This is it, folks. This is the greatest movie of all time. It’s better than “Blade Runner” (1982), better than John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), better than “Aliens” (1986). And those movies were all … perfect. (Man the 1980’s really were a golden age for pop culture, weren’t they?)
I was eight years old when I saw this in the theater, and I thereafter was a bit of an Indiana Jones cultist. It wasn’t just the action figures and board games and comic book and posters and role-playing games. I actually resolved to become an archeologist (or a paleontologist), and I thought the best way that I could prepare for that as a third grader was to gain experience “in the field.”
So I would lead my friends on “digs” or “expeditions” in the forests around my neighborhood. We would often arbitrarily pick a spot in the middle of nowhere and then just dig there, with a shovels we borrowed from my family’s garage. We were hoping to find … anything of interest, I guess :buried treasure, dinosaur bones, Indian arrowheads, whatever. (We never did. About the only thing we “discovered” was that tree roots are a real bitch when you’re trying to dig a hole.) I even kept maps and journals of our “adventures.” These are the kinds of things that boys do before they discover girls.
I tried to look the part, too. I had a brown cowboy hat that I hoped could pass for a fedora, an (empty) binocular case and a prop bullwhip snagged from a Levi’s jeans display at the local mall. My older brother called me “Idaho Bones” because I essentially was a cheap, skinny knockoff of the character I wanted to emulate. I hated it at the time, but as an adult, I kinda can’t dispute his assessment.
Oh, well. We all had fun. Every other boy in the neighborhood who spotted that bullwhip wanted to try it, so there’s that.
To this day, “Raiders” is still my favorite movie ever.
Yeah, I challenge you to name ONE person who was actually persuaded to eat Quaker Oats because of those weird appeals by Wilford Brimley. This was the weirdest ad campaign ever.
“It’s the right thing to do.”
Was it a f***ing moral dilemma?
Postscript: no disrespect to the actor himself; Brimley was a sublime thespian. He was a key part of what is arguably the greatest science-fiction horror film of all time — John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece, “The Thing.” (I was actually unaware until writing this that he passed away back in 2020. ) THAT AIN’T FUCHS.
Before you call Roanoke a small town, remember — it’s got its own ICBM.
I’m kidding. It’s not a nuclear missile. I think it’s a … rocket of some kind? I’m too lazy to google it. It’s outside the Virginia Transportation Museum.
Why do I so badly want it to be a stolen Russian rocket, reminiscent of 1982’s “Firefox” with Clint Eastwood?
Update: I have just been informed by a few people that this actually was a nuclear missile at one point. Apparently what we’re looking at is a Jupiter-class rocket that once held a nuclear warhead? And here I was only joking above …
Hot damn, my best friend gave me the coolest presents for a writer! What you see are “Poe-ka Dots” socks, sculpted raven bookends from the New York Public Library and the piece de resistance …
… a lapel pin fashioned after the origami unicorn from “Blade Runner” (1982). I didn’t even know such a thing existed, so I wouldn’t have even known to ask for it. I can’t believe she found it!
Weird world — Laura Branigan wasn’t the first vocalist to perform her signature song, “Gloria” (1982). It was originally an Italian pop song performed in 1979 by Umberto Tozzi. (That’s the second video below.)
Anyway, for a lot of people in my age bracket, this remains a quintessential 80’s tune. Branigan even performed it in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade the year it was released. I still remember people commenting about how beautiful she looked.
If you’re wondering whatever happened to Branigan, there’s a bit of a sad postscript here — she died in her sleep at a relatively young age, 52, from an undiagnosed brain aneurysm. By that time she’d become a fellow Long Islander; she’d been living in East Quogue.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 