Tonight I'm Not Gonna Party Cuz It's 1893

I've been reading Steve Hockensmith's nostalgic rambles of late with great interest. For I, too, have a certain fondness for the eighties.

Poverty. Back-breaking labor. Blizzards and droughts and disease. Who wouldn't miss 'em?

Ahhhh, the 1880s. Happy days!

Facetiousness aside -- if I can actually get it aside for a second...you know me -- there were some good times for the Amlingmeyer clan back in the (for me) last decade. We were still a family then, all of us together on the farm. And oh, how nice it would be to pop in a BVD of one of the better days as easily as you moderners can pop in a Charles in Charge from Netflix.

(Note: I have no idea who "Charles" was or what exactly he was in charge of. Hockensmith just told me it would remind y'all of the 1980s. If he's funning with me somehow, please let me know so that I can put myself in charge of kicking his ass.)

I'll be interested to see what Hockensmith has to say about his Romancing the Stone and his My Ever Changing Moods and his (he tells me) Gremlins and Dungeons & Dragons and Indiana Jones. Not that I have any more of a clue about 'em than Charles in Charge. (Though I must say -- "Indiana Jones" would make a great cowboy name.) But I'm curious to see if Hockensmith's past can be bottled up so easy in a BVD.

If so -- if hitting "PLAY" is all it takes for you moderners to truly relive your youth -- I'll be both jealous of you and a little sad for you. My childhood's gone forever, and that's too bad...I guess. But the moments of it I miss most were real.

In other words, I don't want any fairy tale Charles in charge of me.

Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer
May 15, 1893

P.S.: Now get back to work, Hockensmith! You're supposed to be helping me finish the next book, not laying on the couch watching The Last &*$#ing Starfighter!

Whatever that is....

Tonight I'm Gonna Party Like It's 1984, Part Deux

I've been feeling kind of nostalgic about the mid-'80s lately. Or maybe "nostalgic" is the wrong for it.

I haven't been idealizing those years in a cartoony Happy Days/That '70s Show kind of way. Most of it was way, way too boring for that. And I haven't been pining for it, either. I was a teenager at the time, so even when it wasn't boring, it was still excruciatingly awkward.

I think maybe I'm more curious than anything else. Looking back on those years last week, I tried to dredge up what it was like being me at the time. And I'm not so sure I got it right. Was I really the happy-go-lucky nerdling I made myself out to be?

Well, the nerd part would be easy enough to verify: All I'd have to do is crack open one of my high school yearbooks and look at my own picture. Which I'm wise enough in my dotage never to do.

But what about the happy-go-lucky? I remember being pretty miserable a lot of the time, actually. Especially if I had to go to school or church or the grocery store or the mall or...anywhere more than five yards from my bedroom or the TV, really. Even going out to get the mail was risky. I mean, somebody might see you out there....

Yet I always managed to make it out to the movies -- even if my excitement was tinged with terror because I was going to see Ghost Busters on a Friday night and there were going to be a lot of kids from school there. And you could actually coax me into the light of day to go to a book store or a comic book shop, too. Or a record store, though you'd have been lucky to find one in my old town that stocked anything other than Def Leppard and Stryper.

In a weird way, escapism -- the movies and books and comics and music -- was the only thing connecting me to the rest of humanity at all. Without it, I think I would've just found a nice, quiet spot in the basement and spent the tail end of the Reagan years collecting cobwebs.

So if I want to remember what life felt like for me back then -- want to recover my Lost Self like Indiana Jones digging up some ancient treasure -- there's really only one way to do it. And no, I'm not talking about hypnotic regression. Or borrowing a TARDIS. Or getting hit on the head by a falling flower pot, although that did seem to work in old movies sometimes.

No, the only time machine I need is pop culture...enhanced by a little Boone's Farm, maybe. Because that had its place back then, too.

At the top of my Netflix queue: Romancing the Stone.

Just ordered from eBay: Café Blue (a.k.a. My Ever Changing Moods).

On my bedside table: an '80s-era science fiction Best Of anthology.

And in my heart and head...well, we'll see....

The Wayback Machine's been set for 1984, gang. Better strap yourselves in.

Steve Hockensmith
May 8, 2008

Tonight I'm Gonna Party Like It's 1984

I'll be turning 40 in a few months, and I've noticed a strange feeling coming over me as my birthday draws nigh. It's not the urge to buy a red Lamborghini or chase younger women or anything else off the midlife crisis checklist. I don't go in for clichés.

And what's more, I can't afford a Lamborghini. Maybe a Hyundai. Used. I mean, really used. Which probably wouldn't be much of a chick magnet.

No, it's not a sporty Phallusmobile or an ego-boosting PYT I find myself pining for. It's much, much more shameful than that.

I'm excited about an Indiana Jones movie. 

If I were casually interested in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that would be one thing. Borderline indifferent, and I could maybe salvage my dignity.

But, no. I'm geeked out. I'll be there opening weekend with an extra 10 bucks in my pocket for popcorn and a Coke.

Only...will 10 bucks even get you popcorn and a Coke anymore? The last time I was this psyched for an Indiana Jones flick, it was 1984. The movie was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and, if memory serves, you could buy a large popcorn and medium soda for two bits, with enough left over for a crank or two on the nickelodeon machine in the lobby.

But perhaps memory doesn't serve. Remember, I'm almost 40.

Almost 40...and hyped up by the same silly action movies I loved when I was 15. Is that alright, I wonder? Shouldn't I be on pins and needles about something serious? Something important? Something grown up? The next John Updike novel. The new Errol Morris documentary. The Democratic primaries.

(Aside: I actually was on pins and needles about the Democratic primaries until about a month ago. Now I just wanna barf.)

I mean, 40 seems as good a time as any to do some reappraising. To look back and see how far one's come. And I guess I'll look back and see that I've come all the way from The Temple of Doom to The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Which really isn't much of a journey.

I'd like to think I'm not the same person I was 24 years ago. I weigh a little more now. And my hair has some gray in it. And....

Alright, other than that, I probably am the same person I was 24 years ago. And that guy was a geek. Nerdus Americanus. Dorkus Maximus.

I don't think it bothered him much, though. Yeah, the no-date-on-Saturday-night thing got to be a drag. But it's not like he wanted to be a jock or a preppy or a burnout or whatever else guys could be in a John Hughes movie. He was O.K. with being a total Poindexter.

Maybe that's the way I've really devolved. When I was a kid, I wasn't ashamed to be first in line for an Indiana Jones movie. Why should I judge myself now that I'm a man?

In the words of the poet, I yam what I yam. And I yam a geek, John Updike be damned.

So I'm gonna start saving up for that popcorn and Coke now. If I set aside a twenty each week, I should have enough just in time for opening night....

Steve Hockensmith
May 1, 2008