Nostalgia

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My Retrospective Review of the Back to the Future Trilogy; Post October 21st, 2015

My Retrospective Review of the Back to the Future Trilogy; Post October 21st, 2015

The week of October 21st, 2015, I realized that the Back to the Future trilogy was being featured on Amazon Prime streaming; as well as the documentary, Back in Time. So I finished the series last night and decided it would be interesting to share my review of all 3 movies, in hindsight.

Now that we are officially living in the future, according to Back to the Future Part 2, I was able to see how each of the 3 movies still holds up.

Here’s my analysis:

Back to the Future Part 1 is the best.

Part 3 is my favorite.

Part 2 was my least favorite and the least relevant to the series.

Back when I was a kid, I thought Part 2 was the best one because it attempted to show me a glimpse of the future. Hoverboards!

But really, Part 2 was the strange off-the-beaten path installment that have easily been removed from the series and the storyline would have been just as strong. Not to mention, seeing it again as an adult, Part 2 was the darkest and most tedious of the series.

My Retrospective Review of the Back to the Future Trilogy; Post October 21st, 2015

I was surprised at how little of Part 2 actually took place in the good version of 2015. Most of the movie is in the dystopian version of 2015 and then back to 1955 again.

The reason I like Part 3 the best is because I feel it’s the most charming. The plot was simple enough and I loved the chemistry between Doc Brown and Clara. I appreciated how it utilized so many of the original characters of the first two movies.

Just overall, it’s easier to watch; and I feel, the most fun.

Granted, Part 1 is the best. It’s not my personal favorite, but it’s the best. It was the most original, innovative, and legendary.

Interestingly enough, the critics of Rotten Tomatoes agree with my assessment that Part 1 is the best, Part 3 is the second best, and Part 2 is the least best.

My Retrospective Review of the Back to the Future Trilogy; Post October 21st, 2015

In closing, I want to point out this:

Despite these movies being generically remembered as “family friendly” movies, for the most part, they are not:

If Part 1 were released today, it would definitely be rated PG-13.

It features constant swearing (nearly every word in the book) as well as religious exclamations (using God’s name in vain), casual marijuana use (the band at the prom), attempted sexual assault (George McFly saves the day by stopping Biff from taking advantage of his future wife), implied sexual activity involving minors (17 year-old Marty McFly and his girlfriend are planning to spend the night together in the back of his Toyota pick-up truck) and violence: Doc Brown is shot in the chest with machine guns by Liberian terrorists.

Part 3 is the tamest; containing the least profanity, hardly any innuendoes, and the violence is simply cartoonish. It would uphold its PG rating.

Part 2 is somewhere in between the two, but I could easily see it being rated PG-13.

Thanks for reading! If you’ve have recently seen the Back to the Future trilogy, I would be curious to see if you agree with my assessment.

2 Comments Posted on food reviews, funny, Health, Nostalgia, parenting, Storytelling, Uncategorized, vegan

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

4 years, 11 months.

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

Dear Jack,

Being the daddy blogger who denounces artificial food dyes in food, I must admit it is quite convenient that my almost 5 year-old son has willingly chosen to use his Halloween candy for science experiments, as opposed to actually eating it.

This was completely your idea. It was the convenient timing of you rediscovering your Magic Science kit that Mommy and I got you’re a year ago for your 4th birthday.

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

Saturday morning, which was Halloween, you and I took a walk at the park and you found a green acorn; which you referred to as a coconut.

You announced to me: “Daddy, when we get home, I’m going to put this coconut in the water with peanut butter!” 

That’s exactly what we did. (Featured in the collage below.)

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

I supervised as you randomly mixed the ingredients included in the kit, with the “coconut” as well as some peanut butter. Needless to say, you weren’t following the instructions included in the kit at all. Fortunately, no explosions occurred…

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

Even during dinner, as you ate the pizza Mommy made, you were constantly checking on the progress of your science experiments. (Not to mention, you had previously dunked some of the uncooked pizza dough into some chemicals as well; as part of its own experiment; as seen below.)

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

We then took about a 90 minute break to actually, you know… go trick-or-treating.

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

It meant so much to me to finally go trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood; since we moved in our new home back in January. When we lived in the townhouse community before, it just wasn’t the ideal environment like our neighborhood is now, for something like this.

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

Needless to say, after we got home from church on Sunday, you spent all of your time testing all types of the candy you earned the night before.

I think you favorite to dissolve were the Nerds. You explained to me:

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

“Daddy, the Nerds turn in to crystals!” You scooped them out from the bottom of the cup, using a plastic spoon; revealing the now colorless pieces of sugar.

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

It was also interesting to see Runts without their coloring as well. And the Laffy Taffy looked like a brain.

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

A dentist in our neighborhood is buying back Halloween candy; paying $1 per pound, then sending the candy overseas the U.S. troops.

Dear Jack: Using Halloween Candy for Science Experiments Instead of Eating It

You were planning on selling most of your candy so you could use the money to buy a toy.

Instead, it looks like you’d rather use the candy for scientist experiments; as opposed to selling it, or even crazier… actually eating it.

Love,

Daddy

6 Comments Posted on Nostalgia, Spirituality, Storytelling, Uncategorized

McGee and Me! Soundtrack: “Hold On” by Michael W. Smith

McGee and Me! Soundtrack: “Hold On” by Michael W. Smith

This post will not be read by the people seeing it on my Facebook or Twitter feeds. Instead, it will be specifically sought out by a small fraction of the Internet who grew up in an explicitly Christian culture. I will become the #1 source when someone Googles “Hold On by Michael W. Smith McGee and Me Soundtrack”.

If you happened to grow up like I did, you were born in the early 1980s and were at church at least twice a week.

And on those days where the teacher was out in Children’s Church (the class where all the kids went during the main church service on Sunday mornings), you walked into the room to see a TV set up with a McGee and Me! VHS set up.

The series consisted of the protagonist Nick (played by Joseph Dammann) who liked draw. That alone was enough reason for me to like the show since I shared the same name and hobby as the main character.

Nick’s doodle, McGee, helped him navigate through moral decisions. Each episode contained an awesome original song composed by James Covell.

All together, there were about a dozen of McGee and Me! episodes. Perhaps the rarest one was “Take Me out of the Ball Game,” which was the only one not to contain a James Covell song.

Instead, its feature song was “Hold On,” by the legendary Michael W. Smith. Strangely, this song was not featured on any other Michael W. Smith album, nor was it on the CD version of the soundtrack; it was only on the cassette version, which I owned.

Another thing that made this song more rare and unheard, was that in addition to the episode being harder to purchase because it was released after the peak of the series popularity, the song was not featured during the action sequence of the episode, but instead during the closing credits.

But as a 6th grader who got my hands on the cassette tape version of the McGee and Me! soundtrack, I didn’t know any of this. I just knew I loved the song.

In fact, I bought my first portable cassette player especially so I could listen to this soundtrack. All the songs were amazing, but my favorite was “Hold On” by Michael W. Smith.

I think it’s safe to say that the “new original song for every new episode” formula in my original webseries, Jack-Man, has something I learned from seeing McGee and Me! as a kid and loving the soundtrack.

Please feel free to share your own warm memories of McGee and Me! Show me I’m not alone in my nostalgic thoughts!

5McGee and Me! Soundtrack: “Hold On” by Michael W. Smith

1 Comment Posted on movie reviews, Nostalgia, parenting, Storytelling, Uncategorized

Dear Jack: Our “Practice Halloween” Night as a Family/We Watched Gremlins

4 years, 11 months.

Dear Jack: Our "Practice Halloween" Night as a Family

Dear Jack,

Tonight we were able to “practice Halloween” at your preschool with all your friends. You got to be the coolest person possible: Captain America.

It was funny because all your friends who were boys were also dressed up as super heroes; but there were conveniently no duplicates: Batman, Iron Man, Spiderman…

As for Mommy and me, we took a more minimalist approach:

Mommy wore a zebra mask and I wore my cave man hat which I’ve owned for years.

(At Target, your costume only cost us $10 and Mommy’s mask was only $3.)

I like the fact you wanted to make sure your stuffed animal, Kitty, was dressed in costume too; as a baby in a onesie.

And by the way, you got a whole lot of candy! The proportion of candy-to-kids was definitely in your favor.

However, there’s a decent chance it’s going to rain on Saturday, which is Halloween.

So even though we are finally moved in to a nice suburban neighborhood where we can truly just walk door to door, instead of driving to a decent place, we may get rained out! Therefore, tonight served as our back-up plan to that happening to us.

And to set the mood for Halloween, I let you watch the 1984 Steven Spielberg movie, Gremlins; which is currently free on Amazon Prime right now.

gremlins_gizmo Dear Jack: Our "Practice Halloween" Night as a Family/We Watched Gremlins

I admit to having a few reservations in that it, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Jones, were the very first movies to be released under the PG-13 rating; as opposed to PG.

Granted, you watched Ant-Man and it was no issue for you.

I don’t regret my decision. You didn’t recognize the bad words, since to you, “stupid” is the one that concerns you the most right now.

And though parts of it are obviously creepy and violent, it was nothing you hadn’t seen on Goosebumps. I’m not saying I recommend showing Gremlins to all 5 year-olds, but I feel confident in us being able to enjoy it together.

You were on the edge on your seat the whole time, and you loved Gizmo. Not to mention, you’ve already proclaimed that when we go to Nonna and Papa’s house next time, you’ll be bringing home my old Gizmo doll.

Love,

Daddy

4 Comments Posted on funny, Nostalgia, parenting, Storytelling, Uncategorized

The Only Time I Got Paddled (Spanked) in Public School: Gym Class, 8th Grade, May 1995

The Only Time I Got Paddled (Spanked) in Public School: Gym Class, 8th Grade, May 1995

While I’m definitely in the minority (20% of Americans) in that I don’t believe in spanking my own child as an efficient form of discipline, I think it has become a collectively weird thought for us as American parents to consider that not that long ago, students were still being spanked (with paddles!) in the public school system.

I managed to make it all the way through 13 years of public school (that includes Kindergarten, obviously) with only getting one paddling.

I had just turned 14; it was at the end of my 8th grade year, 20 years ago: May 1995.

It was a Friday at the end of gym class, during a “free play” day. A bunch of my friends were running towards the wall, then jumping as high as they could, to see how high they could press our feet on the wall.

The wall was built of concrete cinder blocks, so we could easily measure how high we jumped by the grout in between them, using the grout lines to measure the height of where our feet hit the wall.

Turns out, I jumped the highest that day. However, no one bothered to tell me that the gym coach had just warned the other guys that the next person he saw jumping on the wall would be paddled…

So the male gym coach took me to the locker room and paddled me 3 times with a wooden paddle, while the girls’ coach witnessed it.

I could sense she felt awkward being there; knowing I was “the good kid” who was playing the scapegoat that day.

When I emerged from the locker room, having just been hit by a wooden plank on my “bum”, all my friends were lined up waiting to give me a high five and cheer me on.

I suppose it was a perfect way to score some “cool points” just in time to prepare for high school.

The paddling was obviously not effective; especially since I wasn’t aware I was breaking the recently established rule until it was too late.

All it really did was make my friends think I was cool. It was like part of an initiation process, apparently.

Isn’t it bizarre to imagine that paddling (spanking) in the public schools was still going on in our lifetime?

These days, something like that could easily be perceived as harassment or abuse. Right?