Good evening, readers. And people who happened to click a link to this post while trying to scroll on smart phones, tablets, and other touchscreen devices designed for such misclicks. Welcome to the first of undoubtedly many Throwdown Thursdays, which is a thing I came up with instead of making Throwback Thursday happen on my blog. I avoid posting old pictures of myself because they’ve been known to cause irreversible blindness, but if I were into that sort of thing I would post them on whatever day of the damn week I want.

The purpose of Throwdown Thursday posts is to pick a topic–preferably a relatively relevant one–and…basically rant a bit. I can’t justify dolling up the point of these posts when they’re actually just therapeutic venting with a chance someone else might read it.

I’ll admit that I was really torn on tonight’s subject. Commenting on how people being shocked by snow in January is actually the most shocking part of winter was a close front-runner. That changed when I saw the reactions to the cast reveal for the Ghostbusters reboot. It’s like someone filled a garbage bag with highly concentrated crazy, held it over the Internet, and tore it open in response to the news of who would be the leading ladies of this brave new version of a Hollywood treasure. Before I even dare leap into the bulk of me losing my mind over just how ridiculous this non-issue is, let’s take a look at what the problem is. What group of B-list, no-named losers did Paul Feig cobble together for this terrible, sad knock-off again?

Photo credit goes to http://filmonic.com/ – I may have stolen this from http://filmonic.com/ghostbusters-reboot-cast-date

What? No. That must be some sort of mistake. People are actually getting upset about a movie starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones? I would understand the outrage I’m seeing all over social media if, say, the above picture contained four actresses who were clearly just pulled off of the street for this nostalgia-destroying, childhood-ruining misadventure in film. If I cared enough about Ghostbusters (Writer’s Note: not even a little sorry) in the first place, I would even join in the outrage. They’re only the leads in this movie. Four comedy superstars, who even on their own shine so brightly people can’t look directly at their work without having their retinas burned out. Surely there is some actual, reasonable excuse to be furious that Ghostbusters is returning with such drastic changes.

…

For the sake of misplaced kindness, I won’t link directly to any particular tweets. Let’s just say the level of wackadoo crazy surrounding this movie because it’s being made with women in the lead roles is a bit mind-blowing. And mind-numbing. To call it as it is: this is just a bunch of people clinging to the cinematic equivalent of their childhood blankies. Let’s consider a few key points here. First and foremost, this is its own, new, separate movie. It will undoubtedly have its own strong merits, as well as possible shortcomings (I make this statement with the understanding that no movie, no matter how good, is perfect). Based on the leading ladies alone, it’ll most probably be a strong title regardless of how the writing goes. That’s a statement based off of the talent that each one of these actresses has displayed in the past. Secondly, why is it so troubling that women are being cast as the leads in a new Ghostbusters? I may be a little fuzzy on the details, but I’m fairly certain the original Ghostbusters didn’t save the world from supernatural threats with their penises (a fact, I’m sure, everyone involved was grateful for, and I mean no disrespect towards Bill Murray there).

This is ultimately another issue of Hollywood needing a greater deal of diversity versus being too backwards to accept that old things can, and invariably will in the case of media, be used as the basis for new things. It happens. I, for one, am eager to see how the new Ghostbusters movie turns out. If nothing else, I think it’ll be a great source of delicious, angry tears from people set in their ways.

I imagine this could have gone on longer if I didn’t feel like someone were beating me over the head with a baseball bat made out of jackhammers.

Ninety-five days remaining.