Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Last night I was talking to my friend Lauri. We often have lengthy late night phone conversations. They're funny, and I wouldn't miss a single one of them. Lauri has recently come down with a head cold or a flu so she was grumpy and uncomfortable last night. She began the phone call with a diatribe against the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. This went on for quite awhile, and towards the end of the phone call I remembered a pivotal moment in my life. It was a moment when part of me changed from one thing to another.

Pivotal moments happen all the time, but they are not as common as transition periods. For instance, in 1980 I turned 18 and I registered to vote. I registered as a Republican, and that year I voted for Ronald Reagan as President. By 1984, however, I was disillusioned, and I voted for Walter Mondale in that year. As far as I can tell, there was no pivotal moment when my political opinions changed from one thing to another. Instead, there was a long transition period. On the other hand, my love of refried beans happened at a pivotal moment. I grew up hating them, and you couldn't pay me to swallow a pinto bean, fried or refried. But, in the Spring of 1982 I went into a Mexican restaurant with my folks, and I instantly liked refried beans. This change happened in a moment. I rode in the car to the restaurant as someone who hated refried beans, and moments after entering the restaurant, I loved them. (I didn't even eat any first before the change. In fact, I ordered some with my meal that night because I suddenly liked them.)

In the 80's I used to go to the movies every weekend with my friends. Pat and I started going to the movies first— not every weekend, but frequently. Then I moved in with Dale and started going to the movies frequently with him and Ken. By the late 80's I was going to at least one movie a weekend with one or more of these guys. Frequently, all of us went on a given Friday night. It was about this time that Clayton started hitting the movies with us as well, and his presence virtually assured that every weekend there would be a trip to one movie or another.

I was an avid movie watcher then. I have always had the ability to lose myself in a movie— any movie— unless it's incredibly bad. There's just something about sitting in a dark theatre and watching that big screen. I am sucked in right away. In fact, it is difficult for me to pull myself out of a movie. That's why I don't see horror movies or incredibly violent movies. I can't distance myself from what's happening on screen.

So we would go week after week to see whatever the new big release movie was. If there wasn't a big release on a given weekend, odds are I would see a movie a second or a third time with one or more of the guys. The only question week after week was "Which movie?"

And then I hit my pivotal moment. One instant I was a huge movie geek, willing to go week after week to see almost anything, and then the next moment I could no longer do that. Unlike many other pivotal moments, this one had a name: Eraser.

I was never the world's biggest Arnold Schwarzenegger fan. I skipped most of his early movies, refusing to believe they could be good, and I really only started to see his movies when he became so popular that you couldn't go to the movies without seeing him. Along the way, I even enjoyed a few of his movies. (T2, True Lies) But Arnold was my trigger. I saw the trailer for Eraser a few times before other movies, and I assumed I would see it, but when the weekend finally rolled around, I couldn't go. I suddenly knew that I'd seen that movie a hundred times before. Something inside of me changed and I just couldn't see that crap any more. In fact, with one exception, I never saw another Arnold vehicle after that. The one exception was Batman and Robin, which was one of the worst superhero movies ever, but, to be fair, that wasn't Arnold's fault.

I got a lot of shit from my friends at the time for skipping that movie, and I got a lot of shit going forward from then for continuing to skip the same old Hollywood crap. In fact, to this day, one of my friends still gives me shit if he invites me to go along and I choose not to. I can only assume that my friends haven't built up their immunities to Hollywood crap the way I have.

Anyway, for some reason I thought that was interesting enough to write about. Doubts about its interest level have been rising since the second or third sentence. I hope you'll come back again soon!

"I'll be back."— Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator