R.I.P. John DeLorean, 1925-2005

1980s carmaker DeLorean dies at 80. (via)

The Delorean was a piece of fanciful shit and the car of my when-I-was-8-years-old dreams (or maybe I was older? hmmm). I built one out of Lego. I could never get it to go 88 miles per hour. I was also bitterly disappointed that my primary school library had nothing on building your own flux capacitor. Plus the bastard librarian reckoned I had a book out called “Eating string” or some shit. Could the real thing get up to 88 miles per hour? Maybe.

Are they filming ‘Getaway in 1985′?

 

The car would’ve died a slow and even more expensive death had it not been for its starring role in Back to the Future (check out some of the awesome trivia). Anyone who says that car was not totally cool is either a bellicose ‘tard or not from our generation. That was some cool shit. Then the second one had the hover-board. OMG! If you go ANYWHERE in a DeLorean and your car doesn’t turn heads then go somewhere else because the people there obviously have no conception of how to appreciate one of the greatest artefacts of late-modern, US-global, popular culture.

Here is an awesome page on how many trips the DMC took in the BTTF film series.

 

I remember getting the first out from the video store (one of the very first videos we had got out, it was a family thing to do back then), because the car looked cool. Then when it said “To Be Continued” at the end of the film I almost couldn’t sleep. I had to see the next movie. When we went back to return the video the next day, I cried. I hated that video man. Why didn’t he have the next movie? This is scarred into my subconscious, I am sure of it. I think that was the first time I became aware of the dynamics of popular culture, as something that was happening ‘over there’. I also didn’t give a rats about what was happening over there, I just want to see the nest one. Then when it didn’t come out, I remember flicking through magazines at the newsagent’s trying to figure out when it would. Two years or 2 1/2 or whatever it was seemed like such a long time, we are talking about at least 1/4 to 1/5 of my time on this planet. I didn’t know it was called ‘popular culture’, but that is what I was waiting on. The affective temporalities of anticipation.

 

Bye bye to Mr DeLorean. Thanks for your part in my childhood memories.

I need to see those movies again…