Lesson Learned, People

So, a few months ago, my bro and LVN and yours truly all came up with a plan to use the plot from Back to the Future II: No Subtitle Necessary in order to make our millions without having to put forth all kinds of yucky effort. Well, news of our plans has gotten around, and the bigwigs at ABC Family aired the poorly edited version of BTTF2 today as a kind of message. And let me tell you, message received loud and clear. You guys, the one thing we didn't think of was the paradox we would create if the descendant of our arch-nemesis somehow got wind of our plans and access to our time machine and went back to squeal to his ancestor. We were so blind!

Also, and this may be the after-effects of eating two dinners last night, but I think Back to the Future II was sort of the Nostradamus of 1989. Bear with me, y'all. If you're only looking at the surface, they really got so few things right that it's more of a projection of 1991 than 2015, as it is supposed to be. Everything is neon and spandex, the only non-score music that you hear is Michael Jackson's Beat It being played in an 80's themed cafe, people ride around on skateboards (that happen to hover), wear hightops, and drive vaguely more streamlined Chevys that float around about a foot off the asphalt.

Probably the most noticeable actual differences between now (2010, so kinda close to 2015 really) and 1985 (confusingly the setting of the movie which was actually made in 1989) are smart phones and the internet. Everybody owns at least one personal computer (which seems like a really quaint term to refer to something like an ipad...), people listen to mp3s, and are never without their "phone" (another antiquated term. it feels like i'm referring to a copy as a 'ditto' here). The makers of this movie were in such a small creative box that the only futuristic thing they could think of was that all transportation should take place 12 inches higher than it currently does. Oh, and communication happens on 48-inch pull-down projector screens (already existed in 1989) and via 6 fax machines per room (1/6 of which was already happening in 1989). The movie moguls should have totally consulted the then-8-year-old Professa' before moving forward on filming. Even Zach Morris had a (behemoth) cell phone by 1989. You are in serious trouble when Saved by the Bell shows more foresight than you.

But when you are coastin' on a double-dinner hangover, you don't just look at the surface of an epic like the Back to the Future Trilogy. If we just looked at the surface of Nostradamus's Prophecies, we woulda been like "oh look, this nutjob wrote a quatrain. that's freakin' adorable." And then where would we have been? No, instead we analyzed and interpreted, and 12 hours after it was too late, we were all like, "Billy Mays is going to die of head trauma! Forsooth! It has been told!"
And thus, we must apply the same wisdom to this movie, NAY...documentary.

The filmmakers were not that shortsighted after all. For all the money we've poured into researching alternate fuel sources and public transportation and energy conservation, what have we come up with? The ecological equivalent of cars that float a foot off the ground. Point, Zemeckis.
As embarrassed as we all claim to be of 80's and early 90's popular fashions, what's in style now? aviator RayBans and rad neon leggings. even shoulder pads have slid right past the noses of the editors at Vogue a time or two.

Touche, Zemeckis!
As for internet, hallmark of the future (present), how much different really is email from a room equipped with 6 fax machines? Pretty good one, Zemeckis.
And the final Prophetic symbol, the grand-McFlys all sit around the dinner table, eating their rehydrated pizza, chatting on their video-phone glasses...or you might say, their "eye"phones. IPHONES, PEOPLE!! ZEMECKIS PREDICTED THE TOTAL DOMINATION OF THE IPHONE! ZZZZEEEEMMMMEEEEECCCCKKKKIIIIISSSS!!!!!
Whoa.

Watching this movie on ABC Family meant that every fifteen minutes I was assaulted by iCarly and Secret Life of the American Teenager previews, and this may also have contributed to the deeper enjoyment I drew from the film. Rather than the actual present-day (where sixteen year old girls are paid millions to star in low-quality shows that attract millions of tween fans, then they use their millions to buy progressively shorter shorts until they inevitably release a hit cd, then they make the career switch at seventeen to "producing" so that they can be replaced by the next girl in the cycle), the movie depicts an anachronistic Present-Day Lite, where Pepsi is now called Pepsi Perfect, and we no longer have to waste precious energy putting on our shoes, because our hightops have PowerLaces. Plus, Michael Jackson should be the only artist played in public places. And you'd never see Elisabeth Shue trying to release a pop album. She's a lady.
Thesis Statement: Don't even bother with Back to the Future 3. You'll thank me later. It is basically just a Prophecy that Wild West and the Quick and the Dead should ALSO not have been made into movies. Don't ignore Prophecies, people.
Supporting Afterthought: Save those double dinner opportunities for special occasions and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban marathons, also strangely on ABC Family.

Freebirds

I've been meaning to have an opinion on Freebird's World Burrito for quite some time now, but I think I'm just now getting around to it. I mean, it ain't no Rico's, that much I know.
I can't tell if I like Freebirds and their anti-corporate corporation, their hippy/redneck flavor, or if my DT's due to lack of guacamole are just making me think that I do. Either way, I go. I order my half bird with steak. I pay extra for guacamole. I pay $5.25 (pre-guacamole tax) for what passes as a meal. It beats paying nearly ten bucks for a monster, a tortilla piled so high with crap that it takes the fat man who orders it four bites just to penetrate the foil wrapping.
I go and I eat and I'm vaguely certain that I enjoy it. It's just that I've been to one location in Austin, one in Dallas (on Greenville Ave. and Lovers Ln.), and one in College Station (if ever a city could be categorized as a "total fucking mindfuck, bro") and each location is exactly the same as the next, from the half brick, half cement walls, to the foil sculptures left on the bricks by customers, to the giant Statue of Liberty on a Harley holding a burrito instead of a torch. I mean, if I had just gone to one, I might have been fooled into thinking it was unique, a novel place, where college kids can rediscover what tortilla-wrapped edibles should be.
But I didn't stop at one. Nay, I got hooked on their backwards F logo. I saw it, high on a shopping center marquee and I salivated. I imbibed again and again, until resistance was futile; I was no longer a consumer, but a puppet, controlled by a half-bird with no cheese. So do I still go to Freebird's? Of course. Do I enjoy it? maybe. But do I choose to eat their burritos? Quite the contrary. The burritos chose me.
(Wow. Pot really DOES affect yer brain.)
Also, if you're still interested, you can order your Birds online! They'll be waiting for you ten minutes later at your favorite location. Bitchin'.