I've been chewing on this since my birthday several months ago and it is now I finally collect myself and adequately convey my thoughts. As we get older, how you want to celebrate morphs. Just a few years it was a big group gathering to glow in the glory of ME! Later it became limo ride with my favorite couples. Then reduced to bowling with friends surrounded by young people that do the same for their tenth birthday. Most recently it was just pizza and beer. And I don't like either. It was just about being with my favorite people with whom I didn't share a bloodline with. (Bloodline celebration involves ribs.)
So here I am with friends from many moments in my life who made the cut. It was lively conversation and at no point there were no more than six people in the room. Naturally, pop culture is the best way to keep a conversation going and strangely, at times, can get tempers boiling as much as politics. What I thought was truly perverse is that after talking about some of the greatest movies of all time, we could not everyone to agree on the greatness of one movie.
Sure, you can get a consensus on the crappier movies. That's not a problem. Sadly, it's been so long since the conversation that I only have flashes of one friend claiming The Godfather was too long and The Departed was okay. I think Alien came into the mix as well. Don't get me started on Return of the King. I had this vision of the film class scene in Scream 2 and all of the students nodding in silent agreement The Godfather Part II surpasses the first. I had six people in my house and there was no agreement there. Of course in a freshman discussion, you can have the timid people agreeing because they do not want to stand out, but then it completely contradicts the earlier arguments that make up the entire scene.
Around the five minute mark you will feel the pain.
