If you’ve wondered what I’ve been up to during my long hiatus from this site, the answer is “trying to enjoy and reconnect with things without feeling like I have to mine them for content.”
What kinds of things?
A lot of shit from first three decades on earth, where imperfect memories and rosy nostalgia needed a reality check. Videogames, comics, books, music, and midden pickings such as Deadly Lessons…
…a 1983 ABC made-for-TV movie with an incredible cast and some dubious decisions.
Donna Reed! Ally Sheedy! Larry Wilcox! Diane Franklin! Bill Paxton! Rick Rossovich! It’s as if the Love Boat crashed into a Hemdale movie production!
Mostly though, it’s an odd artifact of what happened when the made-for-TV movie hunger to bite some cultural trend — in this case the “slasher at an all-girls school” horror thriller — grappled with the need to square things with the wholesome-ish standnards of prime time network TV.
No gore. No titty flashing. No cuss words or anything within the same galactic sector of a R-rating. Just a whole lot of familiar faces going through the bowdlerized motions as genre cliches demand.
In short, it’s a fucking hoot and a half.
Recommended listening: Welcome to the house of fun.
