A few questions:
Why do soft drink companies keep poisoning perfectly good soda with cherry and vanilla?
Why do large teenage boys ride those tiny bicycles?
And finally, is it just me, or is the Darth Vader mystique losing, more or less, its luster? Lately whenever I’m out swinging a dead cat my follow-through is impeded by the ubiquitous Lord of the Dark Side taking a comedic turn as a spokestoon. He shills for Cingular, he puts the death-choke on a talking M&M, and he appears unable to prevail in a staring contest with a papier-mâché Burger King.
Speaking of death chokes, I was forced to channel-flip last night, and it was inevitable that I should land, for a time, on the heretofore-unviewed-by-me Star Wars clone movie. Years of “Worst. Movie. Ever.†hype assiduously promulgated by greater minds than mine had failed to adequately prepare me.
I don’t know about you, but when my boyfriend starts throwing shit around the room and wails about how he has just singlehandedly massacred an entire trailer park full of aliens in a vengeful rage, I’m all like “Whoa, red flag! Later, Kujo!†But what does sylphy cipher Natalie Portman do when mopey young Aryan Anakin Skywalker makes exactly that confession? “To be angry,†she says vacantly, for she is a human fortune cookie,“is to be human.†And she strokes his little Darth Vader cheek. And she marries him. In a dress that looks like one of those macramé slings used for potted philodendrons in the 70’s.
And that’s about all I’ve got to say about that clone movie.
You want to know what’s really sad? Natalie’s reaction is probably more true to life than yours. All the women I know who have ever been in abusive relationships, not ONE of them ever said “whoa, you’re a violent dickhead. I’m outta here.”
What’s even sadder than that is that everyone seems to know multiple women who’ve been knocked around by violent dickheads. That’s a lotta violent dickheads.