Home Alone 2

Christmas time is near. I liked the Home Alone movies even though for some strange reason I was always hoping that the bad guys would trap and kill Culkin. I think I just hated that this obnoxious, rich, white kid with happily married parents was supposed to be the object of my empathy. Maybe I identify more with Joe Pesci.

Thanksgiving, 1990

Happy Thanksgiving. I can't remember who won, but I was rooting for Georgia Tech as always. Ironically, maybe, I ended up going to UGA. Unironically, I did not give a damn about football while there. This opinion was re-enforced by watching people vomit in the streets at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. Nein danke. I'll keep my vomiting indoors and after sunset.*

*Bonus fun-fact: Despite the insinuation, I have not vomited since I was 10-years-old (almost 20 years).

Silents is golden

One of the greatest silent films of all time, shown in a classic movie palace with accompaniment by possibly the greatest living organ player in the U.S. (Dennis James). This is the kind of stuff I live for. It's like stepping into a time-machine.

Zombie Attack!

Zack Snyder gets it all wrong: zombies can't run. Also, I'm pretty sure the mall setting is supposed to be a loaded symbol. I knew these things at 14, so how is it that a grown man with millions of dollars and a giant crew doesn't seem to get it? I guess it's all part of what makes him "visionary."

That said, if the movie was named Zombie Attack! or something, I would have liked it and assumed it was a very lazy homage to Dawn of the Dead. But calling it a remake just invites the criticism...

I love stupid comedies

I guarantee, I walked out of every single one of these movies happier than I ever have been as an adult.

The Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey stub is from the Merrit Square Mall "North" theatre on Merrit Island, FL. When visiting my grandparents there, going to this movie theatre was one of the only ways to keep from turning inside out as a result of sustained boredom. I look back on this with a wince of regret because adult me wishes I had spent more time talking with my grandfather before he passed away. But ten year old me lacked this perspective and, really, any emotional maturity, therefore spending an hour and a half with time traveling idiots who give Death a wedgie seemed far more appealing than spending even five minutes with my family. Ah, who am I kidding... put in the same situation today, I would still probably go see Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. I'm not that much more mature, and any mortality-linked perspectives will still lose out to my desire for cheap laughs and a projected movie show.

Understand, I was really into Bill & Ted. I ate their breakfast cereal, and used the cassette tape case that came with it to carry around my Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey soundtrack cassette (in 1991 it was probably sharing that 3-cassette space with the Ghostbuster's II and Back to the Future III soundtracks...)

Things are scarier in 3D?

These are the the 3D glasses that were handed to my dad and I upon purchase of two tickets to see 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (a title contradicted by New Nightmare, Freddy vs. Jason, and the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street remake). My dad rarely would go out to see movies, but having grown up during what Wikipedia refers to as 3D's initial "revival" age, he was intrigued by the gimmick. And I needed someone over 18 to buy me (then 10 or 11) a ticket, so we both had an excuse to head down to CNN Center and experience Freddy in 3D.

Here's a detail of the glasses that shows the really specific directions which are presented as a rather stern warning:


Try reading the text with a voice in your head and give proper emphasis to the bold words. Kind of odd, right?

It's such a stupid movie, I even thought so then. Only about five minutes at the end are in 3D, and it mostly consists of crudely animated worm things that are anthropomorphizations of Freddy's evil... or something like that. I barely remember at this point, and I have little desire to revisit the movie. I don't think I saw a 3D movie again until Spy Kids 3D aka Headache Island vs. Steve Buscemi on a Flying Pig and also Ricardo Montalban is There.

The fact that James Cameron, et al are giving 3D another push is comical to the point of absurdity. Maybe this time things will pan out differently, and audiences will really embrace the gimmick, driving up movie studio profits and getting people back out to the theatre in droves. I think having a good 3D movie would certainly help things, but unless Avatar is as good as or better than Aliens or Terminator 2 (I don't have to see it to definitively say it won't be), 3D will go the way of... well 3D... and 3D before it.

Lest we forget what time does to pop culture, particularly something as whimsical and fickle as popular cinema, here are some more details from the glasses. Details that amuse me much more than any memories I have of seeing the movie that brought this relic into my life.





So before you spend too much of your day thinking about what Kanye West said or did, remember, today's star is tomorrow's Kid 'n' Play. But y'all knew that fame is fleeting, I just wanted an excuse to type "Kid 'n' Play." ... I bet Suburban Commando is as good as I remember it being...

All about me

These things were in my ticket collection for some reason. The back of the soccer "trading card" says I was #21 on the Lean Green Soccer Machine in 1991, played Right Forward (really? I remember being short, chubby and on defense for most of my soccer playing days?), was 10 years old, 4 ft 8, and 85 lbs.

I have no idea what the stain on the lunch card is...