Tag Archives: Eddie and the Cruisers

Out of the Dark

1 Jul

When my old laptop died, I had to get another one. There was no way I was going to know what to get, so I asked my nephew. Under his guidance, I bought a Mac, and it is a cool piece of machinery. It has all kinds of bells and whistles that I have no idea how to use. However, there is one thing that is mega-cool. The keyboard lights up.

That means I can work in the dark, and, as I have always said, I do some of my best work in the dark. Some people refer to my office as a cave because there is only a single bulb burning. More than once, a security person has stopped by because they thought I had left my door open by accident.

I have always liked the dark. Nights are better than days. Staying up late is better than getting up early. It could be the mystery of the dark that fascinates me. You cannot really tell everything that is going on. People do things differently in the dark than they do in the light. Simply, darkness is a favorite of mine.

Just think about all of the cool stuff that is associated with the dark.

The Dark Knight (Batman at his best.)

Dark Chocolate (Good stuff.)

It was a dark and stormy night. (Every book should begin this way.)

Cinemax After Dark (I got cable in my room way too soon.)

Darkman (Alright, this one is a little obscure. If you think Liam Neeson was a badass in Taken, then you should see him in this.)Darkman

Dark Shadows (Think of it as Phantom of the Soap Opera.)

Dark Night (A great song by The Blasters. Everyone should give it a listen.)

Dark Horse (Not the Katy Perry song. I am talking about that person who comes from nowhere to achieve greatness.)

The Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd made what could be the greatest album of all time.)Dark Side

The Dark Tower (A series of books by Stephen King about Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger.)Dark Tower

On The Dark Side (A song from Eddie and the Cruisers that was actually performed by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.)

See, there are a lot of great things that come out of the dark.

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The Conspiracy of Michael Pare’s Acting Career

21 Dec

A while back, I got caught up in a movie-themed stream of consciousness that brought to mind several movies that would not be considered classics. Like a good blogger, I wrote a post about it. A few days ago that same movie-themed stream of consciousness hit me again as I was flipping through the guide.

It was late. Necole was asleep, but I wasn’t at that point yet. That’s when I came upon The Philadelphia Experiment, a 1984 movie starring Michael Pare. There is supposed to be one of those lines over the E in his last name, but I can’t figure out how to do that. Anyway, Pare is a sailor during World War II, and his ship is being put through an experiment. That navy is trying to make it invisible to radar. Instead, they make it completely invisible. When the ship returns, all sorts of strangeness has taken place. Some people have become part of the ship. Pare and this other guy are luckier. They get thrown into the 1980s.Philadelphia Experiment

It’s typical of a 1980s time travel movie except for one thing. A lot of people think this really happened. There are a lot of famous conspiracy theories out there, but this is one that flies under the radar. I suppose that’s a pun. Anyway, there is this idea that a World War II experiment made a ship vanish into thin air and return with all kinds of messed up stuff, and the government has been keeping it a secret all of these years.

I watched the beginning of the movie, but my mind drifting to best of all Michael Pare movies, Eddie and the Cruisers.Eddie and the Cruisers

Made in 1983, this movie follows a reporter who is doing a story about a long dead singer from the 1950s. She interviews the members of his band and learns some interesting things. There is a recording that has never been released, and someone claiming to be Eddie is trying to get that recording. Is Eddie alive? Is Eddie dead? It’s a mystery. Wait, it’s a conspiracy.

That’s went it hit me. Did the navy make a ship disappear? Did a singer survive a wreck and live the rest of his life in obscurity? Michael Pare was the king of conspiracy movies, and that answers a question for which I have always wanted to know the answer. Why did Houston Knights, Pare’s television series, not make it?

This show had it all. There was a Chicago cop working in a city that is strange to him. His partner is a local boy who knows his way around Houston.Houston Knights

They fight crime while one tries to figure out where he is and the other one laughs at him about it. How could a show like that misfire? It has to be a conspiracy. Hell, Michael Pare’s career is filled with conspiracies.

There’s more. An actor named John Hancock also appeared in the series, and there has to be a lot of conspiracy theories involving the original John Hancock. After all, he was a Founding Father, and everyone knows they were up to their eyeballs in the Freemasons.

There’s also this. Michael Beck, who was the second part of the cop buddy system, starred in Megaforce, a 1982 movie about a secret group of elite soldiers who fight evil around the world. These guys have it all. Flying motorcycles. Cool spandex uniforms. A giant cave hideout in the middle of the desert. They have names like Ace, Dallas and Sixkiller. What else can you ask for in a movie?Megaforce 2

I’ll tell you what else you could ask for – Michael Pare. He should have been in it. That would have been three years in a row of conspiracy movies and made him the super king of the genre. Think about it.

Megaforce in 1982.

Eddie and the Cruisers in 1983.

The Philadelphia Experiment in 1984.

With that under his belt, Houston Knights would have made it past two seasons and become a classic. Instead, it fell victim to its own conspiracy. If a Michael Pare vehicle doesn’t involve a conspiracy, then no one will accept it.

Anyway, that’s the kind of stuff that runs through my mind while flipping through the television guide late at night.

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Movie Wisdom – Ellen Barkin Edition

13 Aug

At times, movies can offer words for us to live by – bits of wisdom that we would do well to take with us after the credits roll. Throughout the life of this blog, the movies of several performers have been analyzed for such nuggets. These have been Burt Reynolds, Don Knotts, Kevin Costner, Paul Newman, George Peppard, Don Johnson, Jodie Foster and Tommy Lee Jones.

Usually, these take place after I have watched a movie and thought to myself, “Hey, that was a pretty good line.” The other day, I caught the end of one of the all time great movies, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, and thought to myself, “Hey, that was a pretty good line.”

Then, I thought about whose career could be analyzed for more words of wisdom. I haven’t seen that many Peter Weller movies, and the rules state that I must have seen a movie to use it. Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Lloyd were options. However, one person has appeared in a couple of movies that I can watch over and over. For that reason, this post explores the wisdom within the movies of Ellen Barkin.Ellen Barkin

From Diner

If you don’t have good dreams you got nightmares.

From Eddie and the Cruisers

There’s nothing can’t be fixed.

From The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

You can check your anatomy all you want, and even though there may be normal variation, when it comes right down to it, this far inside the head it all looks the same.

Don’t be mean; we don’t have to be mean, cuz, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

Pictures don’t lie.

History is-a made at night. Character is what you are in the dark.

From The Big Easy

New Orleans is a marvelous environment for coincidence.

From Wild Bill

You ought to know better than to touch another man’s hat.

Whiskey’s good for a man… helps him put things in perspective.

A man that cheats at cards ain’t got no religion.

From Ocean’s Thirteen

The moment you become embarrassed of who you are, you lose yourself.

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Events of the Evening

30 Nov

This was going to be a simple evening. After work and a waxing, the plan was to head to my girlfriend’s house to decorate the Christmas tree. Work went well. The waxing went well, if slightly painful. Then, it was time for the fun to start. And, start it did.

First, I get a call from the fairgrounds. I am on the oversight committee, and a meeting had been called at the last-minute to discuss an upcoming event. Wait, it’s not really an upcoming event. It’s an event that we hope is upcoming. Right away, obstacles were being thrown into my path, but this one was easily handled. I didn’t go to the meeting.

Excitement abounds.

Excitement abounds.

The drive to her house was pleasant. It’s a winding road that goes through the countryside. The deer were not out yet, so there was not danger that I would run over a large animal. However, there was the danger that I would get caught behind a tractor, and that danger presented itself.

One of the hazards of living in the South.

One of the hazards of living in the South.

After some slow going, I made it to her house with the anticipation of eating good pizza and hanging good ornaments. Then, I heard the news. Her cousin, the hair stylist (in the old days they were called hair dressers), was coming over to work on my girlfriend’s hair. I decided to take a nap.

I’m not sure how long the nap lasted, but, for some reason, I dreamed that I was in an old timey beauty shop with women talking and those big hair dryers blowing. You know, the ones that women would sit under.

Take us to your leader.

Take us to your leader.

Anyway, I was awakened from this dream and told that it was time to get the pizza. At the pizza place, the guy was full of questions. My girlfriend lives in a really small town where everyone knows everyone else. He didn’t know me. After answering his questions satisfactorily, I was allowed to leave with the pizza.

When I got to the house, we scarfed the pizza down, and, with the hair far from being done, I hopped onto the iPad. Through the next couple of hours, I randomly went through the Internet and looked up the following:

The cast of Megaforce, a great 1980s movie starring Barry Bostwick

Yes, it is a flying motorcycle. Never say movies of the 80s were not classics.

Yes, it is a flying motorcycle. Never say movies of the 80s were not classics.

The farewell speech by Richard Nixon on the last day as president

His father had the poorest lemon farm in California.

His father had the poorest lemon farm in California.

The best songs of Eddie and the Cruisers

SPOILER: Eddie lives.

SPOILER: Eddie lives.

The previews for several episodes of The American Experience, with a special focus on George Armstrong Custer

During Custer's Last Stand, I don't think he was standing.

During Custer’s Last Stand, I don’t think he was standing.

The last speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The night before his tragic assassination, Martin Luther King said that he had "seen the Promised Land".

The night before his tragic assassination, Martin Luther King said that he had “seen the Promised Land”.

There was more, but you get the point. I was all over the place. Then, my girlfriend brought her cousin into the room so I could tell her about Abraham Lincoln. We saw Lincoln last night, and my girlfriend didn’t understand why politicians were debating about outlawing slavery at the end of the Civil War when the war was being fought to end slavery.

I am not going to get into a big historical discussion here, but I had to explain that the Civil War was not as simple as many people have been taught.

I write all of that to write this: I went to my girlfriend’s house to decorate the tree, and we did everything but decorate the tree. After she got her hair colored, she spent the rest of the night fretting over how bad it looked. After filling my mind with Internet info, I was fretting over my head beginning to hurt.

In the end, we decided to go ahead and decorate the tree. We didn’t know when we would be able to do it again, and we knew that her daughter would be disappointed if we didn’t do what we had planned on.

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