Month: January 2020

[BEGIN RANT]

This city is choking on cars. Everywhere you go there is high-speed, high-volume vehicle traffic.

Walking and biking are dangerous, noisy and unpleasant because of the vehicles and the constant diesel exhaust fumes. There are also crappy older vehicles everywhere that spew half-combusted gasoline but just refuse to die.

Free, abundant, unlimited parking is everywhere. But drivers still find that the street is not enough for their oversize pickups and SUVs. So, they encroach on boulevards and sidewalks. They know they can do so with impunity. When parked they go right up to the intersection, creating a hazard for pretty much everyone. PBOT has acknowledged the problem and said they are not planning to do anything about it. (At least they are being honest.)

Some 50 mile-per-hour death roads such as Columbia Boulevard have puny bike lanes alongside them. To bike alongside a deadly highway strewn with metal shards and industrial junk is not what cyclists want. Rather people want complete streets for everyone.

The juxtaposition is really jarring. In fact “phony and failing” come to mind, as in this recent commentary that I thought was accurate.

I captured some of the ugliness over the past week. In one photo you have oppressive third-world country style mud where walkers seldom go, but giant SUVs have no problem getting through (deepening the ruts and potholes and spraying mud all over as they go). Other photos are of blocked sidewalks and of stored cars going up on boulevards and sidewalks. Another is a crappy diesel bus spewing exhaust on waiting transit riders (I had to step away, it was so bad.)

There is hope. There are signs of progress, including a recent bill that will prevent Oregon from getting diesel trucks “dumped” here from states with more stringent regulations. Senator Michael Dembrow deserves thanks and support for this.

But we have a long, long way to go.

[END RANT]

I saw this movie, dubbed “the end of the Skywalker saga,” with a coworker who is a superfan. I went in with few expectations and with the closely guarded conviction, “I will always have the original trilogy. They can’t take that away.”

Thanks to this mindset I mostly protected myself from disappointment.

I enjoyed the visuals and the music, of course. I liked seeing some people finally die (although I kind of hoped everyone would perish, Hamlet-style). Another good thing was the attempted tying up of loose ends and the many unabashed references to the complete saga, making it all of a piece instead of disjointed.

But in the course of 2 hours and 40 minutes there was a lot to question. If I had stepped out to visit the snack counter a few times, I don’t think I would have missed anything.

To take just one example, there were four fake deaths. Chewbacca was blown up, only to come back because he was actually on another ship. Kylo Ren died and then got Force-healed by Rey and came back to life. Rey then died and got Force-healed back to life by Kylo Ren in the same manner. Finally, C-3PO got his memory wiped only to have it restored almost immediately.

My coworker is a guy who spends hundreds of dollars on Star Wars cosplay and figurines and he pointed out the strange rapid cuts. I felt I was watching a fast-paced commercial where I couldn’t even keep track of what planet the current scene was on, much less how the crew got there or what it meant for the plot. Contrast this with the worlds of Hoth or Bespin. They just don’t compare at all.

Then there were the space horses galloping on the outside hull of a star destroyer. Just, why?

I was relieved that there was no fourth Death Star. If they had created a fourth Death Star that got destroyed in the same manner as the first three, I would have been upset. Looking back, perhaps we didn’t need a second Empire and a second Emperor at all. All the same villains, with the same outfits even.

I am happy this saga is over. Star Wars will always be special to me, but I now view it as just one franchise to enjoy among many. There will be hits and misses and I will take them for what they are. But with all the other great stuff being created (including sagas), it will occupy a much smaller space in my imagination.

Below: a nice poem from a kid at polluted Poet’s Beach. I can’t imagine actually spending an afternoon here breathing exhaust fumes from I-5.