Thursday, April 22, 2004

Tron's Midlife Crisis Not exactly on par with remembering where you were when the space shuttle blew up, or Kurt Cobain committed suicide, or the World Trade Center came crumbling down, but I distinctly remember where I was when I first saw the movie Tron.  I was eleven years old and I saw it at the Heritage Park Mall in Midwest City, Oklahoma in the summer of 1982.  Why that day is so memorable to me, I have no clue.  The movie isn't even all that great, in retrospect.  It was certainly no Empire Strikes Back.  It wasn't even a Return of the Jedi.  It was maybe a The Last Starfighter.  Maybe. Which makes it all the harder for me to understand someone else's devotion to Tron.  Much like the folks who dress up like characters from Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, it seems that Tron also has its own hardcore following.  A following that doesn't seem to care that the rest of us are just not down with their glowing neon-suited selves. For example, check out the folks on this site.  Don't they seem just a little too smug for someone wearing an outfit that was kinda lame even back in '82?  Even worse is that you know behind those smug grins are the hours and hours that they've (wasted) spent toiling on their suits and perfecting their freesbie throws.  Hours?  Hell, try years. But all those other folks pale in the complete sadness of the guy down at the bottom.  Be it far from me to rain on someone else's glowing spandex parade, but my man, Jay, needs help.  Lots and lots of help.  Because certainly his webpage is a cry for it.  I mean, look at him!  Not only is he grinning in that ridiculous outfit, he's also showing off a little too much male camel toe.  If this doesn't scream mid-life crisis, I don't know what does. If I ever, and I do mean ever, get it into my head that dressing up in a costume like that and then posting pictures of myself on the net for millions to see is a good idea, then please, for the love of all that you hold holy, please shoot me.  Put me down like a dog with a bullet right behind my left ear.  Please.  I beg you in advance. Same thing goes for if I ever feel the need to: Build Star Wars costumes:  Sure this would make a hell of a Halloween costume one day, but something tells me that people who buy and wear these stormtrooper outfits don't prance around in them just once a year.  Try every weekend. Wear Halo Armor:  Perhaps just worse than wearing movie costumes on the weekends is wearing videogame costumes.  C'mon!  Does doing this make you feel as if those videogames are real life?  That your awesome score in Halo or Unreal Tournament or Counter-strike now actually amounts to something if you can scare the neighborhood kids with your shiny new armor?  Worse yet if all the ten year olds on your street now think you're cool because you look like something they play with.  Go to a Cosplay convention:  These are the lost causes.  They not only love to dress up like videogame or comic book characters, but then they go to conventions to hang out with other elves and whatnot with the same fetish.  And some of these folks are certainly not unattractive.  They just have a disease for which there is no known cure.  Not even public ridicule. 5:21:09 PM     |

© Copyright 2005 Alex L. Mauldin.