cvxn

wilwheaton:

This story, originally presented in 1976 as fact but revealed in 1997 to be fiction, was the inspiration for Saturday Night Fever.

Why was I not aware of this? In 1977 (I was 8), my mom had the cassette tape, and I actually wore that fucker out. The tape snapped and OH MY GOD THE SHRIEKING. I was pretty inconsolable. For Halloween that year, I was a disco dancer in a forest green leotard and silky wraparound mini-skirt, and my dad even rigged up speakers and some cheesy lights in our rec room because a friend of the family had let me see inside an actual disco during the daytime and somebody was maybe a little bit obsessed. That may have also been the year I asked Santa for a boogie van with a velvet waterbed in the back for Christmas* - like the one Annie Potts’ hooker-with-a-heart of gold has in Corvette Summer, in which she deflowers LUKE motherfucking SKYWALKER. Disco and Star Wars… seemed fairly well-rounded at the time. 

I’ve always loved Saturday Night Fever because, hello, Annette? But I’m also a fan of the epic cheese factor in its sequel, Staying Alive, which I think really delves deep into the psyche of what it means to be a philosophizing, disco dancing man.
A man who wears a lot of torn rags tied to his limbs. Don’t think those rags aren’t symbolic, yo.  He’s like a disco Archie torn between not just Broadway Betty and Veronica, but torn between two worlds… disco Riverdale and disco Manhattan. Deep, I know. And now I get why. (Thanks, Whil Wheaton!)

*That Christmas list turns out to be one my mom saved in her scrapbook, which I inherited after her death. Besides the aforementioned boogie van, I wrote “Santa” 4 pages of outrageous requests and bizarre whimsies… I’ll scan it for kicks one day.