Journal Entry: 80's Movies Spectacular

Yesterday for lunch, as has become my ritual, I went to Buffalo Wild Wings for some cheap boneless wings and some AoC on the laptop. Unfortunately, they didn't have the wireless network on. I'll give them another week to see if they fix that nonsense, and then I just may cancel my ritual. Jerks.

I'd had the presence of mind to bring a book, though, so it wasn't a bad lunch. And the chicken, of course, was delicious.

Then after work I took AB to the gym, and T-- stayed home to get some work done (she's been in a frenzy all week, getting ready for her parents to come visit). After strength training, I did the first day of week 5 in my running program, and it went really well. The second day is going to be tough, and the third is going to be a nightmare, but I'm anxious to see if I can manage it (this is the first week that the various days involve different requirements).

Anyway, after the gym, I got home to find K-- and N-- already there, and D-- showed up shortly with a big batch of boneless wings from Buffalo Wild Wings. (Yes, I did know that we'd be having the same thing for dinner, and no, I didn't mind at all.) I suggested that we watch the next movie in our 80's marathon, and we settled on Flight of the Navigator, one of N--'s picks.

Okay, here's the thing with that. D-- suggested over dinner a couple months ago that we should spend the summer watching our favorite movies from the 80's.

The idea evolved gradually. We started out with a pretty simple rule: our "favorites" should be movies that we liked during the 80's, not just movies made in the 80's that we like now. The reason being, movies that we like now (with the availability of DVDs and whatnot), we watch pretty frequently. Not a season goes by that I don't watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and usually some subset of this group of friends is forced to sit through it with me. Same goes for The Three Amigos and any of the Fletch movies.

So, 80's movies that we liked back in the 80's. When we started throwing out names, there were way too many, so we decided on 3 movies apiece. Some negotiations were made whenever more than one of us wanted to pick the same movie, so that those with longer lists wouldn't have as much difficulty narrowing it down.

And then, as we got further into the selection process, it became more of an evangelistic endeavor. When K-- said, "Well, there's Tron," and I said, "Never seen it," and he said, "You've never seen it?!?!" like that, well, he had to pick Tron because, come on, everyone should see Tron.

So that pretty much became the next major rule: out of our lists of childhood favorites, we narrowed it down by polling everyone to find out how many people had never seen each film. We're not required to pick the least viewed films, but we're using that as one of our selection criteria.

Anyway, T-- hasn't settled definitely on her 3 yet, but she's hoping her parents' visit this weekend will help spark her memory. Once that's done, we're going to go through a voting process to determine the viewing order, but so far I've just been using the right of imminent domain (we've watched all the movies at my house) to pick the ones I thought we should see.

The list we have so far (not including T--'s) goes, in no particular order:
The Abyss (N--'s pick. 2 people have never seen it)
Adventures in Babysitting (My pick. 2 people have never seen it)
An American Tale (N--'s pick. 1 person has never seen it)
Bladerunner (K--'s pick. 3 people have never seen it)
Field of Dreams (N--'s pick. 1 person has never seen it -- me)
Flight of the Navigator (N--'s pick. 2 people had never seen it)
Goonies (D--'s pick. 2 people had never seen it)
Ladyhawke (My pick. 2 or 3 people have never seen it)
The Last Starfighter (My pick. 2 people have never seen it)
The Lost Boys (D--'s pick. 3 people have never seen it)
Real Genius (My pick. 2 people have never seen it)
Running Man (K--'s pick. 2 people have never seen it)
Tron (K--'s pick. 2 people have never seen it)
Young Guns (D--'s pick. 3 people have never seen it)

There's an extra movie in there for me (Ladyhawke) and N-- (An American Tale). We haven't fully narrowed down our lists to three yet. I toyed with suggesting that we expand our selections to our favorite four movies, but then I looked at a calendar, and realized that would stretch our summer to the end of October.

We're sort of watching a movie every Saturday night that we're all in town (T-- and I being the ones most often missing). I like Thursdays, too, but it can be tough to talk K-- and N-- into staying out too late on a school night. Luckily, 80's movies tend to be in the 75-90 minute range, instead of the 2 hour plus stuff we're making today.

Anyway, that's our 80's movie thing. Now you know what's going on. We watched Flight of the Navigator last night, and it was pretty good. I can definitely see why kids would have loved it back then. I was pretty critical of it during the movie, but that was the Crown Royal talking.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.