Quick, While She's Sleeping

Today is Integalactic Star Wars Day! I love random holidays, but I am especially excited about this one.

I love Star Wars. My parents had all of the original movies and we watched them frequently as I grew up. When we lived in Ohio we actually had a projector and a movie theater room in the house, for playing laserdisc. Any younger readers might not be familiar with laserdisc... basically it’s the predecessor of DVD. It’s like a giant, pizza-size DVD. The records of movies, if you will. I still remember the cover for the New Hope laserdisc. It was beautiful. It was epic. It was inspiring. I was in love.

Now, I happen to be one of those fans that actually likes the new movies. Don’t judge. I saw them all in theaters of course. Phantom Menace I believe I might have seen multiple times in theaters, and is also linked in my mind with pizza. Pizza Hut happened to have some kind of promotion tied in with the movie, and our local Pizza Hut was decorated with all kinds of Star Wars paraphernalia. I love Pizza Hut too, so that was a pretty awesome month for me.

When I really love a movie, I watch it multiple times. Just like when I really love food, I eat it a lot. Makes sense, right? Now for me, these interests tend to match up. There’s a slight difference though between my everlasting love for things, and my infatuation stage. I go through a lot of infatuations. Sure, sometimes it leads to true love, but not always.

Star Wars I am happy to say is love, although oddly I don’t own the movies. I’m hoping to rectify that someday but I’m weird about buying things. I’ll watch pretty much any of them any time they’re on tv. I read a few of the books. I have boxers with Luke and Darth Vader facing off. I have a Princess Leia costume that I pretty much rock. But while Phantom Menace makes me think of Pizza Hut because of the timing and promo, this is completely separate from my usual food-movie infatuation links.

When I’m infatuated with a movie or food, that’s all I want. I eat the food as much as possible. I watch the movie constantly. It’s not the re-watching of a favorite movie every so often. Oh no. It’s encompassing. It all ties back in with that idea of neekness being defined by obsession.

I’ve gotten a little better with age. High school was probably the worst time for the habit. I cannot tell you the number of times I watched Tomb Raider for a few weeks. Pretty much every single day after school if I didn’t have work. And if I did, after I got back from work. During this time we happened to have some chocolate chip cookies in the house, so while watching the movie every day I’d eat chocolate chip cookies with gobs of purple icing on them. Both just infatuations (although cookies are a reoccurring infatuation… they’re the on-again off-again ex-boyfriend of my food). Sure maybe if the movie was on or a cookie was in front of me I’d eat/watch it, but no real need.

The same thing happened with Queen of the Damned and beef ramen. Fun dips and the dvd of The Blue Man Group. My movie infatuations weren’t always linked to food. Unfortunately, I think they’re actually worse then. It’s like all my obsessive energy can focus on the movie instead of being divided.

This was especially true with a few movies that we rented. Most of my other infatuations we were lucky enough to own. It didn’t really make a difference when I watched them over and over again. Rentals were a whole different issue. At least we weren’t restricted to the normal movie rental time frame. At that point my parents had one of the Blockbuster deals where you could keep a movie out however long as you want, but you could only have 2 movies out at a time.

I suspect this caused my family to secretly hate me.

One of my other movie infatuations was with Final Fantasy: Advent Children. Oddly enough I wanted nothing to do with the movie initially. My brother and I had been arguing over what to get, and he won. Thus I was determined to dislike the movie no matter what, just so I could remain convinced that my option was better. Advent Children charmed me regardless. I watched it in English, then in Japanese. I watched it again in English when my mother was home as she missed the initial viewing(s). Some days I’d watch both language versions, watching one and then immediately switching it to another.

This actually could have kept up indefinitely, but one day I came home and the movie was gone.

 King Arthur was even more drastic. Having learned what happened when I left a movie in the living room, once I became infatuated I organized a tactical retreat to my room. This was even worse, as now I could watch the movie multiple times and fall asleep to it. 

Mads Mikkelsen in various roles

I’ve watched it so many times that I can identify the actor for my favorite character (Tristan) in any other movie. When my family got sick of being restricted to renting only one other movie, they took action. One night I had a very weird dream with changing lights and the words, “quick, while she’s sleeping.” I didn’t think about it until the next evening, when I tried to play King Arthur again and the screen retorted something about missing discs.

So really, for the sake of having a life, it might be for the best that I don’t own the Star Wars movies.