Who Doesn't Love Waterworld?

I see one, two... oh, everyone hates it, that's probably a good thing. Have I spoken of my irrational love for the Kevin Costner bomb before? It is simply a bad movie - the acting is bad, the plot is full of holes, and they are smoking filtered cigarettes after any such means to make such things were long gone. Who knows, maybe there was a Phillip Morris ship around when the world flooded. I also wasn't aware that oil tankers came equipped with refineries.

But I’m a Mystery Science Theater fan and liked Kevin Costner when I was a kid. It wasn’t a crush, I was too young to be sexually attracted to anyone, much less some actor in his 30’s, but I enjoyed Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves, and some of his other not-as-bad movies. I also really liked the premise of the movie, and the things that stuck with me were some of the metaphors that I identified. The biggest one was the presence of motorsports on the Exxon Valdeez. The smokers were the obvious metaphor for all the polluters and their love of motorsports just highlighted how stupid they were – using the one thing that kept them going for something completely unnecessary. It is the kind of metaphor that hits you like a brick and then keeps smacking you around.

That is why news like this, despite the layoffs, really makes me smile. Just one more sign that our cowboys in spaceship mentality is finally being smacked down a little bit. Could it be that civilization is leaving adolescence? Don’t get your hopes up too soon, you haven’t yet heard my Best Buy story.