Imagine you are a child in the year 1984, seeing and hearing this for the first time:
That opening theme is every bit as iconic as those of Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Buckaroo Banzai. It isn’t just triumphant; it’s Christmas, your birthday and post-orgasm in half a minute.
It’s one of the corniest moments in any movie, let alone a WWII movie from 1998, but it works.
In Saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) pulls Private Ryan (Matt Damon) close, and speaks his final words to the soldier he has given his life to save:
Unless you were alive and paying attention in the 1980s, you probably didn’t know that Transformers weren’t the first toys in America that changed into vehicles. “GoBots” were.
Transformers came from Rhode Island’s Hasbro, in 1984. GoBots came from Tonka, makers of fine metal toy trucks, in 1983. That may be why Hasbro did everything right, from the start- they saw what Tonka had already done wrong. And oh boy… Tonka did just about everything wrong.
Not many arcade players noticed, but in December of 1984, the sound of video games changed for the better, forever.
I certainly noticed. I pumped quarter after quarter into that Marble Madness machine, not just because I enjoyed the (admittedly very challenging) game, but because I had to hear that music, one more time. Continue reading →
I won’t lie to you; I’m a conceited guy. I probably possess an overabundance of confidence in my own skills. As I grow older, I try to temper this arrogance, because I’ve seen how it can drive others away; friends, loved ones, fans. But you must understand the importance of this feature (not a bug). In today’s world, you have to be crazy to get anything accomplished.
I have a “Messiah complex”, for which I blame no one but myself. My endless vitriol directed at the entertainment universe springs from the concrete belief that I can do better for you. I can give you what you really want.
A few years back, I was confused as to why so many people on-line were identifying as “Single Jewish Women”. I thought perhaps it was a hacking incident, or a mass gaslighting (masslighting?). The truth was far more banal.
Hey… remember when dudes (you call them Nazis now, due to your low testosterone) would get together after a long week of work and party hard? They were called Weekend Warriors.
Whatever war they fought in, versus weekends, watery beer, or good taste; it was every bit as real a conflict as the one fought by trendy Social Justice Warriors.
An object in motion tends to stay in motion. An object at rest tends to stay at rest.
From “Prince Variant: Seller of Collectibles”, BIUL #2 (2015).
More accurately, an object that is in motion will not change its velocity unless a force acts upon it. This is Newton’s law of motion. It applies to the average blogger thusly; if you’re having a good posting run, it will continue until some force acts upon it.
What’s your purpose in life? Are you even aware of one? Are you just running on automatic, going with the flow? Nothing wrong with that, but it all leads to the same big faceless wash-out.
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