Let's focus on what's REALLY important today. FAST FIVE - !!!!!

Hey, look at that! I'm a girl under the age of 102 and I'm capable of thinking of something other than The Big, Fat, British Wedding!

Like, uh, A MOVIE WITH LOTS OF GIANT, TATTOOED, BALD MEN. Happy "Fast Five" day, ya'll.

Bet you didn't know that so far, the fifth installment in the longest-running exercise in hyper-manly sexual tension is also:

"the best-ever debut for a Universal title and the biggest for the action franchise yet."

At least that's the word from The Hollywood Reporter, which also mentions that the film has already grossed $3.7 million from it's midnight release yesterday and is expected to draw the year's biggest opening to date.Oh - and its opened in several countries overseas and is already number one everywhere it's playing.

Because this franchise is flippin awesome.

NPR has their own, understated way of acknowledging its flippin awesomeness, too. They've declared it "A progressive force" in American cinema. 

Got that? The article is pretty good, actually, drawing comparisons between this man-heavy metal-fest and more racial-centric flicks like "The Blind Side." By this guy's approximation, the Fast and Furious crew are much more progressive. Yep.

Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Tyrese, Ludacris and Assorted Hot Chicks are obliterating racial barriers in ways that other, "better" films can only dream of doing. A film critic from the Boston Globe chatted with NPR's Michele Norris yesterday and put it this way: "Basically it promotes race as this very normal thing," Morris tells NPR's Michele Norris. "Around these cars are these very different types of people, but it's not the subject of the movie like it is in most Hollywood movies. Race is just a matter of fact." It "...has just sort of exploded into such a thing in these movies that it almost doesn't even matter." Of producer and star Vin Diesel he says, "And I think one of the things he wants to try to do with these movies — whether consciously or not — in achieving that effect is to sort of eliminate race as a point of conflict and use race as a sort of point of normalcy, which I think is a really revolutionary thing to be able to try to do and achieve."

AND, he also acknowledged the fact that, while women in the Fast and Furious movies may be primarily one-dimensional bikini models, he points out that, frankly, the dudes are, too. It's not just shallow, hard-bodied women in various states of trendy undress: it's shallow, hard-bodied men in various states of tattooed undress. Equal opportunity shallow. 

Because these movies are as good as it gets.

You know, for those of us who LOVE really awkward dialogue and testosterone and punching and bald guys in wife beaters and exploding and loud cars making really loud car noises and the gratuitousness of bad hip-hop soundtracks. Which I happen to love.

So, happy Fast Five Day.

Now, go forth and enjoy the best movie of the year. The Rock's in it, too. You know, in case he makes the difference between "nah, I'm not into that crap" and "oh, well, fine, I'm sorta into that crap."