13 Days and Counting

Look carefully at the right edge of this still frame from TRON. Can you see what Mr Red Antenna sees? Here's a hint: he's yellow and lives on a steady diet of ghosts.

I've always thought this is one of the more unique cameos in film history. In 1982, when TRON came out, it was definitely not cool to be a geek, not like it is now, what with the booming popularity of The Big Bang Theory and so on. Little inserts of geek culture like this were few, if they occurred at all. Part of the abiding charm of that year for a science fiction fan. It was the year that every month brought a new classic of the genre. Blade Runner, the second Star Trek movie, E.T., Poltergeist, The Road Warrior, The Thing... a seminal year for geekdom, without a doubt.

We're watching an odd double bill today, TRON and Die Hard. Originally just intending to watch the one, when word got out that one of the gal's friends has never seen the greatest christmas action movie of them all, we decided to double down. Should be fun. We'll watch 40 Stories of Sheer Adventure (Die Hard's tagline), break for an intermission supper and then fire up TRON himself, which nobody present will have seen before; or if they did, it was long ago and is now a distant, barely perceptible memory.

That's why I'm here: to create good memories.