More procrastination from studying for Torts

If there is one area where I am still not solid, its Duty of Care as it applies to omissions. This hurt me on Crim Law also. It's counter-intuitive. The gut instinct is that morally you should help people, so legally you should too. Then, GOTCHA! All sorts of legal and moral hazards come up in creating these sorts of duties, the type that can't be explained away with "bumper-sticker" phrases like "It's bad to legislate morality"

anyway. On to the procrastination:

HoustonChronicle.com - Partners create local 'Japanimation' station

Actually, I've got nothing to say about this article. I've been rewatching Last Exile on the new combined G4 TechTV network (I've got a separate rant on how Tech TV isn't nearly nerdy enough but I'll skip it for now) which I've previously talked about how this show is like the best video game ever. That doesn't push the heresy envelop near far enough, so here is one which I've been roasting on for a while.

This show is an above-average done but fairly standard anime. That said, it is an epic vision of a different world like our own but with its won history, legends, technology, culture, faiths, social classes and darn it if it doesn't even have its own physics. These are all the things that Kevin Smith says is so brilliant about "Star Wars" with a strong implication that Lucas is somehow singular in his ability to read Jospeh Campbell and paint by numbers.

At a certain point, however, I have to admit that their are visions of other worlds that are much more compelling and far less cheesy than Lucas. It's a bit sad that with only a few months to go before the last movie of the epic, the illusion seems to be wearing off, especially since I was such a big far for these last twenty-seven years.

The last straw was not this Japanese Cartoon but an article in EW about the Star Wars Holiday Special and the realization that I definitely saw it on TV when it aired in 1978. I saw this and a little more than a year later, the episode of the Muppet show with Mark Hamill, and the following year R2-D2 and C3PO on Sesame Street (couldn't find any good links). I was as uncritically positive about these airings as one might expect from a preschooler, kindergartener, and first grader. I remember talking my friend, Larry, about how Sesame Street was getting kind of babyish, except for that "totally mint" episode with the 'droids. I also remember going to the public library and listening to the soundtrack on vinyl with other 1st graders.

Eugene, of course, thought that the whole thing was stupid and likes to make fun of me about liking Star Wars. I didn't understand this at all, since we both liked the original movie. But over the years, I filled in the blanks by seeing the movies that he saw that I didn't like "2001:A Space Oddessey," "The Man that Fell to Earth," "West World," and "Logan's Run"

and his disdain for Star Wars fandom is more understandable.

I suppose what I am saying (here comes the heresy) is that George Lucas ain't all that. His vision isn't timeless nor even all that epic and that after the last movie comes out, more than anything else, I will probably just feel a sense of relief.