Old Lady?!? Old Lady.

Everyone has a moment when they feel old, right? My first came when I turned 27 and realized that I was no longer eligible to be on The Real World. Not that I ever wanted to be on it, but I always loved watching it. Once that birthday came around, though, watching it was never the same. They were just kids, using every opportunity to grope each other and fight about who disrespected whom (without any real sense of what respect is in the first place).

Now I'm 30. I'm good with that. I had a big party, we rented a dunk tank.

My ongoing project is to have my 12-year-old sister watch all of the movies my brothers and I loved while growing up. I made her her own queue in Netflix, and so far we've watched Walk Like a Man, Vice Versa, The Wizard, and as of last night, Gremlins.

In the opening scene of Gremlins, the camera pans slowly down Main Street of the town. Here's the bank, a shop, Burger King, the florist... My sis turns to me--wide-eyed--and with a hint of skepticism in her voice says, "You guys had Burger King back then!?!" Hence, the name of this post.

Actually, this has been the funnest part of the whole project. I have to interpret the 80s for her, or she won't get the jokes.

Like with Gremlins: the guy in the movie drives a beat up VW Bug. Nowadays the Bug is kind of cool again. But I had to tell her that back then the Bug was definitely not cool, and that the character, therefore, is not cool.

Or in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead: One of the boys steals some money and purchases a state-of-the-art entertainment center. All of the characters gape at it in amazement. When the camera turns to the center, though, it is laughable. There are about 15 components to the stereo, and the TV is about 25 inches. I had to tell her that back then that was a giant TV (I think the one in her bedroom is about 25 inches!), and the stereo was awesome. Nowadays, with flat-screens that literally take up an entire wall, the scene didn't make much of an impact on her.

Another issue is clothes. In movies, clothes are chosen by wardrobe departments to say something about the character. But really, clothes in the 80s were so fucked up--she can't tell who is a dork and who is cool. For example, the movie Can't Buy Me Love with Patrick Dempsey (McDoodle or whatever his name is on Gray's Anatomy). Dempsey pays the popular girl in school to transform him from dork to hunk. Here's the movie poster--what do you think?

Is this Dempsey before or after his transformation? Those glasses. The string tie. And Good God, the pattern of his shirt!

Here are the movies I have in her queue:

Short Circuit
Short Circuit 2
Little Monsters
Innerspace
The Last Starfighter
Flight of the Navigator
Explorers
D.A.R.Y.L.
SpaceCamp
Mannequin
Crocodile Dundee
Star Kid
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
Starman
Batteries Not Included
Willow
Labyrinth
Krull
The Beastmaster
Better Off Dead
Teen Wolf / Teen Wolf Too (Double Feature)
Splash
Big

Any others I should add? Ideas in the comments, please!