George Lucas has been shooting his mouth off again. Let's not forget history. He promised Episode I was going to be the best film he's made – the best film ever made, in fact. (He even called Fellini's entire ouevre "okay, if you like watching gay clowns fuck" when compared to the saber battles in his movie) But in all his grandstanding Lucas neglected to inform us that The Phantom Menace included a scene of a young (borderline retarded? macrocephalic?) boy dodging space meanies in his own stolen rocket ship, while gleefully shouting "Wheee!!!" and "Whoopee!" like he'd just discovered some Chicken Dunks® Lunchables® in his secret hidey hole. (I'm not even going to comment on JarJarGate or all the kikey shylock aliens. The hacks have already hacked those subjects to bits.)

Then, after the space dust settled, and everyone who didn't share a brain with a conjoined twin declared Phantom Menace smellier than a seat cushion on a local Greyhound shuttling between Hobo Junction and Shitpants Valley, Lucas had the Death Star-sized balls (See how I did that???) to stand by his stink and declare that everyone in the world was dead-wrong, with the exception of Ching and Chang.

THEN...a couple years later he backpedaled a little on that film, but only enough to leave room to bump Phantom Menace down to the #2 slot on his list of The Greatest Cinematic Experiences Of All Time (Crazy, Delusional and Heavily Bearded Category), just below his latest "masterpiece" (his word, made up by me), Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Of course, it was another case of "fool me twice, shame on America" because this movie was like the longest-running game of Turd Jenga. "Attack of the Clones?" That's the best he could do? This movie cost $398 million and took three years to make. What an insulting title. He might as well have called it Episode II: Untitled Jimmy Smits Project. Or, if you were to believe the carefully spun press, Episode II: Yoda Fight!. Way to promote the three satisfying minutes in the final act of a two and a half-hour disco nap. With all its graphically-enhanced scenes and wooden acting, Episode II was like the world's most expensive puppet show. The only thing in that movie that wasn't CGI was craft services. (zap!)

And now...holy shit, the dirty spin has already gotten underway. Does the American movie-going public have the same memory dysfunction as a housecat? Because Lucas has already been applying the full press, and staying on point with carefully released statements like, "this is a much darker, moodier film" and "this is the one we've all been waiting for" and "there is convincing evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction-based programs." George Lucas would have us believe Episode III: Baby, I'm Sorry is better than Episodes I and II. OK. Cool. That's a convincing argument, I suppose, but here are a few other things that are better than Episodes I and II:

• stepping in cat vomit while wearing dress socks
• finding a toe in your cobb salad
• getting punched in the heart by skinheads
• sniffing the inside of plaster medical cast
• an all-expenses paid spa weekend at the Hotel Rwanda
• cock mites
• being condemned by God to live as the painkiller-releasing medical pack fused to Jerry Lewis' spinal cord
• at least 6 of the 10 plagues
• fucking to world music
• fucking to Pet Sounds
• fucking to "Kokomo"
• inheriting the job of Chief Operating Officer in your father's failing company, Diarrhea Unlimited
• losing that job to a talking baby

I guess what I'm trying to say is, "See you in line, Wookies!"*

[*Additional disproportionate attitude provided by Lewis Black and Evil Jay Leno]