General:

As the world churns

Certain books, movies, and other works are timeless while still being so much a part of their time that they are outstanding in providing a good "feel" for the era in which they were created.

I'm watching To Live and Die in LA on DVD now. The movie is so much a part of the 80s it's almost painful, but it also is a good movie, despite at times resembling a long Wang Chung video. Tell your children to watch this movie (when they're old enough) to understand the era of Reagan and the last days of the Cold War, before computers and the internet became commonplace, before cell phones, before technology made so many things so easy. Sadly, it opens with an assassination attempt on Reagan (whose voice is heard in the film making a speech) by an Islamic terrorist with dynamite strapped to him.

Unfortunately, some things haven't changed in 20 years.