May the 4th Be With You

Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo. A minor holiday in Mexico but a complete blowout here in the US. That’s fine. Lots of holidays – St Patrick’s day, Hanukkah, etc. – mean very little in their homelands but become exciting excuses to drink here in America. Also exciting excuses to drink are; Sanforized toupees, the correct spelling of cat, cartoon penguins, finding a penny, art films with gratuitous nudity, two ply, yo-yos (plural only), sun dresses, free wi fi, side boob, unibrows, … the list goes on an on. Let’s face it. Americans will use any excuse to have a drink. If they can have those drinks while carrying a loaded weapon, then so much the better. But the one thing Americans are still coming to grips with is public nudity. However, there are those who are chipping away at that taboo. Regular readers of this blog know that today is, the internationally celebrated, Naked Gardening Day. If you click that link you will just see regular folks gardening in the buff. It’s not nearly as exciting as you might think.

While this holiday may appeal to the four people who still read Mother Jones and listen to NPR, how do we reach a wider audience? Our old pal, David Moye, says the answer is simple; make it Star Wars Naked Gardening Day!

Star Wars fans are nakedly emotional about their love for the Lightsaber saga.

On May 4, some will just be getting naked for the first ever “World Naked ‘Star Wars’ Gardening Day,” a 24-hour period when geeks from Endor to Tatooine and all points in between celebrate the film franchise by … gardening naked??

The clothing-optional holiday is actually a hybrid of two existing May 4 holidays: Star Wars Day, a day when fans say “May the fourth be with you” to each other (presumedly followed by shrieks of laughter) and World Naked Gardening Day, , a 24-hour period where people are encouraged to water plants sans clothing.

This hybrid holiday is the brainchild of Ritch Duncan, a columnist at Dumb As A Blogand a big “Star Wars” geek. He’d like to admit he came up the concept a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but he’d be lying.

“I just thought of it,” he admitted to The Huffington Post. “I was writing up something about ‘Star Wars Day’ anyway and then someone told about World Naked Gardening Day and I decided to combine the two.”

Duncan suggests people who want to join in on the festivities have a lot of options, such as getting several friends to wear nothing but Tuskan Raider masks and then garden in single file lines, “to hide your numbers, but nothing else.

Other suggestions he made on his original post include:

• Wear nothing but a Chewbacca Bandolier, with laser-crossbow themed trowel.
• Get naked and paint your face red and black like Darth Maul. Attach another rake to the handle of your existing rake for “nude double lightsaber raking action.”
• Don’t wear a costume. Just strip down, garden, and keep repeating “Size matters not. Judge me by my size do you?”

Another option: “You could turn Stormtrooper helmets into gardening pots,” he said.

Surprisingly, Duncan hasn’t spent much time imagining which “Star Wars” characters he’d like to see garden naked.

“I’d hate to have George Lucas digitally add clothes later,” he said.

No word on how many people will actually garden naked “Star Wars” style, but Duncan is asking people who do to tweet pictures to @DumbasaBlog with the hashtag #nakedstarwarsgardening.

Meanwhile, Mark Storey, one of the originators of World Naked Gardening Day responded to inquiries about their reaction to the Sci Fi co-opting of their event with loud giggles.

“More power to him,” Storey added.

Regular readers also know that I am not, normally, a fan of Star Wars.

I think I summed up why very nicely on January 8, 2011;

There has always been a clearly defined line between Start Trek fans and Star Wars fans. Star Trek’s are the more cerebral of the two. Fans not only follow the shows, they learn new languages, discuss how Paul Dirac’s theories on anti-matter, when coupled with Einstein’s theory of relativity, could truly lend credence to the argument for faster than light travel and often will worry about the socio-economic impact that one culture could have upon another. It is not uncommon to find Star Trek fans knocking back a couple of frosty cold adult libations over a game of 3D Chess all while contemplating the vagaries of nonlinear quantum mechanics and noting that Lt. Uhura was seriously hot. This hotness has been noted in the re-imagination of the character as well.

Star Wars fans, on the other hand, really just like toys.

That being said I still think that we, as right minded Americans who stand for all that is pure and holy, should support Ritch Duncan and his mad quest. I can see no greater path to peace than millions of butt naked people wearing silly masks. There is no way you can start a war when you’re dressed like that.