Category Archives: Life Changes

Secret Origins II: How I Got the Holy Grail

Chaos in Print

It all began when I was 10 years old. Transformers: The Movie had just come out on video, and I had finally seen it. I thought I had just witnessed the greatest movie ever made. I was horrified at Megatron’s slaughter of the Autobots. I wept for the death of Optimus Prime. I laughed at Grimlock’s antics. For a 10 year old in the late 80s, this was Gone With the Wind. As the end credits rolled, I actually watched them, and what caught my eye were the song titles. “Dare.” “The Touch.” “Dare to be Stupid.” My birthday had just been a few weeks earlier, and I was given my first personal stereo. Nothing more than an AM/FM radio with a tape player, but to a 10 year old, a complete home entertainment system. I started thinking, “What better way to begin my album collection than with the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack?” On every excursion into Edmonton from that day forth, I would scour the record stores and music sections of department stores, searching in vain for this album. It soon became greater than just a kid wanting an album. It was an obsession. In the soundtrack section, I would always head straight to the “T” section, hoping to glimpse Transformers. But, it was never to be. As my fifteenth birthday rolled around, I began to acknowledge the inevitable. The movie was now 5 years old. Perhaps it was now too old for stores to stock it. I felt it was time to let the dream die. But, just maybe, dreams don’t die. They just lie dormant until they can come true.
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Secret Origins: The Night I Saw A Bug’s Life

Chaos in Print

I’ve seen a lot of movies in my night, but no night at the movies was as momentous and eventful as that wintry Thursday in November of 1998 when I saw A Bug’s Life. I was still just a punk student at Augustana. My final year was well underway, and I (just like now) had no real plans for my future. I wasn’t seeing much beyond May of 1999, when I was going to be seeing Episode I. As this year was still just starting, Chuck and I began a tradition of sorts to see movies on Thursday nights. It began back in September. I was still embroiled in my election campaign for VP External, and Chuck was hard at work on one of his many projects. We just happened to run into each other outside of the computer lab, and I chided him for not having seen Blade yet. He said, “OK, let’s go see it.” So, we did. And from that point on, we were going to see movies on Thursday nights. Both being animation geeks, we had been looking forward to A Bug’s Life for a few weeks and had this night planned with great anticipation.
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