I finally finished installing a KVM switch so that I could fix my internet feed to watch The Searchers. It is a movie on my watch list that I haven’t seen yet. The film, which was released in 1956, starred John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles and Natalie Wood.

The plot involved Ethan Edwards (Wayne), a middle-aged Civil War veteran, who spends years looking for his abducted niece with Martin Pawley (Hunter), his adoptive nephew.

Although the movie received no Academy Award Nominations, the movie is listed by the American Film Institute as the Greatest Western Film of all time.

John Wayne’s catchphrase in the film, “That’ll be the day”, inspired Buddy Holly to write his hit song of the same name.

The 1990s were not that long ago. But when you think about it the year 1990 was 20 years ago. There are kids that graduated from high school in 1990 that will be attending their 20th high school reunion this year. The 90s is when the technology boom really started happening. Cell phones, mp3 players and a bigger online consumer presence took hold. You could even buy online life insurance instead of talking directly with an insurance agent.

Looking back, some of my favorite 1990 movies include:

One of my favorite movies is Young Frankenstein. If you watched the trailer, you will get a glimpse of some cool wall sconces outside the door. I have always wanted a big, creepy looking house with fire coming from the wall sconces! This is the type of movie that you either think is absolutely funny, or you think it is the dumbest thing you have ever seen. I put this in the same category as the likes of The Producers, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Napoleon Dynamite!

Who doesn’t love diamonds? The song “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” was introduced in the Broadway musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and was sung by Carol Channing. The song was written by Jule Styne.

But, it is probably best remembered for the movie version sung by Marilyn Monroe. Monroe plays Lorilei Lee, whose father does not want her to marry for money. When he finds that she is involved with a British mine owner, he cancels her line of credit and she seeks work in nightclub where she performs this song:

I recently saw a huge point of purchase displays for the movie 2012. I never got to see it in the movie theater and I thought I would either purchase it or rent it.

How did we start believing that the world was going to end in 2012? December 21 or 23, 2012 is the end date of the 5,125 year long Mayan Calendar. Some believe that 2012 will mark the beginning of a new spiritual era, while others believe that it will mark the end of the world. The Mayan’s themselves never predicted an end on this date.

Remember the scene from Rocky where he drink raw eggs? Too bad he didn’t know that he could get the same protein from whey protein powder. Just the thought of drinking raw eggs makes me sick to my stomach! The problem with drinking raw eggs is that some eggs contain the bacteria Salmonella enteritidis. The bacteria is found in the yolk of the egg, but is is also possible for it to be in egg whites as well. Always cook your eggs!

Entertainment Weekly has rated the top 50 High School Movies. I am listing the top ten from this list here. If you want to see the entire list go here. Some of my favorite from the list include Dead Poet’s Society, Napoleon Dynamite, and Splendor in the Grass. Most of these movies feature fresh face kids who never need to look for acne solutions!

10. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – 1986
Who didn’t want to be Ferris in 12th grade? Who wouldn’t want school to be a magical place where you could wake up and call in sick (with an awesome hacking-cough keyboard) and then see your name in a get-well-soon message painted on the side of a water tower by lunch, all while you were cruising through Chicago in a red Ferrari? Thanks to Matthew Broderick as Ferris, teenagerdom has never felt more fun or mythic.
9. Election – 1999
Before taking on geezers (About Schmidt) and oenophiles (Sideways), director Alexander Payne in Election scabrously exposed the most embarrassing shortcomings of high schoolers in an artful, hilarious way. He doesn’t go easy on anybody — not Matthew Broderick’s weak, meddling teacher, nor Reese Witherspoon’s Fargo-accented student-council-president candidate. In fact, Election is as mean as high school at its worst.
8. Boys N the Hood – 1991
Set in South Central Los Angeles, John Singleton’s Oscar-nominated directorial debut revealed what it’s like to come of age — and cram for the SATs — in a community plagued by crime, violence, and gang warfare. By contrasting the collegiate aspirations of bookworm Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and football star Ricky Baker (Morris Chestnut) with the self-destructive lifestyle of dropout/drug dealer Doughboy (Ice Cube), Boyz effectively pimped for education.
7. Clueless – 1995
It’s a rare movie that makes you want to befriend the prettiest, most popular girl in school. But not all girls are Cher (Alicia Silverstone), who gets as many killer lines as fashion ensembles, learns that seeing the best in others is a way to better yourself, and discovers the joy of shopping with a well-dressed gay man — all at the ripe age of 15. Credit writer-director Amy Heckerling for making this modern-day Emma consistently smart and funny.
6. American Graffiti – 1973
Graffiti’s cast of teens — including Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard — has serious decisions to make on a late-summer night filled with rock music and hot rods, the kind that can only be made if they stay up ’til dawn. Should they ditch town for college? Should they stay with their gals? Whatever the choice, it infuses this most innocently joyous eve-of-adulthood film with that bittersweet feeling of leaving one’s childhood behind.
5. Heathers – 1989
For those who dream about offing an obnoxious classmate, Heathers is the ultimate fantasy. Full of mordant wit, shocking violence, and savvy performances by Christian Slater and Winona Ryder, the flick was the antithesis of the earnest ’80s John Hughes films — you’d never see Molly Ringwald serving up a kitchen-cleaner cocktail for Ally Sheedy. Even today, Heathers’ spin on cliques, teen suicide, and homosexuality still has bite.
4. Rebel Without a Cause – 1955
”You’re tearing me apart,” Jim Stark (James Dean) howls at his parents. For the new kid in school, it doesn’t get any easier. Though he finds a friend in the extremely troubled Plato (Sam Mineo), Stark gets into it on his first day with a gang of bullies, in a knife fight and later in a chickie run. Dean was a refreshing change from the well-scrubbed teens of earlier Hollywood films. Here was a character young audiences could finally recognize.
3. Dazed and Confused – 1993
Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson likes high school girls because even though he gets older, they stay the same age. We feel the same way about Richard Linklater’s minutiae-filled comedic epic about the last day of school in 1976 — we may get older, but Dazed is ageless. And for a movie featuring so many stoners, Dazed is mammothly ambitious: Few other films say as much about starting, sticking around in, and leaving high school.
2. Fast Times at Ridgemont High – 1982
When screenwriter Cameron Crowe went undercover to observe the species Teenagerus americanus, he returned with more than the usual grab-bag of anecdotes about horny, apple-pie-humping guys and the popularity-obsessed girls who must fight them off with a stick. He returned with 24-karat truth. To watch Fast Times today is to know exactly what it felt like to be fixated on sex, drugs, and rock & roll in Southern California circa 1982. It also launched careers and dished out still-relevant life lessons: Jennifer Jason Leigh (relax your throat muscles when fellating a carrot), Phoebe Cates (always knock before entering a bathroom), and Judge Reinhold. And Sean Penn’s Jeff Spicoli, with his checkerboard Vans and bong-hit grin, was a geyser of catchphrases (”Aloha, Mr. Hand!”). The film never strains for coming-of-age treacle. Maybe that’s why it still feels so…right. Especially Damone’s sage advice: ”When it comes down to making out, whenever possible put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.”
1. The Breakfast Club – 1985
We see it as we want to see it — in the simplest terms, the most convenient definition: The Breakfast Club is the best high school movie of all time. It may lack the scope of its peers — the drinking, the driving, the listless loitering in parking lots — as well as any scenes that actually take place during school. But if hell is other people — and high school is hell — then John Hughes is the genre’s Sartre, and this is his No Exit. The concept is simple: one Saturday detention, five unhappy teens, and their scramble to prove they’re each something more than a brain (Anthony Michael Hall), an athlete (Emilio Estevez), a basket case (Ally Sheedy), a princess (Molly Ringwald), and a criminal (Judd Nelson). Following the farcical fluff of Sixteen Candles, the issues Hughes explored — sex, drugs, abuse, suicide, the need to belong to something — were surprisingly subversive and handled with bracing, R-rated honesty. ”’Kids movie’ was a derogatory term,” recalls Nelson, ”and Hughes was definitely not making that.” Thus, 21 years later, the film still sparks intense debates about the trials of teen life. (Sheedy’s goth freak gets a makeover, then gets the guy: well-earned happy ending or antifeminist propaganda? Discuss!). Never mind the serious sociological stuff. The Breakfast Club rules because watching the group dismantle/ignore the authority of Principal ”Dick” Vernon (Paul Gleason) is a vicarious thrill at any age. It rules because Simple Minds’ ”Don’t You Forget About Me” is a kick-ass theme. Mostly it rules because, as Hall puts it: ”In the end, you learn maybe we’re more alike than we realize, and that’s kind of cool.” Leave it to the neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie to get all cheesy.

There is something creepy about peeking through window blinds to see what your neighbors are up to and no one portrayed this feeling better than Alfred Hitchcock. One of my favorite Hitchcock movies is Rear Window.

The film was based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich entitled It Had to be Murder. The movie stars James Stewart as a photographer who spies on his neighbor while recuperating from a broken leg. His girlfriend is played by Grace Kelly and Raymond Burr plays on of the neighbors. The movie received four Academy Award nominations.

Before the wii was ever invented, we used to spend our afternoons watching soap operas. My favorite was All My Children. And who can forget the sometimes evil Palmer Cortlandt played by James Mitchell.

James Mitchell was born February 19, 1920 in Sacramento, California. Mitchell’s mother left the family in 1923 and Mitchell’s father, unable to run a farm and raise a son at the same time, “loaned” him out to a vaudeville act, George and Katherine King. Mitchell’s father eventually remarried and went back to live with his father. At the age of seventeen he left for Los Angeles.

Mitchell study acting at Los Angeles City College and became involved in modern dance. He danced with Leslie Horton’s dance company for four years. He auditioned for Oklahoma! as a dancer and danced and also assisted Agnes de Mille with choreography. He would work with de Mille on a number of projects for Broadway and film. He worked on stage in musicals and dramas until the late 1970s.

Mitchell had limited success in film and appeared in a few movies. In the 1950s and 60s he appeared in numerous television series and movies. In 1964, he took a role in The Edge of Night, his first soap opera role.

Mitchell’s performing career almost ended in 1974 and he went to college to get a BA and MFA so that he could teach at the college level. He taught at Juilliard, Yale University, and Drake University. In 1979, he was asked to play Palmer Cortlandt on the soap opera All My Children. He was hired for only one year, but the role was extended and he ended up playing Palmer for 30 years.

James Mitchell died on January 22, 2010 a few weeks before what would have been his 90th birthday.

You may not recognize the name, but I bet you will recognize the face. Zelda Rubenstein passed away on January 27,2010 she was 76 years old. Zelda was born on May 28, 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She stood only 4′3″ tall due to a deficiency in anterior pituitary gland which produces growth hormone. She lived in London for a few years and upon returning, at the age of 49, began her acting career.

She was cast as Tangina Barrons, the medium, in the movie Poltergeist. She also appeared in the two sequels and in a tv spin off. She appeared in Sixteen Candles, Cages, Teen Witch, The Wildcard, Southland Tales and National Lampoon’s Last Resorts. She also did voice over work and made numerous guest appearances.

Here is a clip from Poltergeist: