No, I was not alive when “The Adventures of Superman” first aired in the 1950’s. But I could swear that I remember seeing reruns on local New York broadcast TV when I was a tot in the 1970’s.
I could be wrong! It’s possible I’m remembering some other iteration of the character in film or television. My instincts are telling me that this is the show, though.
Comic book fans will recognize George Reeves in the iconic title role.
I am linking here, by the way, to Steven Brandt’s Youtube channel. Thanks, Mr. Brandt.
Pop Rocks!!! These fizzy little candies had a genuine mystique to little kids in the late 1970’s — and they were pretty damned good too! (I am linking here to the Bionic Disco Youtube channel for the video.)
Of course, no reminiscence about Pop Rocks could leave out the morbid, wide-eyed awe we kids felt at the fate of poor Mikey, the beloved little brother in the classic Life Cereal commercials. The finicky tike had perished horribly after a concoction of Pop Rocks and soda had literally exploded his stomach.
I think that we can all agree that “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008) is the least of the film series. (Some people really despise it.) And I suppose it’s telling that I’ve only seen it twice.
It isn’t a terrible movie, it just couldn’t match the magic of the original trilogy. (I was surprised a moment ago when Wikipedia informed me that it was indeed still directed by Steven Spielberg.) The Russian villains were a little too cartoonish, the chemistry among the leads was a little off, and the whole thing maybe felt a little … rushed. For some reason, it makes me think of a pretty good made-for-television movie instead of a feature film — sort of an “Indiana Jones Reunion Special.”
Hey, I didn’t hate it. The artifact they’re chasing is unique and cool, the denouement is inventive, and Shia LaBeouf’s “Mutt” actually didn’t bother me much. This movie was fun.
I remember seeing “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” in the theater with my 11th grade girlfriend. When it was released, we thought this third entry in the film series would be the last. (Blockbusters tended to run in trilogies back then.) And what a great ostensible send-off it was! Indy was back, in fine form, doing what he did best — punching Nazis. Casting Sean Connery as his father was a stroke of genius, and the chemistry between him and Harrison Ford was priceless.
A couple of astute film fans on Facebook pointed out that 1989 was a great year for movies. This was the summer when Tim Burton’s “Batman” came out, along with “The Abyss,” “Lethal Weapon 2,” “Pet Sematary” and “Dead Poets Society.” Seriously, look at this list. It’s insane.
“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984) was the first sequel to 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but it was technically a prequel — its story is set a year prior to the events of the first film. I was predictably obsessed with seeing it when I was a kid. I even remember getting excited over the tagline you hear in the trailer below — “If adventure has a name, it must be ‘Indiana Jones.'”
But I was a little late for the party, and a few of my sixth-grade classmates saw it before I did. They even blabbed about the rope-bridge finale in class, which I guess is the first time in my life that spoilers were ever an issue. It didn’t affect my enjoyment of the movie, however. (Somewhere, the shrinks at UC San Diego are smiling.) I was over the moon for this “second Raiders movie.”
If memory serves, I even had the story on audio cassette. I think it was a birthday present. I had the novelization too; that was even more fun!
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.
Flashback to the middle aughts — I emerged from New York City’s Penn Station with a group of friends to an amazing surprise. It was none other than U2 being hauled past the transportation hub on the back of a flatbed truck, playing music.
Then, the other day, after maybe 18 years or so, my girlfriend sends me the video for a song she likes — U2’s “All Because of You.” (It’s from their 2004 album, “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.”) There’s the flatbed truck with the band performing all over the city.
So that’s what that was all about. A mystery nearly two decades old at lasts stands revealed.
Of course I scoured every frame of the video hoping that there was a one-in-a-million chance I’d see myself in the background. No such luck.
Anyway, my four other brushes with famous people are as follows:
Madonna. (I saw her for two seconds entering a building in Manhattan.)
Linda Ronstadt. (I gave her a tour at a historic site.)
Marissa Tormei. (I saw her in a restaurant in Brooklyn.)
Ralph Macchio. (I checked him out at a video store.)
Henry Kissinger. (I saw him at a fundraising event and helped his Secret Service detail get situated. Seriously, you can not make this stuff up.)
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 