Star Wars

May 13, 2022

So, I have had some heavy and emotionally taxing posts on here the last few weeks. This week, I thought, I should switch it up a little and talk about something fun.

This may seem shocking to a lot of you but I, someone who was born in the mid-80's did not see a single Star Wars movie until I was 30!

Okay, so that is not quite true. My mom did take my brother and me to watch The Phantom Menace back when it came out in 1999. It's cool to shit on that movie now but back in 1999 it was the biggest movie of the year and I think that was why my mother took us too see it. She didn't know much about Star Wars either and even a couple of years ago when I tried showing her The Mandalorian she said she didn't like Star Wars. Unfortunately, for me and my brother we had no idea what was going on either. So, we just sat there watching the whole thing for a couple of hours and that's all the "real" Star Wars I saw for the next sixteen years.

Now, the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed, I said "real" in that last paragraph. The main reason why I didn't see Star Wars for so long was because I didn't feel the need to see it. The franchise is so huge at this stage that it has sort of leaked into the larger cultural zeitgeist. You don't actually have to watch Star Wars to know what the Death Star is or what the line "Luke, I am your father" refers to.

And so it was for me too. I knew everything that would happen in the movie. So, why did I need to see it? There were, however, a couple of other reasons why I felt that way. Two pieces of media - one that I saw in high school and another that I while I was working as a software engineer in 2010 - that pretty much gave me a gist of the whole series in a much more digestible way.

The first, was Mel Brooks' excellent parody film, Spaceballs. I don't think too many people are familiar with this movie these days, which is shame because although, it is a Star Wars parody, it's not the kind of political jokes laden parody that we see these days. This is a parody done right. Also, the Schwartz is a hell of a parody of the force.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPkWZdluoUg

The second is the Family Guy trilogy, Laugh it up fuzzball. I am a huge Seth Macfarlane fan. I think almost everything he has ever done is hilarious and I appreciate that he keeps politics mostly out of his comedy. His stuff is or irreverent and he would make jokes of everything and about everyone and to me making fun of the Kardashians while not leaving out Caitlyn is the true definition of equality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq1AVXVXIf0

That was it for me. I didn't really need to watch Star Wars after that. I continued working and then decided to transition (which I described in another post). It would be after this that I went through one of the worst phases of my life, which involved a toxic relationship and a toxic person. I will elaborate on that in a future post. But at the end of it, I spent two months in a cold apartment in Asheville NC that I was paying for by putting it on my credit card. I didn't have any of my savings from working all those years - having spent it all on a narcissistic man-baby. I was living off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches - three times a day.

Having nothing going on my life, I spend a few days doing something that would bring me so joy. So, I watched all of Star Wars - all the movies, the Clone Wars and the Christmas special - over 3 days. I really enjoyed it. I am not some Star Wars super fan but those movies made me feel good. This was early 2016. So, I even went out and watched The Force Awakens after finishing up all of the series. Shortly, after that I would be hired as a nurse for the first time at the UVA Health System in Charlottesville.

This isn't some depression-laden post about my life. Instead it's about a few days that made me feel good. Movies, TV shows and video games have this power to make us forget about all that is wrong with our lives momentarily. I guess, I just wanted to tell a personal tale from my life about that.

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