"I'm getting too old for this sort of thing."

Too fucking right. 0 STARS!!!!!!

I have an unfortunate story to tell about my experiences as a Star Wars fan.

As a kid, I wasn't ever really a Star Wars fan. I thought the movies were really slow and the aerial battles were too long. I was a big fan of 60s Star Trek, I liked the colorful sets and costumes, I liked that Captain Kirk had the best job ever, and I liked that everybody got along. Bad guys came and went. I always felt like Star Wars was too grand for what it was. As a kid, I just didn't get it like my friends.

I had a Yoda figurine, the one with the cloth jacket. I didn't have any other Star Wars figures, and I didn't really know who or what Yoda was, merely that he reminded me of a green cat. One day, I took it out to play in the snow, and I lost it. I never saw it again. I always think about that Yoda figurine being dug up by some future archaeologist.

Later, when Phantom Menace was gearing up, I had a bunch of friends that were really into Star Wars, and as I was a late teenager, I talked myself into agreeing that I liked it. This coincided with my first full time job, and I spent far, far too much money on Phantom Menace action figures, long before the movie ever came out, going purely off looks alone. I did actually like the aesthetic of the film. It was shiny and pleasant to the eyes. The acting seemed irrelevant to me... Star Wars was always slow and awkwardly paced to me. Star Trek was breezy and chatty. I didn't really mind Phantom Menace as much as I was told I was supposed to. I put all the action figures into a coffee can and they went into the garage when I moved out.

I found them a few months ago, all jumbled in together, never played with, just sort of a remnant of a time when I would engage in consumerism just to belong. I don't really think of it as anything other than a change in my aesthetics. I wouldn't mind owning a Yoda figurine with his cloth jacket, just to have around, but, ultimately, isn't that what every other Star Wars fan does with these toys? Trying to cling to something that doesn't really exist? These aren't GREAT films. These are exercises in the eccentricity of a single, overly powerful nostalgist who somehow got his movie made, and that somehow pinged into the psyche of all these other eccentric nostalgists.

I was thinking a bit recently about the Cabbage Patch Kid, and how it is a symbol of a deep sea change in the Reagan era culture, where suddenly two working parent families were made to feel guilty about having to do exactly what the people begrudging them about it were profiting from. "Here's this doll to symbolize our love for you, a love we'd offer if only we didn't have to do exactly the opposite."

This isn't really going anywhere. My grandmother was blind. My younger cousins, who loved Star Wars, would play Star Wars endlessly, and one day she asks me "What is Star Wars about?"

"I guess it would be Red Badge of Courage if it was set in the Civil War," I said.

Star Wars is a thing. It's an insidious thing that destroys brains. But, the brains destroyed by Star Wars were destined to be destroyed by something, anyway, and Star Wars is actually pretty innocuous.

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These stars are for 0:55 - 0:56.

What's wrong with your faaaaaaaaaaccceeeeeeeee....