We're All In The Same Cage Here

Easy Rider
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The drive-in was home to a true American classic on the Fourth of July this year.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

There was an excellent pre-show DJ set from a very cool man named Guy who brought a pile of bandanas to hand out to fans in attendance.

 

It started raining pretty heavily not long after we pulled on the lot.  It continued raining until about ten minutes prior to showtime, after which point the skies cleared up and it was a beautiful night.  We sat outside for the entire movie and the trailer reel after the film, and as soon as we packed up and got back in the car to drive home, there was rain falling on the windshield.  This isn't the first time that this has happened this season either.  The drive-in gods have been good to us!

Easy Rider premiered in theaters nationwide two days before the launch of Apollo 11, six days before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and a month before Woodstock.  It was a pivotal year in American history, and although it was eleven years before I was born and have no first-hand experience to make this assumption, this movie felt like it captured the time and place that it was released as well as any movie ever made.

Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper are both absolutely incredible as Wyatt and Billy, but Jack Nicholson gave one of the best performances I have ever seen on the big screen with a performance for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 42nd Academy Awards.  This exchange between Hopper (Billy) and Nicholson (George) is one of my favorite exchanges that I've ever seen in any film.

Billy: They're scared, man.

George: Oh, they're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to 'em.

Billy: Hey man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody needs a haircut.

George: Oh no. What you represent to them is freedom.

Billy: What the hell's wrong with freedom, man? That's what it's all about.

George: Oh yeah, that's right, that's what it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it - that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. 'Course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

Billy: Well, that don't make 'em runnin' scared.

George: No, it makes 'em dangerous.

The things that irrationally rile people up may have changed over the years, but the reaction to them really hasn't.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Last night at the Mahoning was my first time seeing Easy Rider.  I've heard of it before it was announced on the drive-in calendar, but it's a movie that I had absolutely no intention of ever sitting down to watch.  The only thing I knew about this movie prior to seeing it is that it had something to do with motorcycles.  The only interest I have in anything automotive is the fact that they take me to and from the things that I actually am interested in, so Easy Rider could not have been further off of my radar.  In reality, this movie isn't actually about motorcycles at all, but I never would have known that, and I never would have known what an incredibly powerful film this is if not for the Mahoning Drive-In Theater.  After 3+ years of coming here, the amount of movies, music, people, and ideas that this place has brought into my world has become too numerous to list.  It's a special place, and I'm thankful that I live close enough to it to make it a part of my life.

A Psychotic Love Letter To 80's Horror

Maxxxine
A24 (2024)

It might be the recency bias talking, but I think this might be my favorite slasher flick of all time.  I'm not sure if I'd go as far as to say that it feels like what we'd see if Tarantino directed a horror flick, but it definitely feels like it was inspired by his work.

I enjoyed X a lot, and I thought Pearl was alright (I didn't hate it, but I definitely didn't love it as much as many others seem to), but I'd say that they saved the best for last.  Maxxxine is by far the strongest film in the trilogy.

A Horror Flick That Will Make You Crave Pizza

A Quiet Place: Day One
Paramount Pictures (2024)

This is the third movie in what has become one of the most creative and entertaining horror franchise of the 21st century, and it did not disappoint.  Lupita Nyong'o delivered an incredible performance as a woman living in New York City who is in the final stages of terminal cancer.  She leaves hospice care to go into the city on the day that the aliens who have taken over the planet in A Quiet Place first arrive on Earth.

I'd recommend this to anyone who has even a slight interest in horror or suspense.  The story is told in such a way that you don't have to watch the first two movies in the series to understand and enjoy the prequel, and it's told well.  The only thing you really have to know going into this movie is that if you haven't eaten dinner before you walk into the theater, you're going to be tempted to go on a pizza run on your way home.

Get A Grip

Game Boy/Game Gear flyer

Software Etc (July 1994)
This is one of the most mid-90's things that I've ever seen.

The Arcade That Moved Downstairs And Went Downhill

Timeline Arcade
Hanover, PA

We spent my 44th birthday at the Timeline Arcade in Hanover, PA.

I've been to their arcade in York, PA several times over the past six years, but this is the first time that I've visited their Hanover arcade since it was moved from the second floor of its building to ground level.

Time Out Family Amusement Center  (photo source: Arcade Blogger)

Timeline Arcade - Hanover, PA

The new entrance to the Timeline Arcade has been designed to resemble the outside of a Time-Out Family Amusement Center, which was a chain of arcades found in malls across the country throughout the late 70's through the early 2000's.

 

While a lot of work has gone into the aesthetics of the Hanover location since the arcade was moved from the second floor to the first, unfortunately the same cannot be said for the games themselves.  I'd estimate that the arcade includes maybe 25% of the games that it had prior to the move, and a significant number of them were either out of order or had damages that ranged from hindering the gameplay to rendering it completely unplayable.  Examples include Tetris, which had glitches on the monitor which made it impossible to tell which spaces were empty and which spaces had bricks at the bottom of the screen, to Q*Bert, which the joystick panel was not attached to the panel and separated from the rest of the cabinet entirely when you tried to move up.

The pinball games were in better shape, but they weren't without issues either.  Two of the machines were out of order completely, the Terminator 2 machine had a left flipper that was non-functional, and several other machines had issues that affected the game play.  Most of the older machines had plungers that could barely launch the ball hard enough to get it through the chute and onto the table, which I'm guessing means that they either had broken springs or that the wrong springs were used so the plunger isn't hitting the ball as hard as it's supposed to.

They did have some pretty cool machines though, and the ones that worked properly were a hell of a lot of fun to play.  The newer machines, like the John Wick and Elton John ones, worked perfectly.  Most of the other ones were playable, even if it was a bit of a struggle to get the pinball to launch.  I'll post some more pictures of these machines and some of the others in a few days.

To call the Timeline Arcade in Hanover, PA a disappointment compared to what it was before the pandemic would be a massive understatement.  A few years ago, this was one of the coolest arcades I had ever visited in my life.  Today, it's not worth the gas money that it takes to get there, even if admission was free.

I visited the York location earlier this year, and it is still absolutely incredible, but its expansions seem to have come at the expense of the Hanover location.  Quite frankly, if not for all of the time and money that it must have taken to make the Hanover arcade resemble the old Time Out Family Amusement Centers, I would have said that it was being used as a warehouse for machines that were in need of repair and overflow cabinets that they didn't have the room to put out in York.  The difference between these two arcades is so vast that it's hard to believe that they're owned by the same person.  It's like comparing a playground in a state of neglect to Disneyland.

If you live in Hanover and you only care about playing pinball, visiting the Hanover location might be worth your while to buy a one hour pass.  For anyone else, do yourself a favor and skip the Hanover location and visit the Timeline Arcade in York.