Saturday, January 21, 2006
The Road Warrior and Mel Envy
Do I move in with g-phrase to save money and make it easier to survive on the remnants of my savings and the unemployment I’ll be collecting for a bit? That’s what I’m contemplating while I’m watching The Road Warrior and thinking about all the twists and turns my life had taken to get me to this point.
So, yeah, let’s talk about the movie.
First, I wish I could drive the last of the V8 Interceptors. Second, Mel Gibson was a tremendously attractive man. I mean, something beyond handsome, although far too manly to be pretty. No wonder the women got all happy when they saw him. Third, we should all have a dog like Dog to keep us company when we’re contemplating life’s bigger questions and issues.
And, lastly, we used to take the idea of apocalypse seriously, didn’t we? There was a deep belief that the world could easily slip into self-destruction when the Soviets finally decided to test our German tripwire or when one of those hot wars on the fringe of our cold war spilled over with dramatic effect. The belief in the potential wasn’t so completely misplaced, either. There were times (like during the Cuban missle crisis, when the Soviet client state was urging a launch against the United States even though the leadership believed it would mean the essential destruction of Cuba) when we danced awfully close to that line.
It’s odd to think that an era of trivialities like pink Izods, Better Off Dead, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood was also an era of a deep, nervous wait for nuclear holocaust.
I’ve always been convinced that former President Bill Clinton was, in part, a reaction to the end of the Cold War. An America that had finally moved out of the shadow of a very final kind of war didn’t want to think about the next challenge; it wanted to enjoy a little R&R after a long, tense conflict that left us in a better world. Who wants to worry about the problems of the rest of the world when we just got finished with so much heavy lifting?
Maybe that’s too simplistic, though, and it doesn’t really fit with the fact that Clinton actually did get us involved in a few conflicts (big and little ones, here and there) during his time in office. So, yeah, maybe it’s more that people didn’t really like President Bush the First or know what to think about the idea of a President Dole; and, let’s be honest, things were going mostly okay (even though some of that “okay” was an illusion generated by an irrational dot com boom and some seriously irresponsible corporate practices that would bit us all in the ass about the time that Clinton was thinking about taking his final Presidential bows).
None of which changes the fact that I’m still jobless and a big fan of the Mad Max flicks. And that Carnation Chocolate Malted Milk mix is really tasty stuff. And that I wish I looked like Mel Gibson. So does the g-phrase, for that matter.
Comments & Trackbacks
Ugh, David… Did you have to remind me of those pink Izods? Excuse me while I shudder in my TheraFlu.
But I agree. The Cold War, with all its possible horror able to become reality at a moment’s notice, completely ingrained itself into our popular culture. In fact, it BECAME our popular culture to such a degree that, once it formally ended, most of America hasn’t figured out which way to go over 15 years later.
And for a couple more books that got sent off to the dustbin of irrelevancy, try the original Cyberpunk trilogy: William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Also add in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X (Particularly, look at the end-of-the-world sequences with Dag.) and the early Tom Clancy novels.
I’d try to do some particularly snarky political analysis about this concept, but the NyQuil is making my brain all fuzzy. I’m suprised this comment has remained coherent for this grrzwebble flump aarnik…
I never read the Coupland book, but, yeah, those Cyberpunk novels are all as dated well beyond their years, aren’t they? Such a cool, visual sub-genre, too.
And Tom Clancy--well, Red Storm Rising can’t be seen as anything other than a period curiosity now, can it? All those things that were so important to us are just nostalgia now.
Yeah. Here’s to Nyquil…
(At the next blogger bash, remind me to tell you about the time I drank a few bottles of that stuff. On purpose and everything.)
Gibson’s books are far from irrelevant, and I’d hardly call them dated, but then I only read the last two recently (I read Neuromancer sometime in the mid 90s and never realized it was a trilogy).
I read all the books back when they came out--I can’t divorce them from that nostalgic feeling. Maybe it’s more about me than it is about the books, but they do seem dated to me.
Considering co-habitation, eh? Well, it’ll no doubt be an eye-openning experience. I’ve found that no matter how well you think you know somebody, living with them results in revelations.
Mad Max just rocked. Though “Beyond Thunderdome” seemed a bit overdone.
And, in closing ....
Toga! Toga!
Hmmm, Mel G or moving in?
Sounds like some drinking and inebriated-inspired contemplation is/was going on?
If you weren’t already considering moving in, I don’t know that I would have financial circumstances be the launch pad, but you know yourself and you know the G-Phrase, so only you two can make the decision. Prayers and vibes of coming into a job, big money, or at minimum, clarity in choice.
"Do I move in with g-phrase to save money and make it easier to survive on the remnants of my savings and the unemployment I’ll be collecting for a bit?”
Would you move in with the g-phrase if money were rollin’ in like normal?
If not, I will just give you a wink, because you already know what I am thinkin’.