Back to the Future Part II and Part III

Back to the Future Part II and Part III
seen on TV @ G4, New Paltz, NY
10.3.10

I spent this past weekend upstate in New Paltz with my friends Bibi and Eric. This was a bit of a last-minute surprise trip. Bibi had e-mailed me last week telling me about a street festival going on in the historical district and would I like to come up for it? So we hung out there for awhile and then went apple picking at a farm on the outskirts of town. That was fun. There's this tool that you can use to yank apples off the branches; it has this wire basket on one end, with curved extensions on one end that you use to hook the apples off the branches, and once they do, they fall right inside the basket. I found it very useful. After that we went comics shopping, then back to their place for awhile, and then out for dinner.

Wouldn't you know it, though - we were at dinner for so long, I ended up missing the last train back home! We all knew it was at eleven, and we knew we had to drive to Poughkeepsie to get it, but you know how it can be sometimes when you're with friends you don't see very often - you know you have to leave, but you don't want to. This was actually a first in all the times I've visited Bibi and Eric, though. Bibi thought we could drive down to the next town and catch a different train into New York, but that didn't work out. I ended up staying the night in their spare bedroom, which would've have been fine if not for their cats. I've recently developed an allergy to cats, which meant a lot of congestion and heavy breathing through my mouth during the night, but I got through. (The worst part is, I like cats!)

I woke up a little after nine, went downstairs and watched TV with Eric, and what should I find but the Back to the Future trilogy on G4. I had missed Part 1, but I've seen that so many times it didn't matter. When I turned on the TV, Part 2 looked like it was about 15-20 minutes in. G4 is the geek channel; this was only the second time I'd ever watched anything on it. There are "hosts" that pop up during the commercial breaks and talk about facts related to the movies, as well as general geek-related items of interest. (One segment was about a new home video game and how to play it.) This being a Sunday morning, the commercials tended to be the same five or six ones over and over again.

Eric and I pondered the logistics of the timeline in the movies, especially Part 2, which has a great deal of back and forth from the future to the "present" (1985) to the past and back again. The first time I saw Part 2, it confused the hell out of me; now it's less confusing, at least. I remember wondering if there's a chart explaining all the moves back and forth through history throughout the trilogy (and sure enough, there is).

The summer Part 1 came out, I was vacationing with my mother, my aunt, and my cousin in California. We were in a hotel, and I was listening to the radio, and at one point a commercial for the movie came on. I was excited about it, but my aunt was less than impressed. When the commercial said, "Rated PG," my aunt said "That should stand for Put it in the Garbage!" I've never forgotten that; I'm not sure why. (She was actually a wonderful woman, even if she didn't care much for modern movies.)

Bibi woke up later on and caught the tail end of Part 3 as she played with her cats. One of them seems to love batting away crumpled bits of paper if you throw them at him, and Bibi and Eric get a kick out of watching him do it, even though it means balls of paper all over the floor.

I took the bus back to New York instead of the train, as Eric had housework to do and Bibi didn't feel like driving all the way to Poughkeepsie. While I didn't plan on spending the whole weekend in New Paltz, I can't complain. I get to see Bibi and Eric once, maybe twice a year, so any extra time with them is welcome, whether intended or not.