I’ve seen most of Mel Gibson’s movies, but I somehow missed Payback (1999). I watched the movie tonight and was distinctly underwhelmed.
Payback, as the title suggests, follows a boilerplate revenge plot. Mel Gibson plays Porter, an unlikable underworld figure who has been shot, left for dead, and cheated out of $70,000. Most of the movie concerns his violent quest for retribution.
Payback seems to be influenced by the nihilistic violence of [the much overrated] Pulp Fiction (1994), which was then recent in the public memory. There is much bloodshed in Payback, but none of it is very believable. Characters sustain fatal gunshot wounds, but recover long enough to deliver a coherent wisecrack or two, before falling off to sleep.
Payback proceeds with a smirking, tongue-in-cheek tone and vibe. The result is a movie that is not enough of one thing or another. Payback is too grim to succeed as a comedy, it’s too ridiculous to succeed as an action film.
Mel Gibson has starred in some great movies over the years. Payback isn’t one of them.
-ET
VENETIAN SPRINGS
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Mark Baxter thought a trip to the casino would mean easy money. Instead he faces a desperate fight to save his wife from a ruthless narcotics kingpin.
I discovered pop/rock music in 1981-2, when I was still in junior high. Because of the longevity of contemporary rock bands, I sometimes come across new material from bands that I first discovered 40 years ago.
This is always a treat, and it always makes me feel younger. (If the rock bands of your youth are still making new music, you can’t be that old, right? That notion works for the Boomers, so why not for Gen X?)
38 Special is one such still-active band from my junior high years. I became a fan of 38 Special back when their 1982 album Special Forces was new, and reached the number 10 spot on the Billboard 200. This album includes several of the group’s classic songs, including, “Caught Up in You” and “You Keep Runnin’ Away”.
The band has just released a new song on YouTube, “All I Haven’t Said”.
There have been some personnel changes since 1982, of course. (I believe 38 Special has a new lead vocalist.) So the sound is a little different, but the same spirit is there.
I like the new song, and I am glad to see that 38 Special is still around and making music.
I have been an avid runner since 1984. In more than 40 years of running, I have had relatively few injuries. But all of the injuries that I have had have involved my feet.
As a result, my quest for the perfect running shoe has lasted for 40 years, too. I’ve tried all the major brands at one time or another: Nike, Adidas, New Balance, etc.
I recently acquired this pair of Cloudsurfers, and they are like no running shoes I have ever owned. They are light for speed, but also provide extensive support.
My new Cloudsurfer running shoes
Regular readers will know that I often wax nostalgic about the 1980s. I’m a curmudgeon when it comes to most social media—and don’t even get me started about AI.
But sometimes, the more modern, high-tech solution represents an improvement. Cloudsurfers weren’t available for me to run in back in 1984. I wish such shoes had been on the market in my salad days.
Not far from where I live, there is a stretch of Ohio State Route 125 that has been dubbed Dead Man’s Curve.
The spot is just a few miles from my house, in fact. I’ve been by there many times.
According to the urban legend, if you drive this section of rural highway a little after 1 a.m., you might see the faceless hitchhiker. From a distance, this male figure may look relatively normal. Once you get close, though, you’ll see that he has no face.
Sometimes the hitchhiker isn’t content to stand there by the side of the road and watch you. There have been reports of the phantom actually attacking cars.
Creepy, right?
Yeah, I think so, too….
Dead Man’s Curve on Ohio State Route 125 has a long and macabre history. Route 125 is the main road that connects the suburbs and small towns east of Cincinnati with the city. But much of the road (including Dead Man’s Curve) was originally part of the Ohio Turnpike, which was built in 1831. (Andrew Jackson was president in 1831, just to put that date in perspective.)
That section of the Ohio Turnpike was the scene of many accidents (some of them fatal), even in the horse-and-buggy days. The downward sloping curve became particularly treacherous when rain turned the road to mud. Horses and carriages would sometimes lose their footing, sending them over the adjacent hillside.
In the twentieth century, the Ohio Turnpike was paved and reconfigured into State Route 125. In 1968 the road was expanded into four lanes.
As part of the expansion, the spot known as Dead Man’s Curve was leveled and straightened. (As a result, the curve doesn’t look so daunting today…unless you know its history.) This was supposed to be the end of “Dead Man’s Curve”.
But it wasn’t.
In 1969, there was a horrible accident at the spot. The driver of a green Roadrunner—traveling at a speed of 100 mph—slammed into an Impala carrying five teenagers. There was only one survivor of the tragic accident.
Shortly after that, witnesses began to report sightings of the faceless hitchhiker during the wee hours. (The hitchhiker is said to be most active during the twenty-minutes between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m.) There have also been reports of a ghostly green Roadrunner that will chase drivers late at night.
Oh, and Dead Man’s Curve remains deadly, despite the leveling and straightening done in 1968. In the five decades since the accident involving the Roadrunner and the Impala, around seventy people have been killed there.
Is there any truth to the legend of Dead Man’s Curve?
I can’t say for sure. What I can tell you is that I’ve heard many eyewitness accounts from local residents who claim to have seen the hitchhiker. (Keep in mind, I live very close to Dead Man’s Curve, and it’s a local topic of discussion and speculation.) Almost none of these eyewitnesses have struck me as mentally imbalanced or deceitful.
I know what your last question is going to be: Have I ever driven Dead Man’s Curve between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m. myself?
Uh, no. But perhaps I’ll get around to it someday, and I’ll let you know in a subsequent blog post!
I’m not sure how 40 years went by without me seeing Commando (1985). But I finally caught it last night with my YouTube Premium subscription.
Commando stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a retired military operative, who is called into action when a group of international bad guys take his daughter hostage.
It’s a very basic plot, with a lot left to assumption, or the viewer’s imagination. This is pure 80s escapism, and the film suffers somewhat from the production values of that era.
On the plus side, there are no boring moments in the 90 minutes that it will take you to watch Commando. The movie is a lot of fun, in the same way that the A-Team and Magnum P.I. were fun in the 1980s.
There is no romantic subplot in Commando. Rae Dawn Chong, however, provides a solid performance as Schwarzenegger’s sidekick (and, at one point in the movie, his pilot). The 12-year-old Alyssa Milano, who was decades away from becoming annoying and political, appears as Schwarzenegger’s daughter.
The X feed Super 70s Sports has the following to say about the late Merlin Olsen (1940 – 2010):
“I miss Merlin Olsen. A true renaissance man who could kick your ass, eloquently break down exactly how he did it, then send you a thoughtful bouquet of flowers as a gesture of goodwill.”
I miss Merlin Olsen. A true renaissance man who could kick your ass, eloquently break down exactly how he did it, then send you a thoughtful bouquet of flowers as a gesture of goodwill. pic.twitter.com/rLxImgSPtR
I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but most Gen Xers don’t remember Merlin Olsen as a professional football player. Olsen played his last game in the NFL in 1976. This Gen Xer was an 8-year-old third-grader then.
Most of us do, however, remember Merlin Olsen in his post-NFL acting career. Olsen portrayed Jonathan Garvey on Little House on the Prairie from 1977 to 1981. In this secondary role, he was the “male buddy” figure for Michael Landon’s starring role.
My childhood household had one television, and my mom loved Little House. So we of course tuned in every week. I didn’t love this show quite as much as my mom did, but I didn’t exactly hate it, either. It was pleasant enough television for that pre-cable era, when most TV shows were written to the broadest audience possible. Little House on the Prairie was written and billed as wholesome family fare, with all that label implies, both for better and for worse.
I recall watching Olsen on Little House on the Prairie for several years, perhaps, before my father mentioned, apropos of nothing, that Merlin Olsen had previously been a professional football player.
My research tells me that he had quite a career in that capacity. But I, like most Gen Xers, will always think of him as Jonathan Garvey.
This past week marked the 40-year anniversary of the release of Back to the Future on July 3, 1985.
I saw the movie when it was new. I enjoyed it; but I never thought that this was a film that would be remembered four decades later.
But hey, I was 17 years old in the summer of 1985. What did I know?
1985 theatrical release poster
One of the forgotten facts about the movie is that Disney originally rejected it. The dealbreaker was the subplot in which Marty McFly’s mother becomes infatuated with him during his time in 1955. Disney execs didn’t like the incestuous plot twist.
And it struck me as a little strange at the time. Never mind that this is not the sort of scenario that anyone is likely to encounter in real life.
Whether Disney was right to reject the film or not in the 1980s, herein lies a measure of how much Disney—and the movie business—has changed since then. As we all know, Disney is more than happy to let its freak flag fly nowadays.
When I was in junior high in 1981, everyone was talking about Ozzy Osbourne.
We were too young to remember when Ozzy was the lead singer for Black Sabbath (the band that finally fired him in 1979). But we all liked Blizzard of Ozz, and Diary of a Madman, the two solo albums of his that were then available.
Back then, we bought them in vinyl, or maybe cassette. There were no lame streaming platforms in 1981. In 1981, Taylor Swift would not even be born for another eight years. It was a grand time, indeed.
There were concerns about some aspects of Ozzy’s persona. His music, like that of Black Sabbath, had a quasi-occult vibe. That was typical for heavy metal music of the 1980s. On at least one occasion, Ozzy had bitten off the head of a (already deceased) dove. That was not so typical, even for heavy metal artists.
I still like Ozzy’s music. But as is so often the case with still-thriving Boomer artists whom I discovered in my tender years (like Stephen King, for example), I have a strong preference for the early portion of Ozzy’s oeuvre. And even that is something I have to be in the right mood for.
I never tire, however, of my interest in Ozzy the individual. A few years ago, I watched several of Ozzy’s reality show series with my dad. I could never get my dad to listen to Ozzy’s music back in the 1980s; but he liked Ozzy the reality show star.
Now 76 and beset by health issues, Ozzy is closing out his long career. This weekend marked his final solo performance. Not bad, for a man whose first stage performances date back to the late 1960s.
I was driving through my neighborhood the other day when I saw…a group of kids riding their bikes.
No, seriously. Kids. Riding. Bikes. There were no electronic devices involved. No one was checking Instagram. There were no hovering, fretful parents, either.
For a moment I thought I had strayed into a time slip, and wandered back into the 1970s or 1980s, when the “free range” childhood was the norm. During the summer months, I used to take off at 8 o’clock in the morning—maybe come back for lunch—and disappear again until dinnertime. The bicycle was the cornerstone of that style of summering.
But that simply isn’t done anymore! Someone might get hurt! And think about all the screen time that the kids are missing.
I had to be back in 1978 or 1982! Time travel is real, I told myself.
Then I noticed that the kids were all wearing helmets, as if they were commandos assaulting the Taliban headquarters in Afghanistan. A concession to the hyper-vigilant, ever-nervous present. No—I was still in 2025! Whew! That was a close one!
Me, with bike, summer of ’78. The older adults in the photo are my grandparents, members of the WWII generation, who grew up during the Great Depression.
Nevertheless, this was reassuring to see. For years now, childhood has become increasingly screen-based and indoors. This trend accelerated during the pandemic.
The result is a young generation that is more disturbed than ever—even more than my grandparents’ generation was; and they came of age during the Great Depression—when there was actually a lot to worry about.
According to one recent study, 30 percent of adolescents today are affected by anxiety disorders. Some pundits blame social media. I don’t disagree with that analysis. I’m 56 years old, and an hour on Facebook or TikTok gives me anxiety, too.
I will interpret the kids on bikes as a positive sign, then. Perhaps there is a collective realization that the kind of childhood enjoyed by Generation X and the Baby Boom generation was much healthier—even if we didn’t wear bike helmets.
Now let’s turn our attention to something really important: the future of the rock band AC/DC.
I’ve been a fan of AC/DC since the early 1980s, when Back in Black was the latest thing. AC/DC isn’t my favorite band. (That honor goes to Rush.) But AC/DC is definitely among my top ten.
The members of AC/DC, just like the rest of us, are getting older. Angus Young, the group’s iconic guitarist, is now 70. Lead vocalist Brian Johnson is now 77.
No, it isn’t 1981 anymore. (And oh, how I wish that it were, for any number of reasons.) But AC/DC still gives a pretty solid live performance, by my estimation.
The 1980s have acquired a reputation for being hopelessly conservative, fuddy-duddy times. On the contrary, many of the movies, songs, and jokes that were commonplace back then wouldn’t pass muster in today’s environment.
Consider Exhibit A: the Angel series of thriller films. The tagline of the initial 1984 movie was:
“High school honor student by day, Hollywood hooker by night.”
The movie starred Donna Wilkes (then in her twenties) as the 15-year-old Molly Stewart, a prep school honor student who, for whatever reason, moonlights as a sex worker each night. And of course, she solves a crime or two along the way, as well!
Now, I’m not saying this is a laudable film concept. But people barely batted an eye at it in the 1980s. If such a film were released today, social conservatives on the right would go ballistic. (Jesse Watters and the rest of the Fox News crew would have a field day.) On the dour, humorous left, meanwhile, there would be wailing and shrieking about “exploitation”.
To be sure, there was an element of exploitation in the movie. (This is why a twenty-something actress was cast in the lead role.) But in the 1980s, most folks seemed capable of realizing that a movie was just a movie.
I was fifteen when Angel came out. I never saw the movie, but it was heavily advertised. Many people did see the film, apparently. There were two sequels: Avenging Angel (1985) and Angel III: the Final Chapter (1988).
I took guitar lessons for a while in the early 1980s. But only for about a year.
I did not have a knack for music. I lack the sense of timing that is inherent in all great musicians. Writing comes naturally to me. Practicing the guitar was always a chore. I wanted the result, but I did not enjoy the process.
Forty years later, I can still manage most of the basic chords. But where music is concerned, I am content to remain in the audience.
Nevertheless, music is an art form that I appreciate. But I appreciate it selectively. There is music I love (most of it 1980s rock) and music that I will simply never enjoy. I acknowledge Taylor Swift’s commercial success. Her music is not my cup of tea.
But I’m a 50-something male, and we all hate Taylor Swift. Right? Well, maybe, but that’s an oversimplification. Even in the 1980s, there was popular music I never developed an appreciation for: A Flock of Seagulls, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, most of Michael Jackson’s catalog.
On the other hand, I loved Rush, Foreigner, Triumph, Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, Journey.
I think that’s normal, where music is concerned. We all have preferences. No one, I’ve found, is neutral about music. No one likes all of it.
Which makes the public soundtrack all the more annoying. Whenever one enters a restaurant, retail establishment, or waiting room, one is immediately assaulted with random music, piped in from overhead speakers. They play music at my gym, even though most members wear headphones.
Another problem with music in public places is that it is usually played too loud. I won’t get technical here, and speak of decibels. If when addressing my lunch or dinner companion, I have to raise my voice to be heard over the music, then the music is too loud.
Almost as annoying is the street guitarist, tambourine player, or vocalist. I admire the chutzpah of those who publicize their art this way. But I quicken my pace whenever I pass by a street musician. Similarly, I would not stand on the sidewalk and read from one of my novels, stories, or essays.
I want to consume my music selectively: the music I choose, at a time and a place of my choosing. I don’t want a restaurant, fitness club, or a grocery store to tell me that listening to the music of their choice, at the volume of their choice, is the price of admission to their place of business. This is especially true when I find their preferences actively annoying.
As a long-ago failed musician, I understand how difficult it is to become a real, skilled practitioner of that craft. How many hours of practice is required to perform music at even a journeyman level.
All the more reason not to cheapen music, by turning it into aural wallpaper.
One day in the early spring of 2018 I traveled to a rural part of southern Indiana to attend to some family matters. (I live in Ohio, but I’m half Hoosier. My dad grew up in nearby Lawrenceburg.)
I spent most of that day in Switzerland County. You’ve probably never been there. Switzerland County, Indiana looks nothing like Switzerland. In early spring, that part of Indiana, along the Ohio River, can look a little bleak.
(Portions of the 1988 Molly Ringwald/Andrew McCarthy movie, Fresh Horses, were filmed in Switzerland County. McCarthy said of the area, “There’s the whole starkness up there; it helped the mood of the movie.” )
Southern, rural Indiana is home to several large casinos. I ordinarily have no interest in gambling venues. I ate lunch at the nearby Belterra Casino that day, though, because…there weren’t many other dining options in the vicinity.
My visit to the casino got me thinking: What if a young couple in debt visited the casino in a make-or-break effort to get ahead financially? What if they were lured there by a special offer? $300 worth of ‘free’ gaming chips?
What if their beginner’s foray into gambling went horribly wrong, and they fell further in the hole? Then suppose that a narcotics kingpin offers them an alternative plan…another way to get ahead.
All they have to do is run an errand for him. What could possibly go wrong?
That’s the premise behind my 2020 casino novel, Venetian Springs. Set in a fictional version of Belterra Casino, Venetian Springs is a story of two down-on-their-luck high school teachers who succumb to the lure of easy money. They soon discover that easy money doesn’t exist. But this is a lesson that may cost them both their lives.
In the fall of 1984, I was a junior in high school. I had a passion for the novels and short stories of Stephen King.
My high school English teacher, not so much. He was a devotee of two twentieth-century writers: Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. So I read a lot of Hemingway and a lot of Fitzgerald that year.
I was 16 years old, and really two young for either writer. Hemingway and Fitzgerald wrote about adult concerns, and concerns of what was already a long-ago, bygone era. As a teenager of the Reagan-era American suburbs, I had little interest in the social conventions of the Jazz Age, or the moody ramblings of World War I veterans.
As an adult, I’ve developed a new appreciation for both writers.
I’ve recently begun digging into The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection. This collection, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, contains all the Fitzgerald short stories I remember as a junior in high school: “Winter Dreams”,“A Diamond As Big As the Ritz”, “Babylon Revisited,” etc.—as well as many that my high school English teacher never assigned.
Fitzgerald wrote his short stories long. Not all of them can be read in a single sitting. Many of his short stories resemble compressed novels more than typical short stories, as they deal with events stretching out over many years, even decades.
Fitzgerald’s writing style is accessible to modern readers, but his subject matter is a hundred years removed from our time. It takes some effort to put oneself in the mindset of an adult living in 1925. (I am soon to turn 57 years old, and that is the era of my great-grandparents. The one great-grandparent I knew was born in 1895, one year before Fitzgerald.)
Still, there are some universal themes in Fitzgerald’s fiction. One of my favorite stories is the aforementioned “Winter Dreams”. This is the tale of a man who, between adolescence and early middle age, mistakenly projects all of his ideals onto a woman with whom he has a fleeting romantic relationship.
1922 magazine illustration for “Winter Dreams”
“Winter Dreams” is basically a story about the pedastalization of femininity. The theme is as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1922, when Fitzgerald wrote the story.
(Note: When I first read “Winter Dreams” in 1984, I “got” what Fitzgerald was trying to say. Some years would pass before I learned the real-life lesson.)
You might be hesitant to dive into a book of century-old stories. I would encourage you, though, to give Fitzgerald a try. Many of his tales, like The Great Gatsby and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, have been adapted for film in the modern era.
There is a reason why Fitzgerald endures, when so many other writers have fallen by the wayside. Fitzgerald was a skilled and insightful storyteller.
