The End of Days: Part One
Ever since George Lucas was taken by the dark side in the couple of weeks following the release of Star Wars, influenced by the dread Darth No-Need-For-401K, he has tried to wring out every last cosmic ounce of juice from his tired space opera bandwagon.
The latest iteration of the cultural phenomenon that has done so very very much to effect a state of eternal retardation in huge swathes of the American male population (I believe statistics will bear out that, in this age of no military draft, there are more stormtroopers of the Empire variety than volunteers for the real Army Reserves. Which must be a comfort at least to the fanatical insurgents of Afghanistan. I imagine them sat in their caves at night giving thanks to Han Solo and a walking carpet that they can live to fight another day.) is the cartoon Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This weekend it was released to a less than stellar box office of $15.5m.
This marks a distinct difference to the hysteria generated by the previous films. Lines of fans do not reach around the block, this time. Media crews don’t set up shop outside Mann’s Chinese, interviewing the spooky stalwarts who been camping out since June to see the first screening. The waters of Los Angeles docks have not been displaced two feet higher up the sea walls by convoys of Taiwanese freighters unloading Count Dooku lunchboxes, dead Tauntaun sleeping bags, Yoda-flavored peanut butter and Obi Wan Kenobi toilet roll holders.
To be continued…
The Daily Mona Lisa Monster Truck:
Imagine public sculpture that is better than public art, and you are also allowed to play on it! For those of you have always wanted to absail down an Anish Kapoor or a Richard Serra but were deterred by bourgeois principle, it’s nice to know that there is genuinely weird shit out there that is clamber-friendly. Darkroastedblend.com has a series of photographs of nightmare playgrounds that appeals to the clown-dressing child-slaying monster in all of us.