Goonies R Gone E’Nuff

I’m currently sitting at a Toyota dealership writing this on my phone. My truck let me know I have a wonky tire this morning and I’m driving to Atlanta in a couple of days for Shaky Knees Music Festival. There’s some screaming bastard on the television talking about sports. Side note: I’ve never been one of those men who watch every single televised sporting event. I’ve sure as hell never been one of those men who fills in the gaps by watching Sports Center. There’s more to life than sports, oh cavemen of the post pandemic apocalypse. Kiss your wife, kick your dog, or pat little Billy on the head. The world is collapsing around you.

Also, the Toyota dealership claimed I didn’t have tire coverage. Bitch, please. Do you think my wife would’ve left the dealership without it? We live in Dallas, Texas where throwing nails, screws, and glass into the street is a status symbol! Don’t make me call her, Toyota. You’re not ready for that conversation at 9am on a Tuesday morning.

Also, also…

I just sneezed in public and people reacted like I’d thrown a grenade. Do you think society is a little gun shy? They should be. It’s coming back. Trust me.

I watched The Goonies last night for the first time since childhood. I viewed it repeatedly as a kid, but last night was the first time I’d watched it as an adult. It made me sad. Not the movie itself, but the meaning behind it all. Friendship.

Kids today will never know what it’s like to be a part of a close knit group like that, exploring the unknown as an inseparable team or going on bicycle adventures. It doesn’t exist anymore and it all began long before COVID.

The movie never bothers to explain any of those kids’ back stories and it didn’t need to. They were all 80’s stereotypical personalities that would be seen time and time again through my movie viewing childhood. The adventurous leader, the muscle, the love interest, the nerd, the loudmouth narcissist, the techie, and the cowardly chubb. You’ll never guess which one I was in my group of friends.

If that movie were to take place today, those kids would never have met each other face to face, and the adventure would’ve taken place on a Minecraft server. As boring as that sounds, some movie exec has pitched the idea. Not this week, because the writer’s guild is on strike again, but it wouldn’t shock me if a film along those lines was released on Hulu or Netflix at some point. I still can’t help looking at streaming services as the place where Hollywood dreams go to die.

Gone are the days of gathering at arcades or friend’s houses to see who kicks the most ass on 4 player split screen Goldeneye. The woods? Most modern children don’t even know what they smell like. A quest? Only with their thumbs on a Playstation controller. Adventure? Excitement? A modern-day armchair Jedi craves not these things…because they’re hard. There isn’t an app for that.

What are today’s kids going to fantasize about when they hit fifty? Their youth? There’s no way it’s even worth the energy to recollect. I weep for the future, but long for the past. Let’s face it. The present is a horror film where everyone dies. Cabin In The Woods? It’s basically The Goonies with blood mixed in. You know I’m right.

It’s all over the moment we ride up Troy’s bucket or something like that.

Peace…