Day 23: Twister, Fight Club, and Happy Gilmore
We’re winding down. I missed the last two days because once again real life gets in the way of your fake time travel life sometimes and that’s just the way it is. But do not worry, I 96’d as hard as one could possibly 96 over the last couple nights.
Cow
TWISTER. Holy shit. Whenever this premiered on television in the Terry house, we gathered as a family and watched because it seemed that during that time there was an outbreak of tornado fascination and we ATE THAT UP. It could have just been me or my friends who were super jazzed about storms as if it were a phase any kid goes through like dinosaurs or whatever, but I couldn’t get enough of God’s natural form of fury in my life. I fortunately grew up in an area shielded from tornados for the most part, although we did experience a flurry of F3’s and F4’s one night about ten years ago that made for a real bad time and my parents watched one go by from their porch as if that was a normal thing to do, but I could afford to be fascinated with and unafraid of tornados because the chances of me meeting one was nil. When that opening scene with Helen Hunt’s dad getting swept up out of the basement and into the ether of the tornado nether realm, I was blown away too! My dad ended up going to bed early because I guess he had seen one too many dads get sucked into the vortex for one night, but mom and I stayed up for the whole two-hour fence flying, cow slinging, and barn wrecking adventure.
“I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter
You’re the firestarter, twisted firestarter”
I thought the movie was superbly cool back then. Yeah, I could do without the awkward divorce parts and even the movie’s “bad guy” is hardly a nuisance, but after credits rolled I was ready to watch the movie again. And Again. I don’t normally rewatch things but because it was the 90’s and the most advanced technology my mom could master was a VCR, we watched it a few times until the cow part wore off and then moved on. I am extremely happy to report that 25 years later that movie holds up dang well. I was worried I had forgotten about some long drawn out romantic parts that were thrust in there that I had averted because STORMS but no, that movie starts and doesn’t stop with the action. It’s TWISTER, TWISTER, TWISTER, BREAKFAST, TWISTER, COW, TWISTER, CREDITS. It kicks ass and on top of kicking ass, the effects still look decently good today. There were a few parts that looked like a digitized cutscene from a Sega CD game but for the most part everything they tried to pull off was passable and believable. Twister is great. RIP Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Get’m Sandler.
Adam Sandler’s thrust into mainstream movie roles was thanks to his short tempered, grandma loving golfer character Happy Gilmore. I remember taping this movie off of the Pay-Per View my dad managed to steal for us somehow with 90’s dad magic. Thanks dad. As a kid, Happy Gilmore was everything to me. I loved sports, I thought Adam Sandler was funny, and I hated Bob Barker. Who lets that guy name all the prices? Who does he think he is? Thanks to the number of times I rewatched Happy Gilmore over the years, the list of quotables for me may be the longest of any other movie. “You eat shit for breakfast?” “Go to your home!” “Tap tap tap taperoo.” I have to wonder if a movie like Happy Gilmore came out today would it rise to the top as Happy did? Or would it be seen as just another walk in the park comedy? It could have been Sandler’s shiny new comedian veneer that added luster to it and the fact he fights Bob Barker is fun too. It’s hard to tell.
I have finished a couple of books this month. I wrapped up Airframe, the Michael Crichton thriller about a plane that endures a shakeup mid air and lands with a few dead and many injured passengers. The media is frenzied and the bad reputation of the plane’s manufacturer is on the line so it is up to an internal investigator to figure out what happened. If that sounds very procedural and boring, it honestly can be. But Crichton does his aviation industry homework and by the end you’re smarter about planes with a solid resolution to boot. I would recommend this one if you’re a nerd and don’t mind some real world formalities and science crammed down your throat at the expense of the author’s enormous dork boner.
I cannot finish Stephen King’s Desperation. This time King didn’t do it for me. I tried. Lawd, I tried.
I finished The Beach by Alex Garland. This one was less my speed but palatable enough to finish. There are lots of references to video games, the Gameboy especially, and Street Fighter on the Super Nintendo. The characters sometimes waste time by playing games and it would appear that Alex Garland was a fan of video games at the time. I did not expect that in a story that takes place in the remote beaches of Thailand. The story itself is a bit of an adventure with a spritz of mystery and romance peppered in. Do you spritz pepper? I’m a bad writer. But Alex Garland is a decent writer so if you’re interested in idyllic islands unfettered by tourism that might be a stronghold for drug armies then try that book.
I managed to finish Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk in one go last night. The movie didn’t come out until three years later in 1999, but Chuck’s book hit shelves in 96. It’s one of those books that I had always heard was “something” than the movie, and I can’t remember if the sentiment was always better or worse. I found it to be nearly the exact same, almost beat for beat. In fact, having the movie in my head as I read the book felt almost like reading the script. There were a few parts here and there that strayed or that clearly weren’t in the movie, but I do think Fight Club is a story that benefits from the inner dialogue of the main character to clue the reader in a bit more than a movie can show. The movie does a great job at making what is going on fairly clear as well so I’m not really complaining. If you like the movie then there is no reason you won’t like the book, in my opinion.
I have never committed to a deep dive in a single year before and in general I’m not very aware of books or when they come out, I just read them. That said, I have no idea if 1996 was a good or poor year for readers. Some books came out that I just don’t want to commit to this month like Infinite Jest, Angela’s Ashes, the first Game of Thrones, Into the Wild, and Bridget Jones’ Diary. In addition to Airframe, FIght Club, Desperation, and The Beach, I am currently reading John Grisham’s Runaway Jury and so far it’s engrossing. If I had to point to a favorite of the ones I’ve read this month, I think Airframe is my choice but Runaway Jury is fast on its heels.
As an aside, Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble on the Sega Genesis is a pile of ass but Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is a decent vampiric Zelda-like, but painfully slow, on the PlayStation 1.
