Skimmed through an hour of lousy gootube videos to get to this gem before tomorrow's commute. John Candy's much maligned, later movies had a few gems of late 80's life.

The rear projection TV in this scene brings back the cozy memories of the late 80's. A rear projection TV in those days was truly luxurious & signified great professional achievement.  Today, we're a lot more sensitive to vignetting & resolution.  Lion memory only remembered those TV's as crisp & bright from corner to corner.  The much higher quality of this movie today reveals the limitations of those TV's.


A lot more stuff in those days signified luxury & set you apart from the rabble. Today, most everything is commoditized except for having a lot of space. In the 80's, square footage was the commodity.

Then of course, the national debt clock in 1991 was amusing. It really was still below $4 trillion until 1992. The lion kingdom recalled panic in the 80's about Reagan's debt buildup but only remembered $4 trillion being the doomsday number. We didn't know interest rates could drop to 0. Who would ever lend money without interest, they said. 0% has been standard since 2008.

9 months ago, the fed abandoned its traditional rule of paying off its balance sheet & wrote $2.5 trillion off as a wholesale printing of money. Last month, they began printing $100 billion every week with no plans to ever pay it off. We used to think wholesale printing of money was unsustainable.