Star Wars, You're Dead To Me

I've never been a dyed-in-the-wool Star Wars fanatic of the type that knows the canonical ins and outs of every spaceship, outpost planet and extended universe novel, but the original trilogy does hold a special place in my heart. My mind goes white and my eyes crust over just thinking about the countless times I watched it on our old wood-cased Zenith TV.

The prequels I blissfully ignored and the Cartoon Network Clone Wars shorts I couldn't care less about, but something recently here in Japan caught my interest--caught it and made me stare into the abyss that must be George Lucas's soul. It seems Sankyo, a maker or pachinko machines, has been licensed to make a Star Wars cabinet. The commercials are incessant on TV and the kids at school mimic it like parrots. The ad campaign (and maybe the machines itself) is dubbed "Fever Star Wars", and, as if to demonstrate the power of media on young minds, many of my students no longer associate the word "fever" with sickness or a feeling of ill health, instead they think of gambling and Star Wars.

Sure, you're thinking, George Lucas has pimped out his intellectual property to crap products in the past including, but not nearly limited to, breakfast cereals and underoos, but the thing about pachinko that only someone living in Japan can understand is that when something is made into a slot machine it's the true signal that it has become irrelevant. You know what pachinko machine also just came out? Ghost! Yes, that one, with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore! Freakin' Ghost!

So thank you, George Lucas, Sankyo, Japan and the magnificent media juggernaut for crushing that aspect of my youth like an Ewok under the foot of an AT-AT. Now I can purge that sector of my brain and put it to use in my never-ending quest to beat Maia at Puyo Puyo.

--Matt