Oh now I feel old! The topic in the textbook was science, and as a filler I showed the students some science-related movie trailers, starting with the ‘based on a true story’ movies Hidden figures, The theory of everything and The right stuff. Then I showed some science fiction, starting with 2001: A space odyssey. I said ‘How many of you remember 2001’? I was expecting a few hands. I don’t know how old my students are, but I would guess late 20s or even early 30s for some of them. (Others are much younger, possibly late teens or early 20s.) No-one (but me) remembers 2001???? At least they could have said ‘Oh, that was the year I started school’ (as indeed one of my nieces said when I posted on Facebook about this later.)
Then I showed them Back to the future 1 & 2, and 1989’s imagining of 2015 made much more sense to them than 1968’s imagining of 2001. (In general, BttF got more right than 2001.) Along the way I found 10 Things Back to the Future 2 Got Right, 10 Things Back to the Future 2 Got Wrong and a parody by CollegeHumor made in 2015 with the benefit of nowsight. I also tried to find the American talk/comedy show which snared Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd as guests on 21 October 2015, but I couldn’t find it and couldn’t remember whose show it was on. A Facebook friend later told me it was Jimmy Kimmel.
In one class during my first stay in Korea (early on, so in late 2006/early 2007), the topic of the Olympic Games came up, and I asked the students what they did for and what they can remember about the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Most of the students went to public places and watched on the big screens of the time, or watched or did projects at school, or watched at home with their families. The last student was quite young, and she said sadly ‘I was born in 1989!’.
(I can (just) remember the 1972 Munich Olympics.)
(By the way, who was the first Korean in space? 이천일, a space 아저씨! (i-cheon-il, either a joke name or the number 2001, a space a-jeo-ssi, an honorific address/reference to a middle-aged man). (That explanation probably spoiled the joke.)
Never Pure and Rarely Simple 
One of my regular readers, who worked for some time as a script/continuity supervisor, tried to post a comment, but couldn’t for some technical reason, then emailed me with the following comment, which she said I could add:
‘I worked on several projects with Michael J. Fox. This was before he became symptomatic with M.S. He was the nicest, most down to earth of all the celebrities I have had the privilege to work with. He was fully aware of how lucky he was to have become so well known, so well off, to have the ability to pick and choose what he worked on and with whom he worked. Unlike all the other ‘stars’ I have worked with, Michael J. Fox would always sit with the crew at meals, rather than eat in his trailer or with other actors or the director and producer. He said, “I am the luckiest man in the world”, and he meant it.’
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