compton," and even "Pedophile-free Disneyland."

At least only the tourists would believe that last one.

Will that be to stay or to go?

While being escorted out of my local mall recently, I came to some real conclusions regarding the nature of mans existence vis-a-vis machines. It all started earlier in the day when I attempted to buy some iced coffee at the mall's Coffee Conglomerate.

The kiosk was off the main food court, next to the the cinn-a-lard and a PinkBerry (or as I call them, Dachau II).
After elbowing and and hip-checking my way to the line, I asked the cute as a button sales teen for an "iced coffee, please." After entering my order on the Marketroid 3000 (C) computer, she smiled at me in that comatose, corporate expression, precisely as the training DVD instructed her to do, and said, "Do you want that to stay or to go?"

I stared back at her, frozen. To stay or to go? I looked around. There was one chair, one table, and one stand with fake sugar and some cooling sleeves. "What, exactly," I had to ask, "is the difference between 'to-go' and 'to-stay? Are you saying that if I opt for 'to stay', you will serve it to me in one of the porcelain, $12.99 oversized mugs on sale here? That an alarm will sound if I take my coffee beyond the invisible borders of the store?" With that little smile still plastered on her face, she uttered a profound comment on our society: "Oh, it's just something the computer tells me to ask. It's the same either way."

And you know what? She's right. Better to just placate the computer's desires and ask a pointless question countless times a day, then go through the trouble of an Independent Thought. The fears of sci-fi writers of the 1950's, that computers would one day become sentient and force a brave but outgunned humanity to its knees, were wrong; We don't require death rays or giant robots to submit to the will of the computer. We have done it to ourselves through our lazy, shrugging boredom in the face of the massive mainframe. Skynet is active. They have already won.

It was only after I challenged her slavish devotion to the inventory control device that I realized we can free ourselves. To start, you might want to turn off the Internet for a few hours a day. Dust off the old Lite-Brite for some classic analog art. Or, if you are faced with a dilemma like mine, ask the girl if (hypothetically speaking), the computer told her to take off her top and start playing with her tits, would she do it? Baby steps, people, baby steps.

They may dismiss you as a luddite or a Level 2 sex offender, but if you speak the truth, it will eventually set you free. And the ankle bracelet they give you at the police station is so Web 2.0.

On Religion

Is religion really still around? Really? People are still believing that some great big power up in the sky is helping you, commanding you, and most importantly, looking in on you at night, when you think you are alone? This god character sounds more like a child molester than a deity. (Trust me, I know the difference.) Maybe that's why the priests are on a tear that would make NAMBLA blush.

Despite my agnosticisim (thank you, 16 years of Catholic education), I just love L. Ron Hubbard. I mean this guy is a fucking genius. He took the basic recipe of Charlie Manson (confused young Californians + drugs X promise of celebrity=cult), threw in a dash of Gene Rodenberry, took out the hippie happiness bullshit and replaced the Beatles with a billion year old alien. They both courted celebrities; Manson got Dennis Wilson, L. Hubby got Cruise, Chef from South Park, etc. And say what you will about those cults; they both took their shit seriously, unlike other so-called 'religions'. (Mormonism for example.)
I mean, Manson had people starting race-wars, while L. Ron Jeremy uncovered an intergalactic monster named Xenu. (Sorta like Jesus with rayguns and shiny pants.) In between orgies, they actually got a lot accomplished.

But in the end, they both became the only thing worse than a failure, as our society defines it: an ironic, pop-culture reference point. One ended up as nothing more than the namesake of a sexually ambiguous death metal singer; the other ended up being run by a sexually ambiguous actor and part-time death metal singer.

I can't wait until the inevitable schism that rips Scientology apart. There is going to be some serious collateral damage from phaser blasts and theta-wave duels. Of course, the rebels will claim they are merely trying to return to L. Ron Hubbel Space Telescope's Flash Gordon spec-script beginnings, complete with the power to heal and way cool unitards.
Of course, TomKat will lead the counter-reformation: e-meters will be turned into torture devices that inflict unspeakable pain, and the zombie hipster douchebags who now do the shilling for them on sidewalks will be ground up and used to sate the unqeuenchable thirst of the minions of Xenu. He will then be elected Vice President.

There is really only one person with enough imagination and liquidity to create a new religion to rival Scientology: JK Rowling. In fact, if you think about it, there is really no difference between the Bible and Harry Potter. Both contain images of fantasy violence, withcraft, and forced sodomy. (Actually, only the Bible has that last one, but I'm sure that there are reams of Potter fan-fiction available if you want that.) There is no more proof that there are talking owls delivering messages than there is to support the contention that a man set up a fairly comfortable home inside the belly of a whale for months at a time.

"But," you may ask, "how did we get here? What is our purpose?"
And lo, I answereth, "Smoke another bowl and maybe the answer will come to you. Or maybe you will eat some peanut m&m's and fall asleep on the couch. Either way nothing will fucking change." Duke 3:69