80's Movies Weekend

My wife went to girls camp a couple weeks back, leaving me home alone with the kids for 4 days. It wasn't so bad really. People from church watched the kids during the day while I was at work and I had enough time saved up that I didn't even have to go to work on Friday. Evenings were the only really boring part.

My wife and I have always spent our evenings together: watching television or a movie, reading a book, playing games, going over the budget (*cringe* I hate those nights, they're so boring!), or whatever else suited our fancy. It wasn't until recently that I realized that not all couples do this. Some spend their evenings separately, choosing their own diversions. Having not had this practice, it was actually kind of difficult to find something to do with myself in the evenings. I didn't want to watch one of the movies we'd checked out from the library because I knew my wife would want to see it too and we'd watch it together when she got home. Ditto with our television shows. Games are pretty boring by myself and there was no way I was doing the budget unless I had to.

So I did the dishes. And cleaned the kitchen. And tackled my running list of odd jobs around the house that it takes me a while to get to because they rank just higher than doing the budget. By Thursday night, though, I was bored. Since I wasn't going to work on Friday, it was the beginning of my weekend too, so I felt like I needed something special. I took the kids to the library on the way home from the sitter's house and I perused the DVD racks for a movie that my wife wouldn't mind missing. I struck gold. I found The Last Starfighter and The Karate Kid.

I remember seeing and enjoying both when I was younger but I didn't remember much about either besides the crane kick at the end of karate kid. Both were fun, but The Last Starfighter was definitely the better of the two for me; the acting was much better, which is really saying something for an 80's sci-fi flick. That isn't to say that it was a cinematic masterpiece. The computer graphics were groundbreaking at the time but, as with so many special effects decades later, now they just look laughable. The martial arts in The Karate Kid probably looked impressive when I was 8 but last weekend I couldn't help thinking that Jet Li could have destroyed everybody in that movie. At the same time. Twice. Plus that kid seriously bugged me. I just wanted to smack him a lot of the time.

What was also a lot of fun was watching the Making of documentaries on the discs, which were filmed much more recently and featured some of the original cast members, none of whom has had a starring role in 20 years. In retrospect, it probably wasn't hard to get them to do the documentaries for the special edition DVDs. It's not like they were busy with anything else. Speaking of people who'd gone downhill, though, when I realized that at 11:30pm on a Friday night I was watching the bonsai documentary from the special features section on The Karate Kid, I decided it was a good thing my wife was coming home the next day.

Sawdust and Gasoline

A while ago, as I was parking my car at work, I noticed some workers across the road cutting down trees and shrubs with chainsaws. I caught the aroma of sawdust and gasoline which immediately reminded me of my dad. He used to smell just like that when he would come in from working outside. He spent a lot of time using his chainsaw to cut up fallen trees from the forest in our backyard for fire wood. That smell was usually the precursor to a cold hand down the back of your shirt while you were sitting on the couch watching Saturday morning cartoons. That meant it was time to go haul wood up the hill and, no, in case you were brave enough to ask, it didn't matter that Batman was tied up and the Joker was about to blow up Wayne Manor.

Because of my dad, I have an irrational desire to own a chainsaw. It doesn't matter that I have absolutely no use for one. In my mind, you just can't be a good father unless you cut stuff up and make your kids carry it. Also because of my dad, I learned how to split and chop wood, which is uber-impressive if you ever happen to be dating a farm girl.

Maybe that's why the memories evoked by sawdust and gasoline made me smile. The missed cartoons weren't important like they were when I was ten but the lessons I learned instead were. And even more so, the man that taught them to me. Thanks, Dradums.

...and dibs on the chainsaw.