#year: 1978

[elvismentions]

Grease (1978) dir. Randal Kleiser

[motownfiction]

blue jay

Every time Sam and Sadie’s Uncle Roy visits, Will feels a little bit of dread in the pit of his stomach. It’s not that he doesn’t like Roy. Everybody likes Roy. He’s funny and smart and so much nicer than his sister, Mrs. Doyle, who gets mad if Sam has a song stuck in his head for “too long.” Roy writes stories for a living, he knows more music than Sam and Mr. Doyle combined, and Lucy thinks he’s the best looking guy she’s ever seen in real life.

How is a kid like Will supposed to compete with that?

Most days, Will feels like he fits in pretty well with the rest of his friends. Like they listen to him, like they want him there, like they think he’s a pretty cool guy. But when Roy comes around, it’s like he’s invisible to all of them. Like they speak a different language that Will couldn’t learn even if he tried.

He and Sam sing this particularly annoying song to each other in the car all the time. It’s what they’re doing right now, when Will rides in the backseat on their way to Dairy Queen.

Be like the blue bird and sing … tweet, tweet, tra-la-la-la-la-la!

Apparently, it was Uncle Roy’s big solos in one of the musicals he did back in high school. Sam thinks it’s the funniest song in the world, even now, at twelve, when he’s probably a little too old for it. Sam is never too old for anything. Neither, it seems, is Roy.

Will stopped believing in Santa Claus before he was even three. There was too much evidence in front of him to keep it going, to keep it young. Even his chocolate cone from Dairy Queen feels too young for him. Sam might only be twelve, but Will is already twelve. He’s smart enough to know the difference.

Just not smart enough to keep up with Sam and Uncle Roy.

On their way back to the Doyles’ house, Will asks a question.

“What’s the deal with that song, again?” he asks. “Who’s it by?”

“Which song?” Roy asks.

“Yeah, we talk about a lot,” Sam says, almost like he’s trying to rub it in.

“The one you guys always sing. ‘Be like the blue jay’ or whatever.”

Sam and Roy burst out laughing. Will has never really wanted to die before, but right now seems like a very good time. He must look like hell because Roy’s face immediately sobers up. He puts a firm hand on Will’s shoulder, like a grown-up really would.

“‘Be Like the Blue Bird,’” Roy says. “My solo from Anything Goes, back in high school. Mags likes to torture me with it. I guess I was kind of a nerd. Anyway, it’s by Cole Porter. Really famous and funny composer from the 20s and 30s.”

“You know, like ‘I Get a Kick out of You,’” Sam says. “Sinatra did it, too.”

Will nods. Sinatra, he knows. Daniel’s mom is almost always listening to Sinatra. What does his mom listen to? A little Connie Francis, a little Hank Williams, but never a lot. Lucy’s parents listen to Elvis and Ray Charles and that guy with the fun name, Bo Diddley. They listen to it a lot. Will doesn’t really know where he’s going with that, only that it feels like somewhere.

Roy gets a look in his eye. He snaps his fingers and points toward the Doyles’ record collection. They have about everything you can think of, like a store or something. Will has never really been jealous of it until today, when he knows – knows! – it’s the thing keeping him from being more like Roy Brady, the coolest guy his friends have ever known.

“Will, you’re kind of a genius, man,” Roy says. “You wanna hear a real song? A real blue jay song? I’ve got a good one. Sammy, can you grab …?”

But Sam is already careening toward the turntable with a familiar-looking yellow record.

“I knew it!” Sam says. “I knew it before you even said it!”

“Good for you,” Roy says. “Now, can you put it on so that Will can know it, too?”

He looks at Will like he understands, and for a moment, Will understands why everyone likes Roy so much. He’s like Sam. He understands everyone.

Sam puts the needle on the record, and Will listens to the song. It’s a Beatles song, one he thinks he’s heard before, one from around the time he was born, probably. But it doesn’t sound like The Beatles – not the same Beatles that his mother kind of tolerates, that is. This is … something. Not bad. Not as simple as good, either. It kind of reminds him of water. Really, really thick water.

Soon will be the break of day / sitting here in Blue Jay Way …

Will nods along with it. He’s not sure if he likes the song that much, but that doesn’t matter. The whole time it’s playing, he feels like this is where he’s supposed to be.

He has a feeling he won’t have to dread Roy’s visits anymore.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day 14!)

[angiebowiearchive]

Sunday Mirror (1978)

[gameraboy2]

Year's Finest Fantasy, 1978 Cover by Carl Lundgren

[atomic-chronoscaph]

New Year’s Eve at Studio 54 - Photos by Tod Papageorge (1978)

[1976desire]

bob dylan, 1978. photos by ken regan

[ifangirlalot]

Not to be weird, but Michael Myers canonically looks like this unmasked in Halloween 1978:

Like they handpicked him to play Michael unmasked because they wanted him to look "boyish"

[awoogaslashers]

Bitch slap

[thethespacecoyote]

Needed a book to rip apart and make into Journal 1 for my Ford cosplay, and I think I picked an appropriate one.

[elvismentions]

"Elvis! Elvis! Let me be! Keep that pelvis far from me!"

Grease (1978) dir. Randal Kleiser

[motownfiction]

paperback

For a little while, when Lucy was eleven and twelve, she envisioned herself as a novelist. She’d write tons of stories of girls growing up, making friends, maybe falling in love, moving around the world, enjoying their lives, hating their lives, generally just breathing. She devoured all the books she could. Lots of Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton, even a Maureen Daly book thrown in every now and then, to shake it up. She stayed up at night reading, she read under her desk at school when the lesson was too boring and easy to pay attention to, and she wrote stories wherever she could. She even wrote them on napkins at restaurants and food courts if she was desperate (and she often was – often still is). Mom used to sing “Paperback Writer” to her when she’d scribble furiously about some young woman at a café in Paris. Lucy had never been to Paris, and she’d never been a college student. Somehow, she still felt qualified. Story of her life.

That drive to be a novelist dissipated after a little while. Lucy still thought about stories all the time, made up characters when she felt lonely. She must have dreamt up a thousand imaginary friends in waiting and examination rooms when she was pregnant with Elenore. Sure, Will was there, holding her hand all the way through, but there’s nothing lonelier than the glares grown women give you when you sit underneath a “What to Know about Pregnancy” infographic, clearly there for yourself, for your baby. Lucy must have made up a thousand friends to get her through it, all versions of Sadie, Sam, Daniel. If there’s anything better than one of each, it’s 300 of each.

As the years go by, she’s fond of telling people she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of being a novelist. She’s still in touch with Chris Egan, whose dissertation committee she sat on over ten years ago. He’s published three novels, and he always says that if she has any material, he’d love to take a look. Lucy always says she thinks she’ll take him up on it. She never does. But maybe she might.

She and the family head back home to Detroit shortly after Emma’s high school graduation. They end up at Lucy’s favorite used bookstore, and as always, they wander right to the shelves on criticism. Fiction, poetry, cinema, drama. All of it. It’s tradition.

But this is the first time Lucy’s found a used copy of her own book at the store. Her first book. The one based on her dissertation. She picks it up and marvels at it. Doesn’t matter how many copies of it she has at her home. Nothing like discovering your book on Victorian women’s writing and psychoanalysis in the wild. Nothing like that at all.

Will nudges her.

“Is that what you had in mind when you said you’d be a paperback writer?” he asks.

Lucy doesn’t answer. Will knows what she means. And maybe she’ll call Chris Egan. He lives in the Ann Arbor area again. Maybe he’d be willing to read some of the scattered thoughts and characters she jotted onto the sickbag on the flight from LaGuardia to Metro.

But maybe she won’t call him.

Maybe she’ll just buy her own book and tell a funny story to her graduate students when classes resume in the fall.

Maybe she’ll do that.

(part of @nosebleedclub february challenge -- day 17!)

[angiebowiearchive]

Birmingham Evening Mail (1978)

[baekuras]

can't believe that after multiple rewatched of both the proshot and digital ticket i only now caught this countdown/countup/rhyme i guess happening on the background set

If you can't decipher them all due to quality here is how it goes

1 2 Jäger's coming for you 3 4 Better lock your door 5 6 Grab your crucifix 7 8 Never graduate 9 10 He's the Jägerman

[atomic-chronoscaph]

[mourningmaybells]

The Exorcist (1973)

real screencaps from The Exorcist 1973 i promise

[sacredwhores]

Rainer Werner Fassbinder - In a Year with 13 Moons (1978)

Todd Field - Tár (2022)