Today at my mentor meeting, (Fyi: I do a business mentoring thing, my mentor is Alex and he's a wise old man who flies planes and runs an import business), (He also reminds me a LOT of my Grandfather in Mexico) (Is it acceptable english to have two comments in parentheses one after the other?) (I better stop), and my mentor said that two good conversation starter style questions are.

• What movie changed your life?
• What are you really looking forward to?

So the second is easy: LOTS of things. Travel, music, people, chance.

The first, well, not as much. But I realized a movie that really changed my life was Terminator 2.

Don't laugh! It really did. It changed the way I looked at a lot of things.

• It was the first movie I snuck out of my friends parents cupboard to watch, I remember the feeling of naughtyness and contentment at watching this film, I still relish that feeling of being naughty.
• It introduced me to John Connor. I wanted to be John Connor so bad. I got into Guns'n'Roses because of this movie. I also started wearing cool jackets that were too big for me, and decided to become more independent. I'd go skating down to the arcade on my own and so on. (I was 8, in Mexico City)
• It opened my mind up to ideas of time travel and changing futures. This movie helped keep open the momentum of a wondrous mind in all things sci fi.
• It introduced throughts of theological and spiritual consequence to me, 'No fate but what we make for ourselves' (I was 8).
• I remember watching the doctors in the movie not believing a word Sarah Connor had to say. It made me so angry! She was so passionate! They had the photos! Why wouldn't their closed minds listen?!
• I swore to myself I would always keep my mind open and if when I was older some lady screamed at me about time travel and robots, I would listen. To this day I maintain a mind just as open.
• It made me wary of authority, of blind allegiance, of computer controlled and dominated governments. It fed my us vs the elusive 'they' mentality, which I had so much fun with during my teens (and today).
• It presented a strong woman lead character, with a passion and love and drive.
  
• It made me realize I could pick locks with a paper clip (it's hard but you can)
• It had Mexicans with big guns in underground bunkers.
• I was hitchhiking through the Australian desert with my best friend Rachel. We were on the bus bored and she turned to me and asked, 'What's your favorite movies of all time?'. I looked back at her 'Aliens, and Terminator 2'. I braced for a laugh, but she said 'Really?! Me too!' and began quoting the film. We'd been best friends for years and hadn't known this about each other!

What more could a movie do?!

I remember getting an email from Rachel, I'll dig it up..

"Well what fun!
Today I read a 300 page book on the Holocaust. Oh how I laughed. It sounded like a lot of fun. Who ever knew the Germans had such a sense of humour!?
Then I read the short history of my grandads fight at sea during the second world war. Man was HE having fun! HOO HOO!
THen I watched the opening of Saving Private Ryan, y'know, just for a laugh of course.
THen I turned on the news and that jolly old joker georgie was hittin hard with the one liners, y'know, the sort that makes your sides ache with laughter and milk come out your nose. I'm telling you, he's the next Sienfeld.

But then I say something that really bugged me. Alien Resurrection.
The soundtrack is so fucking star treck. The Aliens roar like lions.
LIONS. THis is outer space, not outer Kenya. The Aliens drip like they've been doused with KY jelly by that Elvis chopper that comes in for all the bushfires. I mean thats just fucked. By itself, the movies not so bad, but this is sacred heritage. You can't fuck with it.
The movie, as a sequel to one of the greatest flicks of all times, is an abomination and a disgrace and it really pisses me off.
I am NEVER NEVER going to watch terminator 3.
NEVER."

.

I love Rachel.

And I Love Terminator 2.