No disrespect meant to Jimmy Kimmel, but my normal nightly routine is to go home from the library and wind down by not watching his show.
If I watch TV, it’s almost always “Family Guy,” “American Dad” or whatever other more surrealist comedy Adult Swim happens to be showing that night.
That routine has always worked for me: I’ve never really missed anything that made me go, “Damn, I wish I’d been watching that,” until the other night when Matt Damon hijacked his show.
For those of you who, like me, were busy with not watching Jimmy Kimmel and missed it, it was awesome. Go look up the clips on YouTube. No, seriously, right now. I’ll wait.
Seeing that spectacular display of “Damonity” made me realize that Matt Damon is our greatest American treasure. I know this is probably an unpopular opinion.
I’m sure some people are out there saying, “No way, man, it’s George Washington!” or “Dude, what about the Constitution?” or “Seriously? Have you not seen Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ video?”
Well, you are all entitled to your own opinions. They are wrong, but you can have them.
Matt Damon is THE American treasure. Let me just make a list for you here: “Good Will Hunting,” “Ocean’s Eleven,” the Bourne movies, “The Departed,” “Good Will Hunting,” “Dogma,” the episode of “30 Rock” where he pulled a gun on Liz Lemon, “Good Will Hunting.”
Hmmm. I seem to have listed “Good Will Hunting” three times. Hey, it’s not my fault!
Wait, actually, it … kind of is my fault. But I’m not going to change it.
How do you like them apples?
Anyway, there is a point to all this, other than just annoying everybody by giving myself an excuse to misquote a fantastic movie.
The other big pop culture story of the week was that they picked the director for the new Star Wars movie. And it was, to the surprise of no one except for maybe one Swedish guy who never saw “Lost” or the new Star Trek, J.J. Abrams.
I’m not going to complain about the choice because I liked the new Star Trek. I am excited to see how he’s going to pull off something as monumental as STAR WARS F***ING SEVEN while he’s also working on a new Mission: Impossible and a “Cloverfield” sequel, though.
There’s a reason I’ve mentioned these two seemingly unrelated things in the same space. I think you all see where I’m going with this.
Yes: John Wall fakes an injury, retires, then comes out of retirement to sign with the Jazz. Err, sorry, wrong crackpot pop culture scheme.
Yes: Matt Damon as Luke Skywalker’s son in “Star Wars Episode VII: We Bought A Space Zoo.” (The subtitle may need some work.)
I’ve been doing some thinking about this. Well, a little more than some.
OK, it’s all I’ve thought or talked about for the last three and a half weeks. My brother and both my roommates stopped responding to my texts about a week ago.
So here’s what I’ve come up with so far: We open on a shot of Matt Damon with a lightsaber. Then, roll end credits. I’m open to suggestions on what to put in the middle there. We might have to kill his character off (cf. Liam Neeson in “Episode I”), so he can work on his Bobby Kennedy movie and the “Tender Is the Night” adaptation he’s cast in with Keira Knightley.
Look, guys, I honestly didn’t know about the “Tender Is the Night” thing until I started researching (i.e., reading Matt Damon’s Internet Movie Database page) for this column. That movie will be the combination of two of my favorite things in the world: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Matt Damon.
I’m too excited to write a coherent conclusion now.
Dallin Kelson is an English senior at UF. His column runs on Mondays. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
