IN QUEST OF THE UR-TEXTS. The History Channel put together a 30-years on retrospective, Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed, with appearances by inter alia Linda Ellerbee, Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich, Camille Paglia, Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw. The show will air (is that the right verb for a cable show?) again on Sunday, 3 June.

The intellectual content of the show is pretty high: all manner of classic sources merit mention. One of the experts notes that her university students aren't necessarily conversant with those sources, but mention Star Wars (by the time it made it to the Midwest, it was already a hit) and everyone will grasp the reference. On one hand, perhaps that's yet another lament about the hollowing out of the common culture -- one really ought to know the allusions Supreme Court opinions often contain. On the other hand, perhaps that's a manifestation of a phenomenon a colleague refers to as "many Homers before Homer." We attribute Iliad and Odyssey to a specific bard who we refer to as Homer, but he was retelling stories handed to him.

One observation struck me as novel albeit apt: the meanest dude in the universe was once a whiny teenager. Fun stuff.

Thus 1967 brought us Lucy in the Sky, with Diamonds, and 1977 the lightsaber. Help me out: what were the lasting pop-culture creations of 1987 and 1997?