Have a Nice Life

You have to be a guy to understand my love for the movie, Fandango. That's probably not totally true, but I did notice it was on the list of top 50 guy movies of all time.

This movie is about a group of guys that either just graduated from UT. Or, in the case of the main character Gardner Barnes, all of his friends graduated from UT while he partied.

The main group of characters in this memorable flick have named themselves the Groovers during their college days.
At the beginning of this movie, the Groovers are throwing a party to celebrate their graduation and the upcoming wedding of one of their members.
Instead of just disappearing into the night and beginning the next phase of their lives, they decide to go on one last great adventure as a group. Mostly, the epic adventure is the idea of Gardner Barnes, the leader of this merry band of college dudes.

They set out to "dig up Dom".

It seems years earlier as a group they went out to the Big Bend area of Texas and buried a bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne with the idea that some day they would come back and dig it up.


On the surface this is a silly movie but if you pay attention it has much deeper tones.
It is set in 1971. The Vietnam war is the number one topic in America in those days and you are either for it or against it. But, either way, if you are a young man in this time and age you are going to be thinking about Vietnam.
As in most groups, there are a lot of different opinions in the Groovers. Gardner Barnes plans on skipping the war. Another member of the Groovers is hard core and willing to get to Nam as fast as possible.

The symbolism in this movie is fun for me to watch.

But, the main thought for me as I take something from Fandango is about saying goodbye to a certain time of your life and moving on to the next time. In this case, it's about going from boyhood to manhood.

I am a little younger than the characters in this movie were. I was a mere lad in 1971. In junior high and thinking about working up the nerve to talk to some cute young girl in my class. Vietnam was also on my mind.
I would come home from school and play and a lot of times there would be the news on and Vietnam dominated. There was the daily body count and other things the news reporter brought and it was a scary thing.
I just knew I would grow up and have to go fight. Would I have gone? Would I have skipped off to Canada as many did?
I'll never know because Vietnam ended before I had to deal with that, thank goodness.

The title of this blog was 'Have a Nice Life' because at the end of the movie one of the Groovers said his probable final goodbye to another Groover. The Groovers reply was to "have a nice life".
That reminds me of feelings I have gotten from catching up with very old friends on the website, Facebook. Especially, since one of my oldest friends in the world, Bobby Hernandez, finally found me.
Life is not over for us, but did we have nice lives so far? If not, is it too late to do something about it now?

That's my question of the day. Have you had a nice life?