Hey, everybody. There’s no way you’re reading this. Honestly. Hell, you’re probably not reading our current site, full of fun articles about Back to the Future and The NeverEnding Story and Jurassic Park. Sometimes Ghostbusters stuff. Here’s a link to it, though, again, you’re not reading this, so I don’t know why I’m bothering with links. And I’m definitely not posting about this article on Facebook or Twitter, because, frankly, Top Gun is behind me and I’d like it to stay the fuck there.

Okay, so here’s the deal: all of us Cinemanauts were supposed to do a big end-of-the-year write-up on our movies and how watching them every week of 2012 affected us. I was planning on doing this massive son-of-a-bitch filled with charts and graphs, but then something happened. That something was January 1st, 2013, when I was freed from my hell of Top Gun and shipped to my new prison of Back to the Future. Since the second year of the project was supposed to be a movie you love, I hit it early and loved it hard. I instantly wanted to put in ten times the effort on my BTTF articles than I did on dumb old Maverick. And I did. I look back on my Top Gun articles and cringe.

Our new site looks slicker, our writing has improved, and we’re way more popular, thanks largely due to our movies being more beloved (and tinily to the increased amount of work I’ve been putting into content, promotion, and networking, but blah blah blah, get to the movie stuff). Logging in on the Year One version of the site is like visiting a ghost town. I’m scared.

Anyway, I’m finishing this article to say I finished it. Only Cinemanaut Ty finished his wrap-up, so good for him. Yay. Way to be, buddy. Cinemanaut John also fell in love with his Year Two movie (Jurassic Park) and never looked back on High Fidelity, so he never did a wrap-up either. And there’s some fourth (possibly imaginary) member who quit months into the project– basically, I’m in a race against a sleeping person and a dead person. I’m not going to exert too much effort for my silver medal. And if you think my grumpiness stems from my bad experiences with Top Gun, darn fuckin’ tootin’, kiddo.

Ty’s article has a word count of 916 and contains two pictures. I will work slightly harder than that here today. Look, here comes a picture now.

Ha ha ha, classic.

Alright, so how did watching Top Gun 52 times in 2012 affect me or whatever? Here’s my hypothesis, if you care to compare some of the numbered points.

1. Oh, hey, I HATE TOP GUN. When the project started, I was indifferent to the film. Now? Fuck it. I hate it. I don’t want to see it again. By the way, I DID go see it again, when it was released in 3-D. Should have passed it up. I predicted I’d end up loving it, which I didn’t believe at all, but Past Me is a dick.

2. I did not have a more positive outlook on life. I mostly became aware of how much a) violent douchebags and b) the ’80s suck. I was miserable watching this movie, especially because it took away time watching movies I actually might enjoy.

3. Something about gay. I made a quick stupid joke last year that I might turn gay, as did many hack comedians I know. I didn’t turn gay, because that’s not a thing. However, I did sometimes think about shirtless dudes playing volleyball during woman sex, so…

4. I did not feel any more or less patriotic than I already do. War sucked, war sucks, war will always suck.

5. I’m quoting Top Gun a lot more. Like that one was hard to call. I quote everything all the damn time, and now this whole movie is in my head. During the project, I would fight not to quote it just so I wouldn’t go crazy. Now I am able to quote it fairly well, though I only actually do so occasionally.

6. I had some Top Gun dreams, but not that many about jets. I had six Top Gun dreams. Yep. I’ve easily beaten that record with Back to the Future dreams in 2013, but I’m not supposed to talk about that here.

7. BONUS THING! I became exceptionally aware of macho bullshit, and questioned my own masculinity. Yeah, really. I mean, Maverick goes around being all cocky and confident and shit, and after watching it week after week, I started doing that myself, just to see how wrong the movie was. And then I whittled it down to a point where the movie was right. Son, I was gettin’ dates. Left and right. They didn’t always go well, but they happened. It was weird. This stupid movie made me swoop in like a fighter pilot instead of gripping the wall with fear and letting the ladies come to me. They never do, because that doesn’t work.

Alright, all that shit came to 848. Gotta keep going. This is waaay shorter than I had intended it to be, but Cinemanaut Becca, the newcomer in Year Two and a well-read psych major, pointed out that this really isn’t the sort of experiment where you can collect data; it’s more about personal experiences. Well, ain’t she smart? I’ll keep that in mind. I probably won’t even require wrap-ups at the end of Year Two, because the really important assessment will be at the end of Year Three: The Final Conflict.

Pfft, I’m not even going to proofread this. I do enough of that around here.

Oh, cool, I out-word-counted Ty back there somewheres. Suck it, John. Cinemanaut Bill out.