The Last Unicorn

Up at Cardinals Manitowish Lodge in Woodruff, WI, they had a TV and VCR in the lodge along with a bunch of videos they'd taped off of cable TV. The most played was probably The Last Unicorn which I've seen more times than I care to admit.

Happy Birthday Mom

Here's the first movie I remember seeing in the theater. I may have seen other movies before this but I don't remember them if I did. I do remember we went to see something else but it was sold out so my parents thought it would be fun to see this instead. I'm still not sure what they were thinking.

The Black Hole

This one hasn't aged well. Watching it today, it's kind of boring but the robots were cool and I wanted one of those double barreled laser guns really bad.

Throw Him In The Hole!

This is one of the few movies where I've felt it was not only acceptable, but necessary to talk back to the screen. I saw this with Tony at the Deerbrook Mall theaters and I think we almost got kicked out. It was a pretty lame movie but at the time, it had some pretty cool special effects.

The Gate

Spike! What Did You Just Say?

Transformers: The Movie

Saw this one opening weekend with Jim. It's actually a great movie and I own it on DVD but it sits in my memory for one reason alone. Spike swears. We were shocked, SHOCKED I say, when early in the movie, Spike lets out a long drawn out profanity. This is a movie based on a kids cartoon and it had a swear word. I was earth shakingly disappointed when it came out on video with the naughty word edited out. Thank god it was restored for the DVD.

Condorman

This is one of those movies that looked much better than it actually was. It also stars Michael Crawford, who later went on to star as the Phantom in the mega popular Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and who Lisa and I saw in the far less popular FX in Vegas.

Not sure why I can't find the trailer in English but I did manage to find the awesome boat chase.

The Untouchables

Still one of my favorite movies. I saw it on the 4th of July with Jim instead of going to see the fireworks. We were both working at Dominicks that night and the store was dead. I had negotiated with our manager Armin to get the 3rd off so I could go to the comic book convention and he told me that if I did, I'd have to work the 4th. Apparently he was having a tough time finding people willing to work that day. The store was so dead that our assistant manager actually ran out of things for us to do. When I asked him if he wanted me to sit around and do nothing he told me no, stand around and do nothing. That, and the time I had an incredibly bad headache are the only two times I've skipped fireworks.

Beat Street

Actually, this was probably the first rap album I ever owned.

Funky Cold Medina

Can't remember if I owned this one or not.

Tone-Loc |MTV Music

NWA

The second Rap album I ever bought. Accidentally left it in family station wagon with the volume cranked a few times.

N.W.A. |MTV Music

Run DMC

The first rap album I ever bought. Run DMC's Raising Hell.

Run-D.M.C. |MTV Music

The Choice is Yours

This isn't really my childhood but I'm feeling my age and it was more than 15 years ago so we'll dive into the hip hop pool this week.

I found this video a couple weeks ago and since I don't care much for political propaganda or campaigning, I sat on it. I've watched it more than a few times since then and now that the election is over, I'll share it.

Obama seemed to inspire the hip hop community to record a whole punch of politically minded stuff this year. This is one of the better recordings I've heard. It's Dres from Black Sheep updating the classic The Choice is Yours for the Obama campaign. I've read he did this all on his own dime over a weekend but the result is pretty good.




And here's the original...

Journey Arcade Game

This was considered pretty high tech back when it first came out. I can't remember if it was this or Tron where Brad Cheskes started bullying my friends and me because we ratted him out for cutting in line at Tilt.

King's Quest

This was the first PC game I ever played and it hooked me on the Sierra Online model of gaming for quite a long time. It was also the first game I played where there were multiple solutions to problems which gave the game a little more replay value than most.

Hardware Wars

I don't remember the first time I saw this. It may have been at the community house before another film but I remember thinking it was the funniest thing ever. I think my friend Stafford may have owned a copy on 16mm as well. The public library had a copy that we would sometimes set up in the conference room.

Star Wars Holiday Special

I realize this is pretty campy now but when I was 7 or 8 it was canon. For years I had distorted memories of this thing being awesome and I wanted to know more about the Wookie planet and the treehouses. I still haven't seen the whole thing since the first time it aired. It's easy enough to find so it might just be that I don't want to taint my memories of it.

My 45 Collection: Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade

I used to have this ratty little 45 record player and a little box of 45s. I can't remember what all of them were but I remember this one for sure. It was a cool little picture disc that I'm guessing my family picked up on a trip to Disney World one year. While the label reads Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade, at Disney World they used the same music for their light parade which was on a series of small barges on the lagoon. The highlight of the week for me was watching that parade go by on the nights they did it and I listened to this record quite a bit. I'll credit it with giving me an early appreciation for the Moog. The song is Baroque Hoedown by Jean Jacques Perrey.



Here's the song.



Here's some video of the Disneyland version of the parade which goes down Main Street at night. I have yet to find video of the Disney World barge version which is smaller, but in my mind, much cooler, especially now that not all the hotels face the lagoon.