Out of the past

Pretty much wiped out--23.65 miles on the stationary bicycle will do that--and feeling a touch nostalgic today, which is why you get the embedded music video. While driving around at lunchtime I landed on a radio station playing "the next generation of classic rock". (Translation: the music that was on AOR stations during my formative years.) I haven't heard these songs in a long time and own next to none of it, so I was sent on a bit of mental time traveling at the sound of Guns N' Roses, Tesla, and Def Leppard.

To add to that, seeing the new movie Super 8, opening Friday at a theater near you, pressed all the right buttons for me, not the least of which is it being set in a fictional town that's virtually where I grew up. Brookville, which is five miles from my hometown, is name dropped. Greenville, which is twenty miles away, hosts some scenes, although it's at a fictional Air Force base. I suppose they avoided having the characters go to Wright-Patterson because that's more urban.

Of course, there are a couple of major slip-ups, not that anyone is going to notice or care about them. (These are nitpicks for me to make because I know where they're talking about.) Belmont County is referenced, which is on the other side of the state rather than being adjacent to Montgomery County. Much of the film was shot in West Virginia, so maybe it's a nod to the area where production took place. The hilly landscape is not at all like the flat part of Ohio that I'm from.

The houses, inside and outside, all felt very familiar, though. The main characters are about twice as old as I would have been in 1979, but I confess to watching hungrily for props, production design, and anything else that I'd recognize. But there I go, getting all sentimental.