Cant

Pakeha - Column for 1/13

After eating a small piece of positively evil chocolate cake, I decided to brush out some of the cobwebs festooning the corners of my brain.

Rules of the Road

Basic speed law: Multiply the posted speed limit by two.
Basic speed law (corollary): Go as fast as you can until you run up on the back of the car in front of you.
Stop at every red light and stop sign, except for those that don't apply to you.
If someone is naīve enough to use their signal to warn you of their intention to savagely cut in front of you, thereby infringing on your Constitutional right to an open road, speed up and pace the sucker.
Turn your brain off as you approach anything more complicated than a T intersection.
If you pay more than $50,000 for your vehicle, no rules apply to you and you are entitled to take two plebeian parking spaces.

George Lucas and Adolph Hitler

The last week of work was rather hellish. I'm not complaining too loudly as I have way too many friends and family members who don't have a job at the moment. Anywhoo, despite of, or maybe because of, this pressure cooker atmosphere, I found a gaggle of coworkers huddled in a cube subjecting themselves to the Episode II teaser trailers. The general consensus was that they were crap. I can see how someone was going for "dark" and "menacing" with Darth Vader's breathing, but in the end it sounded like 60 seconds of really bad phone sex. The second, non-heavy breathing trailer proves that George Lucas has performed a miracle: He's found someone who is as utterly talentless as Jake Lloyd: "It's all Obi-Wan's fault! He's holding me back!"

The only explanation I can cook up to account for Jake, Jar Jar, and "Attack of the Clones" is that George Lucas suffers from the same sort of hubris that Adolph Hitler developed. After a few stunning successes, surrounded by people who worshipped them, both men grew to actually believe in their ultimate invincibility. Hitler and his staff knew that they would rule the world by force of will alone, damn the realities of logistics. Lucas and his minions believed that they would rule the hearts and minds of a new generation, damn the realities of a crap acting and an insanely bad script.

Hitler	Lucas
Hijinks in the Spanish Civil War: Hitler flexes his muscles and experiments with new and exciting ways to kill people from the air.	Look at Life (1965): Lucas experiments with some artsy fartsy photo montage stuff while in school.
Austria: This is a shoe-in for Hitler. The Austrians speak German after all, right?	1:42:08: A Man and His Car (1966): Lucas films a subject close to his heart: cars.
The Sudentenland: Hitler moves in to protect his homeys from racial persecution. Can we say "irony"?	THX 1138:4EB (1967): Lucas wins a prize and the attention of studio heads.
Poland: Hitler finally convinces enough folks that he's a lying, conniving bastard. The world is almost at war again.	THX 1138 (1970): Lucas gets his first shot at the big times.
Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg: Like falling off a log. Belgium invaded? What a shock.	American Graffiti (1973): A warm, fuzzy sort of film from Lucas about teens in the Central Valley of California? What a shock.
France: Hitler is the king of the world as he marches into Paris.	Star Wars: Nothing needs to be said here.
Battle of Britain: One of the first big hints that all is not well. The tiny island fights off the Luftwaffe's might.	Episode I: Things are not at all well. The first hint was the fans snoring at the midnight first screening.
Operation Barbarossa: Disaster.	Episode II?

Let's hope that history doesn't repeat itself.

Pakeha

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