Eric’s Blog

I got up this morning glad it was Saturday and ready to take on the day. And by take on the day, I had absolutely no plans to do anything…at…all.

You see, the wife and my daughter have color guard practice Saturday mornings from 9-noon. So after I got up, washed my face, made a cuppa tea and an English muffin, I decided to figure out what to do with myself.

I started off by listening to a book on Audible that I’d downloaded, American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I listened to that for a half-an-hour while I munched my muffin and sipped my tea and tried to figure out what I’d do with myself the rest of the day. It’s a great book, but I wasn’t in the mood to sit and pay attention for more than 30 minutes, so after breakfast, I turned off the book, I sat down at my desk, got my typewriter out and started clacking away on that.

I’ve been working to improve my writing skills, and from what I’ve found, there’s no better way to improve them than to just do it. So I typed for a few hours on a personal journal and suddenly, an old thought that I haven’t thought of in an extremely long time came to mind.

I’d suddenly remembered the old toy typewriter that my parents had given me as a kid. It was beige plastic with brown buttons and metal striker heads. I hadn’t thought of that typewriter, as I said, in years. In fact, I’d almost forgotten all about it. I thought I might have been having delusions, so I texted my Mom and Dad and asked them if they remembered it and Mom responded before I’d set my phone down that she did remember it. I guess now it’s just a question of if my Dad held onto it and put it somewhere in the attic and could find it.

Not that I’d use it, but it’s cool that after all these years, my brain somehow remembered the typewriter that I used to play with and clack away on. It made me start to think about how things when I was a kid seemed to be better than they somehow are. Albeit, things today are better than they ever have been. We humans are living in the best times that have ever existed. We’re all living more for pleasure than we ever have in the history of our species, nay our planet.

And yet, there are so many anachronisms around us that people grow nostalgic for and gravitate towards more than ever. I was sitting at my Grandmother’s kitchen table, now much smaller than I ever remember it being (how did she fit all that food on it when we were kids?). I use it as a desk in my front sitting room/office area. On the filing cabinet next to me is the clock that she also owned that somehow found its way into my home. On the other side of me sitting on the hutch is a record player that is the gift I got my wife for Christmas this year.

On that was a vintage LP of Bye Bye Birdie spinning right-round-baby-right-round with Ann-Margaret crooning about One Boy. Among some of the other LPs that we have is an original pressing of the US version of Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles, and an original Thriller from the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. There are a more re-pressings than there are original albums, Queen’s News of the World, Elvis Presley‘s Greatest Hits, myriad albums from The Beach Boys, Oasis, and the Bee Gees.

This got me thinking that this seemed to be the year of the retro-Christmas. I’d gotten a vintage 1945 Smith-Corona typewriter in mind condition. She got a record player with some vintage and non-vintage records. And we weren’t the only ones that had a vintage holiday! My Dad dug the trains out of the attic for the first time in years and got them running again. He had me pick up some switch track at the antique store for him and send it to him so he could set the trains up for Lincoln and Piper (my nephew and niece) who were going to be in the area for the holidays. He even bought a new hustler engine for the train set on ebay for $5 and another engine we found in an antique toy store for another $5.

Yes, we humans are living our best lives, and the best part of it all? People my age who work in mainstream media are bringing back the awesomeness that was our childhood!

There are shows on television that are all based in the 80’s and 90’s. Look at The Goldbergs; it’s a show about a kid who grew up in Philadelphia, PA in the 80’s and basically had every toy imaginable! On one episode, he had the aircraft carrier from G.I. Joe, another, he has the Castle Greyskull from He-Man! Full disclosure, I had that one, and it’s still at my parent’s house! The best part is, the kid was a nerd about pop-culture, movies, and other aspects of life in the 80’s. The only difference between him and me is that it seems his parents had a lot more money for all the things, where ours were a bit more frugal.

The show is so successful, it’s already had a spin-off following one of the ancillary characters through college and into her career as a high school music teacher at the same school where she went to high school. It goes into the fads of the 90’s; Beanie-Babies, Turbo Man from Jingle All The Way, POGs, ALF, etc. It’s just a great trip down memory lane for anyone who grew up either in that area, or during that time-frame and I was both! Well, more central PA than Philly, but you get the idea. Both shows have covered all the things I was in love with as a kid, Laser Tag, Ghostbusters, Transformers, The Karate Kid, Double Dare, Nickelodeon, WWF, Nintendo, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Star Trek, and countless others.

It is a great time to be alive. There are so many things that are coming back. I saw the Ghostbusters trailer the other day. It appears fans weren’t too happy with the last movie that came out and the cry has been heard by the powers that be. They’re making the new movie set in current times (about 30 years after all the supernatural happenings in NYC from the two original films). Egon has died (in real life and in the setting of the movie), and it appears his grandkids find all the Ghostbusters equipment at his farm house after his passing, including Ecto-1. I’m sure something will happen where ghosts will show up on the scene, and Paul Rudd, who appears to be a self- proclaimed Ghost-nerd/science teacher in the film will surely lead the new generation of Ghostbusters to victory over the demons from hell. It looks to be a great trip down memory lane and the surviving cast members from the original films will be on hand to pass the torch.

I don’t get too upset about things that come out and change things that I love. Like I said earlier, people hated the all female cast of Ghostbusters. I didn’t have a problem with the movie, it just added to the universe where those characters and events take place. The only issue I had was when the female Ghostbusters aim at the crotch of a (male?) ghost to “hit him where it hurts!” Other than that, it took nothing away from the original movies for me. It had a few good laughs, and they paid quite a bit of homage to the original cast, characters, and stories which I thought was classy.

It does make me think that some times we are just out of good ideas though. The Goldbergs is really just an updated version of The Wonder Years complete with reflective and omnipotent voice-over taking us through each episode.

The new Star Wars films were great, but they definitely felt like a generational passing of the torch to a new cast and crew. Heck, every main character save Chewie and the Droids either died or said they were never going to reprise their roles ever again. Some of the cast even died in real life and their children carried on the torch. Carrie Fisher’s daughter was in the last film and stood in as a body double for her mom on a few occasions.

The reason I bring all this up is because I wonder how difficult it would be to get some of the ideas I have for stories into the world. Everything that I love seems to have already been done. Even the story about the NPC in the video game starring Ryan Reynolds was an idea I had at once and now it’s going to be a major motion picture.

I feel like every-time I come up with an idea, someone else either has already done it, or it’s just not good enough to be in the mainstream. A few years ago when I was learning how to make beer, I thought it would be cool to open up my own brew-pub/brewery, and now look, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one of those places! They’re everywhere!

It would be nice to have a few of my ideas make it to the big-time. But, until I come up with one that hasn’t already been done, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to write when I feel like writing, and I’m going to write about what I like to write about. Maybe that next big idea is just around the corner waiting for someone to find it. Maybe I’ll never be a big writer and as sad as that seems, I guess it’s okay too. I’m honestly just happy to be alive and living in the best time ever!