The 80s Club

We loved Forest Whitaker as the giggling Pfc. Garlick in Good Morning, Vietnam, and were moved by him as Cuffey in the epic drama, North and South. And now, two decades later, Forest Whitaker is honored with the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in The Last King of Scotland.
Congratulations, Forest! We are so proud and excited for you!
By the way, did you see all the 80’s looking dresses on the red carpet? From the big bows, to the metallic brightly colored dresses, to the short in front/long in back gowns, the 80’s …read more

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Okay, so only now as a parent of potty trainers do I realize that the title of this song sounds like something I would tell my potty-training kids before going to bed.
I asked my friend Jackie (who happens to have been my friend since the mid-80’s) what her favorite 80’s video is. Without hesitation, she says:
Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. It is the epitome of the 80’s videos. Big hair, flourescent clothing, fingerless gloves, the big white t-shirts with the big black letters, the blacklight with the neon colors, all of it. It’s awesome….so …read more

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Do you remember the first computer you ever worked on? My friend Jackie is sitting here with me and we’re reminiscing over our elementary days of learning BASIC on the TRS-80s that were in the library. Yeah….we were awesome because we could make a picture of a clown (comprised of different keyboard symbols) appear on the screen by entering a short list of, oh, 50 commands in that high tech computer language. Can you imagine how cool we felt? Only almost as cool as we’ll feel when we have our retro-80’s night while she’s visiting this …read more

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I remember when the Rubik’s Cube came out and how unexcited I was to get and solve one. Seriously, it looked like absolutely no fun at all to me. My brother got one, and I think he was able to solve it, without even taking the stickers off and just replacing them. I tried it, I couldn’t get it, I didn’t care.
Now a new generation of kids, and an old generation of middle-aged people who still think they’re kids, can try to solve a new version of their favorite old game. Head on over to Hsien’s …read more

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We’re down to our last few weeks of the Best of the Worst of the 80’s movies. This week’s pick is from Kelley Saunders of Thrifty Mommy.
Mommie Dearest is one of those that I do remember seeing at what was probably a pretty young age. I remember the boy being strapped in his bed, the crazy eyes of Mommie Dearest, and the classic “NO WIRE HANGERS” line.
Here are Kelley’s thoughts on that infamous flick:
I still can’t use wire coat hangers. We watched Mommie Dearest a few times and was tramatized ever since. My mom let us stay …read more

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Why Roseanne this week, you ask? No other reason than that the Chicago Bears are in the Super Bowl, and that Roseanne was set near Chicago in Illinois. (I thought Lanford was supposed to be near Chicago, but over at Wikipedia, you find that the actualy location of Lanford varied depending on which episode you were watching. Wikipedia also goes into the whole Becky switch thing that went on. That bugged me.) That’s it. Nothing more.
Roseanne entered the sitcom arena with a bang, at least in our house. We watched this show together …read more

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I got a chance to get out for a bit today, and I took the opportunity to call up Bald Man and get out for lunch. Just the two of us. It was fantastic.
Anyway, as most of you probably don’t know, Bald Man loves to sing. As you probably also don’t know, he’s aurally challenged (read as: doesn’t really know whether or not he’s in tune when he’s singing). It is a fact that he’s well aware of, so I’m not outing him here or anything. Or maybe I am, but he can take it. …read more

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Kids Incorporated. One of those Saturday morning shows (at least I think that’s when it aired, when else would it have?) that I remember loving, but I no longer have any idea why I liked it or what the plot was even. Kids dancing, that’s what I remember. You can head over here to see what Wikipedia remembers about it.
Enjoy the theme song, and watch for Fergie (Stacey Ferguson) of the Black Eyed Peas. She’s the first one to be credited. Crazy, huh?

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With the Chicago Bears in the home stretch to the Super Bowl, every child from the 80’s should be walking around with the sweet sounds of The Super Bowl Shuffle streaming through their brains, or is that just for those of us who were living in the Land of Lincoln at the time and couldn’t have gotten away from the song if we’d tried?
It was up at YouTube for a while, but has been pulled down. I’m guessing it has something to do with those pesky copyright laws, but it was fun to see it while it was up, …read more

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Not only did John Hughes quite ably portray the fears, desires, hopes and challenges of the 80’s teenager, he also did a phenomenal job of presenting the worst in the villians of his films. Steve Spears has a great list of Hughes’ villians and all of their awful attributes. Head on over there and join the conversation in the comments section, and let me know who you chose as your best of the worst villians!
As for me? Most definitely Hardy Jenns (played by Craig Sheffer) from Some Kind of Wonderful. He had a way of telling …read more

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