Crosswalks to Nowhere

We had a very nice Thanksgiving weekend-- it started with Craig and Megan's visit Wednesday night as they were on their way down to Indiana. We broke open a Mommessin Beaujolais Nouveau, which was very nice despite the plastic bottle. :-)

On Thursday we went to my parents' house and enjoyed a great dinner including Lisa's secret cranberry sauce and a new version of Magic Pumpkin Pie. My sister and her kids were there, so even though Becca and Emma weren't there, there were still other little voices in the house.

I went into the office on Friday as I usually do, mainly because I can actually get something done on that day. I typically hate going out for the Black Friday madness, but this year I did wind up at Best Buy since it's walking distance from my office, and I managed to knock off a little Christmas shopping. There weren't long lines, but people were spending money.

An interesting side note: as I approached the store at around 8:30 am, I could see the line of trash left by the people who waited alongside the building earlier that day. Clearly, Dunkin' Donuts was the preferred refreshment, given the number of cups and bags left behind that bore their logo.

Around noon, Lisa came and picked me up and we took off for her folks' house. The 94/65 junction in Indiana is fully repaired and open, so we whizzed right through to the land of $1.50 per gallon gasoline.

We broke tradition this year and missed the annual Arlington Heights Tree Lighting Event, but we've more than made up for it with our previous attendance.

We arrived in Frankfort on Friday evening, and spent the next couple days eating, playing Tripoley and Scrabble and watching this year's Apple Butter video.

We had our first Chick-Fil-A experience in Lafayette on the way home. We were there on "All You Can Eat Nuggets" night, but we didn't partake. Our verdict: good, but not really exceptional.

On Sunday, we had breakfast at TNT and then picked up our Christmas tree at Lowe's. I know, it's not exactly the Currier and Ives image of cutting down our own tree in a snowy woodlands, but our feet stayed dry and we wound up with a really fresh tree.

The holiday season has officially begun.

We got a few inches of snow today, which makes it feel a lot like Christmas.

All of our decorations are up, and we've dragged out the Dickens, as Tom Lehrer once sang.

I also got out some of my old Dennis the Menace "Pocket Full of Fun" digests. The frame above comes from the 1972 "Xmas Xtra" collection. My original copy disappeared years ago, but I picked up a nearly-complete collection from an eBay seller.

More of the season to follow!

Tonight, Lisa and I watched the 1978 movie FM on VH-1 Classic.

This is a time capsule of the late 1970s, complete with feathered hair on the guys, perms on the women, and a plotline about Sticking It To The Man, 'Cause He Just Doesn't Get It.

The movie centers around the operations at a Los Angeles radio station, QSKY. The station's owners send a new salesman to LA to goose up their ad revenues, and QSKY's management and air staff are resistant to their evil, capitalistic ways. After refusing to air some ads for the Army, station manager Jeff Dugan (Michael Brandon) quits and there's a fan-and-DJ revolt, resulting in the station going under siege.

If some of this sounds familiar, it's because the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati was written around the same basic premise. Supposedly, the movie and TV show had nothing to do with each other-- the WKRP pilot was shot before FM was released. Interesting coincidence, though. (The "station under siege" device was also used in the 1994 movie Airheads.)

Martin Mull was early in his career when he played a DJ in the cast of FM; his character is simply an extension of the "Barth Gimble" character he played on Fernwood/America 2-Night. Eileen Brennan plays "Mother," a 40-something evening DJ, and Cleavon Little plays the overnight DJ, Venus Flytrap "The Prince of Darkness" (sorry, there's that 'KRP influence again).

The movie also features cameos by REO Speedwagon, Tom Petty, Jimmy Buffett (looking like he's around age 20), and a soundtrack that you could program any soft-rock station by, although I put nearly every track here on the Songs-I'll-Never-Need-To-Hear-Ever-Again-As-Long-As-I-Live list. I get the impression that many people are unaware that the Steely Dan song "FM" was actually written as the title track for this movie.

(As an aside, it's worth pointing out the soundtrack's album cover was designed by John Kosh, the guy responsible for drawing about 90% of the album covers released in the late 70s and early 80s.)

The movie itself is passable; I don't recommend going out of your way to view it unless you want to see what life was like in 1978. That said...

Those of you who know me may recall that I had a bit of an infatuation with Linda Ronstadt around this time. FM features a concert performance by Ms. Ronstadt, which was enough to get me into the theatre and sit through this thing. She sings a cover of The Rolling Stones' "Tumbling Dice" that pretty much makes up for everything we had to watch on the screen up to that point.

I saw the movie in the theatre when it opened in April of 1978. When I went back a week later, it had already closed. It would occasionally pop up on cable and eventually came out on DVD, but by then it was already terribly dated with one exception: the whole story line about turning radio into something focused entirely on profit turned out to be spot-on.

It's quite a little time capsule, though.

Here's wishing everyone the happiest and all the best the New Year has to offer.

Your regularly scheduled blogging will resume next week. :-)