Good things about 2005

It brings us further and further away from Nov. 17, 1978, when CBS aired the Star Wars Holiday Special.

If the blog seems a little, uh, not good for the next few days, it's because I incurred some brain damage last night. For reasons I can no longer remember, I allowed myself to watch this monstrosity for the longest two hours I've ever experienced. It was a DVD of an early home VCR recording, and the best part was by far the terrible, terrible commercials.

Veritably the last stand of American manufacturing, they gave us a chorus of singing International Ladies Garment Workers Union singers, a comparison of American Bald Eagles and Whirlpool machines, and notably unintegrated GM and Ford unionists. An elderly woman in a rocking chair seemed to exult in, and then demonstrate, the strength of her apparently dead husband's immense Fruit of the Loom briefs, while men dressed as grapes and bananas fawned on her. A priceless newsbreak informed viewers that Brezhnev had announced the testing of a Soviet neutron bomb, and the conviction of former CIA employee William Kampiles for espionage and selling secrets to the Russians.

This was all infinitely preferable to Wookie porn, Wookie gameboys, Wookie/Art Carney-in-Drag cooking shows, and much, much worse. You can read a Salon essay describing the Holiday special here.

Quote from a fellow audience member: I can't believe this was the world my parents chose to bring me into.

The experience has given me a greater appreciation of pretty much every other piece of moving image I have ever seen, and ever will see. Who knew that so many people had so much cinematic talent? Like the Count of Monte Cristo, I did not fully appreciate the joys of film until I had plunged into its deepest nadir. For everything I see after this, I can be at least a little grateful.

UPDATE: SKot Kirkword has an inexplicably thorough and fond website devoted to the "Special" here.