1990

Movies, TV and Music

After spending a almost a year without a car, it was nice to have one again so I went to the movies more often.  I had to go see Back to the Future Part III but didn’t find it as good as the first two.  I found Dances with Wolves with Kevin Costner about the slaughter of Native American Indians deeply moving.  The updated Frankenstein movie Edward Scissorhands with Johny Depp amusing. 

There were two “after death” movies Flatliners and Ghosts.  Flatliners had an all-star cast with Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, and Kevin Bacon was about a science experiment which they induced near death experiences to spooky results.  A bit on the scary side but an important movie if you ever play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The second ghost story, Ghost  with Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze in which a woman’s husband is murdered but comes back as a ghost to direct the woman to find the murderer.  It was a sweet movie but kind of sad.

I enjoyed the fun and amusing Joe Versus the Volcano with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan because I always loved any movie with the two of them.  I saw Quigley Down Under with Tom Selleck mainly because I like Selleck from the TV show Magnum P.I. but did find the story about the treatment of Aborigines in Australia informing.   

The Hunt for Red October with Sean Connery about the defection of a Russian submarine crew was reflective of the Cold War times between the U.S. and Soviet Union.  Little did I know at the time that the Soviet Union would collapse the following year.

There were several popular movies that I did not go see.  The Exorcist III came out but I did not go see it.  I had not been to a horror movie since first Exorcist movie.   Rocky V, the fifth in the series was just two much and I hadn’t seen three or four.  The Challenger movie about the space shuttle disaster I couldn’t bring myself to go see, the memory of seeing Challenger blowing up was still fresh in my mind.

TV

I continued to watch Cheers which took the number one show. The CBS news show 60 Minutes was the second most popular show in a time which 90% of the news came from the three big networks, ABC, CBS and NBC although CNN was gaining for those that had cable TV.  All the top 30 TV shows came from the big three networks. There were a lot of family shows on TV that I didn’t watch much, Family Matters, Full House, Who’s the Boss?, Growing Pains to name a few although I did still like The Wonder Years.  I continued to watch Murder, She Wrote, and sometimes Murphy Brown.   

Music

1990 didn’t bring much new for me in music partly due to not being in the car much which is where I mostly listed to new music on the radio.  Julie’s and my commute to work was ten minutes on typical days, fifteen on bad days.  It was nice living and working in Reston.  One notable song from 1990 that I really liked was Tom Petty’s "Free Fallin” which reached number 64 on the charts. An interesting note was that Tom Petty lived in my hometown Gainesville Florida and went to Gainesville High School a few years before me.

The Holidays