Your Most Disturbing Realizations

[Trenchfriend]

I'm interested.
Were someone of you in cinema on the premiere of "Blade Runner", in 1982?

I'm asking, because its my favorite movie.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Technically, "premiere" refers to the first public showing, generally followed some weeks later by general distribution. But I did see it on its first general release. The formal premiere pretty much went out of fashion with the first "saturation release," invented by, (who else?) Steven Spielberg, for the release of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1981. It was released on hundreds of screens nationwide on its first day.

 

[Zombie_61]

I'm interested.
Were someone of you in cinema on the premiere of "Blade Runner", in 1982?

I'm asking, because its my favorite movie.

It "opened" here in the U.S. on Friday, June 25, 1982; I saw it on the 26th, if I remember correctly. And I've seen it several times since. I like it well enough to have spent the money on the five-disc collector's edition released in 2008 (and I think Ridley Scott's "Final Cut" version is indeed the best), but to be honest it's not anywhere near the top of my personal "favorite movies" list.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's disturbing to realize that the World War I veterans I knew as a child were younger at the time than the World War II veterans I know as an adult today.

 

[Fading Fast]

^ If it helps at all, those wars were not that far apart. Something else I often think about - so many people of a certain generation lived through two massive global modern wars. It definitely shaped my grandparents' (who lived through both and my granddad who fought in WWI) world view in a different way from my parents - who "only" lived through WWII.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

But for Americans the two wars were very different. For us, WWI was scarcely a "world war" at all. American troops were involved only for a few months, and only on the Western Front, mostly in France and Belgium. The flu epidemic that followed the fighting was far more devastating. Even so, it made that generation very reluctant to take part in another foreign war. By contrast, WWII involved vast numbers of Americans fighting all over Europe, North Africa, the Pacific, parts of mainland Asia in the air and on or under the seas. It was a far more comprehensive war and the people at home participated in vast numbers. It changed the entire economy as well and turned Hollywood into a huge propaganda machine. WWI was barely a warm-up for all that.

 

[Fading Fast]

But for Americans the two wars were very different. For us, WWI was scarcely a "world war" at all. American troops were involved only for a few months, and only on the Western Front, mostly in France and Belgium. The flu epidemic that followed the fighting was far more devastating. Even so, it made that generation very reluctant to take part in another foreign war. By contrast, WWII involved vast numbers of Americans fighting all over Europe, North Africa, the Pacific, parts of mainland Asia in the air and on or under the seas. It was a far more comprehensive war and the people at home participated in vast numbers. It changed the entire economy as well and turned Hollywood into a huge propaganda machine. WWI was barely a warm-up for all that.

All fair points from many American's perspective, I was coming at it, in part, from a personal angle as my grandfather fought and was gassed in WWI and came back a changed man (as told to me by other relatives who knew him before and after and as passed down through family history).

 

[ChiTownScion]

^ If it helps at all, those wars were not that far apart. Something else I often think about - so many people of a certain generation lived through two massive global modern wars. It definitely shaped my grandparents' (who lived through both and my granddad who fought in WWI) world view in a different way from my parents - who "only" lived through WWII.

Two very different generations of vets, as exemplified by the reaction to one Sen. Joseph McCarthy. To the World War I vets, he was generally viewed as an anti-Communist patriot. Those of the Second World War were infuriated by his efforts to obtain leniency for Waffen SS perpetrators of the Malmedy Massacre.

 

[Stearmen]

It's disturbing to realize that the World War I veterans I knew as a child were younger at the time than the World War II veterans I know as an adult today.

An even bigger shock for me, many of the WWI Veterans were younger then I am now, at the time I was born! Of course, they are all gone now, every single WWI veteran from every country!

 

[tonyb]

This thread feels like a visit to a graveyard.

I enjoy visits to graveyards, usually. I enjoy reading what's still legible on the more eroded grave markers. I enjoy contemplating the sorts of lives those residing a couple of yards beneath my feet experienced, and how they differ from mine, and how the nearby scenery has changed since those departed last gazed upon it.

What's become increasingly sobering, though, is calculating the ages at which those long-gone folks went to their graves. Makes me feel like a miracle of modern medicine.

 

[GHT]

I enjoy visits to graveyards, usually. I enjoy reading what's still legible on the more eroded grave markers.

There's a headstone in a graveyard, near a relative of mine, that always amuses me, it reads:
"HERE LIES AN ATHEIST,
ALL DRESSED UP,
AND NO PLACE TO GO."

 

[LuvMyMan]

Hey there handsome! FUNNY as hell that one...thanks for a good time!

 

[LuvMyMan]

This thread feels like a visit to a graveyard.

I enjoy visits to graveyards, usually. I enjoy reading what's still legible on the more eroded grave markers. I enjoy contemplating the sorts of lives those residing a couple of yards beneath my feet experienced, and how they differ from mine, and how the nearby scenery has changed since those departed last gazed upon it.

What's become increasingly sobering, though, is calculating the ages at which those long-gone folks went to their graves. Makes me feel like a miracle of modern medicine.

Geez this is so true Tony. However the entire journey of life itself is such a story. The difference in times is a very nostalgic ordeal all on it's own. I think we can reflect back on what we know took place back then, but as it was not OUR time, we have to be stuck reading about it rather than being able to first hand experience those events of time.
( I am adding Daniel's Great Grandpa lived to close to 100..died three weeks before his 100 birthday and was still working part time as a Janitor a week before he died) and that was in 1969.
Age does come into much of this...yet some folks hang around a bit longer. My Dad passed before he was 80. My Mom is 93 and still in good health with a very feeble mind...her Sister (my Aunt) is hitting 96 and sharp as a tack but blind and medically feeble. My Husband's Father died before age 80, but out lived his entire Family Tree (so far) BUT he has other relatives still going now past age of 84 on his Mother's side. But along this road we call LIFE, within all Family we have had some pass at age of mid 40's some due to just plain old bad habits...(too much white lightning) or driving Ms. Daisy (on the wrong side of the road)...Ha! My own Husband still hanging on when he should have already been "gone" many times over now. He is a fighter of course, and just flat out has far too much LOVE to roll it up! And he cannot keep his mouth shut...I'll be damned if he does not crack so many jokes even with his Doctors or Medical care givers...they appear to have laughed so hard at times, I am sure they had to leave the room to change their "drawers" due to laughing so hard! I think a person's spirit is what defines them.

Grave yards as a soul filled experience. It makes sense..if someone good, bad, successful, handsome, or ugly has lived...you can find them all right there. And some of them most likely know you, too!

 

[LuvMyMan]

I'm interested.
Were someone of you in cinema on the premiere of "Blade Runner", in 1982?

I'm asking, because its my favorite movie.

No one in our Family participated in the cinema for that movie...I think seeing it on the Television was our first viewing. The movie does present an interesting concept about "replicants" who knows maybe some day that will not be so much "fiction"?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Since generation 1990, here in Germany, youth is absolutely magnetized on mobilephones, got mobilphones since childhood.

We "older" call them "smartphone-autists/smartphone-autism". The kids walking the crosswalk slowly, like hypnotized smurfs ("Beanie"-toques), that you like to get out of car and push them on the other side of the street.
And we think: "If you know, how we laugh about your mostly useless electronic-psychoses."

 

[Fading Fast]

There's a headstone in a graveyard, near a relative of mine, that always amuses me, it reads:
"HERE LIES AN ATHEIST,
ALL DRESSED UP,
AND NO PLACE TO GO."

You have to wonder if the person chose it for himself of if his family chose it as a tongue-in-cheek coda.

My Dad died at 64, his dad at 49, I'm 51 (13 years to go or 2 years past my expiration date), but there are some longevity genes on my mom's side - so who the heck knows. But it was an insanely disturbing revelation when I turned 49 to think about my grandfather's passing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've already outlived my uncle, who went at 46, and the next milestone is my grandmother, who went at 69. She had her first heart attack at 35, though, and I got past that point without incident. So good so far.

My Aunt Edie, the former longshoreman, lived to be 92, but the last few years of her life were quite miserable, so longevity can be a mixed blessing.

I remember being really disturbed when I turned 34, and realized I'd lived longer on earth than Jesus.

 

[Edward]

I caught my self the other day looking in the mirror and thinking.... "I'm 41. By the time Kurt Cobain was my age, he'd been dead for fourteen years."

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

It's disturbing to realize that the World War I veterans I knew as a child were younger at the time than the World War II veterans I know as an adult today.

And that Vietnam veterans now are the same age WWI veterans were when the Vietnam veterans were young men.

 

[Harp]

And that Vietnam veterans now are the same age WWI veterans were when the Vietnam veterans were young men.

Youth is fleeting.