Entertainment Look

Where The Wild Things Are – The Movie?

This is an awesome time to be living for me.  When I was a kid, Where the Wild Things Are was my favorite book.  I even had posters on my walls.

But I thought I was losing it one day, years later after I had completely grown.  I could remember the “Wild Things.”  I could remember them vividly in my mind, but I couldn’t find any proof that they ever existed.

My mom had gotten rid of the books a long time ago.  My posters were gone too.  I couldn’t remember what the Wild Things were called ironically.  So, I thought it was just a part of my imagination.  Something I had lost along the way from childhood to manhood.

Then one day, just a few short weeks ago, I see something that throws me back.  It’s the movie.  Where the Wild Things Are the movie will be playing in the theaters.  It seems to me like an entire generation missed out on the great stories that I once loved as a child.

But then, it is resurrected.  Just in time for my daughter to be able to enjoy them as much as I did.  But, she’ll get to see it in the movie theater and then I’ll bring it home when it comes out on DVD.  When I was growing up, we had to use our imagination.  But, I tell you what!  I think I’m going to enjoy it much better this time around. 

It Seemed Just Like Yesterday

Children coming into this world today are being raised with a great bit of technology surrounding them all the time.  It’s strange to me that just a few short years ago, we did not have these things.  I do not consider myself old at all and I did not have these things when I was young.

I learned typing on a typewriter.  Are there any that still exist?

We walked around listening to radios through our headphones until the tape player came out?

We had to buy an artist’s entire album.

I played Space Invaders and Donkey Kong on my Atari 2600.  It came with Pong and Asteroids.  I don’t think any other games existed at the time.

I wrote letters and called people on the phone.  I got tangled up in the phone chord every once in awhile.  The first phone I ever made a phone call on had a rotary dial that took two minutes to dial a number. click click click click click

We had to wait for a movie to come out in the video store and we had to sit through commercials on the television.  That was the bathroom break.  I’m not saying video stores and commercials don’t exist today.  I’m just saying that’s what we had to do.  There are other options available now.

We had to look things up in encyclopedias and dictionaries.  Or read a book.

I have mixed emotions about it.  I mean, I would rather sit in front of the computer and type in a search that comes up with a million and one sites that I can begin exploring and finding my answer.  I love being able to correct my work before I print it.  I love being able to put together a CD with only the music I enjoy.  It does seem as if we live in a world that in many ways, has a lot less waste.

But, I think children of today are missing a rich education because they are handed the easy way and they never learn the foundation from which teachers can build.  When a teenager is on the internet instant messaging her friends and using abbreviations like omg and lmao, she then starts writing like that in other areas of her life.  She writes her term papers with abbreviations and misspellings like “u” and “b.”

“Win u get 2 b da prez, dats win u own da world.”

OMG!!!

So, in many ways it’s a far better world.  I just don’t want anyone to lose sight of where we came and how far we’ve come.  Our history is an important part of our future.