Be Excellent To Each Other

Phantom Menace, The.

A decade old in less than six months.

Jesus motherfucking christ, what happened there? And the Matrix!

You get old, suck it up. I don't get the reference to the Phantom Menace making me feel old - I went to the cinema to see SW when it was first released - it's passable as mindless entertainment now, but I don't feel old if I watch it. The Phantom Menace is the most meretricious rubbish imaginable on any metric other than being some Star Wars apologist, and age isn't doing it any favours - having spent 20 mins watching a bit of it on the weekend again it didn't so much make me feel old as depressed about being alive. Lucas cannot write for shit and he can't direct either - he just has money to support a franchise. Anybody who comes back with, "BUT IT'S STAR WARS!!!111!1!1!" can roundly fuck off and grow up.

I think that's rather the point - The Phantom Menace is still mentally one of the shitty 'new' star wars films, yet it's a decade old.

Granted, but considering how much finessing the cunt has done of his legacy in the past decade or so it's easy to get hazy about releases of relevant films. Shit, I think I went to see TPM in the cinema but don't feel old because it was ten years ago - a decade feels about the right amount of time to erase the dispiriting experience so I have no concept of period for the movie, as it were.

Also, Doom is 15 years old today!

It is a bit of a wrench to the senses. I remember that time with great fondness as I was at University, and went down to Cornwall with some friends to see the total Solar eclipse just after The Phantom Menace came out. I was looking forward to the film so much that I wore a black t-shirt with "Episode I" in red lettering on it.

The idea that people born in 1990 went to University this year is also a bit mind bending.

Remember the original Batman film? The one with Michael Keaton?

That's 20 years old next year... yep... 20.

Try working with A-level students. I was in the cinema watching Robin Hood: Prince of Americans when my charges were squealing in a maternity ward somewhere. I'm still cool! I can 'relate'! Watch me do the U-turn, guys. How about that Snoopy Dogg, eh?

Oh fine, fuck off and do your coursework.

NOES!

OOOOOLLLLLLLLLDDDDD

Yep, that (Phantom Menace) does it for me. 10 years! I was well out of university, could still remember Star Wars from the first time round. But 10 years since that seems bonkers - the other things mentioned less so, though when students were born in the 80s was a big deal, so 90s is just oh for crying out loud. One of my reasons for moving from working in a 'conventional' university to a mature students one is the kind of age-drag you get in a conventional one. Academic years come and go, but the students around you stay the same age as you get older - kind of freaked me out.

My mate works for a girly mag and has to write smut-filled interviews with girls born in 1990.

My sister was born in 1990

Darryl turns 17 soon, I must have been about four when I had him.

The lasses on my course are all born in about 1988 and stuff. It's fucking awesome, frankly.

Pics or it didn't happen.

ditto.

I remember seeing Return of teh Jedi at the filks.... but then I was only born in 1974...

I was talking to someone this week about school and realised I left just over 20 years ago. I didn't even go off to work in a coal mine or anything that was after A levels.

That's the kind of stuff that makes me feel old.

I had just got out of hospital after a week-long visit due to a fucked up case of appendicitis. I left the hospital at midday, clutching my stitched up stomach, lit up a fag and went to the pub with a mate, then went to see Phantom Menace at an early afternoon showing.

Fucking hell that was a long time ago.

That's what does it for me, stuff that seems recent, but then you realise was 13 years ago! (My last trip to the US was in '95 yet it feels like about 5 years ago or something).

I think that having kids merges everything into BK and PK (Before Kids, Post Kids) and the PK time period just blurs the years.

Malc

I went to see Phantom Menace on a sunny afternoon with a few friends. We went to Blackpool on the tram, on the way I found half an Ecstacy tablet in my pocket and ate it. We watched the Red Arrows do a display and then went to the cinema. All I could remember of the film was that I couldn't follow the story but that it all seemed incredibly exciting, the most spectacular and exciting thing ever, probably.

Imagine my disappointment the first time I saw it properly.

They should use that as an anti-drug ads. "Drugs fuck you up so badly, you think new Lucas material is good".

Or that drugs are so good that they can even make Jake Lloyd seem like a good actor.

Going round to my friends house and seeing his lounge full of RC planes and telescopes makes me feel old.

Oh ho ho, Mr "I can't come playing skateboards, I have to do dada stuff"

Fuck you. You're a calendar year older than me, so there.

And her phone number is....

Available on postcards in phone boxes.

I was chatting with a Uni friend recently and we both suddenly realised that we've known each other for just over a decade. That seems entirely mental to me. Still, I turn 30 in less than a fortnight, so I require no such reminders that I am becomming an old bastard.

I drunkly explained my remorse at being 30 in ten months to one of the 22 year olds on monday at the ball.

Former Lady Z was born in 1987. I remember when we first started going out two years ago and we went to a pub and started chatting to another random couple in there. One of them asked how old we were, FLZ said "19" and I said "27". At this point, the bloke we were chatted to patted me on the back, shook my hand and loudly exclaimed "Excellent work mate, I was banging a 19 year old when I was 27 too and it was the best thing ever!".

He wasn't wrong though!

You're a bunch of miserable old cunts, most of whom are still in your late twenies or early thirties. Fucking hell people, probability states that at least one of us is going to live for at least another HUNDRED years, so quite frankly pipe the fuck down. You're going to be around for a while longer.

I'm so miserable at the moment, being old and all, I'm not even going to ask you if I can have the link to your blog.

I had the pleasure of sharing a bus journey with a gang of studenty geeks t'other day as they were loudly remembering kids programs form their youth, a conversation I have had myself many times. EXCEPT! In place of bona-fide classics like Knightmare, Pole Position and Funhouse, they were loudly remembering Keenan & Kel and Goosebumps and other such tripe, along with a raft of manga inspired fluff on channels I'd never heard of.

Pole Position was chuffing awesome wasn't it? I used to really like that one.

Mysterious Cities Of Gold ftw, though. And I've got the whole first series of The Real Ghostbusters saved on my computer at home.

MrsA has silly numbers of 80s kids telly on dvd in the garage.

markg fix

For girls, yes. Boys watched Ulysses 31.

Damn you sir!

I used to watch Ulysses 31 too though.

"How about them clangers, eh?"

I keep saying that at college and people look at me, funny. Probably shouldn't do it when discussing murder, though.

Pah the youth of you lot disgusts me. Try coming to terms with the realisation that I went to University 20 years ago this October...when it only seems like last week.

Memory loss, that.

I often think like that, and then think, in 20 years time, will they have the same thoughts, and be berating kids stuff from now?

Malc

So very, very true.

Dropped a clanger? No, sorry. I'll get me coat.

It's.

Well.

Like, when we had people over and someone asked for a cofee, then said "black", without thinking, I muttered 'racist' and then had to explain the whole 'joke' concept to them and they l,ooked at me like i was a loon.

There is a very simple cause and effect thing going on here.

22 feckin years ago...

Ack. Beex bleeding into real life. I have to avoid 'Feex-ing' people out loud and a few 'whatver-dicks' have had to be stuffed back in *Fnar*