A minor controversy in northern Utah has convinced me that too many people have too much time on their hands. The debate revolves around a movie theater and people who move their lips without realizing how silly they sound.

I’m all for protecting and preserving historic structures. But the hand-wringing in the Ogden area isn’t about saving an historic church or architectural wonder. We’re not talking about a piece of Utah’s pioneer history or anything close to the date of statehood.

No, the furor is aimed at saving a movie theater…a failed movie theater. We’re not talking ancient or art deco; the theater, the Cinedome, opened about the same time that Nixon resigned from office. Heck, the Beatles had already disbanded and Bob Dylan wasn’t singing protest songs anymore.

Yet to hear the “Save the Cinedome 70” group squawk their objections, tearing down the theater to build a new Larry H. Miller auto dealership is akin to paving over the Acropolis or shellacking the Wailing Wall.

Amazingly, some 4,885 people have signed on to a Facebook page claiming the crumbling, kitschy theater should be saved. They don’t care about economic development or the sales tax that will come through auto sales. They care only about their memories.

And those memories aren’t centered on pioneer theater or Rudolph Valentino or even John Wayne. No, the signers are crying about the oddly designed edifice in which they first saw Star Wars or Rocky. One signer interviewed by the Ogden newspaper got teary-eyed about the time his father took him to see his first R-rated movie. “I was 12 or 13,” said the man. “He covered my eyes during the nude scenes.”

Boy, that is an argument for historic preservation!

Using the same logic, groups should argue to save the grocery store where they bought their first Snickers bar or the Maverick where they bit into their first corndog.

To read the jeers of the Facebook crowd, the Larry Miller group is the evil Mr. Moneybucks intent on trampling the sacred. One of the leaders of the group says there are already 13 auto dealerships on Riverdale Road. His self-proclaimed economic sense tells him that’s enough; he doesn’t care about free enterprise or Riverdale City’s opportunity to fill an empty lot with a taxpaying, employing business. He would much rather see the building used for a place of “art and culture.”

The sad thing is that these folks could be channeling their energy into worthy causes: feeding the homeless, cleaning up the environment, volunteering at hospitals or schools.

Instead they are expending their efforts slapping a prominent business for trying to clean up a place made memorable because they first kissed a girl under the domed, red insulation ceiling during a science fiction movie.

Instead of “Save Cinedome 70”, I suggest they form a new online group: GetALife.com.