“Lemons make me smell so great!”

This isn’t going to be much of a post, I just wanted to give more atten­tion to a cer­tain (now infa­mous?) sticker from my 80s sticker book I shared the other day: this weird, kind of dis­turb­ing sticker of an uncom­monly intel­li­gent fish lay­ing on a din­ner plat­ter encir­cled by lemons. He’s pretty enthu­si­as­tic for a fish who’s about to be eaten. He’s also self-aware enough to real­ize fish smells pretty bad, cooked or not.

And before you ask, yes, I pur­posely cropped the fea­tured image of the lemon sticker so that it spells “emo.” This fish should be fuck­ing emo, but instead he has rather com­pla­cently accepted his fate.

What’s his backstory?

My Sticker Book from the 1980s

My older sis­ter and I didn’t have much in com­mon grow­ing up, aside from hav­ing been pushed through the same vag and the few mor­ti­fy­ing occa­sions our mom forced us to wear match­ing out­fits. My sis­ter, the prissy straight “A” stu­dent who was into clothes and make-up, ver­sus me, the tomboy who was into pretty much all the same (read: much cooler) crap I’m still into now.

One of the few ways our inter­ests over­lapped was our mutual love for stick­ers. Then again, every kid in the 80s col­lected stick­ers, so say­ing we had this in com­mon is like say­ing we’re both fans of breathing.

We were never “hard­core” in our sticker-acquiring aspi­ra­tions, but we did enjoy fill­ing up this sticker book with our shared trea­sures, giv­ing care­ful thought and atten­tion as to how they should be arranged. Well, sometimes.

I’m sure at the time it seemed like a good idea to “pro­tect” our stick­ers inside this old album meant for pho­tos, with its sticky pages and clear plas­tic page cov­ers that would yel­low and wither over time. I may not have learned much in the 20 years since I last touched this sticker book, but I think I can safely say that was a fuck­ing hor­ri­ble idea. Of course it wasn’t mine.

Also not my idea was the inclu­sion of lame-ass stick­ers like Padding­ton Bear, but one of the rea­sons I love this sticker book so much is that it’s a time cap­sule that reveals the dif­fer­ences (and some­times sim­i­lar­i­ties) between its two curators.

Those Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles plas­tered on the inside back cover? All me.

It’s fun to flip through these worn pages and try to remem­ber who con­tributed what in cases where it’s less cut and dry. That Poochie sticker could have been either of us.

Also worth not­ing are the loosely adhered-to “themes” we attempted to cre­ate on some of the pages, which I’ve pro­vided my best guesses for below (when it isn’t some­thing obvi­ous, like uni­corns). As was often the case, my sis­ter, ever the more cau­tious and detail-oriented daugh­ter, would get a good theme going until I came along and fucked it all up with my ran­dom sticker bombs and less than art­ful place­ment. STICKER ANARCHY!

And now, to sim­u­late the full expe­ri­ence of trad­ing stick­ers back in the 80s…

“GUYS! GUYS! GUYS! LOOK AT MY STICKERS!”

Page 1 — Candy & Sweets

Page 2 — Moodies

Who remem­bers these lit­tle guys?

Page 3 — Metal­lic Mes­sages & Music

Page 4 — Hearts

Page 5 — Bears

Page 6 — Fuzzy Things

Page 7 — Kittens

Page 8 — Hot Air Bal­loons & Garfield

Page 9 — Ice Cream

Page 10 — More Ice Cream

Page 11 — Peaches ‘n Cream

Page 12 — Junk Food

Page 13 — 80s-Tastic!

Page 14 — Easter

Page 15 — Skat­ing & Ballerinas

Page 16 — Sparkles & Shiny Objects

Page 17 — School

Page 18 — Cab­bage Patch Kids

Page 19 — Mup­pet Babies

Page 20 — Puffy Stick­ers & Goo­gly Eyes

Page 21 — Lemons

Page 22 — Valentines

Page 23 — Chore Rewards

Page 24 — Straw­berry Shortcake

Page 25 — Dogs

Page 26 — Teddy Bears

Page 27 — (Not Really) Balloons

Page 28 — Unicorns

Who wants to trade stickers?

Hav­ing got­ten reac­quainted with my check­ered sticker col­lect­ing past, I think I’m inspired now to start an adult sticker book (NOT the kind you’re think­ing of) to give a proper home to all of the rad stick­ers I’ve accu­mu­lated from my blog­ging friends lately, between Branded in the 80s , Top Hat Sasquatch , Strange Kids Club , etc. which reminds me–have you seen the totally kick­ass Cult Film Club stick­ers we’re selling?

Do also check out Redis­cover the 80s totally rad sticker album from 1984 ! It puts this col­lec­tion to shame.

Is it weird that I love old typewriters?

The first story I ever wrote was about a pur­ple pen­guin named Flippy who was dif­fer­ent from all the other pen­guins because he was pur­ple, you see. Look, I was five, what do you want from me?

I did it on this typewriter:

This is an Under­wood Rhythm Touch De Luxe model from 1949 (the only rea­son I know that is because I did some Googling and found this vin­tage adver­tise­ment  for one) that used to reside in my grandmother’s old house. When I was lit­tle, I used to get dropped off there before school with noth­ing to do but find ways to keep myself enter­tained all day. One of them was this typewriter.

It weighs some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of HOLY SHIT and METRIC FUCK TON and it’s faster to watch paint dry than it is to actu­ally type on the darn thing, but I’m sure back when Tru­man was pres­i­dent this was a pretty sophis­ti­cated piece of tech­nol­ogy. Just don’t ever drop it on your foot, or you’ll no longer have one.

Typ­ing on it the same way we do our mod­ern com­puter key­boards is impos­si­ble as every key punch requires near-mutant strength. I remem­ber hav­ing to  press down on each key with two fin­gers, and even then I wasn’t always suc­cess­ful, leav­ing only a faint out­line of illeg­i­ble ink where my let­ter was sup­posed to go.

The keys would also fre­quently jam up and I’d have to reach my fin­gers into the machine’s guts to un-stick them, get­ting ink all over me in the process. It was all worth it though, just to hear that glo­ri­ous clickety-clack sound. The only thing bet­ter was when you reached the edge of the page and got the hard car­riage return, result­ing in a cheer­ful “ding!” Call me old school, but I like tech­nol­ogy that rewards you with bells for your hard work. Not that I was writ­ing the great Amer­i­can novel at age five or anything–I mostly just liked to fid­dle with the var­i­ous levers, knobs and but­tons pro­trud­ing from all over this thing while pre­tend­ing I was doing some­thing important.

When my grandma got too old to take care of her­self and moved in with my par­ents, this type­writer was one of the few things I inher­ited from her estate–and by estate I mean a small rancher with an inte­rior like an episode of Hoard­ers . I’m glad she never got rid of this type­writer, though. I never both­ered to look up what it’s worth, but to me its price­less. I credit this hunk of iron with inspir­ing me to want to write, even if all I have to show for my “tal­ent” is this silly blog and a half-finished book I’ve never shown to any­one. One day…

What is it with old type­writ­ers and grandmas?

Here’s another old type­writer I inher­ited from a grand­mother, though not my own (my ex-boyfriend’s). It’s an elec­tric model Smith Corona “Coro­net Super 12″ from the 1970s that sur­pris­ingly still works.

I say sur­pris­ingly because when you plug this thing in it makes this god-awful hum­ming sound like you can hear the cur­rent flow­ing through its 40-year-old parts, caus­ing me to have seri­ous doubts about its elec­tri­cal safety. But know­ing it could burst into flames at any moment makes typ­ing on the Super 12 all the more fun.

Plus, I just love the color. When’s the last time you saw elec­tron­ics in robin’s egg blue?

I like toy type­writ­ers, too.

As it turns out, my affin­ity for type­writ­ers goes deeper than I thought. Appar­ently this was one of my favorite baby toys:

So much so that my par­ents have held onto it for 30 years. I recov­ered it last week­end when I went search­ing for child­hood trea­sures over at their house and was delighted to see it still works, even though it’s kind of beaten up. There’s a crank you can turn to scroll through the dif­fer­ent words–bears, cats, and apple. The but­tons make a great “ding!” sound when you press them, and col­ored ham­mers strike the cylin­der, which turns slowly as you “type.” It’s a lit­tle less sophis­ti­cated than the Under­wood and Super 12, obviously.

My Bedroom, Circa 1989 (Mildly TMNT-Related)

I recently dug up this photo from one of my family’s albums. Why on earth they had a pic­ture of my bed­room on a ran­dom day in 1989, I don’t know, but I’m glad it exists if only so I can re-live the magic of get­ting splin­ters from my unfin­ished pine fur­ni­ture and star­ing loath­somely at the ugly pas­tel wallpaper.

Let’s take a tour!

This was taken around the time I had started to tran­si­tion away from girly stuff and get more into comics and video games, and obvi­ously, Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles. The striped wall­pa­per, flo­ral bor­der and “ugly art thing” I’ve so help­fully pointed out in the above photo are holdovers from when my bed­room was floor-to-ceiling peach. (I know. Ew.) That bed used to be a four-poster affair with a big, frilly canopy that matched my frilly peach bed­spread, but I demanded my dad saw it off. I think my offi­cial rea­son­ing was so that my room would be “less gay.”

I still had a cou­ple of dolls, but they were of the col­lectible “do not touch” vari­ety my mom would bitch if I messed up. I’m dying to know what cas­sette tapes those are over in the cor­ner there. I’m think­ing prob­a­bly Cal­i­for­nia Raisins, the sound­track to the first Bat­man movie, and Paula Abdul. Yeah, let’s go with that.

I’m pretty dis­ap­pointed in the angle of this photo. If you could pan another foot or so to the right, you’d see the bitchin’ neon-colored Habi­trail setup where my ham­sters lived. On the oppo­site wall from my bed there was an armoire (also of rough pine that gave me splin­ters) that housed my TV and video games.

Oh, and if you’re won­der­ing why Raphael’s mask is loose, it’s because I had a dog who was fond of eat­ing my stuffed ani­mals and Raph was a fre­quent vic­tim. Just had to be the Tur­tle I loved the most.

Reunited with one of my best buds. It’s a Kodak moment…

This past week­end I went spelunk­ing for price­less child­hood arti­facts over at my par­ents’ house and didn’t come away dis­ap­pointed. Between their attic, base­ment and crawl­space I was able to find a num­ber of items I prob­a­bly haven’t laid eyes on in over 15 years, hav­ing long ago chalked them up as rot­ting away in some land­fill. One of those items–this stuffed Michelan­gelo, circa 1989–may as well have been.

Poor Mikey. He’s seen bet­ter days …

Judg­ing from the chewed-up appear­ance of his belt, I have a feel­ing he may, at some point, have been a play­thing for my family’s old dog, which was Raphael’s fate:

(Also, my dog was pos­si­bly a Terminator.)

Now Michelan­gelo is the only sur­viv­ing mem­ber of my four­some of plush green heroes, which back in the day I would not have hes­i­tated to call my most cher­ished possessions.

By day “the guys” hung out in the most cov­eted spot in my room– front and cen­ter on my bed –and by night they slept snugly in my arms (or, if Raph and Leo were fight­ing, in groups of two on either side of me).  The Tur­tles accom­pa­nied me on play dates, beach vaca­tions, camp­ing trips (bet you didn’t know I was a Girl Scout!), that time I “moved out” into my play­house, and I wouldn’t dream of open­ing up my presents on Christ­mas morn­ing with­out them beside me to share in my–I mean  our –delight if I got some­thing TMNT-related. I told them all my secrets and would often seek their advice on ever­day mat­ters of impor­tance, like what Sega game to rent, or if I should cheat on my math test. Which Tur­tle I asked depended on the answer I was hop­ing to get.

They were, in short, my best buds.

Out­side the car­toons and movies on VHS, my plushies were one of the few tan­gi­ble pieces of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles fan­dom I was allowed, which is part of the rea­son I loved them so much.  My mom never liked the idea of me play­ing with “boy toys” so I barely had any TMNT action fig­ures to speak of, even though I always asked for them at Christ­mas (aside: that’s how I orig­i­nally started to sus­pect the whole Santa thing might be a sham) and birthdays.

Speak­ing of birth­day parties…

Yes, I’m well aware I had the worst hair­cut ever. It was a com­bi­na­tion of a perm gone wrong and me try­ing to take mat­ters into my own hands with the scis­sors. It’s a mir­a­cle I even had any friends left to invite to this party. By all means, make fun of my hair if you must, but if you’re going to make fun of any­thing , it should be my pants. I have no excuse for those.

Box Full of Awesome = Boxsome Nostalgia Packs!

When I heard my friend Tommy from Top Hat Sasquatch was start­ing up a busi­ness sell­ing geeky nos­tal­gia packs, I had a feel­ing it was going to be awe­some, just based on the fact that Tommy’s an awe­some dude. Really, I didn’t need any more con­vinc­ing than that. Judg­ing from the pack­age I got in the mail today, I know this to be true.

Look!

The new ven­ture is Box­some , a mail-order ser­vice deliv­er­ing “Nos­tal­gia Packs” right to your mail­box. Every box or bun­dle is crammed full of cool geeky, nos­tal­gic stuff, like unopened wax packs, trad­ing cards, stick­ers, Pogs (remem­ber those?), and other small items you prob­a­bly col­lected as a kid. You get a whole lot of awe­some for less than $10 (each pack is $7 + $2.50 ship­ping), and you can cus­tomize each pack to your inter­ests based on the avail­able themes. Of course, I went with Ninja Tur­tles and Nintendo.

Here’s a bet­ter look at every­thing in my cus­tomized Nos­tal­gia Pack :

Even though you can choose which wax packs you want, the fun of Box­some is all the sur­prise items you get, like a mail-order grab bag! I got some Star Wars, Lion King and Simp­sons pogs, Nin­tendo cards, Pizza Point stick­ers, Bat­man cards, and other assorted geek­ery you can have fun iden­ti­fy­ing in the photo above. It’s a pretty good deal for all you get, and there’s no sub­scrip­tions, fees or other B.S. Just pay once and get cool stuff! Who doesn’t love get­ting cool stuff in the mail?

Want your own Nos­tal­gia Pack? Get yours for 20% off!

Tommy is hook­ing up ShezCrafti read­ers with a 20% dis­count! (I told you he’s an awe­some dude.) Just enter code “SHEZCRAFTI” when you check out.

If you decide to take the plunge, be sure to post some pics of your loot on Twit­ter or Insta­gram and give a shout-out to @HeyBoxsome ! You could end up in the Box­some Gallery and be inter­net famous.

Here’s mine:

It’s so bad!

5 Bastard Kids from the 80s I Want to Punch in the Face

Nor­mally I have a very sweet dis­po­si­tion around chil­dren and can usu­ally find a way to relate to them on some level, being an over­grown child of 31 myself. How­ever, there are some kids–the bad seeds–that do their level best to annoy the crap out of me, to the point where I can’t help but fan­ta­size about intro­duc­ing them to my fist. Of course I would never do that, but if enter­tain­ing the idea makes me a hor­ri­ble per­son, so be it. Also, hi, are you new here?

In the mean­time I’ll safely take out my frus­tra­tions on the kids who annoyed me in the movies and TV shows I grew up watch­ing. Here’s five child stars from the 80s who played the roles of bas­tard kids I want to punch in the face!

#5 — Billy Lombardo

It’s a shame Billy Lom­bardo quit act­ing after 1986’s The Money Pit , he was so good at play­ing the pre­co­cious teen pop star “Benny,” who, accord­ing to his man­ager Wal­ter (Tom Hanks) was Billboard’s Artist of the Year. Benny him­self, who last year alone sold a mil­lion records! His exchange with Wal­ter is brief but eas­ily one of the fun­ni­est scenes in the movie. Hav­ing more money than he knows what to do with, Benny spends his days loung­ing around his man­sion while chicks wait for him in the Jacuzzi, berat­ing ser­vants, and get­ting waited on hand and foot by his mother–who is also his maid. His out­right refusal to loan Wal­ter money and sub­se­quent tem­per tantrum that would make a 2-year-old proud reveals a spoiled-rotten but inse­cure lit­tle boy who could have ben­e­fited from a severe ass-kicking. This is not too far off from what I image Justin Bieber’s home life is like.

#4 — Emily Schulman

Small Won­der was a show FULL of kids I wanted to punch in the face, but the clear fron­trun­ner was pesky next door neigh­bor Har­riet Brindle, played by Emily Schul­man. Twenty-four years later, I still can’t fig­ure out how they were able to get her hair to look like a per­fect bowl with two pig­tails com­ing out of it, and some­times still think about how if you chopped them off she’d totally look like a boy. Why do I still think about these things? That’s the real small wonder.

#3 — Jason Hervey

Jason Her­vey is a pro at play­ing kids I want to punch in the face. Most mem­o­rable for his role as the obnox­ious Wayne in The Won­der Years , he lived to tor­ment younger brother Kevin Arnold (Fred Sav­age) and wel­comed every oppor­tu­nity to ruin his life. How­ever, his most punch-in-the-face-worthy role for me was in  Pee Wee’s Big Adven­ture  where he plays a child star (so meta!) named Kevin Mor­ton in the midst of shoot­ing what appears to be a heart­warm­ing movie about a sweet, young orphan boy find­ing his parents–but when the cam­era stops rolling he unleashes a world of shit on poor direc­tor Jerry and his co-stars. His on-set melt­down is what I assume work­ing with most child stars is like, and kind of makes me think hit­ting kids isn’t so bad. You don’t have to tell me I’d make an awe­some mom.

#2 — Miko Hughes

Miko Hughes is another actor whose early career has included mul­ti­ple bas­tard child roles, all of them wor­thy of a cold-cock. Most famously, Hughes was fond of point­ing out that boys have a penis and girls have a vagina; arguably the most impor­tant take­away from Kinder­garten Cop . If you were a Full House fan, you might remem­ber him as Aaron Bai­ley, the brat­ti­est of Michelle’s school friends. At least in  Pet Semetary you could claim self-defense as there are few things more threat­en­ing than a creepy baby return­ing from the grave with a vengeance and a really big knife.

#1 — Michael Oliver

Okay so Prob­lem Child is from 1990, but my list would not be com­plete with­out Michael Oliver, bet­ter known as “Junior.” A poster child for red-headed stepchil­dren every­where, the mere sight of him makes me want to plant my fist right in the mid­dle of his ugly, freck­led face. I can’t be alone in my irra­tional hatred, can I? Even though we’re kind of  sup­posed to hate him, it’s gotta be a tough break for Michael Oliver, who’ll for­ever be known as that bas­tard kid from Prob­lem Child . That kind of noto­ri­ety does things to a man.

Case in point:

If you never ask me to babysit your kids after this, I’ll com­pletely understand.

There is Neither Magic Nor Wonder in Zoobilee Zoo. Discuss.

The 80s had no short­age of weird and uncom­fort­able children’s shows fea­tur­ing cos­tumed per­form­ers, but this week’s League topic was to write about some­thing I hated as a kid, so I feel it’s my duty to bring the atroc­i­ties of Zoobilee Zoo to your attention.

For those who don’t remem­ber it, Zoobilee Zoo was a ter­ri­fy­ing children’s show star­ring a bunch of overly-enthusiastic peo­ple dressed up like ani­mals known as “Zoobles” who sang, danced, and intro­duced young chil­dren every­where to what they would later learn was furry porn. Also Ben Vereen.

The show ran from 1986 — 87, which means I was about five or six when I watched it. But even as a child squarely within the show’s tar­get demo­graphic, I can remem­ber feel­ing embar­rassed when­ever it came on. Like some­how I could sense the per­form­ers were all rejects from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, or that the show was endorsed by The Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers even with­out know­ing it was mar­keted as such (thanks ran­dom press release I found online!). Things that teach­ers like are lame, and I, clearly a kid who was too cool for school, rec­og­nized this. Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers Neigh­bor­hood this show was not.

Let’s intro­duce the Zoobles to you!

Here’s the main cast of char­ac­ters, includ­ing each Zooble’s job, because appar­ently Zoobilee Zoo is so broke all the ani­mals have to work. And I thought the Bal­ti­more Zoo was ghetto.

Sandy Grinn as “Bill Der Beaver“
The Zooble with the most prac­ti­cal job and least clever name, Bill Der Beaver is a BUILDER and inven­tor. Get it?

Louise Val­lance as “Whaz­zat Kan­ga­roo”
The bimbo of Zoobily Zoo. She’s not a very tal­ented musi­cian, but gets by on her (good?) looks. Guys dig chicks with fuzzy pink tails.

For­rest Gard­ner as “Van Go Lion“
He’s a painter just like Van Gogh, but still has both his ears. He’s also the rea­son I once mis­spelled “Van Gogh” in a school report. I thought this show was sup­posed to teach us shit?

Karen Hart­man as “Talk­a­too Cock­a­too“
Eas­ily the most annoy­ing res­i­dent of Zoobilee Zoo, she’s a vicious gos­sip who “spreads the news” as well as bird flu.

Gary Schwartz as “Bravo Fox”
He’s a jug­gler and magi­cian. Unof­fi­cially, he’s also kind of an asshole.

Michael B. Moy­na­han as “Look­out Bear”
I guess he’s sup­posed to be a scout of some sort who looks out for dan­ger. I told you Zoobilee Zoo was ghetto.

Ben Vareen as “Mayor Ben“
In Zoobilee Zoo, one of the perks of being the Mayor (besides dress­ing like a pimp!) is you don’t have to iden­tify your­self with a spe­cific ani­mal. To this day I still don’t know what the hell Mayor Ben is sup­posed to be, besides token black guy.

The Zoobles are sup­posed to resem­ble ani­mals, but who­ever designed the cos­tumes opted not to go full-furry. So instead we have an awk­ward mix of cos­tumes, the­atri­cal make-up and pros­thetic noses I find extremely unap­peal­ing, almost repel­lent. There’s just some­thing about peo­ple in bright cos­tumes and make-up with big noses I can’t get past. I don’t know if there’s an exact pho­bia for what­ever this is, but maybe if you’re one of those peo­ple who are afraid of clowns, you can under­stand. I guess this explains why I never wanted to get my face painted as a kid.

Oddly, I’m not both­ered by peo­ple wear­ing cos­tumes that fully cover their faces, or anthro­po­mor­phic ani­mals in pup­pet form. Mup­pets and I are cool. Zoobles and I? Not cool.

My main prob­lem with Zoobilee Zoo (besides being creepy as hell) was that it tried too hard. Every­one on this show acts like they just snorted ten lines of coke. I refuse to believe any­one is that enthu­si­as­tic about wear­ing shitty ani­mal cos­tumes while spoon feed­ing dumb kids all the typ­i­cal social val­ues and moral lessons you’d expect from a show like this, includ­ing the oblig­a­tory “peo­ple in wheel­chairs are just like all the rest of us!” episode that seemed to be a pop­u­lar theme in 80s shows. Even Saved by the Bell was guilty of that one.

By far the worst thing about Zoobilee Zoo, how­ever, is the theme song which I’m con­vinced was con­jured up in a Satanic rit­ual. I don’t rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing unless you want it stuck in your head. All day.

Zoobilee Zoo, Zoobilee Zoo
Magic and won­der are wait­ing for you
It’s as close as a dream
And as bright as the bright­est blue
Wel­come to Zoobilee Zoo

Really? As close as a dream? As bright as the bright­est blue? They weren’t able to come up with any bet­ter sim­i­les? All these ani­mals with jobs and not one of them is a writer.

P.S. Did the show ever say what ani­mal Mayor Ben is sup­posed to be? Does any­one know? I’d look up some more episodes on YouTube to try and find out, but frankly that’s too much effort for a show I’m sup­posed to hate.

Magic and won­der aren’t wait­ing for you.

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was to reveal some­thing in pop cul­ture­dom we hated as kids . Here’s what my homies in the League had to say:

• Toyriffic hates G.I. Joe, is un-American.
• Mon­sterfink is secretly a vil­lain and hates the good guys!
• Nerd Rage Against the Machine hates Foot­loose, which means we’ll prob­a­bly never be friends.
• Jathniel’s Space for Rent hates the lack of death in children’s shows, pos­si­bly needs therapy.
• Thir­ty­ish Year Old Boy is hangin’ tough, hates New Kids on the Block.
• My Vin­tage Toy Box hates dolls that crap them­selves. Understandable.
• Hench­girl hates Hermione Granger. The only thing I hate is that she didn’t end up with Harry. (Yeah I shipped HHr what of it?)
• Pop Rewind is sym­pa­thetic to the plight of cereal mascots.
• For­tune and Glory Days , like me, hates Mighty Mor­phin Power Rangers. Sol­i­dar­ity, man.

Pia Zadora is a Little Bit of 80s Heaven

It was an odd set of cir­cum­stances that led to my dis­cov­er­ing actress/singer Pia Zadora and her lost 1985 sin­gle, “Lit­tle Bit of Heaven,” but I’m so glad I did.

I haven’t seen chore­og­ra­phy that amaz­ing since Laura Branigan’s video for “Glo­ria.” If I had known this song existed back in the 80s, I can eas­ily imag­ine Zadora shar­ing space on the mix­tapes I made, along­side artists like Limahl and Cindy Lauper.

As far as 80s fash­ion aes­thet­ics go, Pia Zadora’s out­fit is the absolute epitome.

Big hair? Check. Head­band? Check. Two-color eye­shadow? Check. It’s like one of the god­damn Mis­fits from Jem came to life. I espe­cially like the par­rot motif on her sweater, which is, of course, paired with match­ing skin-tight leg­gings and heeled boots. The only ques­tion I have is where can I buy one just like it?

As it turns out, I was already famil­iar with her but didn’t even know it.

In the process of adding the sound­track for John Waters’ 1988 film  Hair­spray  to Spo­tify, I hit a road­block when Spo­tify didn’t have “Day-O,” a song per­formed by Zadora that was used in the film, even though I couldn’t place it. Then it dawned on me–in Hair­spray , dur­ing the scene where Tracy meets the beat­nik chick (the one who famously irons her hair), she sings “Day-O” very briefly.  This led me to look­ing her up on IMDB and sure enough, the beat­nik chick is Pia Zadora herself.

Huh. Some­how I never made the connection.

Pia Zadora is quite a name. Curi­ous, I browsed YouTube to see if there were any other clips from movies she’s been in, like  Troop Bev­erly Hills, which is a movie I’ve seen like a zil­lion times. How the hell did I miss that? After dis­cov­er­ing the above video I looked her up on Wikipedia and found out about her singing career. Evi­dently Zadora has had nine albums. NINE. Unfor­tu­nately, Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have much info  about them.

At some point she also did a duet with Jer­maine Jack­son , which is every bit as awe­somely 80s as that sounds. Their song “When the Rain Begins to Fall” was used in a b-movie they both starred in together called Voy­age of the Rock Aliens.  This rab­bit hole just keeps get­ting bet­ter. I’m now on a mis­sion to find a way to lis­ten to the rest of her music and watch all these crazy-sounding movies she’s been in.

The inter­net is funny like that. I never know what I’m going to ran­domly stum­ble upon, nor could I have pre­dicted I’d be spend­ing my Sun­day after­noon blog­ging about it. I guess I’m like a Pia Zadora fan now or something.

Reckless Love Keeps 80s Glam Metal Alive

With the Amer­i­can music indus­try being what it is, per­haps the only thing sad­der than 80s hair metal falling out of fash­ion is that it’s now up to other coun­tries to fill the acid-washed void. Meet Reck­less Love , a glam metal band from Fin­land that you’d never know was from Finland.

I mean, just look at these guys.

Now I admit my knowl­edge of Fin­land is lim­ited at best. Being your typ­i­cal dumb Amer­i­can, to me Fin­land has always been that “other” Scan­di­na­vian coun­try, the one that’s not Swe­den, Nor­way or Den­mark. I get all those damn flags with crosses on ‘em mixed up, any­way. But if some­one hadn’t told me Reck­less Love was from Fin­land, I never would have known. If they have Finnish accents, I can’t hear it in the singing. And the music sounds straight out of the 80s, like some­thing you’d hear between Möt­ley Crüe and Ratt.

When I first heard “Ani­mal Attrac­tion” , for a split-second I thought “hey, cool, Poi­son has a new song out!” before real­iz­ing it sounded too fresh, too good to be what Poi­son sounds like now (which isn’t all that bad , actually).

What’s great about these guys is that they’re the same age right now as all those hair bands were back in the 80s, which means I can feel less awk­ward about want­ing to sleep with them. On the other hand, they have names like Ollie, Pepe, Jalle and Hessu. I can’t really envi­sion myself get­ting any of those tat­tooed on my ass. But also work­ing in their favor is the fact they started out as a Guns N’ Roses cover band, so the ass tat­too isn’t totally off the table.

Reck­less Love has two stu­dio albums under its leather-studded belt, 2010’s self-titled debut and 2011’s Ani­mal Attrac­tion , both with equally awe­some album art:

If the crotch of your leather pants is get­ting uncom­fort­ably tight just try­ing to decide what to lis­ten to first, don’t sweat it! Here are some of my recommendations:

Next month the band releases its next sin­gle, Night on Fire, which drops April 26th. Based on the cover art alone, I’m excited for it. A new album will fol­low in late sum­mer or fall.

Remembering the Top 5 Dirtiest Music Videos on The Box

Come along and ride on a fan­tas­tic voy­age, back to the early 90s when a lesser-known music video chan­nel known as The Box used to exist. With the tagline “Music tele­vi­sion you con­trol,” The Box let view­ers call a 1–900 num­ber to pay $1.99 to play any music video through its auto­mated phone sys­tem, using num­bered codes that flashed on the screen in between songs. The entirety of The Box’s pro­gram­ming con­sisted of full-length, uncen­sored music videos that other view­ers had paid to request and there were lit­tle to no com­mer­cials. It’s not hard to under­stand why this was totally fuck­ing awe­some com­pared to, say, MTV, which edited the hell out of their videos, if they were even play­ing videos at all.

Here’s a circa early 90s promo for The Box that some­one uploaded to YouTube:

As you might expect, the most pop­u­lar music videos on The Box seemed to be the ones with the most explicit content–the ones MTV would cut down to prac­ti­cally noth­ing, or out­right ban. The Box was  edu­ca­tional , to say the least, for curi­ous, young teenagers like myself. I can remem­ber many hot sum­mer days spent hang­ing out at my friend Gina’s house, glued to The Box on the 19″ tele­vi­sion in her base­ment, well out of earshot from her mom who would have grounded her and sent me home if she had known what we were watch­ing. (My par­ents, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind if their thirteen-year-old daugh­ter was exposed to sim­u­lated sex and close-ups of booty sweat. Thanks Mom and Dad, for being you.)

Here’s a round-up of the top five dirt­i­est videos I can remem­ber get­ting fre­quent rota­tion on The Box (and it should be obvi­ous that extreme NSFW warn­ings apply):

#5 — “Short Dick Man” — Gillette

Just in case you aren’t clear on what these lyrics are sup­posed to mean, Gillette help­fully acts them out by scru­ti­niz­ing a num­ber of dif­fer­ent men’s crotches with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, mea­sur­ing tape and video cam­era as they dan­gle and thrust their man parts in her face. Thanks to this song and video, I knew that size mat­tered before I even really knew  why .

#4 — “Come Baby Come” — K7

Yo dawg, this song is STILL slam­min’ in 2013! That’s what I’m plan­ning to say in my YouTube com­ment, any­way. K7’s (what­ever hap­pened to this guy, by the way?) video for “Come Baby Come” is typ­i­cal of the period and starts off rel­a­tively tame, you know, despite being for a song called “Come Baby Come” which means exactly what you think it means. Just a cou­ple of bros shootin’ some b-ball and danc­ing around in match­ing out­fits while scantily-clad women jig­gle their breasts and K7 licks ice cream off her–WAIT, WHAT? You tricked me, bros!

#3 — “Put ‘Em On the Glass” — Sir Mix-a-Lot

Sir Mix-a-lot was evi­dently a big fan of the 1992 sexs­ploita­tion flick The Bikini Car­wash Com­pany , or at least that’s what I gather from this video. Only the rap­per of “Baby Got Back” fame could write a whole song about women rub­bing their big, soapy breasts–oh excuse me– lungs  up against the wind­shields of lux­ury cars.

#2 — “Pumps and a Bump” — MC Hammer

This is the infa­mous M.C. Ham­mer video that was banned from MTV for being too sex­ual, as Ham­mer is shown pranc­ing around in only a tightly-fitting speedo that barely con­ceals his rag­ing hard-on. He thrusts and gyrates his banana ham­mock around a harem of girls who all have spec­tac­u­lar bumps as they dance pool­side in pumps. In some of the shots Ham­mer turns to the side and you can totally see it , not that I was look­ing that closely or any­thing, or paus­ing the video after I taped it just to make sure.

#1 — “Pop That P*ssy” — 2 Live Crew

Here it is, the mother of all dirty rap videos. If I have to explain this one, you might be asexual.

Thanks, The Box, for teach­ing me SO MANY THINGS!

This one goes out to someone who’s never seen The Goonies.

Last week I was emailed by a friend who admit­ted to never hav­ing seen The Goonies, which I have pre­served in a screen­shot because I’m still hav­ing a hard time believ­ing it’s true:

My imme­di­ate reaction:

Now bear in mind, this per­son (who shall go name­less) is over 30, loves comics, adven­ture, the 80s–basically all the same stuff you’d expect your typ­i­cal Goonies fan  to like–and what’s more sur­pris­ing, my friend is even more dialed into pop cul­ture than I am. SO HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? I don’t think I’ve ever met any­one I’d con­sider my peer who  hasn’t seen The Goonies. Right now I kind of feel like one of those National Geo­graphic explor­ers who dis­cov­ered an uncon­tacted tribe from an iso­lated region of South Amer­ica. Say­ing you’ve never seen The Goonies is kinda like say­ing you’ve never eaten a Reese’s Peanut But­ter Cup.

In my friend’s defense, at least they’ve rec­og­nized the lack of Goonies in their life as a rather seri­ous pop cul­ture blind spot and has sought help from a pro­fes­sional such as myself. As I’ve men­tioned on the Cult Film Club pod­cast, and many times through­out this blog, The Goonies is one of my favorite movies of all time. In my dream pop cul­ture road trip , I travel to Asto­ria, Ore­gon just to do the truffle-shuffle out­side Mikey’s house. “Man…you smell like Phys Ed!” is one of my favorite six-word movie quotes . I try to yell  HEY YOU GUYS!  when­ever an appro­pri­ate oppor­tu­nity arises. And if you par­tic­i­pated in  my recent Goonies poll , you’d know I am Team Mouth. I fuck­ing love The Goonies, is what I’m say­ing. And I am hon­ored to have been asked for  my opin­ion when this per­son is some­one who’s own opin­ions I greatly value.

To that end, I am going to make good on my friend’s request. I am going to explain exactly why I think  The Goonies is so awe­some, and what’s more, I’m going to do it in a way that I know is extremely rel­e­vant to this person’s interests.

So here you go, my unini­ti­ated friend. These are the Top 10 rea­sons why I feel you NEED to see this movie:

#10 — Because you’re always fight­ing for truth and justice.

So I know you will appre­ci­ate The Goonies’ plight. It’s about a group of mis­fits who find a centuries-old trea­sure map and go on a wild adven­ture to find the “rich stuff” in order to save their houses from a pair of rich, greedy devel­op­ers who want to turn their neigh­bor­hood into a golf course–and did I men­tion they’re chased by a fam­ily of mob­sters along the way?

 #9 — You will learn how to say use­ful things in Spanish.

Because I know you are a per­son who val­ues edu­ca­tion above all else.

#8 — It’s full of things that just don’t look safe.

You’re always tak­ing the time to warn me about the unfore­seen dan­gers of this world, which I cer­tainly appre­ci­ate. This movie pos­i­tively  oozes  unsafe. So much so that you might even learn some tips yourself.

#7 — This catchy-ass Cyndi Lau­per song.

And more impor­tantly, this Cyndi Lau­per video because it has a cameo by ANDRE THE GIANT:

#6 —  These girls.

You will have fun decid­ing which one you like/dislike more.

#5 — It’s easy to relate to.

Because deep down we are all out­casts, just like The Goonies.

 #4 — It’s also a super­hero movie.

Well, kind of. Okay, not really. But I assure you this guy is SUPER.

#3 — There’s toys!

I don’t feel an expla­na­tion is nec­es­sary here.

#2 — It’s the best non-pirate movie about pirates ever.

Going by the stuff you post on your blog, I know you are a fan of pirates. You owe it to your­self to see this movie if only for the awe­some pirate-y action toward the end.

And you just gotta love a pirate named “One-Eyed Willie.” You’re a perv like me, so I know you’ll appre­ci­ate the penis joke.

#1 — The Goonies hate cephalopods, too.

Never for­get who’s on your side!

The infa­mous Giant Octo­pus attack only appears in cer­tain tele­vised ver­sions of  The Goonies , but is included on the DVD as a Spe­cial Fea­ture. And hoo boy is it spe­cial! Data (whom you’ll rec­og­nize as “the Asian Goonie”) defeats it with a moth­er­fuck­ing cas­sette tape that plays 80’s music  under­wa­ter . Like I said, SPECIAL.

Well there you have it, friend. If none of this con­vinces you The Goonies is awe­some and that you are less cool for not hav­ing seen it, then I have failed as your des­ig­nated 80’s movie spirit guide and must now go eat a Baby Ruth to cope with my shame.

My favorite spaceman is the one who gave us MTV.

This week’s League assign­ment was yet another single-word prompt: “space­men.”

I’m late with my response this week (because Ni No Kuni hap­pened ) and a lot of my fel­low Lea­guers have already beaten me to some great top­ics, like E.T. and Astro­naut Bar­bie (which I was totally going to make fun of, you thun­der steal­ers). Also, I’ve been com­pletely Star Wars –ed out since the news that J.J. Abrams will be direct­ing Episode VII nearly broke the inter­net Fri­day, or else I’d write about that.

So instead I thought I’d boldly go where no man has gone before–before 1981, that is. On August 31st of that year, MTV made tele­vi­sion his­tory when its first-ever broad­cast, the MTV Moon Land­ing , appeared on tele­vi­sion screens across Amer­ica and intro­duced an entire gen­er­a­tion to 24-hour music television.

This is what those kids saw:

Though I’m too young to remem­ber the orig­i­nal Moon Land­ing (I wasn’t born until Sep­tem­ber that same year), it’s an iconic TV spot that MTV played in heavy rota­tion through­out the 80’s, and to this day, why MTV still gives out “Moon Man” stat­ues at its annual Video Music Awards.

(By the way, does any­one know if it’s pos­si­ble to get a replica of one of these things? Because I’d totally Fla­vor Flav it as a neck­lace.)

Between hav­ing an older sis­ter, and par­ents who’d let us watch pretty much what­ever we wanted, MTV entered my life at a very young age. My ear­li­est mem­o­ries of it are from around the time I was five, so we’re talk­ing 1986 or so. I couldn’t tell you what the first music video I ever saw was, but I do dis­tinctly remem­ber squeal­ing with delight when­ever Peter Gabriel’s video for  Sledge­ham­mer came on. I couldn’t get enough of those danc­ing naked turkeys .

(I still can’t.)

As a card-carrying mem­ber of the MTV Gen­er­a­tion, I watched MTV reli­giously from the mid-eighties to around the time I started col­lege. I miss those lose lazy sum­mer days when it was too hot to play out­side, giv­ing me a per­fectly valid excuse to lay around watch­ing Beavis & Butthead   while ignor­ing my chores. Then, some­how, grad­u­ally and almost with­out warn­ing, MTV just stopped being impor­tant to me.  Where once we had a net­work full of awe­some shows like Yo! MTV Raps and  Headbanger’s Ball   in addi­tion to, you know, actual music videos,  we now have a cesspool of retar­da­tion such as  16 and Preg­nant and Jer­sey fuck­ing Shore .

Back then, even the non-music-related shows were awe­some. Remem­ber Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion and the bizarre cool­ness of Aeon Flux ? Or how about all the awesome/hilarious game shows, like Remote Con­trol and Sin­gled Out  ? (You ain’t cool unless you knew who Chris Hard­wick was before Nerdist .)  Twelve-year-old me used to day­dream about being a con­tes­tant on Lip Ser­vice because I totally know all the words to K7’s “Come Baby Come.” (And still do.) 

But any­way, this is not meant to be a “get off my lawn” post about how much MTV sucks now. I mean, every­body already knows that, right?  Instead, this is a lov­ing trib­ute to the MTV I used to know, and the Moon Man who reg­u­larly landed in my liv­ing room and blew my god­damn mind with awe­some music and unique programming.

Remem­ber when the VMAs used to, like, actu­ally mean some­thing man?

Oh sure, we had our embar­rass­ing teen pop acts and one-hit won­ders in the pre-Bieber era, too. I thought it’d be fun to dig up a cou­ple of my favorite per­for­mances from the MTV Video Music Awards vaults!

Guns N’ Roses Per­form­ing “Wel­come to the Jun­gle” (1988)

A 7-year-old child should not be allowed to wit­ness such raw sex and power, but I did, and I’d like to think I turned out bet­ter for it.

Paula Abdul Per­form­ing ‘For­ever Your Girl (Med­ley)” (1989)

You know, Paula was never a great voice, but GODDAMN that woman could dance.

Vanilla Ice Per­form­ing “Ice Ice Baby” (1990)

If you were to time-travel back to my bed­room in 1990, you’d find me glued to the screen, strug­gling to under­stand that funny feel­ing I had while watch­ing this.

Faith No More Per­form­ing “Epic” (1990)

One of the best songs ever. This is not open for debate.

En Vogue Per­form­ing “Free Your Mind” (1992)

This per­for­mance right here is like the 1990’s per­son­i­fied. God, I miss these bitches.

Shit. I was sup­posed to write about space­men, wasn’t I?

Now that I’ve man­aged to com­pletely go off-topic, let’s get things back under con­trol. This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was sim­ply the word  “space­men.”  Our leader, Brian, is really stretch­ing the lim­its of his cre­ativ­ity lately with these top­ics. Here are a cou­ple of my favorite spacemen-related posts writ­ten by fel­low Leaguers:

• Good­will Hunt­ing 4 Geeks shows off his space­men action fig­ures. I’ll give you ONE guess which toy is my favorite.
• The Man Who Stares at Toys men­tions my favorite alien beings from Aqua Teen Hunger Force !
• That Fig­ures went in a really cool direc­tion with this post about Levi’s jeans circa 1995 “Space Man” commercial.
• For­tune and Glory Days cov­ers one of my favorite 80’s movies, E.T. The Extra Ter­res­trial .
• What­ever I Think Of! talks about Spec­tra, Astro­naut Bar­bie, and other incred­i­bly lame space-themed toys for girls.

I’m possibly the only person who remembered it’s Ya Kid K’s birthday today.

Happy Birth­day, Ya Kid K ! Almost 25 years later, you are still pumpin’ up my jam .

I have to admit, I thought you were a dude when I first saw you per­form live on TV some­time back in 1989, before I knew what a les­bian was. Sorry about that.

In fact, your gen­der was a fre­quent before-bedtime hot topic for my older sis­ter and I, along with other stu­pid things like what exactly the “Cs” in C+C Music Fac­tory stood for, which New Kid was the ugli­est (answer: Danny), and whether or not Paula Abdul was part black. We were just dumb, spoiled lit­tle white girls who were raised on MTV and had noth­ing bet­ter to argue about, but were sis­ters, so as a rule we had to argue about some­thing . And this was years before the inter­net, so we couldn’t exactly look these things up. But we sure did wear the shit out of our Tech­notronic cass­in­gles! Me especially.

Like sev­eral other now-obscure musi­cal acts of the 90’s (see my posts about Part­ners in Kryme and Fifth Pla­toon ), my Ya Kid K fan­dom is directly asso­ci­ated with Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles . You have the esteemed honor of being the only artist to have appeared on all three live-action TMNT movie sound­tracks, albeit under totally incon­sis­tent names:

• TMNT I (1990) — “Spin That Wheel”  cred­ited as Hi-Tek 3
• TMNT II (1992) — “Awe­some (You Are My Hero)”  cred­ited as Ya Kid K
• TMNT III (1993) — “Rockin’ Over the Beat”  cred­ited as Technotronic

These are sound­tracks I’m still lis­ten­ing to at age 31, and not just because I have nos­tal­gia blind­ness (deaf­ness?) for all things TMNT–no, I still lis­ten to these albums because there’s some damn good music on them, thanks in a big way to you. I’ve read biogra­phies  where you didn’t seem all that thrilled to have sold out in that way, like so many other artists who were swept up by Turtle­ma­nia, but if it’s any con­so­la­tion, you helped make my child­hood (and a lot of other kids’) a whole lot more awe­some.

And speak­ing of awe­some, your live per­for­mances were The Shit. Until you burst on the scene, I had never really seen any­one per­form with that level of energy and  enthu­si­asm. You could dance, you could rap, you could sing, and you had a funky-fresh style (yes, I feel it’s totally accept­able to use the 90’s slang term “funky-fresh” here) that was really unique.  And that voice is unmis­tak­able. I don’t think you get nearly the level of credit you deserve.

I can’t believe you’re 40 years old now. In my mind you’ll for­ever be own­ing that Arse­nio Hall stage.

Oh, A Cowboy Needs a Horse (Needs a Horse! Needs a Horse!)

The first ran­dom thing that popped into my head (well, besides Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive”) after see­ing today’s assign­ment from The League , was an ani­mated Dis­ney short from 1956 called A Cow­boy Needs a Horse . I sur­prised myself by think­ing of it, because this car­toon is one of those things from the obscure, nearly-forgotten minu­tia of my child­hood that I’m con­stantly redis­cov­er­ing in weird ways (quite like Que­stron and the Clue VCR Mys­tery Game ) ever since I started blogging.

A Cow­boy Needs a Horse (which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube right here ) is about a lit­tle boy who goes to sleep one night and dreams of being a cow­boy. As he slum­bers, an incred­i­bly repet­i­tive song of the same name accom­pa­nies his trans­for­ma­tion from an ordi­nary boy into a cow­boy com­plete with a horse, a rope, a song, a hat, a pair of fancy boots, and a set of shiny spurs, which are all “drawn” into the scene. It’s all very  Lit­tle Nemo-ish  and the ani­ma­tion is clas­sic Disney.

Here’s the song. Please don’t hate me after it inevitably gets stuck in your head!

Since I was born in 1981, I’m obvi­ously too young to have remem­bered this car­toon when it was new. My intro­duc­tion to it was in the form of a Dis­ney Sing Along Songs VHS tape that I got for Christ­mas one year–this one, to be precise:

If you’re around my same age, you might remem­ber these things. They were a series of home video tapes that fea­tured a com­pi­la­tion of songs you could sing along to from both ani­mated and live-action Dis­ney movies and shows. Most mem­o­rably, kids were encour­aged to “Fol­low the bounc­ing ball!” which looked like the Mickey sym­bol and helped you keep time with the lyrics. (And I swear to this day, the insanely catchy intro song  from these tapes still gets ran­domly stuck in my head sometimes.)

A cowboy’s gotta keep ridin’, ridin’ along…

This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was sim­ply the word, “cow­boys.”  Here’s how my fel­low extra­or­di­nary blog­gers inter­preted this fun topic:

• For­tune and Glory Days loves spaghetti west­erns and Red Dead Redemp­tion (which is an AWESOME game, by the way).
• Branded in the 80s waxes nos­tal­gic about The Leg­end of the Lone Ranger toys.
• Mon­ster Cafe Saltillo  scored a great deal on The Lone Ranger DVDs.
• Flash­lights Are Some­thing to Eat was the cutest lit­tle cow­boy I’ve ever seen back in 1976.

*I’m early this week (for once!). I’ll update this sec­tion with more links as more folks turn in the assign­ment.

My childhood arrived in a TurtleVan.

Well, tech­ni­cally it arrived in a box from Amazon.com. One of the shit­ti­est things about break­ing up right before Christ­mas was hav­ing to return all the gifts I bought for my boyfriend (actu­ally, the shit­ti­est part was hav­ing to unwrap them first, then return them–do you know how depress­ing that was?), but hey, at least I got some money back…which I spent on myself. I’m con­sid­er­ing it a con­so­la­tion prize.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles: The Com­plete Clas­sic Series Col­lec­tion  brings together all ten seasons–193 episodes in all–of the clas­sic Fred Wolf TMNT car­toon, pack­aged in what is one of the coolest-designed DVD box sets I’ve ever seen–a replica Turtl­e­Van! I’ve been lust­ing after this baby since it was announced back in August (that post is here ), and know that a cou­ple of you guys in The League also got this for Christ­mas, which means you made me insta-jealous, which means I decided I couldn’t live another day with­out hav­ing this in my life. It is my child­hood, after all.

There’s a ton of reviews for this box set all over the inter­net, so I won’t bother adding to that noise with one of my own (I’m pretty biased anyway–you know I have noth­ing but uncon­di­tional love for my four green heroes). Instead I’m going to rem­i­nisce a lit­tle and tell you about the day the  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles entered my life. It seems like such a triv­ial thing, but it’s one I will never forget.

It was the fall of 1988. I was in sec­ond grade. I used to get babysat by a woman who lived across the street from my par­ents, who had two kids around my age. She also watched a bunch of other kids from around the neigh­bor­hood and there was a good mix of boys and girls, with a few dif­fer­ent grades between us. We were together as a group every school morn­ing before the bus came and every after­noon until around six, or when­ever our par­ents got home from work and were able to pick us up. That’s a lot of time to spend around other kids, and as you might imag­ine, we didn’t always get along. One of the things we fre­quently fought over that had the power to deter­mine  if we were going to get along on any given day was the TV: what to watch.

One after­noon, Jonathan, a boy who lived down the street from me and who was a few years younger, prac­ti­cally had a melt­down when the other kids wouldn’t let him put on his favorite show. Two of the kids (I won’t name names) were big­ger and meaner than the rest of us, not to men­tion spoiled-rotten shit­heads who always got their way. They said the show was stu­pid and teased Jonathan relent­lessly for lik­ing it, to the point that it made him cry. I had no idea what show Jonathan wanted to watch so badly (nor did I really care) and I never liked get­ting involved with Shit­head #1 and Shit­head #2, hav­ing been the sub­ject of their ridicule more than a few times myself. In those sit­u­a­tions I’d nor­mally just go with the flow, to stay in The Shit­heads’ good graces and hope to avoid becom­ing the tar­get. But some­thing about the whole thing just pissed me off that day. Jonathan was such a nice, sweet boy, and I knew The Shit­heads were teas­ing him just to be dicks, not because there was any­thing else on TV they really wanted to watch. He was younger, smaller, and totally defense­less, and I felt bad for him. So I stood up for the lit­tle guy.

Well, you can imag­ine how they treated me after that–but hey, Jonathan got to watch his show. And I got stuck watch­ing it with him. The Shit­heads rounded up the other “cool” kids (of which I was no longer a part of) to go out­side and play a game, declar­ing I wasn’t allowed to join them. But as it turned out, I soon wouldn’t care about their stu­pid game, or try­ing to impress The Shit­heads ever again…because I had just been intro­duced to the great­est, most mind-meltingly cool show I had ever seen.

The show, of course, was Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles . To this day I still remem­ber the exact episode: Enter the Fly . I can’t say for sure what exactly drew me in. Maybe it was the sheer absurdity/awesomeness of what I was witnessing–four green, wise­crack­ing, pizza-loving tur­tles ninja-fighting against a giant mutated fly (not to men­tion fly­ing a blimp). Maybe it was the seri­ous­ness of this par­tic­u­lar episode’s plot, and how I in my eight-year-old inno­cence really thought April might die! But what’s more likely is that I fell in love, as so many kids my age did, with the per­son­al­i­ties of the Tur­tles them­selves. Leonardo’s brav­ery, Donatello’s genius, Raphael’s wit, Michaelangelo’s heart. I know it sounds cheesy, but the Tur­tles as we know them in that car­toon rep­re­sent every­thing we wanted for our­selves as kids. Despite being out­casts, they were cool and like­able. They were smart. They were funny. They had these incred­i­ble abil­i­ties. They were the best of friends. They saved the day. In short, they were “The Good Guys.” They stood for some­thing . All of this is appar­ent just from watch­ing any sin­gle episode.

On that par­tic­u­lar day, hav­ing gone through what I did, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles were there for me in a way that nobody and noth­ing else was. I didn’t care that I had just alien­ated myself from the group or pos­si­bly jeop­ar­dized my neigh­bor­hood social sta­tus for­ever. I had done some­thing I felt was the right thing to do and  The Tur­tles were on my side for it. This all seems like a bunch of stu­pid kid stuff, I know, but when you’re eight years old, these things matter.

Things were never the same between me and The Shit­heads again. That day was some­thing of a turn­ing point for me. It’s the day I decided I didn’t care how uncool I was for lik­ing some­thing that made me so happy. Did I know that sin­gle episode would lead to a life-long obses­sion with all things TMNT? No. I just knew watch­ing the show made me feel good, and I couldn’t wait to find out all there was to know about these four green guys. On that day, and on many days since, I have made new friends because of TMNT. I learned to draw because of TMNT. I learned to try new things because of TMNT. I had a hap­pier child­hood because of TMNT.

See­ing this show for the very first time was the begin­ning of a pas­sion that has brought noth­ing but good things into my life. And that’s the high­est praise I could pos­si­bly give it.

There should be ‘Glamour Shots’ for 80s music videos.

There. That’s a free busi­ness idea I’m self­lessly bestow­ing upon the world. Mainly because I wish it were an actual thing.

You remem­ber Glam­our Shots , right? Think Deb from Napoleon Dyna­mite. Your local mall prob­a­bly had a Glam­our Shots at some point or another; most likely in the late 80s or early 90s. It was a chain of por­trait stu­dios where you got all gussied up in eye­liner and feather boas like some two-bit whore–the big­ger and more feath­ered your hair, the better–to pose for your very own “glam­our shot.” Some­times you cold even pose with props, like a sparkly micro­phone or stud­ded cow­girl hat. At Glam­our Shots, it didn’t mat­ter how young or old you were, fat or thin, wear­ing whore make-up and single-handedly deplet­ing the world’s sup­ply of Aqua Net was appro­pri­ate for all ages and body types. Some­times even men.

Oh Google Image Search, you never dis­ap­point. Here’re some of the finest exam­ples of Glam­our Shots the inter­net has to offer:

 This is also highly rel­e­vant and worth a few min­utes of your time: The 20 Worst Glam­our Shots

So any­way, back to my bril­liant idea. Imag­ine if there was a Glam­our Shots-like place you could go to get made over in the style of your favorite music video? Not  just a makeover, though–I’m talk­ing about actu­ally “star­ring” in one. That’s totally pos­si­ble nowa­days, what with Pho­to­shop and clever video edit­ing, right? Or maybe it could be done kind of like Jab-Jab where there’s these pre-recorded tem­plate videos of face­less peo­ple danc­ing the parts of your favorite music videos and all they’d have to do is insert your photo. Yeah…I’VE THOUGHT WAY TOO MUCH ABOUT THIS. I sup­pose the idea wouldn’t need to be lim­ited to 80’s music videos, but 80’s music videos are obvi­ously the most rad AND the most ridiculous–kind of like Glam­our Shots themselves.

I’ve already got my dream videos all picked out:

I know it’s hard to put a pric­etag on liv­ing your dream , but whad­dya think–about $100 or so for the priv­i­lege? Dis­counts if you can sup­ply your own wardrobe. Just think how amaz­ing din­ner par­ties and fam­ily get-togethers will be when you can whip out a cheesy music video of your very own.

The Most Pixely Man in the Universe

Ani­ma­tor Caleb Hys­tad re-created the clas­sic Mas­ters of the Uni­verse car­toon intro in glo­ri­ous pixel art, because, why not? And I’m post­ing it because this is exactly the kind of silly crap I post. I mean, have you looked around here lately? No seri­ously, have you?

Hey Caleb–on the off-chance you ever read this, how about doing Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles next?

Did you own a Vectrex in the 80s? Me either, but now you can on iPad.

Retro gam­ing fans rejoice, for now you can redis­cover Vec­trex , the failed, extremely short-lived game con­sole from 1982 on your iPad. The Vec­trex wasn’t any­where near as pop­u­lar as, say, the Cole­co­v­i­sion or Com­modore 64 and dis­ap­peared from store shelves by 1984–around the time I was pick­ing up an Atari 2600 con­troller for the first time. It’s a rare con­sole with a small library of even rarer games, and some­thing of a prize among retro gam­ing collectors.

Just released, Vec­trex Regen­er­a­tion is the iOS app that emu­lates the Vec­trex con­sole gam­ing expe­ri­ence, much like the equally awe­some Atari’s Grestest Hits and Activi­sion Anthol­ogy apps I’ve posted about before. The app itself is free to down­load ( get it here ) and comes with a few free games like MineStorm , but if you want the whole col­lec­tion it’ll cost you $6.99. In addi­tion to orig­i­nal titles like Ripoff and Solar Quest , there’re a few indie titles as well.

Prob­a­bly the coolest thing about the app is how it’s designed as if you’re inside a kid’s bed­room from the 1980’s, com­plete with posters all over the walls and retro-tastic elec­tron­ics.  Here’re a cou­ple of screen­shots from my iPad to show you what I mean:

I love too how you can actu­ally use the wood-paneled VCR to play old Vec­trex com­mer­cials from that shelf of VHS tapes:

Obvi­ously I never had a Vec­trex, but I think it’s pretty cool I can now get acquainted with this par­tic­u­lar slice of retro gam­ing his­tory on my iPad. Beats pay­ing out the ass for one on Ebay, anyway.

VCR Repair and other terrible careers Sally Struthers peddled in the 90s.

It’s amaz­ing the nos­tal­gia that ran­dom Twit­ter con­ver­sa­tions about Bev­erly Hills: 90210 has-beens can trig­ger. Learn­ing that Brenda–or “Bren,” as my home­boy Dylan used to always call her–is hawk­ing online uni­ver­sity degrees now imme­di­ately made me think of all those old “Earn your degree at home!” com­mer­cials from the early 90’s. Yes, some­times I even get nos­tal­gic for old, shitty com­mer­cials, like this one for Inter­na­tional Cor­re­spon­dence Schools that starred Sally Struthers:

There were prob­a­bly a dozen or so dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions of this same com­mer­cial, each new ver­sion star­ring an ever more irrel­e­vant and desperate-looking Sally Struthers urg­ing you to train at home to make more money.  It’s a strange par­al­lel because I’m fairly cer­tain these very com­mer­cials aired dur­ing episodes of 90210 . Did Shan­non Doherty know back then she’d end up fol­low­ing the same path? I guess we’ll never know!

As for me, I always found these ICS com­mer­cials to be strangely com­fort­ing. Like some­where in the back of my mind I knew I could become a total fail­ure at life and still call that 1–800 num­ber some­day and be on my way to an excit­ing new career. While wear­ing sweatpants!

Just for shig­gles, I tried call­ing that 1–800 num­ber a few min­utes ago just to see if it still worked. It rang about thirty times, and I was then greeted with a recorded female voice say­ing, “Your party is not answer­ing. Please try again later. We’re sorry, but your call will now be disconnected.”

I can only assume this means that Inter­na­tional Cor­re­spon­dence Schools is STILL SO BUSY SELLING FAKE DEGREES they didn’t have time to take my call.