by Brian Posehn
What threw me off was the feel—green-screen environments instead of real sets, convoluted plots, clunky writing and directing, stiff to straight-up bad acting. Actors I love like Ewan McGregor, Liam fucking Neeson, Sam Jackson, and what’s her nut, Natalie Portman. By the way, how feminists didn’t climb all over the part of Queen Amidala—does she fucking do anything in that movie? Leia is such a tough, dynamic force, and Amidala is such a thinly drawn character.
At least, in my opinion. Don’t come at me, nerds. And Sam Jackson is wasted as Mace Windu. Jackson is arguably one of the most charismatic and likable actors ever. In D&D terms the guy has a 20 charisma with a plus 8 in coolness and likability. And poor Mace Windu was working with a 2 charisma with a plus 10 in who gives a shit. I’m not even gonna trash the kid, for the same reason I no longer go after Juggalos or Nickelback: they are an easy target and they’ve taken enough shit.
I just never cared about any of the characters in the film. Even when my old pal Yoda showed up, my reaction was meh. Where the originals had touched me unlike any other movie, the Phantom Menace couldn’t even engage me. Cynical? FUCK YES. But that’s not why. My heart isn’t made of shit—plenty of recent movies have moved me. Wonder Woman fucking blew me away. I’ve seen it five times at the writing of this, and I’m moved every time.
And then in 2002 the second one, Attack of the Clones, came out, and you were like, “Whew, well, that was clearly a one-time-only thing, like when my cool uncle tried to mouth-rape me—that will never happen again.” And then it’s Thanksgiving and you’re all full of turkey and his penis flesh touches your mouth this time. “Oh my god, it totally touched my mouth!” He’s like, “Is this cool?” Me: “No, it’s not fucking cool. You’re not my uncle anymore.”
The third one, Revenge of the Sith, came out in 2005. And it’s the least shitty. But that’s like the third worst school shooting or the serial killer with the third most kills. I don’t remember much about it other than what’s-his-fuck becoming Vader on the stupid-ass fire planet. Actually, upon reviewing, the Anakin/Obi-Wan battle is choreographed really well, and the famous Order 66 sequence when the clones and Anakin execute all living Jedi is dark and violent. And yet I just don’t care, because I’m not connected. Kenobi, Vader, and Yoda are three of my favorite characters in life, and I don’t give a shit about them or what they do or even what happens to them. Anakin kills little-kid Jedis, and my reaction is meh.
The Vader transformation is definitely the highlight of the whole series, and even then, I don’t really feel much for Vader. Because I was never engaged at the beginning of the prequels, and they never did anything to earn me back. When you look at the prequels as a whole, you see what a massive misfire it is: the three individual turds combine to make one giant, shitty, stinky mess. I guess if you had to have a Vader origin story, you could have done it in one episode without all the fat.
We all could have done without the political intrigue, midi-chlorians, trade wars, bad acting, green screen CGI fillers if there were a single, solid, boiled-down story. At least that’s my opinion. That opinion has actually matured a lot since the first time I saw each of the prequels. In ’99, ’02, and ’05, it was just blind nerd rage. I couldn’t even articulate my dislike; I would just blurt profanity and gesticulate wildly like an angry potty-mouthed wookie.
I hated the prequels so much that I only saw them the opening weekend. I saw The Phantom Menace twice opening weekend only because I’d already bought a matinee ticket to see it at the famous Cinerama Dome. That Thursday night there was a midnight screening, so I went with Patton Oswalt from television, film, and friendship. We and some other nerdy, funny friends were giddy with excitement.
Two and a half hours later we stumbled out of the beautiful Vista Theater, gut-punched. We all expressed our dislike and frustration. I went home, got up the next morning, and saw it again. I still hated it. Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith would each only earn one screening, and that was fucking enough. I rewatched the special editions of the original trilogy and the holiday special as I wrote this. I did not, however, rewatch the prequels. I have viewed them with my son. He’s the only one I would take that bullet for.
After wound-healing time and multiple viewings with my kid, I hate the prequels a lot less all these years later. But at the time, though, I fucking hated them. I was so done by 2005, but I kind of went out of spite. The first two prequels turned me from the whole series. I handed in my Star Wars fanboy card. I didn’t even watch the originals for a while. After the disappointment of the Special Editions and the prequels I purged all my Star Wars memorabilia.
I unloaded nearly every Star Wars item I owned, with the exception of a coffee table book from the nineties, The Encyclopedia of Star Wars, and a cherry, very hard to find copy of the VHS box set of the Original Trilogy, the true special editions because Lucas hadn’t fucked with them. I got rid of everything else, though.
I passed it all on to my friend, Tom Kenny’s son, Mack, and Toys for Tots. Little Mack Kenny got everything that was out of the box, and we’re talking a trunk-load of stuff. Toys for Tots fared even better: some kids in greater LA scored because I gave them around seventy-five figures and toys and playsets, still in the box. I didn’t even put them on eBay because I didn’t want blood money.
For over fifteen years I hated those movies. I actually talked to my therapist about Star Wars. I spent $140.00 to tell a lady that I was mad at a movie because my wife didn’t want to fucking hear about it anymore: after fifteen years she is so sick of my anti–Star Wars bullshit because she knows Star Wars is my Vietnam.
I’m the crazy old guy in the neighborhood who, after some young kid says, “I like the new Star Wars!” I say, “Well, clearly you don’t know dick about shit, motherfucker. That’s not Star Wars. I know Star Wars. Where the fuck were you in 1977? I was in the shit. I saw Star Wars on opening day. Where the fuck were you? My mom took me to see Star Wars opening weekend and it was sold out, so I saw The Deep instead. I saw Jaqueline Bisset’s tits at eleven years old. Made me a man. Where the fuck were you?” Insane.
I really should have listened to one of the famous messages of those movies, because I let my anger control me. I went to the dark side. Fuck that. Those movies suck, and so does Lucas. I was already mad at the entire franchise, and then I would read stories where Lucas told me and all my fellow Star Wars nerds to get a life, like Shatner’s classic Trekkie sketch on SNL. I was furious when I read that. Fuck you, Lucas. Sure, you don’t owe us anything, but how about making a good movie and making nerds happy? Sound hard? Talk to Joss Whedon.
I went from being one of the biggest Star Wars fans to a guy who couldn’t even talk about the series without my blood pressure cruising to unhealthy levels. I once even got to go to Skywalker Ranch to do a sketch for Comedy Central, and we were all invited to sleep in this cool little bed-and-breakfast on the grounds. I peed the bed. Just kidding. We then had the run of the ranch the next day; our small crew got the grand tour of the grounds. Looking back, it was pretty cool. Not a lot of people get to do that. This nerd did. And it was totally wasted on me at the time.
I remember every cool moment of the day was tainted by my attitude at the time. “Sure, this is so cool that I’m walking through George Lucas’s library, and there is the original model of Luke’s X-Wing, and there is Han’s gun, but too bad, cuz’ Star Wars sucks now.” Wish I could go again, because now I love it again. Yep, it won me back. I am once again a Star Wars fan. More about my growth and maturity much later. For now, back to me being eleven years old and…
SIX
SIXTH GRADE: MY SCHOLASTIC HIGH POINT
My third and final year at Dunbar, sixth grade, was in 1977–78. I know those are two years. It didn’t take two years; that’s just how the school year works. Keep up. Sixth grade was the definite highlight of my elementary school career. And like every school movie where a kid turns it around, it was due to a young, eager, idealistic teacher. Mr. Richard Cox was my
young, eager, idealistic teacher. We were only his third class of students. I think he was twenty-six at the time. And he was such a cool, smart, funny guy. If all my teachers were as easy to talk and listen and relate to as Mr. Cox, I probably would have done much better in school. Way to go, other teachers.
Everybody loved Mr. Cox. I’m pretty sure not one kid in my class had a beef with him. I think the clearest example of that would be the fact that his name was Richard Cox, and no one made fun of his name—“Dick Cocks,” or “Dick Cox.” Twenty twelve-year-old boys saw him every day and said his name and no one thought to tease him.
When we started the year he asked us what book we wanted to read out loud. I produced my copy of the Star Wars adaptation. It worked—he was a fan. And to be democratic and teach us all a lesson, we did a vote. Most kids in the world were Star Wars crazy, so it was an easy victory. Things were starting off great; we spent the first part of sixth grade reading the Star Wars adaptation. I felt like I won; I was so damn happy. I even read it out loud when it was my turn. I had previously been terrified of that. For Mr. Cox and Star Wars, I got over my fear and shyness.
He also encouraged my imagination. When we started doing creative writing exercises, it was exactly what I needed. I loved doing those assignments—crafting stories out of thin air to fit his criteria. I wasn’t a horror movie nut yet, but I loved action movies and cop shows, so most of my short stories were inspired by that stuff. I wrote a Freebie and the Bean buddy-cop rip-off and a Dirty Harry sequel. The stories all had car chases and gunplay and way too much violence for a sixth-grader, but Mr. Cox let me do whatever I wanted. Like everything else I loved, I soon became obsessed and started doing short stories all the time on my own.
Because I liked him so much, I didn’t get in a ton of trouble with Mr. Cox. The maddest he ever got with me was when he caught me “being creative.” He saw me drawing a dirty picture. I was copying an inappropriate greeting card. Not totally sure where I got this card; I think because I was going to liquor stores to get comic books, I found these greeting cards that had sexy seventies-style drawings on them. They were almost like Playboy cartoons and were all about sex and alcohol. I didn’t get half the jokes because I was eleven. By half, I mean any.
I wasn’t contemplating life in porn. I just thought the girls on the card were sexy. I wanted to draw like that. I had dabbled at that point with drawing Spider-Man and got pretty good at mimicking John Romita. So I would mimic these cards and draw sexy girls. I changed the jokes and made the pictures dirtier. On one I drew the girl topless and added a guy with his hands down her jeans. Who knows where I got my inspiration? Divine, I guess. A couple of kids liked my “sexy” “art” and asked me to draw one for them. I didn’t charge them much, like sodas or candy. It didn’t make me rich, put it that way.
When Mr. Cox saw what I was doing, I got in trouble, and it was kind of my fault for doing it in class like a dumbass. He really liked me, but he had to do something, so he sent us to the principal’s office. It was me and the two kids I was drawing sexy ladies for: my friend Robert Also-Glasses and this girl Dee Dee. She had an unfortunate last name that led to a homophobic slur from the asshole boys. Dee was smart and funny and kind of different from the other sixth-grade girls, which also of course leads to name calling.
The principal wasn’t there, so we met with our vice principal, Mrs. Nathan, who was really upset with me. We all got paddled. It was so weird and old-school in retrospect, more like the forties than the late seventies. Getting your twelve-year-old butt smacked by a woman who isn’t your mom is more embarrassing than painful. I’ll talk about my mom smacking me in a minute.
My mom was called to school after the infamous drawing. She was pretty annoyed but also actually impressed with the art. She always loved when I drew. I think that it says something that I was already pimping out my art for money.
I excelled in English and especially creative writing. I also enjoyed history, but my math and science skills were lacking. I didn’t excel in physical education, and that would only get worse as my attitude and disdain for team sports grew. A third of the way through the school year Mr. Cox started an incentive program. The kids who had the most improved grades in the second half of the year would get to go on a special day trip with Mr. Cox, roller skating, a museum—whatever the five most-improved kids voted on, he would do. It later inspired a Mr. Show sketch, but at the time I just thought it sounded cool and the incentive worked: I wanted to be a better student. It would be difficult, because outside of school, I had a lot of distractions.
I watched a shit-ton of TV at that age. And I still played outside. In our tiny living room, though, I consumed every episode of Happy Days, Welcome Back, Kotter, All in the Family, Good Times, Chico and the Man. I loved sitcoms. I would watch anything, and I even enjoyed I Love Lucy reruns. One of my best memories with Nana Irene was one visit she and I watched an episode of Barney Miller; I think it’s called “The Brownie.” Nana and I both laughed our butts off at the episode. She was in her late seventies and I was eleven, and we were both crying laughing.
Our favorites were Detectives Himana, played by Jack Soo, and Fish, played by Abe Vigoda. On a show with several scene stealers, they were the best. The episode was about Barney and the guys accidentally all eating pot brownies and tripping their balls off. It was Cheech and Chong–level comedy on a prime-time sitcom—a super-popular prime-time sitcom. It was subversive at the time; I just knew it was funny. I didn’t really understand what was happening, but the performances were hilarious. I showed the episode to my wife a couple of years ago, and it still holds up. And we both know a lot about pot brownies.
I feel like my mom’s TV rules became lax during sixth grade because I watched a ton of it—not just sitcoms but all the prime-time shows: Emergency, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, SWAT, Charlie’s Angels, Wonder Woman, Six Million Dollar Man, and Bionic Woman. They were all huge, and I was a fan too. On the playground we would reenact classic fights between Steve Austin versus Bigfoot and Cyborg. I was usually Bigfoot. When Six Million Dollar Man merchandise came out I had to have a lunch box and a Steve Austin action figure. It was a huge, ungainly action figure. You couldn’t play it with other action figures because they were the wrong scale. The other figures in the series were an old guy, Oscar Goldman, and Jamie Sommers, a girl. So I stuck with the one figure, the original Steve Austin.
I also loved Starsky and Hutch. It would wind up being one of my worst influences. I was super into Charlie’s Angels that year; I saw every episode. I belonged to the Charlie’s Angels fan club. I had the trading cards, the entire set, and a Charlie’s Angels T-Shirt. I had the Farrah poster. The Farrah poster. Everyone had it. I also had a T-shirt with the poster design. At the grocery store I would beg my mom for magazines featuring articles on Farrah and the other Angels.
Farrah was maybe my first love. Leia was kick-ass and beautiful and smart, but to eleven-year-old me, Farrah Fawcett as Jill Monroe was the most beautiful woman alive. Charlie’s Angels nerd? Yep. Girls weren’t into me, but they didn’t treat me like a pariah. Yet there were a couple in Mr. Cox’s class who actually were friendly with me. One was Gina Italian-Last-Name. Super cute and very nice to me, Italian with an annoying little brother, she and I had a couple of exchanges about Lindsay Wagner and Farrah. Gina Italian-Last-Name is not related to Anthony Italian-Name from fourth grade. See, totally different.
Gina liked Farrah and Lindsay for different reasons from me, but we bonded over it in class. I feel like I had won a bunch of people over by then. I wasn’t the weird new kid. I was still the weird kid, but a lot of kids thought I was the funny, weird kid, and that was enough. Unlike my other teachers, Mr. Cox encouraged me to express my sense of humor. I liked being funny or interesting. I also liked knowing all the popular shows, movies, books, and music. It had already paid off in having something in common with Gina.
I listened to a lot of radio. Around ’77 is when I made the leap from AM pop to FM rock. Of cour
se, I loved the music, but I also really liked DJs. Being a radio DJ seemed like such a cool job to me: just play and talk about the music you love. I thought that DJs played whatever they wanted. And the bigger, crazier on-air personality, the better. I loved this drive-time DJ on a San Francisco AM station, KFRC. His name was Dr. Don Rose. I’m not sure whether he was a real doctor, judging by how crazy and loud his morning show was. He might have received his doctorate in funny phone calls and slide whistles, though—that would make sense.
I loved the Dr. Don Rose show and would still check it out, even though I was getting into KMEL and KOME, two Bay Area FM stations. They played better music, and the DJs were more mature—well, most of the time. And then there was Dr. Demento, the king of the wacky DJs with a doctorate. Later I would hear Weird Al there, but first it was fun novelty songs like “The Streak” and “Junk Food Junkie” that got me listening. I loved that songs could be funny and timely and comment on things like streakers and other seventies trends like health food. I once was in a restaurant with my mom when a streaker came in and ran around the restaurant nude. It was funny and super exciting. Now cops would shoot you.
I digress. Back to FM radio. That’s where I was turned on to a lot of contemporary music. I heard Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” and “Feels Like the First Time” and Thin Lizzy’s “Boys Are Back in Town” and “Jail Break” and Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” and “American Girl.” Peter Frampton and Lynyrd Skynyrd were also played frequently, but neither would stick. I actually bought Frampton Comes Alive, and it still didn’t take. Then, in 1978, Elvis Presley died. That was bad and weird. You could see his dead body on the cover of every magazine the week he died. Elvis was my first hero to die.