The Year Of Your Birth

[Rev. Rye]

Here's a few choice excerpts from 1989.

There was no Google yet. Or Yahoo. Or Atheistforums.org, for that matter.

How do they know how I got here?

In 1989, the year of your birth, the top selling movie was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. People buying the popcorn in the cinema lobby had glazing eyes when looking at the poster.

Remember, that was before there were DVDs. People were indeed watching movies in the cinema, and not downloading them online. Imagine the packed seats, the laughter, the excitement, the novelty.

Considering that, by that point, film had been around for a century, I doubt that "novelty" is an accurate word. Especially when used to describe the experience of watching the third part of a trilogy.

Do you know who won the Oscars that year? The academy award for the best movie went to Driving Miss Daisy. The Oscar for best foreign movie that year went to Cinema Paradiso. The top actor was Daniel Day-Lewis for his role as Christy Brown in My Left Foot. The top actress was Jessica Tandy for her role as Daisy Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy. The best director? Oliver Stone for Born on the Fourth of July.

Seen all but the last one.

The number one US bestseller of the time was Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy. Oh, that's many years ago. Have you read that book? Have you heard of it? Look at the cover!

No, I haven't since I don't read a lot of genre fiction with the exception of Trevanian and Louis L'Amour.

The Communist leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, is forced to step down as leader of the country after a series of health problems.

What really surprises me is that, while they mention that he stepped down, somehow, the fact that the Berlin Wall had fallen somehow escaped them.

The Nobel prize for Literature that year went to Camilo José Cela.

Never heard of him. I suppose now I probably should read him.

Protests are crushed down on Tiananmen Square in China.

This fact is mentioned twice in the spiel.

Do you remember the movie that was all the rage when you were 15? The Day After Tomorrow.

That's odd. I don't really remember it being "all the rage." It made a fuckload of money, but it wasn't "all the rage." The Passion of the Christ was more "all the rage" that year.

Do you still remember the songs playing on the radio when you were 15? Maybe it was Burn by Usher.

Considering that I didn't listen to Top 40 radio then, I probably wouldn't have known.

In 1989, 15 years earlier, a long time ago, the year when you were born, the song Two Hearts by Phil Collins topped the US charts. Do you know the lyrics? Do you know the tune? Sing along.

Somehow, I like Phil Collins and I still don't know this one.

When you were 9, the movie Practical Magic was playing. When you were 8, there was George of the Jungle. When you were 7, there was a Disney movie out called Hercules. Does this ring a bell?

I saw the last two in theatres. Never heard of the first one, and, after looking at it on Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes, it doesn't look good, even if Michael Nyman did do the score.

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... it's 1989. There's TV noise coming from the second floor. Someone turned up the volume way too high. The sun is burning from above. These were different times. The show playing on TV is Roseanne. The sun goes down. Someone switches channels. There's Doogie Howser, M.D. on now. That's the world you were born in.

What's really surprising is that, as it turns out, the day I was born, there was a show called L.A. Law, and a baby was born on that show the very same day I was born.
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In 1989, a new character entered the world of comic books: Silver Fox. Bang! Boom! But that's just fiction, right? In the real world, in 1989, Sergey Fesikov was born. And Corbin Bleu. Zhong An Qi, too.

Never heard of any of these people.