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SPEED LIMIT: AWKWARD

In this episode, we’re breaking down the 1985 classic Back to the Future, directed by Robert Zemeckis. We follow Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), a guitar playing, skateboard riding, teenager who accidentally erases his own existence. While Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd) turns a DeLorean into a time machine, proving that if you’re going to mess with the space-time continuum, you might as well do it with gull-wing doors.

Marty gets stuck in 1955 and has to play matchmaker for his own parents. He meets the younger, significantly nerdier George McFly (Crispin Glover), who is essentially a human doormat, and Lorraine Baines (Lea Thompson), who develops a crush on Marty that makes the us all want to hide under our seats. It’s a bold cinematic choice to have a mother flirt with her future son, but hey, it was the '80s! Meanwhile, they have to dodge the town bully, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), a man whose intellectual capacity is roughly equivalent to the dump truck of manure he ends up covered in.

And a fantastic supporting cast who keep the 1950s (and '80s) feeling alive. From Jennifer Parker (Claudia Wells), Marty’s supportive girlfriend who spends most of the movie waiting on a porch, to the stern Mr. Strickland (James Tolkan), who has apparently been bald and angry since the dawn of time. We also can't forget the musical stylings of Marvin Berry (Harry Waters Jr.), who calls his cousin Chuck to let him know he found that "new sound" Marty stole from the future. It’s a wild ride and a great reminder that your parents were once just as awkward as you are.

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Here's a quick hit from the loft. These are movies that always seemed to be on the cable box between 1980-1984. And I got caught up in them every time. Hypnotic. It was like the O.G. doomscroll, but with a great return.

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Another brotherly tale of 28 and 36 Spring Street lore. Go ahead and google map it for reference. Maybe you can even follow the foot chase a little.

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This is a minisode on one of my favorite films. One that feels so real for my age and station at the time that I feel like I could walk right into it. Just deserved a revisit. Hope it doesn't put you to sleep.

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A John Hughes/Chris Columbus joint, Home Alone is the heartwarming tale of an upper-middle-class family who go to Paris and accidentally leave their youngest child behind like an extra carry-on they didn’t feel like paying for. Eight-year-old Kevin McCallister—played by a pint-sized, eyebrow-acting Macaulay Culkin—responds to this minor hiccup by eating junk food, watching gangster movies, and turning his house into a suburban Saw trap for two burglars whose crime is mostly being too stupid to quit. Those burglars are Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, delivering what may be cinema’s most sustained assault on human skulls outside of a cartoon.

In a way, Home Alone is basically It’s a Wonderful Life if George Bailey wished everyone away and immediately started committing war crimes against local criminals. While Catherine O’Hara panics her way across continents and John Heard quietly realizes he’s a terrible father, Kevin learns that family matters… but also that you can permanently disable two grown men with household items. It’s Christmas magic, but with more concussions and far fewer angels getting their wings.

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'Twas the week before Christmas, when all through our house

Not a creature was stirring, not even that big mouth

Our stockings were hung by the chimney with care

In hopes that the MPD would stay in the Square

The renters were nestled all snug in their beds

While visions of alchy bums danced in their heads

And mummy in her Star Market smock and I in my head spin hat

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter

Away to the window I flew like a flash

Tore through the plastic and threw up the sash

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below

When what to my wondering eyes did I see

But a rented U-haul and my brotherly thieves

With their friend Paul as the driver so lively and drunk

I knew in a moment this was more than a funk

More rapid than eagles these coursers they came

And one whistled, and shouted, and gave them all aim

To the top of the porch and to the back driveway wall

Now stash away! Stash away! Stash away all!

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly

If police should appear, they'll slip away sly

So up to the back of the house the coursers they flew

With a truck full of trees, and all those wreaths too

And then, in a twinkling, I heard all the proof

The prancing and pawing of each Chippewa boot

As I drew in my head, and was turning around

Down Spring Street came the throngs with a bound

They weren't dressed in furs, but heard something afoot

And their money was crisp as in our hands it was put

Departing with a bundle of pine they had flung on their back

Bought from the neighborhood peddlers open round back

Their eyes—how they twinkled! Their dimples, how merry!

Their cheeks were like roses, their noses like a cherry!

Their droll little mouths drawn up like a bow

While bolt cutters and work gloves lay muddied in snow

Held was the stump of a lead pipe tight in his hands

To make them believe the trees were shorn from our own Robbin' Hood land

Some even sold by a broad with a slim little face

Our mother the matriarch known to put all in their place

The chubby and plump, the blind and the deaf

And we'd chuckle when at our back door she'd offer a right or a left

As occasionally with a wink of an eye and a tilt of a head

Some renters were left on sidewalks thought to be dead

Jamie spoke not a word, but went straight to his work

Knocking out redwood Big Bob; without even a smirk

Now back to the telling of our story at hand, the one of the boys selling trees minus the brand

Rarely giving a wave, from the peak of back porch stairs

Knowing the close shave averted from one of their dares

He reached for his pocket, to his team he gave a bundle

Knowing those fine trees were now homed with the humble

Then I heard him exclaim, ere he walked out of sight—

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good fight!”

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It’s Thanksgiving, and we're carving up some Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and it’s not just as a holiday classic, but as a masterclass in comedic discomfort delivered by two legends at the peak of their powers: Steve Martin and John Candy. Martin is a symphony of simmering fury. A brilliant performance of the slow-motion dissolution of a WASP executive’s sanity. Meanwhile, Candy's a bulldozing force of good-natured, oblivious optimism. Martin’s precise, explosive rants are only possible because of Candy’s seismic, childlike sincerity. Elevating what could have been a simple road trip comedy into a biting, yet ultimately heartwarming, testament to the fact that even the most insufferable human beings deserve a little mercy... but only after they’ve endured absolute hell.