This is my second post of the day.

Stop the presses. I just learned about the Star Wars Kid, and I am in love. Not in love in an ooky Catholic-priest kind of way, but in a platonic, mildly protective, favorite-uncle-ish kind of way.

Here’s the scoop, for those of you who have not seen this already: a fifteen-year-old boy privately recorded himself mimicking the Darth Maul lightsaber battle sequence from one of the new Star Wars movies. Some of his mischievous friends discovered the tape and posted it on the Internet, where it has since been downloaded more than twelve million times by adoring fans.

For me, this ranks right up there with getting one’s friends together at the dawn of home video technology and recording a few musical numbers in the guise of Riff-Raff and Dr. Frank N. Furter.

Go to this site for the scoop and to download the video yourself. You’ll have to scroll down to see the original thing (there are scads of “clones”), and there’s even a nice petition to sign.

Don’t say I never brightened your day.

Update: All of this happened while I was in the wilds of Costa Rica, and apparently I did not get the full scoop from the Associated Press story that turned me on to the Star Wars Kid today. Apparently, the posting of the video on the Internet was not as kindly an act as I had originally assumed (and why I should have assumed it was, knowing how evil teenagers are, I have no idea). Anyway, the "humiliation" of the whole experience has apparently caused this adorable child to drop out of school and check into a psychiatric facility. I'm leaving this link up, with my original words, because it is the first thing in weeks that made me unequivocally happy . . . not the awkwardness of it, but the sheer joy of it, the secret glimpse of pure and shining spirit in an otherwise humdrum existence. I am the Star Wars Kid: infinitely older and sadder, perhaps, but not dead yet. Better yet, everyone I love is the Star Wars Kid, too. And may the Force be with us all, because the gods know we need it.