Little Changes

With the AC on in my house last night the temperature was still 83 at about 9pm.
So, while sitting as still as humanly possible, I decided to watch an on-demand movie after watching one of the hot girls on Big Brother get the boot.
My choice last night was “Little Darlings” with Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol listed as stars. Others of note in the movie included Armand Assante, Matt Dillon and Cynthia Nixon.

The premise of the movie is that O’Neal is a rich kid and McNichol a poor kid and they go away to summer camp. A contest between those two develops at the prodding of another camper, a very loose hoe, to see who would lose their virginity first.

I had a thing for Tatum O’Neal when I was younger (one of many such "things" I had back then of course) so I decided to watch this 1980 movie.

There were a bunch of things that jumped out at me while realizing that this movie was now 31 years old.

First, I noticed that my joints hurt and that it’s much tougher to move around these days and that I had a bunch of other ailments that remind me that I am now close to 50 years old.

I noticed how bad most of the story telling was in this movie and wondered just how some movies got made then and even now.

I saw that gas was .68 a gallon.
Cars that were in this movie, mostly GM made, were awful. No wonder that company hit the slump that it did that from which they never have really recovered (and are quickly heading back down the toilet these days.)
The pledge of allegiance was said in its entirety (mentioning God) not just once, but twice. Today those two scenes would be removed by censors for being offensive.
O’Neal’s character is 15 years old in the movie and she wants to bag Assante so she could win the competition. Assante is a camp counselor in the movie.
Later in the movie Tatum (Ferris is her movie name) lies and tells her bunk mates that she had this wonderfully romantic interlude with him to win the bet.

She ventured over to his cabin wearing a white night gown late at night and he let her in to talk to him. She tried to get him to kiss her as they were sitting on the couch together with him, for some reason, with his arm around her.
Now, Assante was not a teenaged counselor in this movie; he was in his 20’s. I found myself laughing, not because this was actually funny, but because there would be no way a normal counselor these days would let that girl cross the threshold while she was clearly on the prowl for penis.

Later, Assante gets in some sort of trouble, but it’s not the kind where the police are dragging him away screaming that he was innocent, but rather the kind where O’Neal can simply apologize for the “stunt” and everyone went on their merry way. Today just the accusation that something inappropriate like this happened would practically ruin a dude's life and have him on an internet searchabale sexual predator's list.

In Assante’s cabin, I should add, there is beer on his desk where he was working, and a bottle of wine. He was typing on a manual typewriter on a desk where there was a rotary phone.
Not a single computer was seen nor was there a cell phone in sight. This meant that we could see kids faces as they were walking around the grounds of the camp.

There was a lot of smoking in the movie too. On the way to the camp, McNichol’s 15-year old character was smoking IN the bus. Now we know that kids smoke and drink (as she also did with Dillon in this movie later) but to see a bus driver allow smoking on his bus was almost shocking.
I found myself longing for some of those younger days for a variety of reasons. I never did go away to camp like that when I was young. My mother, raised in Queens, was forced to go to day camp when she was young into New Jersey a place which New Yorkers basically refered to as the "swamp" on the other side of the river. Her experience was terrible and she hated it being the city kid but later raised her two kids in NJ anyway (and the swamp became The Meadowlands that we all know now.)  

I was wondering how Matt Dillon ever actually landed an acting role back then because he was horrible. He became much better later with lots and lots of practice (as anyone would I suppose) but working next to McNichol who was really pretty good in this made him look absolutely terrible.

I still would do Tatum O’Neal, if given the opportunity, to this day. While searching for an image to post on here it was clear that even at 47 she is still hot.

The Phillies made a big change and sealed their doom this week as they signed relief pitcher Aaron Heilman who was released by the Diamondbacks earlier in the week. The Atlanta Braves now will fulfill my pre-season prediction and win the NL East in MLB.
The Phillies management must have short-term memory loss. Heilman is an ex Met who pretty much single-handedly blew three seasons for the Mets including the 2006 NLCS game 7 where he gave up the series winning HR to the Cardinals Yadier Molina. He then went on to help blow probably ten games all by himself in 2007 when the Mets folded down the stretch eventually losing the division and the Wild Card on the last day of the season. He also had a huge hand in their 2008 fold allowing the Phillies to somehow actually win the division again and a World Series for only the second time since the WS began in the early 1900’s.
Aaron Heilman is a high school caliber pitcher at best who will find a way to tank the Phillies high hopes. All by himself he will neutralize the deals for Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay and I think that if this does happen it will be the funniest thing I will have ever seen in MLB history.

 Done.