I’m watched “A Galaxy Far Far Away” and I’ve come to a realization… and it’s not a good one. I no longer consider myself a nerd. I’ve moved on to some higher plain, not quite hipster… but just south of normal. I would like to align myself with a new faction of subculture, perhaps the Art-Dorks would have me?

You can tell that this documentary is not produced by Lucasfilm in any way, there are no pretty girls, there are minimal celebrities, there are only Nerds… Pitiful creepy nerds. It’s just hard for me to align myself with these people… they are no longer my people. These are some epic specimens of Nerddom and looking at it 10 years in the future it makes these guys look even worse. They camped out in line for 45 days to see The Phantom Menace, one of the most disappointing movies of all time.

Maybe my vision is skewed because I almost was one of these people. I always liked Star Wars but I totally bought into all the hype surrounding this movie. I had a black t-shirt with the words “Episode One” embroidered on it. I recorded the trailer off tv and had it playing on a looped VHS tape in my bedroom for months before the movie came out. I thought this was going to be MY Gone with the Wind, MY Godfather, MY Star Wars. When it wasn’t all that I thought it could be, my nerd spirit was crushed.

I’ve never really bought into the hype ever since then. That made be realize that I can be swayed by a good trailer and some advanced hype. It could have been the fact that I was only 17 years old. But I think this happened to a lot of people older and smarter than I was. Now I’m sitting in my office looking into the face of a plastic tiki god and thinking, Man what a dork I used to be…

It would actually be nice to see a sequel to this movie that goes back and visits with these guys to see (sadly) where their lives have gone … and how much these toys are worth now… its like the end of the baseball card craze, when everyone thought that their Steve Avery, Tops stadium club card was going to buy them a car one day. I do have hope for some of them, in the interviews after the screening of the film some of them seem to share my views of “It’s only a movie.”

This is not the kind of nostalgic documentary that makes you want to be a kid again and buy toys and collect them. At least not for me. It makes me realize that there’s a difference between being a “Kid at Heart” and being the guy that lives with life size replicas of characters from a sci-fi movie. On some level I want to commend then for sticking with something that they love. But when it seems to be the only thing they care about and the only thing that makes them feel normal then I think it’s gone too far. Diversity is the key my friends, I love Star Wars… but it’s not the only thing I love.

Later!