By JACK GODBEY

I have to admit that I am not a movie guy. When I was growing up, I was too busy playing outside, riding my bicycle, or making mud pies to worry much about movies. 

That attitude has extended itself into my adult life as well. Even though I don’t make mud pies anymore, I still find that there are too many things to do to invest the time to sit down and watch a movie and I likely would not find anything worth watching if I did. 

When it comes to finding entertainment in today’s world whether that be movies, music, or TV, I compare it to being like taking a trip to the landfill. You can dig around and maybe find a treasure here or there but for the most part, it’s all garbage. 

It seems that everything deemed as entertainment today is focused on zombies and the plight of the living dead to destroy humankind. While there are many zombie loving people out there who eat this stuff up, I can assure you that I am not one of them. 

Even the modern so-called comedy sitcoms out there that deem themselves as funny rarely even get a smile out of me. 

Many of the movies that most people would consider classics I have never seen and have no desire to do so.

In contrast, there are some movies that I have watched many times over and watch them anytime I catch them playing on TV. Movies like, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, or Roadhouse are right up my alley. 

However, I rarely if ever watch them from beginning to end in one sitting. Although it drives my wife crazy, I have a tendency to watch the beginning one day, find it on two weeks later and watch the ending and two months down the road watch the middle and piece everything together. 

Even as a child, I was always a TV kid and never enjoyed movies very much. I can remember an incident from my childhood that seemed to pave the way for my lack of interest in movies. The year was 1977 and my parents loaded up the car to go to our local drive-in to see a double feature of Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit. Star Wars was all the rage at that time and I couldn’t wait to see it. 

I tried to be patient as Smokey and Bandit was playing first. As the movie began to play, we quickly learned that the movie was filled with profanity. My parents were Christian people whose faith was extremely important to them. They didn’t just go to church on Sunday; they lived their faith every day of the week. 

As the four-letter words continued to fly in the movie, I saw my dad get restless in his seat and mumble every time it would occur. We were into about the third Jackie Gleason profanity rant when suddenly, I heard the car start up and Dad left black marks getting out of there so quickly.  I can remember every kid in the car instantly started screaming because we came to see Star Wars but to no avail and we continued on our route towards home.

To this day, I have never seen any of the movies from the Star Wars franchise and don’t intend too. From the bits and pieces that I have seen while flipping through the channels, I can say that I didn’t miss much. However, if you enjoy it then may the force be with you.