Troop Believers (washingtonpost.com)

Helping to control this crowd, as a kind of ad hoc security garrison, are 250 or so members of the Fighting 501st, an unofficial worldwide costuming club whose sole membership requirements are this: You must be over 18, and you must own a suit of fully accurate Imperial storm trooper armor -- which can cost anywhere from $400 to $2,000, and is technically violative of Lucasfilm Ltd. copyright. (In this case, the Flanneled One -- a reverent nickname for filmmaker George Lucas -- has been tolerant.)

But the lady asked why.

Why storm troopers? Why the marching? Are these grown-ups with jobs and families? That's going to take some deeper explaining.

When people try to decipher "Star Wars" they wind up speaking gibberish that drifts from religion to Carl Jung to Akira Kurosawa to Boba Fett. Museum exhibits have been done, and they took up space. If you were born at the right time, it's a short distance to connect the dots between "Star Wars" and God....

For film, this is the Year of the Geek Film, a flurry of s.f.&f. (that's science fiction & fantasy) films that has no precendent (at least none that I can remember). The fest kicked off with "Spider-Man" -- which I saw this weekend, enjoyed tremendously, lamented the lack of a better-motivated villain, and believe Tobey Maquire deserves as Oscar nod if for no other reason than understated eloquence, and thank God for Sam Raimi who really understood the material -- anyway, kicked off by "Spider-Man", will segue into "Attack of the Clones," and will continue all the way through Christmast 2002, what with Star Trek X, Harry Potter 2, and "LOTR: The Two Towers." Wow, bliss at the big screen.