What PLAYER ONES are you READYING?

Expendables 2 had a better cast and that's the only reason to watch any of them.

JCVD was the boss.
I haven't seen the third, was Jackie Chan in that one?

EDIT: back to RPO...it's not all 80s though. Iron Giant. that Firefly ship. It's more the 'history of the Internet' or whatever like that article points out. Either way, none of these things are used for anything deeper than naming them and making you think you like the book because they're 'featured'.

I lived with a lot of fear in the 80s from the cold war and nuclear annihilation.

YES. It wasn’t all He-Man and The Goonies. This was a very big part of my childhood. I had nightmares about nuclear war. One I remember distinctly was that I was looking at a newspaper and then the US and Russia had reached an agreement to mutually nuke 5 cities in each country. There was a map of the cities under consideration and Atlanta was one of them.

I remember watching The Day After and it just terrified me. I was scared to watch Threads or Testament. Even the beginning of The Road Warrior upset me because back then, nuclear war seemed almost inevitable. It was not a funny joke about North Korea or a campy Fallout thing.

When I started listening to Discharge, Exploited, Nuclear Assault, even Metallica...all of that nuclear holocaust imagery really resonated with me. It’s easy to listen to “Fight Fire with Fire” or “Let’s Start a War” now with a sense of irony, but all of that was very real in the 80s...and not fun.

But I guess the wraparound sunglasses and pastel blazers are the 80s for most people.

I'm sure I've mentioned it in the past, but I lived nine of those ten years in on military bases West Germany...with routine evacuation drills for civilians. That sort of day to day and, of course, media as mentioned such as The Day After...had a young Mr. White spending more than one tearful night not wanting his parents and brother to die.

However, sucks though it does, and thankfully we didn't blow each other up, but that sort of living in fear inspired a lot of artist, so try as I might to separate the good times and cool media from the terror, they go hand in hand.

I think, for me, a quote on the 80s that resonates was something along the lines of "a time of limited technology, but unlimited imagination". Maybe that's simply true of youth in general though. All I know is that I never had an issue with Zork being all text based, playing Wiz War on essentially business cards, or taking cheesy b movie effects in stride and was simply thankful something like Hawk the Slayer could exist.

Let’s not forget AIDS too...that was so scary even if you were a kid. And since homophobia and bigotrry was pretty much the mainstream default, so little was done to really attack it at the time. I remember very, very clearly seeing the first news reports about AIDS and at the time, I had a cold or something so I thought I had it.

Woo, 80s. Party on dude!

No era is all roses. Hopefully society continues to progress, though we've hit a hell of a rough patch.

What it comes down to though...is come the end of the month...I'll probably be watching this in the theater with the boy. Doing my part for the downfall of society...

I remember as a kid being absolutely terrified that everyone was going to die because mosquitos were going to start spreading AIDS.

Anyway, RPO sounds great and if anyone wants to mail me their copy, PM me.

Ready Player One in a nutshell:

Just watched a trailer. If i hadn't read the book I would be intrigued. This looks way better than the book I'm reading. That doesn't say this looks amazing, but at least a good time at the theater.



"Cline's Holy Grail of Pop Culture"

Michael Barnes wrote: I
My son REALLY wants to see this. He asks me almost daily "when is Ready Player One coming out?" I have to admit, I thought it was awesome in the theater when he hollered "DADDY IT'S GUNDAM!"

My nerd boys are 21 and 18, and my daughters are into other nerd realms that I am less familiar with. THIS MADE ME WEEPY.

Lessee. Cold war, John Lennon assassinated, our first entertainer-as-president, Reaganomics, attempts on Reagan and the pope, AIDS, Falklands war, US embassy bombing in Beirut, Union Carbide gas leak in India, Indira Gandhi assassinated, subway vigilante, Iran-contra, ozone hole, Challenger explodes on TV, Chernobyl, Black Monday, GHWB elected, Exxon Valdez, Tiananmen Square.

/Billyjoel

I LOVE THE 80S!

I do wish the book had some substance. A critique of pop culture, of nostalgia, of relationships, of virtual reality...anything really.



I would love to see the Black Mirror writers spin a tale in a similar setting. USS Callisder was fantastic.

For those who read the thing, can you answer a few questions for me?

1) The 80s thing: is that just a part of OASIS? Is there any mention of, like, Ancient Rome worlds or 1920s worlds or anything like that? The impression I got was that because Halliday created OASIS and Halliday was obsessed with trivial 80s bullshit, the entire OASIS was built on it and that's pretty much it.

2) Does Wade have any genuine interest in this stuff, or is he only into it because he knows that it's necessary to with the contest? Is that distinction even bothered with?

1) That's about right.

2) Oh man...not even bothered with. There's no comment on anything which is what makes the book so shallow. I'm sure you read all the quotes from the book that are just media listings in that take-down link Jeb posted, but here's another example. At one point, Wade interacts with another character and thinks something along the lines of "I know it wasn't his real name because 'Henry Swanson' was Kurt Russell's character in Big Trouble in Little China." That's it. Name dropping and nothing more. There no reflection or thought on any of this stuff. Not even a hint of something like "Damn, I can't wait for this contest to be over, so we can stop regurgitating this crap" or anything. There's nothing here.

EDIT: Again, I expect the Spielberg flick to probably be descent. Although here's a clip where he praises Cline as some "visionary who can see the future that we couldn't possibly imagine". I know it was all a bit of shilling, but eh, I hope those aren't his real thoughts...

(decent Take On Me remix though)

Looks like the film is premiering here this week and there's a bunch of VR stuff and such set up. I'm sure that's all kind of neat. Can't really imagine being down in it though.

At any rate, for something we don't seem to be into...we sure like discussing it...

Legomancer, what would it take to get you to read and review the book?