This is the future, and it is sexy: Disney Buys LucasFilm

Three of my top five worst sexual nightmares are included in this image.

So by now you’ve probably heard of the ensuing deal in which Disney is buying out LucasFilm and the rights to the greatest sci-fi franchise ever (come at me, Trekkies) for $4 billion. You likely found out on Facebook, where somebody posted a status being all “I FEELZ A GREAT DISTURBANCE IN THE FILMS L0LZ!” but don’t be fooled. This is a good thing. Hell, it’s great.

Regardless of what RTVF majors have to tell you, Disney is not the worst thing to happen to films since Howard the Duck. They have created numerous masterpieces of the moving image, and the succession of Jewish chief executives recently more than makes up for the fact that Walt was kind of a raging, yet deservedly cherished, asshole. Not to be on their dick or anything, but Disney has also used their acquisitions incredibly well. Their most recent CEO, Bob Iger[1], has channeled his inner JD Rockefeller and went on a shopping spree of potential competitors, buying up Pixar in 2006 and Marvel in 2009.  With these franchises, he has made: Up, WALL-E, Toy Story 3[2], the new kickass X-Men, the new attractive-people Spiderman, and the superb eyefuck that was the Avengers. Also, the people who directed Disney pictures and would probably be picked to do Star Wars Episode VII are like the pantheon of nerd heroes. You’ve got Brad Bird, Gore Verbinski, Brett Ratner, JJ Abrams, and freaking Joss Whedon. HOW AWESOME WOULD A JOSS WHEDON STAR WARS BE.

Oh yeah, this “article” is about Star Wars. This brings me to my next point: George Lucas is an aging hack. I know this has become a cliché among the fandom, but that doesn’t make it in any less true. He has his defenders, who will say that since he made this great story in the first place, he can make any movies he wants and should still be loved. Yeah, that’s like saying that Mitt Romney is undeserving of critique because he was a pretty good governor of Massachusetts. But according to soothsayer Nate Silver, Obama’s up by 20 in the state, and George Lucas left a huge blemish on my childhood with Jar-Jar and rat-tails and “This is so wizard, Ani!” He had numerous chances to do well with the Star Wars franchise after the 80s, and he failed in unique ways every time. I say, good riddance. Change is good, and Disney will do some sensational things with the franchise.

Our mousy overlords will probably rely on the immense Expanded Universe for the prophesized Episode VII, but they will come up with newer characters than the original trilogy. Han, Leia, and Luke are all WAY too iconic to replace, and the old actors simply can’t do them. Even though Princess Leia would have been the first Disney Princess to be elected to the Senate[3], Carrie Fisher is simply too coked out to reprise the role. Harrison Ford is only concerned with cashing his Medicare checks and saving people with his helicopter, and Mark Hamill would love to come back, but he reeks of desperation and cheap schnapps[4].  So this means the series will maybe take place in the Knights of the Old Republic Universe[5], but it will probably actually deal with the Thrawn trilogy which occurs after the original series, and shoehorn in Jacen and Jaina Solo, Han and Leia’s spunky twin kids. This will be sweet, since it can be political, endearing, deal with simple moral issues, and still have probably the coolest antagonist in the series, Grand Admiral Thrawn. This is an alien who succeeds in an institutionally racist organization because he is dispassionate, ridiculous witty, and learns from the enemy by studying their art. This is as close to a Bond villain as the Star Wars movies will get, complete with special death-dealing gadgets. Also, (old) Luke will have a romantic interest who’s not his sister[6], which is good. I’ll leave on that, with the glorious image of Scarlett Johansson as Mara Jade. This is the future, and it is sexy.

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[1] Who married some Catholic shiksa, this is the son I raised…

[2] That was us, remember!?! Except you can totally bring your toys here, just make them face the wall when you’re smanging someone

[3] Sorry Kirsten Gillibrand!

[4] Did you know he voiced Fire Lord Ozai? Do you think he has Zuko’s honor in his trailer?

[5] With the aptly named HK-47, C-3PO’s more badass and snarky cousin

[6] What is it with blonds and incest, amirite?

Other Things David Stern Should Veto

The most hated white man in the league since Toni Kukoc

When sports journalists heard about the NBA Commissioner’s probably ill-advised decision to veto a trade that would’ve sent New Orleans point guard Chris Paul to the Lakers, they practically pooped themselves with rage, railing about the end of the NBA with an apocalyptic despair that would’ve made Harold Camping proud. When I heard about the NBA’s decision, all I could think about was the goodness that could be accomplished by extending David Stern’s veto power, trigger-happy finger, and ‘screw it, I don’t care if I ruin the seasons of three teams’ attitude into other walks of life. Here are the fruits of that aforementioned thinking:

1. Rick Perry’s Presidential Campaign
Here at Sherman Ave we love Rick Perry. Oh wait, no we fucking don’t. No one in their right minds could ever stand to be in the same room, much less vote for, that intolerable shitmuffin. It now seems utterly ridiculous that people as intelligent as Mike Murphy actually thought that Perry could win the Republican nomination. Well, they were about as wrong as Custer’s last words. If only David Stern had stepped forward in August to stop this embarrassing shitshow of a campaign from ever launching.

His dreams were crushed by David Stern. M. Night Shyamalan's should be, too.

2. M. Night Shyamalan’s ability to make movies
So The Sixth Sense was maybe kind of okay. But I dare anyone to make it through The Happening without puking in a biological attempt to reject the atrocity from staying with you. Shyamalan made only one or two movies that could ever be considered ‘good,’ and everything since then has been so unbearably atrocious that Shaymalan should be prevented from ever tainting our eyes with such heinousness again. Unfortunately, the good people at Disney (and by “good people” I of course mean “stupid fucktards”) just keep signing off on his movies. Let’s get Stern in there to crush them the way he crushed Chris Paul’s dreams.

3. No Shave November
I’ll be honest, this year I tried doing No Shave November for the entire month, to see once and for all if I could really grow a beard. I can’t. And I’ve got news for everyone else who has tried it: you can’t either. You do look like an atrocious hobo, though. Congrats. Scumbag Steve would be horrified by your hygiene. Now let’s please agree to never do No Shave November again.

4. New Rebecca Black songs

Rosa Parks' personal hero

Katy Perry has no regrets — only love — about going all the way tonight. I have the same feelings about Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” Yes, it’s horrible, and yes, it probably shouldn’t exist, and yes, it speaks to some very heinous problems at the base of our modern society, but god damn is it funny. I’m glad it exists, and those two weeks where everyone in America absolutely refused to talk about anything else were just awesome. I feel bad for the hypothetical children I may or may not give birth to in the future because they will never have the experience of waiting at midnight for the release of Harry Potter books or movies, and I feel bad for them because they will never have the experience of going to school on March 18, 2011 (the Friday after the song came out) when everyone everywhere was singing “It’s Friday, Friday, GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY.” For two weeks it was fun to laugh, at the insipid songwriting, at the random rap verse that doesn’t make sense, at the problems with modern celebrity culture, but then those two weeks were over and we all moved on. DIDN’T WE?????

Apparently not. Apparently the ARK Music Factory thought that when 268,000 people disliked the “Friday” video, that meant “we love this, give us more please.” I hate to be the one to break this to you, Patrice Wilson, but when 268,000 people disliked the “Friday” video, it means they didn’t like it. At first, Rebecca Black was sad and kind of funny. Now she’s just sad.

5. Bill O’Reilly’s book about Lincoln
The only thing more ridiculous than the sentence “Bill O’Reilly wrote a book about the Lincoln assassination” is the sentence “Bill O’Reilly wrote a book about the Lincoln assassination that wasn’t true.” Yes. We live in a fucked up world. And while I think we have all accustomed ourselves to Fox News’s ridiculous excuse for news coverage, we don’t need them fucking up history as well. That’s Ross Packingham’s favorite subject!

6. “Ultimatum” by Jeph Loeb
If you’re a normal person, then it probably doesn’t mean anything to you when I say that Jeph Loeb fucked up the Ultimate Universe, but he did, and it is an intolerable atrocity.

Something doesn't seem right...

Quick nut graf: shortly after the dawn of the new millennium, Marvel Comics attempted to reinvigorate interest in their brand by creating an offshoot label, dubbed the Ultimate Universe, where they relaunched characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men as if their 40 year history didn’t exist, and the characters had been created in the year 2000. It worked. The stories were great, and their modern reworking of occasionally anachronistic Sixties concepts had a huge influence on Marvel’s later movie adaptations.

But in the year 2008, Marvel executives handed the creative reins of the Ultimate Universe to Jeph Loeb. It seemed like a sensible decision, as Loeb had won acclaim writing Batman at DC Comics. But whereas Loeb had done well on Batman with a strategy of utilizing Batman’s colorful cast and intriguing antihero sensibility, his plan for Ultimate Marvel was a little more like “destroy everything and kill every character.” His miniseries “Ultimatum” was basically a giant shit all over the Ultimate Universe, whose comics had helped spike my interest in the medium and which I still give to people who mention an interest in comic books, and I can no more forgive him for that than Eddie Murphy can forgive SNL for making one joke about him once.

And most importantly…

My First Quarter Grades
More important than any of the other things combined. I must admit, I got so caught up in college heinousness this quarter that I didn’t exactly get Will Hunting grades. Sure, it’s not like I stayed up past 2 am sequestered in the library every night of reading week preparing for my Ancient Philosophy final, but if Stern could have some words with Morty re: my grades, that would be dandier than Sebastian Flyte.

If that isn’t a convincing reason for giving David Stern a time machine and being done with it, I don’t know what is.