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[Memories of 1997]

retrorussell, you do know this is like giving a pyromaniac matches, don't you?



Memories of 1997

1.   The Heavens Gate crowd committed mass suicide, in part because of the approach of Hale-Bopp comet.
2.   I saw Smashing Pumpkins in concert but felt cheated because I had to go home after the show---school night---when others I was with stayed out and ran into Billy Corgan and  D’arcy Wretzky at a club!
3.   IBM’s Deep Blue beat Chess Grand Master Gary Kasparov….take that, fleshy beings!
4.   The notoriously divisive The English Patient won nine Oscars.
5.   In a great year for TV, Buffy the Vampire Slayer made staking the undead cool; we first went down to South Park; and Hank Hill let us know he sold propane and propane accessories.
6.   Weeks before graduating from high school, I ditched the famed eastern university into which I’d been accepted. My lawyer aunt didn’t speak to me for a year, and my academic advisor sat on his office floor and cried about the impending fallout on his job.
7.   Amid the rainiest June in local history, I got engaged.
8.   With a psychologist I did a bunch of past life hypnotic regressions and one session of future life progression. The former were fun, the latter was horrifying.
9.   It was a sad year, with the losses of Jeff Buckley, Chris Farley, Jimmy Stewart, John Denver, and of course Princess Diana and Mother Theresa, who passed within days of one another.
10.   The United Kingdom returned control of Hong Kong to China.
11.   I “ran away” and spent most of the summer homeless and sleeping in my car, but eventually hiked the Hundred-Mile Wilderness on the A.T. and got into college, so happy ending there.
12.   Bill Clinton began his second term on MLK Day.
13.   Most folks agreed Dolly, the famous sheep, looked just like her mother.
14.   Uber-narcissist Andrew Cunanan ventilated his head in Miami.
15.   The first Harry Potter novel The Philosopher’s Stone, saw release.
16.   Mike Tyson bobbed Evander Holyfield’s ear.
17.   An astute jury found OJ Simpson civilly liable for wrongful deaths.
18.   Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
19.   I minored in PE, just me and a buncha blue state lesbians who kept inviting me to play dodgeball.
20.   The intrusive employer I began working for at age seventeen told me I had amoral tendencies, handled physical pain well, emotional pain poorly, and was prone to be polyandrous. I disagreed til life made me wiser.
21.   Chumbawamba repeatedly vowed that if they got knocked down, they’d get up again, that nothing was gonna keep them down.
22.   Brad Pitt sued Playgirl for unauthorized pictures of his pee-pee.
23.   Eddie Murphy gave a transsexual prostitute a ride home from the Sunset Strip. What a nice guy!
24.   British nanny Louise Woodward went on trial for allegedly shaking a baby to death.
25.   I rang New Year’s Eve with my grandpa and his friends, and it was sweet.

[Casablanca]

There's plenty I haven't seen, but ones that I've not and people tell me I must:

Casablanca
2001: A Space Odyssey
Gone With the Wind
Dirty Harry
Cleopatra
Casino

There's others I'm sure, but these come to mind right now.

I have a story about 2001 which I've told before, but it has been many years, so I'll tell it again.

For most of my life, I had heard of 2001 but never seen it. 2001 was so influential that references and homages even turned up in the later seasons of Inspector Gadget, with a soft spoken ship's computer, and it featured heavily in one of my favourite books, 'Sci Fi Now', that detailed science fiction throughout the 70s. This movie was spoken of with such reverence and fervour that sooner or later, it had to be seen.

One day in the 90s, 2001 was scheduled to screen on TV, which became the perfect opportunity to watch it. Excitedly, I even handwrote an invitation to my brother to a televisual event to take place in the TV room, and I drew a space station and stars in coordination with the mood. We had bowls of chips, and settled in as the movie began to roll.

We didn't get it at all.

It was so slow, nothing really seemed to happen, or if it did it was as a glacial pace. The ending was bizarre and left more question than answers. We looked at each other as if to say, 'WTH did we just watch?'. In fact, we said it aloud, too.

In later years, my brother watched it again and deeply appreciated it. I watched it as well, not quite with the same appreciation, but a lot more than before. So if you plan to eventually see 2001, bear in mind that it is a slow, cerebral movie that will make you think.

I knew a farmer who had a cow with 2 heads.

.............false.

Probably my all time favorite movie

I knew a farmer who had a cow with 2 heads.

I'm quickly becoming addicted to this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/SoftWhiteUnderbelly/videos

This guy does interviews with skid row residents: hookers, pimps, gang members, addicts of every kind, criminals, schizophrenics, teenage runaways... the lowest of the low. (He also went through a period where he interviewed a lot of sex workers who were relatively well-adjusted (including Ron Jeremy), but I think that was more clickbait to grow the channel.) All of the stories are incredibly sad, but he finds the humanity in each of his subjects. You become invested in the stories of certain people who come back for multiple interviews: Andrea the spice addict hermaphrodite; Exotic the gorgeous streetwalker with the facial tattoos; Reilly, an old hooker with amazing stories about surviving multiple murder attempts; and Andrea, a schizophrenic crack addict. He tries to get them help but it almost never works out. Still fascinating stuff. Almost all of them came from abusive childhoods. Click a random one that looks interesting and you're almost sure to hear the saddest story you ever heard. There but for grace...

Today is the 332nd anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, one of the many sad days in Irish history. Is it any wonder the entire island is so past-haunted?

Forum Wars: A New Mod
Forum Wars II: The Trolls Strike Back
Forum Wars 3: Return of the Administrators

[REPO MAN]

I am disappointed... that I'll likely be up 'til 5am as TCM is showing REPO MAN (1984) starting at 3am est July 2.  




REPO MAN is the perfect example of a great movie that is also Bad.  Great soundtrack!  Bad influence!  Twisted bad taste and silly.  

Slow Children At War