“Party on, Wayne’s World!”

There are so many tidbits of every decade that are of cultural significance and impact us personally.  And when you’re a nostalgic geek, you tend to focus in on the things not many others would.

This is one of those times, and this is one of those tributes.

1992:

Also in 1992:

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Your Then-Future Nostalgia Geek and writer of the Written Word, who was always a geek, but had no idea. (Taken in September 1991)

I have this crazy memory for things that happened many years ago.  It is often described as a “gift,” but I believe it can also be a curse.  For the sake of writing pieces like this, it actually tends to be more of a gift.

In the spring of 1992, during Easter break from school, my parents took my brother and myself to the movies.  They told us we were seeing a movie called Wayne’s World.  I’m not sure who picked the movie, but I’m pretty sure we saw the trailer, and my parents thought it would be a great movie to take their nine-year-old kids to see.

I’m not sure if they realized they would be hearing their kids saying “ribbed for her pleasure…ewww!” constantly.

Anyway, my parents took us to see this movie.  We all laughed, and we all enjoyed it.  What I would never have realized in 1992 was that this would become one of my absolute favorite movies.  I also didn’t know that the movie was based on a sketch on the show Saturday Night Live, which I was too young to watch in 1992.  I may not have even been aware of that show yet.  I also didn’t know these guys didn’t look like this, that wasn’t their real hair, and quite a few of the jokes were things I would only come to know as I got older.  So was it an appropriate movie for a nine-year-old?  Nope!  Did we love it?  OMG yes!

To say there is any one scene in this movie that sticks out as “my favorite” would be a total lie.  There isn’t any moment in this movie found particularly weak.  It’s a comedy, and yes it is silly, but the movie is so much fun, I’d be hard-pressed to find a scene I didn’t find funny.

But if I have to choose four (yes, four) scenes I loved the most (fine, I think I can do it!), they would have to be:

Bohemian Rhapsody

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Who hasn’t imitated the head-banging portion of the song, sung along with Freddy Mercury, and wanted to ride in the Mirthmobile (or wondered what a “Mirthmobile” was?)?  And since you raised your hand, then congratulations, you are a geek.

It’s ok, I did this in the movie theater last night. I’m not ashamed at all. 🙂

You may not be willing to admit it, but you are.  It is all ok, you came here to read an article, look at some screenshots, and perhaps watch a few video clips.

Like this one.

“I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me…”

The Twlight Zone Episode That Doesn’t Exist…

The night before the Stargate Convention started in 2015, my friends (a large group) and I went to a restaurant called the Sugar Factory, and two members of the group ordered these really large drinks that contained dry ice and involved a dramatic moment of pouring the drink at the table.  The result was all this lovely smoke coming from the drinks, clapping, and memories of that ginormous drink Garth drinks in the Hawaiian restaurant.  My friend Nikki and I called it immediately.

Of course, that moment with the drink was a mere footnote of the actual scene, which involves Garth breaking the fourth wall to tell us this little observational tidbit:

I remember finding out years later that this is merely creative writing, and not an actual Twilight Zone episode.  Thankfully, I found this out years before I was invited to do the Halloween podcast about the show.  Because it would have been so interesting had I sought this episode out.

Well, it would have been embarrassing.  Or interestingly embarrassing?

The Scene Where I Fell In Love With Garth…

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I don’t really have to explain it, but it certainly meant I was geeky long before I knew what that was, before it was cool (to quote my friend Marc’s book title), or would have ever believed it.

“I’d like to get by now…”

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Not pictured: Me draped all over Dana Carvey.

I was nine, guys.  That would have been wrong!

“If she were President, she’d be Baberaham Lincoln!”

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Wayne, Garth, Mirthmobile, a starry sky, the Star Trek theme whistled (seriously, geeky vibes anyone?), the epic laugh, and that exact moment you wanted to park outside an airport.

True fact (that you probably already know): The scene was shot late at night, and our duo were so tired, they could barely talk.  The random discussion was actually improvised between the two actors.  Likewise, the laugh was 100% not scripted.  Dana Carvey and Mike Myers were joking around and an off-camera joke Carvey made caused Myers to laugh (you can hear Dana Carvey laughing off-camera).  The reaction to the Bugs Bunny question (which is unrelated to the joke being told off-camera) looks so genuine that the laugh made it into the movie.  And that plane…was a two-foot model.

Admit it, you laughed super hard over the question the first time you heard it!

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I could go on and on, but in the interest of actually keeping this (and you!) interested, I’ll stop at four.

(The original challenge was three.)

Over Your Head…

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When I was nine years old, I didn’t know what a condom was.  Call me crazy, call me oblivious, but it is an absolute true story.  So when I first saw the scene in Benjamin’s apartment and Garth rooted through his drawers, revealing a box of “ribbed for her pleasure,” I actually laughed at the fact that Garth said “ewwww,” and not because he found a box of condoms stashed in a drawer.

Two years later, I found out what he was referring to, and well, I still laugh at the joke to this day.  I can largely attribute the giggles to me initially not knowing the bigger joke, but it is still worthy of a laugh.

“We’ll Hang Out With Ya…With Alice Cooper…”

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I worked at my last job until February 2010 (I was laid off beginning in October 2009), and one of my final (and most enduring) memories of my time there was the time in late September 2009 that Alice Cooper and his band golfed with several casino high rollers.  Each group consisted of three golfers and a band member serving as the fourth member, with Cooper himself rotating in as a fifth player for each group.  That alone is awesome, but coming on to my afternoon shift and seeing his band coming in after finishing their rounds was nothing short of surreal.

Truth be told, I had never heard of Alice Cooper before seeing this movie (lest I remind you of my age again!), but came to know not only his music over the years, but also his love for black eye makeup.  I also found out during my time at the golf course that Alice was actually a passionate golfer.

So he’s not just good at historical facts about Milwaukee…

Still Worthy After All These Years…

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Years pass, movies get older, they get upconverts in physical formats (videocassettes and laserdiscs become DVDs, Blu-Rays, and digital downloads/media).  Kids who saw the movie for the first time as kids eventually grow up, have kids of their own, and you almost hope they will eventually introduce their kids to movies they loved.  You also hope those kids may laugh a little, or in the very least, appreciate what mom or dad introduced them to.

Wayne’s World, in my eyes, is a product of its time.  It is a product of 1990s culture – clothing styles, music, slang, but also a relic of the television show it was lifted from.  It doesn’t matter that the film started its life as the last sketch on Saturday Night Live way back in 1989, that it had to work its way up in both writing, style, and tinkering.  What matters is that it gained ground, moved up to the first half of the show (and by 1991-1992, it was the show’s cold opening), and had enough substance to become a full-length movie.

I could never not have enough to say about this movie – it still makes me laugh, I still love the sketches, and I even like the sequel.  It’s not great, but it isn’t terrible or unwatchable.  And I’ll always have my nine-year-old love of Garth.

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It’s a geek thing, trust me.

May the “party on!” go on for many, many years!

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