I was sitting in a bar last week when the song "Living on a Prayer" came on through the speakers. People sitting in the bar seemed to genuinely get into this song and when there were intentional spots where the song stopped playing, these same people gleefully (and poorly) filled in the missing lyrics. This wasn't ironic or pretending to like Bon Jovi because it's funny in the same way that people pretending to like Chuck Norris is (that is to say... not). These bar patrons were completely sincere in their love for Bon Jovi. Which is exactly when I knew that Bon Jovi had become the new Star Wars.

There was a time when liking Bon Jovi was patently uncool. It meant you were a) New Jersey white trash b) a dork or c) obsessed with a bygone era to the point that you would consider ordering one of those hair metal compilation albums that advertise on TV late at night. Usually all three. But now here were people in a bar in downtown Fullerton with their tattoos and cool (dumb) haircuts openly rocking out to Bon Jovi. These are the same people who had just paid 4.50 for a bottle of Budweiser on a Tuesday night in Fullerton.

In the early and mid-90's, claiming to like Star Wars usually meant that you were either a) a nerd b) 40 years old and living with your parents c) 8 years old d) part of a growing faction of those hip-to-be-squaresque self-stylized geeks or some combination of the various categories. If you wanted to get your ass kicked in middle school, you simply gave Danielle a Darth Vader valentine that said "Join me Valentine!" Vengeance would be swift and decidedly anti-fat kid. But with the release of the new films, somehow society embraced loving Star Wars. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog stemmed the tide, but not for long. Now it's cool to like Star Wars, even though these are empirically bad movies.

Bon Jovi has finally reached that transcendent state where people somehow forgot that Bon Jovi is really not good music and that Jon Bon Jovi actually made homoerotic reference to "riding a steel horse" and even wrote the song "Blaze of Glory" for Young Guns 2. Fortunately grunge music came along and rib-kicked Bon Jovi back to the jukebox of white trash America. Until last Tuesday night.

The sad thing was, during the quiet spots in the song, I found myself automatically filling in the words. Maybe Bon Jovi is the new McDonald's slogan...