The Danger Zone
Today I spent several hours with my lovely granddaughters, literally taking a handoff from my youngest son, their uncle. After a round of volleyball with a soft indoor ball (I enjoyed teaching the four-year-old how to use both hands to volley) we settled into GrubHub dinner and a showing of The Sound of Music. I was surprised when my daughter told me they had only seen Mary Poppins the day before and had never seen The Sound of Music. Little girls always love The Sound of Music and despite this being the era of Frozen (they both know it by heart), I was confident Julie Andrews would charm them as much as she charms me. I was not disappointed. Like all four and six-year-olds, these two have ants in their pants and have a hard time sitting still. The combination of a classic little girl’s movie and alternating back-scratches from Gramps did the trick. I was not disappointed by their reaction. Doe-a-Deer alone riveted them to the screen. The encouragement and singing along by their grandfather didn’t hurt their enthusiasm. It’s a longer movie than I remembered so we stopped on account of bedtime at Intermission with the promise that they would get the second half tomorrow night. They understood the importance of bedtime because tomorrow their grandmother (my ex-wife) is taking them all to the Nassau Coliseum to see Frozen on Ice. Foiled again by modern times, but there’s time for Julie later.
Back home in Manhattan and all by my lonesome I have a few work-related things to do and then I’m determined to watch a movie from start to finish. The next thing I see that’s about to start is none other than Top Gun. This means more to me than it might otherwise have. First of all, the Top Gun School was based in Miramar on the north side of San Diego when the film was made thirty-five years ago (it’s in Nevada now). Tom Skerritt, as the school’s honcho, has a lovely military officer’s home on the ocean. I wondered if it was up at Fort Pendleton or out on Coronado, both of which probably have such officer’s homes. But it turns out the setting in the film was the Point Loma Lightkeeper’s house.
Another Top Gun anachronism I always note as an avid motorcyclist that has two motorcycles registered in California, is that Tom Cruise famously rips along the Miramar runway on his Kawasaki Ninja without a helmet. In 1986 that was legal, but pretty stupid. I guess if you’re a Top Gun flyer with a handle like Maverick, stupid is as stupid does and doesn’t survive. The California helmet law was put in place in 1992 and reduced statewide motorcycle Deaths immediately by 37%. There are only three states that don’t have adult helmet laws at all (Iowa, Illinois and New Hampshire, which brings new meaning to its Live Free or Die slogan). But 19 more have the requirement only for those under 18, and 9 have the requirement for those under 21. That means only 19 of our states (plus D.C.) are smart enough to follow Federal safety and CDC recommendations as well as evidence about the impact of letting the wind flow through your hair. Those of us on the other side of this issue call those 31 states organ-donor states.
I looked at that state map and tried to compare it to red/blue states and didn’t get as strong an outcome as I expected. There was only a slight edge favoring being that 11 helmet law states are blue and 9 are red. What does skew blue is that only 4 blue states are helmetless for adults where 27 red states have no brain-bucket laws for adults. I figure there is likely a high correlation between avid defenders of the Second Amendment and those happy to risk their brains getting splattered on the highway. I’ll bet the correlation would be even better if the Federal government hadn’t put in a highway subsidy law in the 1970’s that pushed states to enact helmet laws. Something tells me that socialized medicine is bound to have a logical impact on all of this when live free or be a brain-dead burden on society comes into focus.
I also like Top Gun because it has so many great lines. I read that the real Top Gun School fines students $5 for every movie reference or quote they utter. That would get real expensive for me. Let me list a few of them:
– I feel the need for speed
– Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash
– Take me to bed or lose me forever
– You can be my wingman any time
– Remember, boys, no points for second place
– This is what I call a target-rich environment
– I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you
– If you think, you’re dead
– You’re not going to be happy unless you’re going Mach 2 with your hair on fire
My guess off the top of my head (which always has a helmet on it) is that this is a top five quote movie for me along with Moonstruck (Snap out of it!) and Glengarry Glen Ross (Always be closing and Hey, let me buy you a pack of gum. I’ll show you how to chew it). I’m not sure about the other two, but see if you can guess the movie from the quotes (I’ll bet you all get 100%):
– Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn
– I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse
– I coulda been a contender
– We’re not in Kansas anymore
– Go ahead, make my day
– You talking to me?
– What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate
– I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore
– I’m walking here!
– You can’t handle the truth!
– You’re gonna need a bigger boat
– I’ll be back
– Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown
– Nobody puts Baby in a corner
Get me going on motorcycling or movies and I’m in my danger zone, going so fast that I might take the gun and drop the cannoli.
You had me at hello.
Good one