Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

16Dec/160

A Slightly Longer Time Ago…

"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." says the familiar graphic, and then we're back in the Star Wars galaxy. Everything feels a bit different, except nothing has changed.

I have no interest in spoiling Rogue One for you--that's the full on-screen title--because its pleasures deserve to be discovered in situ. What I will say is we know the plot already, for the most part, assuming we've seen a heist film like Ocean's Eleven or a Mission Impossible before. That's not where the special treats lie. Rather, this is a basket of Easter eggs for fans both casual and obsessive. We're talking deep, old-school geekery here.

The movie has two flaws, both of which are significant but neither of which are utterly damning. One is the repeated use, dare I say overuse, of cameos from the Holy Trilogy of 1977-1983. ILM deploys cutting-edge effects wizardry to make this happen, and it works more often than not. Still, I bet there will be at least one occasion, perhaps in Jedha City, when you find yourself wondering, "Was that callback really necessary?" The other flaw, at least as many viewers will perceive it, is the pacing of the first hour. I should point out the original Star Wars is paced rather slowly in its own first hour, more like a Western than an action movie, but The Empire Strikes Back accelerated the pace to a clip seen as impatient by critics of its day but expected by popcorn blockbuster audiences now. Let's be gracious and call the pace of Rogue One's first two acts "leisurely."

I don't want to mince words here: The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite movie of all time. I couldn't tell you how many times I've watched it, but I can promise you that number will go up. Empire expanded on its fairy-tale predecessor by enriching the dialogue, finessing the cinematography, and upping the stakes for its characters. At the age of 12, I perceived the movie as more "grown-up" than "A New Hope." And when Return of the Jedi was released three years later, I loved it, of course, but recognized it as a retreat to Toys 'R' Us immaturity. In The Force Awakens, cowriter-director J. J. Abrams nailed Star Wars' wide-eyed innocence. Rogue One steps deep into Empire's moral complexity and more stylized cinematography. You might expect, then, that I enjoyed Rogue One even more than the giddy degree to which I loved The Force Awakens, but that wasn't the case. Both films are deeply entertaining, but I suspect I'll rewatch The Force Awakens more often. You may disagree, but I found Rogue One rewarding, exciting and tense without always being...well...fun.

It's a war movie. People get killed. Actually, a lot of people (including nonhuman people) get killed, though I don't recall a single drop of blood. The good guys don't always hold the moral high ground. The baddies are at times sympathetic. I admire that. Is that Star Wars? Is it a family film? I don't know. I suspect we'll be debating that for years.

Because the rest of Rogue One is so Star Wars! If you love this stuff at all, the last half hour will make you wriggle in your seat. I heard grown men gasp and commend the action on the screen. (True confession: I was one of them.) The last word of dialogue and crash to end credits earned a round of enthusiastic applause. Online chatter from critics and fans alike would have us believe Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie since 1980; I'm afraid I can't go that far, but it is very, very good, in exactly the Empire vein adult fans have been craving. I don't think there's any denying this is a better film all over than Return of the Jedi. Without all the clumsy fumbling of Episode III's final minutes, Rogue One transitions perfectly into Episode IV--so neatly, in fact, that the Holy Trilogy can now be said to comprise four films.

There are three characters at least that you'll fall in love with, including protagonist Jyn Erso (played impeccably by Felicity Jones). Rogue One's scale and spectacle are jaw-dropping, its action scenes tense and geographically clear. I'll happily buy it on video and pore through every arcane bonus feature. It seems clearer than ever that Star Wars is in good hands at Disney's Lucasfilm, respectful of fans but eager to please the movie masses. Grade: A-.

Now bring on Episode VIII !

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24Dec/150

There Has Been an Awakening

Have you felt it? I ask because there's a good chance you haven't yet. IMAX screenings have been sold out since Thursday, and some folks hate standing in line or dealing with crowds even if tickets are available. Some people have, I don't know, other obligations. In any case, about half my friends still haven't seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens, even friends who really want to, so I will tell you right now there will be a point in this update where I throw up a huge spoiler warning. If you don't want to be spoiled, you'll be safe reading up to that point, but then all bets are off. You have to be strong here! Turn away when I tell you to! You've done it for a week, so I know you can handle it now.

First, my non-spoiler thoughts. In the months leading up to The Force Awakens, any number of fellow geeks asked me if I thought it'd be good. It made me realize we have to be very clear on what constitutes a good Star Wars movie. There are people for whom Star Wars is inextricably linked with the best parts of their childhood. They still haven't forgiven George Lucas for releasing three kids' movies bearing the Star Wars label after those poor fans grew up. Of course Jar Jar is silly. So was C-3PO. So is the whole concept of the saga, for Pete's sake. It's well documented that Lucas wanted to make a Flash Gordon serial, but was unable to get the rights. Instead, he mashed up Dune and the Lensman series with old Westerns and Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. It's as simple and brilliant as that. The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite movie and probably always will be, but it still includes phrases like "scruffy-looking nerf herder" and "alluvial dampers." (Is there a problem with the flow of river soil in the Millennium Falcon? How would people in a galaxy far, far away know what a falcon was anyway?) We have to accept that part of Star Wars's essential charm is it's for the kid in all of us. Don't be surprised or put off when it seems a bit childish. No one's claiming this is Shakespeare. So if it sounds like I'm willing to overlook a bit of childishness in The Force Awakens, I am. J.J. Abrams and company make no secret of the fact that they were aware of and trying to duplicate the "goofiness" (their word) of the Original Trilogy. I don't mind it; if you do, however, I can't really argue with you. The point is, it's unfair to demand that The Force Awakens be as good as your favorite movie of all time. No storyteller can simply decide to make a classic. It doesn't work that way. You can only aspire to please most of the people most of the time, and then hope for the best.

See, it's like I've been saying about Star Wars for the last year: everything people say about Star Wars is true. It really is that bad, and it really is that good. I'm on record as saying I don't think much of Return of the Jedi as a movie. People blame the late '90s "Special Editions" for mucking it up, but it was never very good. As my sister observed during a recent viewing, it doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be or whom its primary audience is. The plot is a beat-for-beat outline of the first Star Wars (later tagged A New Hope), but with a flippant air of what-the-hell-ever. There are great moments, of course, which is why we still watch Return of the Jedi all these years later, but as a whole I find it comparable to the much-derided Episode I. So believe me when I say if you find fault with The Force Awakens, that fault was in the Star Wars saga all along.

Just as Jurassic World was a beat-for-beat homage to Jurassic Park and Creed was a beat-for-beat retelling of Rocky, The Force Awakens hangs on the outline of an Original Trilogy Star Wars film. Certain things you expect to happen will happen. But y'know what? There's a reason for that. Lucas likes to say his episodes "rhyme." For years I thought of that as an excuse for unimaginative writing. Now I view things a bit differently. A Star Wars movie is not just, or even primarily, a movie. It's a social event, like a holiday. When you wake up Christmas morning, don't you have a set list of moments and activities you demand every year? Have you ever said "it wouldn't be Christmas without" them? I do, and I wasn't even raised celebrating Christmas. So when certain things happen in Episode VII, they happen because it wouldn't be Star Wars without them. I'm not saying they're good or bad. I'm saying they're part of the ritual. Abrams knows that ritual, and he follows it to the letter. To an adult, does it seem unimaginative? Yes, at times, but I also wouldn't have it any other way. Now that we're back in the flow of the story, it'll be up to Rian Johnson, the director of Episode VIII, to take more interesting narrative risks.

In short, as I watched The Force Awakens, my heart lifted. I flew along with the Falcon. I adore the new characters, especially Rey. I love the fact that she needs friends, not saving. She never whines. She never complains. She just gets her stuff done, and it's everyone else's tough luck if they can't keep up. I think Kylo Ren is a more interesting antagonist in some ways than Vader. BB-8 is a star on arrival. And let's not forget, we've known of these characters for a year now. It's easy to forget this over time, but writing new characters is hard. Abrams and his cowriters, Michael Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan, deserve a galaxy of credit for what they've accomplished here. As you weigh the pluses and minuses of the new film, don't gloss over how amazing those characters are just because we got used to them months ago. They're one of the two best things about the new movie.

The other is this. As I came out of our Thursday night screening, I passed a friend going in. I told him he'd love it. "It does many things well," I said, "but what it does best is make you rabid for Episode VIII." And that's the truth. They should've allowed us to buy tickets as we walked out. I'd have reserved the whole theater. Folks who resent cliffhangers can rest easy; this episode tells a complete tale. But it also finds a closing note that promises vaster adventures to come, and that is also a very high tightrope to walk.

Now.

Here we go. It's spoiler time.

Did you hear me? I said it's

SPOILER TIME.

If you don't want to read details of a movie you haven't seen, this is your cue to hit the back button and get the hell out of Mos Eisley.

Okay.

You've been warned.

So here are things I didn't like about the movie. Did we really need not one but two instances of "we've got company?" Is there any bigger cliché in modern screenwriting? It was probably overdone back when A New Hope used it in '77, let alone now. How many people had eyes on this script before Abrams shot it? Was it not glaringly obvious in the editing bay that they'd used the same line twice? It's indefensible. I mean that. There's no way anyone can tell me that wasn't a blunder. I know it's minutiae, but Star Wars doesn't have minutiae. We fans memorize each line over the years. We kind of need them not to match so damn often. I'll allow, even encourage, another recitation of "I have a bad feeling about this," but "company" just plain has to go.

I wish I'd felt more after the major third-act development. The movie telegraphs its haymaker, then blows past it without the funerary grief other such moments have been granted. Leia frowns; Chewie goes kill crazy. That's about it. It's never even mentioned again. We've loved this character since we were kids, J.J. He deserved better. I don't mind the way he died or who killed him or why; I hate the short shrift the emotions of that moment were given in the context of the movie. My friend Eric told me he was genuinely hurt when that character passed. It was like he'd lost a well-liked family member. Others have told me the same. I think The Force Awakens will be remembered for a long time, and not fondly, as the episode that pulled its biggest gut punch. What a missed opportunity. I cried hard at a similar development in Creed. I shed nary a tear for the death of one of my all-time favorite literary characters. That, too, is pretty hard to forgive.

I realize the Millennium Falcon is a tough old bird, but can it really be bounced around like two drunks playing Frisbee? Especially when the shields aren't even on? My friend Michael complained that you can't fly the Falcon on its side because "that's not how repulsorlifts work." While I get that, I would also point out that repulsorlifts don't work. Much like the Falcon's hyperdrive or, I don't know, alluvial dampers, they're magical objects. They can do whatever the movie needs them to. I can think of plenty of other times the Falcon has been flown on its side; and besides, I've seen The Force Awakens twice and both times the audience went bananas when the Falcon took off.

I've read complaints that Rey is a type of fictional (originally, fan-fictional) character called a "Mary Sue," essentially an author's wish-fulfillment persona presented as a female character with a superhuman range of abilities. Look, no one complained when an archaeology professor suddenly knew how to fly a plane. No one gripes when Bruce Wayne is both a master criminologist and a martial artist, all while running a multinational corporation. Superheroes are part of how we tell stories, and they have been for millennia. Rey's a kick-ass character who also happens to be female, and God love her! I'm beyond thrilled that this new Star Wars trilogy centers around a female orphan and a black ex-stormtrooper. That's fantastic. It's as good as it can be. It means so much for kids growing up right now. I resent any effort to minimize how wonderful it is, so let's just take a moment to celebrate every proud little girl who lugs her Rey and Finn lunchbox to school.

Others have complained that, as with Abrams's 2009 Star Trek reboot, the entire plot of The Force Awakens hinges on galactic-scale coincidences. Yes. It clearly does. Also, in the Original Trilogy, our hero, a foster child on a desert planet deep in the Outer Rim, turns out to be the son of the worst guy in space, the very guy he's been fighting all along. Oh, and a princess and senator from an entirely different planet turns out to be his sister. And the weirdo living two canyons away turns out to be his father's former best friend. So who are we kidding here? The Star Wars universe is one of those fantasy realms (like certain religions I could name) in which it's assumed there is no such thing, really, as a coincidence.

In Episode VII we visit a desert planet, a jungle planet, and an ice world. Sound familiar? One of my favorite moments in the prequel trilogy was that Order 66 montage in Epsiode III, in which we visit a variety of diverse planets like the psychedelically glow-in-the-dark Felucia. The Force Awakens stayed true to Star Wars's roots by presenting environments you could locate on Earth. Even the closing moments, on a craggy island bluff, are clearly in Ireland. I didn't mind that, but I would like to see more inventiveness in upcoming installments. I've been looking through The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens by Phil Szostak, and it's obvious the designers are capable of grander ideas.

All in all I found The Force Awakens a joyous return to form for the series. In some ways it's my third-favorite Star Wars movie. In fact, we can all but ignore the prequels now. New viewers should regard the prequels as this saga's equivalent of Tolkien's Silmarillion, an ancillary backstory you don't need to experience unless you feel driven to. I can't wait to see what awaits us in years to come, and how great is it that we only have to wait a mere year and a half for Episode VIII? Don't forget, the standalone film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story arrives even sooner, less than a year from now. I'm rooting for new heroes and intrigued by the return of Luke Skywalker. I suspect all the box office records this movie is setting will shatter in May of 2017. (Incidentally, let's take a moment to consider the fact that Episode VIII comes out only three weeks after Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2. What a month!) I'll be seeing The Force Awakens again tonight, and I'm looking forward to it just as rabidly as I awaited last week's premiere night. I love watching people my age introduce their kids to a saga they adore. Star Wars has become part of America's positive impact on the world. The advent of a new trilogy is a holiday we all share. So Merry Christmas, my friends, and may the Force be with all of you.

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17Nov/150

Home

My work for the educational game company has been delayed for a day by minor pipeline issues, and I'm fielding additional emails before penning a Weekly Volcano Gift Guide story. That leaves me with unexpected time on my hands. I decided to use this time to write about something I love. This has been a month of things I hate, frankly, with school shootings and Russian Metrojet Airbus bombings and a series of attacks on the city I love most in the world, Paris. On the other hand, it's also been a time of promising changes for my wife and me, as she starts an amazing new job and I extend my daytime contract into game testing and final revisions. We've had our first read-through on The Credeaux Canvas, a play I'm directing as a labor of love for next March, and we'll block the show tonight and next Monday so our actors can memorize their roles over the holidays. Some nights my wife and I are tired and upset beyond words, not at each other, but at a world where bullets tear through French restaurants and our "leaders" are actually, can you freaking believe this, debating whether or not to take in Syrians fleeing for their very lives from our mutual murderers, Daesh. (Daesh, in case you haven't heard, is the Arabic acronym for ISIS. Apparently Daesh members find acronyms dismissive. Also, if you say it just right, da'esh sounds like the Arabic word for "trampler," which is PERFECT. I intend to use it exclusively from now on and encourage you to do the same.)

[P.S.: in the first draft of this blog post, I quoted from mainstream news sources who said da'esh sounds like the Arabic word for "bully." From sources I'm reading today, it appears that may have been false. I don't speak Arabic at all, so I rely on people who do when I say da'esh sounds like (but isn't, quite) the word for "trampler." I hope I'm right now.]

We've shed a lot of tears over the state of the world, and now, more than ever, we need something to cheer us up. That something, for me, is a goofy 1977 kids' fantasy, the British-American space opera commonly referred to as Star Wars. I saw it with my family at the Ventura Drive-In when I was nine, then again I-don't-know-how-many times with my mom on Saturday afternoons, usually at the late, lamented Old Towne Mall in Torrance, CA. It became our thing. First we'd eat lunch at Denny's, which offered kids' menus with built-in, perforated robot masks, then hit a Star Wars matinée and thrill to the adventures of Han Solo and Company. (Han was driving the boat, after all. Luke and Leia were basically luggage.) In the late '70s and early '80s, if you were a boy who wasn't good at sports, chances are you lived for Star Wars. I could probably recite the Holy Trilogy from memory. I won't. But I could.

I probably won't. Probably. Don't push your luck.

Carv at 9ish

This kid sure did like Star Wars. And bowl cuts.

Anyway, I'm not a prequel hater. I dig Watto and Darth Maul and Boss Nass and kendo Yoda and that ominous scene at the Coruscant Cirque du Soleil. Episodes I through III were beautifully designed and boasted at least as many interesting moments as most summer popcorn extravaganzas. Were they Star Wars, though? No. Not the Star Wars I knew. They were shiny, not lived-in. They offered wooden performances of terrible dialogue in front of greenscreens, not wooden performances of occasionally terrible dialogue in front of actual sets. They gave us a lead couple, Anakin and Padmé, with all the sexual chemistry of day-old peanut butter and jelly, a Gungan doofus who somehow made baby talk sound racist, and the backstories of characters whose later-stories were far more interesting. About the best one could say about the prequels was they tided us over. Were they as good as the original Matrix or Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films? Of course not. And that rankled. As I entered my forties, Star Wars became something I had mixed feelings about. We all did, I guess.

Until.

I greeted the news that George Lucas sold Lucasfilm and his rights to all things Star Wars to Disney with mixed emotions. It made me feel old, I think, seeing the Flanneled One fade into the double Tattooine sunset of retirement, but I respected Disney's oversight of recent acquisitions Pixar and Marvel. Could they do the same with Star Wars? I dreamt of a Return of the Jedi sequel directed by Brad Bird (who passed on it to finish the just-okay Tomorrowland) or Jon Favreau (whose live-action reboot of The Jungle Book, due next April, looks fantastic). The reins were handed to J. J. Abrams instead, but I was fine with that, as I loved Abrams' jump-starts of Mission: Impossible (III) and Star Trek. J. J. Abrams is good at restarting things. He's less good at continuing them, sure, but that was producer Kathleen Kennedy's job. The franchise was in capable hands.

When Toy Story 3 writer Michael Arndt dropped out due to accelerated production timetables, Larry Kasdan took over as screenwriter-in-chief. That was excellent news, because Kasdan is the guy who wrote The Big Chill, Silverado, Body Heat, and oh yeah, Raiders of the Lost Ark and...wait for it...The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Yeah. That guy. Writing a direct sequel to Empire and Jedi. With the original trilogy cast. Shooting in actual locations. With working robots. On the Millennium Falcon. So when Han Solo growls, "Chewie, we're home," yes, it does feel exactly like that. There's a reason why grown people cried when they saw that early trailer. It took them, and me, back to being nine years old again. It's Christmas morning. The gifts have been placed beneath the tree. All that remains now is to sip eggnog and let the kids open them.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens one month from tonight. It is not just a movie. I mean yes, it will take exactly two hours and fifteen minutes to see the thing, a longish movie length, in movie theaters as we plow through buckets of movie popcorn and pay inflated 3-D IMAX movie prices. But it's also an international holiday. Call it Life Day, assuming that doesn't make you, my fellow Star Wars nerds, cringe. It's a day when America gives the world something magical. We Americans know we can be childish. We can also be childlike, in the sweetest possible way. A new Star Wars movie is one of those rare times we come together to share something earnest, exciting, and wonderful. It's an event packed with all our goofy optimism and humor, a John Williams-backed binary sunrise heralding grander adventures to come.

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26Aug/130

A Healthy Reminder

I want you to think back and remember a verb you once used with no irony or self-judgment: enjoy.

Here are things I used to enjoy: Star Wars. Burritos. Pinups, burlesque, and other pretty girls in minimal outfits. Comic book movies. Billy Joel. Pizza. Hard rock. Ender's Game. Music videos. Indiana Jones. Battlestar Galactica--the 2004 version, natch. Wine coolers. Standup comedy. I still enjoy all those things now, but in each case, I've been told my affections are silly, perhaps even misguided. Well, maybe the killjoy crowd does have a point or two. It's hard to knock Jar Jar without noticing what an effeminate prat C-3PO was from an adult perspective, so maybe all six of those movies were stupid. They are stupid. But I enjoy them. I've watched each of them dozens of times and I'm probably nowhere close to finished. I like Citizen Kane and The Godfather, too, but not as much as The Empire Strikes Back or Aliens. Pop culture talked me out of loving some of my favorites for a while, but now I've reached an age where I just want to be happy and love the things I love.

I don't care how much you hated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I really don't. You thought that monkey scene was stupid? So did I. I physically cringed. You embraced the phrase "nuked the fridge?" Can you think of a better way to survive a 20-megaton bomb blast? You thought the aliens came out of left field? I submit to you: magic rocks. A wooden cup that makes you live forever if you drink out of it. A fancy gold box God uses as an apartment. Okay, you hated those things. Y'know what? Good for you. Aren't you smart? It won't affect my enjoyment one little bit. You go, Dr. Henry Jones...Junior.

I also want you to know that while I do think it's great women have breasts and look pretty and smell like vanilla sometimes, I also recognize they have minds and desires of their own. I consider them every bit as valuable as myself, and I can't imagine why anyone would think anything else. My unabashed heterosexuality does not impede my political or moral judgment. I support equal rights for every American citizen and wonder why it's even debatable in 2013. It saddens me that some young women feel their best way to get ahead in life is to get naked on the Internet, but that's their choice and I'm not gonna lie, nude women are beautiful. I'm not somehow unaware of that just because I'm a feminist.

I know pizza is bad for me. I've paid for my transgressions vis-à-vis the mozzarella arts with a thicker midsection, higher cholesterol levels, and countless nights interrupted by heartburn. I still like it. I try to enjoy it in moderation these days, but your definition of moderation and my definition of moderation are probably two different things.

I don't care what you love, as long as it doesn't hurt another unwilling person. If you like getting high on a Friday night and watching reruns of Futurama, then knock yourself all the way out. If you think the Transformers franchise is on a par with the collected works of Sidney Lumet, then Godspeed, my robot-loving friend. You have at it. I don't understand this Gen-X insistence on crapping on the things we used to love. Sadly, it's a cancer we've passed on to Generation Y. It must be killed now before it hardens into a permanent part of the American psyche.

If you'd asked guys of my generation two years ago who their favorite young movie directors are, among the top three picks would be J. J. Abrams. We loved that guy. We loved his show Lost till we decided it was cooler to act like we were over it. We loved his revival of Star Trek so much we couldn't even pretend we were too hip to like it. And then...he was given the reins of Star Wars. Suddenly we couldn't dump on him fast enough. And that doesn't hurt him, it hurts us.

Only us!

Last night, I've come to understand, a 20-year-old woman ground on a 36-year-old man for the MTV Video Music Awards, an evening of light entertainment with a title not only redundant but also oxymoronic and on the wrong channel. Be that as it may, the man in question is famous for a song about how a particular woman is "the hottest bitch in this place," meaning sexually attractive. The young woman is famous for having a dad who wore a mullet and for singing a song about how dancing to pop songs is popular across the USA. Together, the two are often seen on a channel devoted to older men capitalizing on the looks (and sometimes talents) of younger people. I didn't see the act, being otherwise engaged at the time (I was watching Breaking Bad like an adult), but I gather from EVERYTHING I LOOK AT THIS MORNING that she wore a pair of shorts so tight they somehow bifurcated her entire midsection. The Internet has gone crazy. This lowbrow dance number was the top story on CNN.com this morning. The top story! It was more important than anything else that happened yesterday anywhere else on the planet! Take a step back, Mumbai and Damascus!

Now, when I was close to this woman's age, we made more sensible choices. We went to nightclubs in timeless fashions like jeans with suspenders or blazers pulled up to our elbows. We ground on each other's midsections like intelligent people, to a song called "Rump Shaker," by a group whose name was spelled Wreckx-N-Effect. Now, even I can't bring myself to reproduce the lyrics to "Rump Shaker" here, but I invite you to Google them for yourself. That song was all the rage in dance clubs in 1992, when I was 24 years old, and it's about a man telling a woman he simply wants to penetrate her in, shall we say, the back 40. Most of the women I knew loved that song, even after they noticed its lyrics. I wasn't fond of it myself, but I did enjoy the consequences of DJs playing it in dance clubs: namely, women would back into me and pretty much do exactly what Hannah Montana did to Growing Pains Jr. last night.

I've seen the dance act called, not just embarrassing, but an all-out career-ender. I've seen it called a minstrel show. That's right, it destroyed equal rights for black people, who apparently have an ethnic monopoly on simulated rear entry. And what all these people are forgetting is it took place on MTV, where Beavis and Butt-Head are now regarded as elder statesmen.

Set aside the question of why Miley Cyrus is said to be acting "slutty" and Robin Thicke isn't. Set aside the repercussions of moving your lower back that fact. (You're only given one spine, kids. Use it wisely.) The real question is, why can't we just admit that sometimes pop music is sexy and fun and ridiculous and all of that is perfectly okay? She's of legal age. Let her dance in a teddy bear hat. Who gives a rat's ass in latex panties? (Fun fact: I couldn't wear those. I'm allergic. The result might be a party in the USA, but not in my pants.)

So just enjoy what you freaking enjoy. Quit trying to act above it all or contextualize it or make it more politically correct or pretend it has apocalyptic impact. Just enjoy it. Recognize Star Wars was a movie for nine-year-olds, and so were all its sequels and prequels. If seeing a Star Wars movie or TV show or even that godawful holiday special makes you feel young again, great. If it doesn't, no big deal. If you like singing along with the radio, sing. Don't get embarrassed if that hipster on his recumbent bike sees you jamming along with "Sweet Cherry Pie." Of course it's a terrible song. So what? It won't change the course of modern feminism. It doesn't mean you consider women equivalent to a tasty dessert. It just means it's Monday and you needed a pick-me-up and that's what came on the stupid oldies rock station you like because it reminds you of easier times.

From now on, I intend to quit second-guessing the things I enjoy. I encourage you to do the same. If Zack Snyder wants to cast Ben Affleck as Batman, let him do it and stop all the faux-entitled whining. It's his franchise now. He may very well have a good reason, same as Tim Burton did for casting Beetlejuice and Christopher Nolan did for casting that guy who played Snowy Bowles on Sweat. He may not. Will it ruin your enjoyment of Batman if Zack Snyder turns out a bad movie? My DC-enraptured friend, may I gently remind you of pretty much every other Batman movie ever made?

For the love of God (and by God I mean Steven Spielberg), can we please remember what it felt like to unironically enjoy things? Would it really be so damn difficult? I plan to be first in line for Star Wars, Episode VII, and in the meantime, how long as it been since you listened to The Bangles' Greatest Hits? Well, mister, that's too long.

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