5 Forgotten Atrocities from '80s Pop Culture
Although I consider myself a child of the '90s because that's when I went to college and ultimately became an adult, I still lived through the '80s. I remember Michael Jackson on the radio, Dynasty on TV and Schwarzenegger in the theaters. Everyone had shoulder pads and neon purses. And questionable mothers let their sons go to elementary school graduations in leather pants.
Really dropped the ball there, Mom.
But this is not a column about Capezio shoes, Duran Duran and Swatches. This is about the subtle horrors of the decade; the parts of the '80s that sneak back into my consciousness now and then. Not the decade's obvious atrocities, like famine in Ethiopia or the Reagan administration's slow response to the AIDS epidemic, but subtler forms of hell. Things that are so inexplicably awful they don't seem real. Forgotten things that made no damn sense.
Here are the five most forgotten atrocities of the '80s.
#5. The Video to Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl"
A couple of months ago, I had to travel to West Virginia for business. After a long day of travel, including a rental car GPS that led me to the set of Deliverance II: The Rapening and some poor directions from an eyebrowless lady at the local Sheetz, I arrived at my hotel. If I tell you the concierge had a massive herpes blister, you won't believe me, but he totally did. Accordingly, when it came time to enjoy the state's nightlife, I made the obvious choice: double-bolting my hotel door, getting drunk and watching YouTube videos.
Somehow, this process lead me to Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" video, which I watched for the first time as a man. Even as a kid I knew the song was kind of an early-'60s-style throwback, but it didn't occur to me how cool that was. It certainly couldn't have been an intuitively obvious decision to sing like Frankie Valli in 1985. So kudos to you, Billy.
But the video? Sweet Jesus.
Billy portrays a garage mechanic in love with supermodel Christie Brinkley. Even though the entire look and feel of the video is retro, it starts with two kids (presumably extras from Breakin') dressed in the height of break-dancing fashion who appear to be trying to steal money from a pay phone. Don't worry, there are other, more positive images of blacks in the video, like Christie Brinkley's limo driver. Oh.
Billy begins combing his hair using a technique prevalent in neither the early '60s nor the mid-'80s involving epileptic neck seizures. Then we get some of the most stilted choreography ever assembled. Then Christie Brinkley comes out of the car being followed by Billy and his army of hunching monkeymen. Not for another 25 years would a moderately heighted man have the courage to stand next to someone so tall when a brave Dan O'Brien paired up with the ginormous little Mikey Swaim.
Not as funny as Agents of Cracked.
The douche-chillingly hilarious solution to this height disparity is found at two minutes in:
I'll have to remember this trick next time I'm cruising for tall ladies.
Then we get the break-dancing kids doing the robot, because what says retro Four Seasons pop song more than break dancing? It was the '80s. Break dancing was everywhere. Ultimately, Billy gets the girl and marries her in real life. However, it will take the director of the video another 30 years to legally marry in the U.S.
#4. Laverne & Shirley in the Army
In 1982, ABC had the great idea to take the then-flailing Laverne & Shirley show and make it a cartoon -- while the real show was still on the air. Sounds hard to believe, right? What if I told you that Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams actually did the voices? It's true. What if I then said the premise was Laverne and Shirley join the army just like Goldie Hawn did in Private Benjamin -- one of the biggest comedies of 1980?
moviefone.com
"Please God, please don't let me inspire Hanna-Barbera's unholiest evil."
And what if I finished it off by explaining that Laverne and Shirley's commanding officer was a talking pig voiced by Horshack of Welcome Back, Kotter? All true.
This cartoon sucks so hard I'm not sure how Seanbaby hasn't written about it already. To this day it is the only major network show to have "Peyote" listed as an executive producer. Just listen to the audio. I'm pretty sure microphones existed in the '80s, but Marshall and Williams seem to be somehow screaming their lines directly at the audiotape. Although Star Trek II wasn't yet in theaters, the opening credits appear designed to replicate the sensation of Khan's mind-control parasites burrowing into your cerebral cortex.
"Hey, Shirl, let's join the army."
#3. "Don't Lose My Number" -- Phil Collins
Let's get some things straight about Phil Collins: He has some amazing chops as a drummer; he has the ability to sing with tremendous range and power; he's written some terrific pop songs and, most of all, I hate him because he absolutely sucks.
Collins started as Genesis' drummer when they were a prog rock band fronted by Peter Gabriel instead of a synonym for "shameful disappointment." After Gabriel left, Collins became the lead singer and they continued to do some of their best work. Around 1978, Phil Collins realized he knew how to write pop songs, penning the somewhat cheesy, but still quite lovely "Follow You, Follow Me." Then the evil crept in. In a few years, he was writing solo albums, and though he wrote some excellent songs like "In the Air Tonight" and "Against All Odds," his vocals were getting more predictable, his arrangements simpler and his compositions, to use a technical musical term, more craptastic.
So yes, the obvious choice is to tool on Phil for "Sussudio," which is just an absolutely miserable song. But this is a column about forgotten atrocities, and fitting the bill is "Don't Lose My Number." It should be called "Billy, Don't Lose My Number," because those are the lyrics to the chorus, but, of course, that sounds a lot like Steely Dan's "Rikki Don't Lose That Number." And since the Collins song compares unfavorably in every way to Steely Dan's, he probably didn't want to invite comparison.
Take a listen. (Oh, the video is absurd and awful, too, but I really just want to focus on the music here.)
Synthetic drums, processed guitars, vapid lyrics and just general suckiness. And it was omnipresent during the summer of 1985, peaking at No. 4 on the Billboard charts. And now no one knows it. That's as it should be. Although I just wrote about it. Fuck.
I always laughed at how "Harry Morgan" sounded like a porn star name, but I'm definitely not laughing now. You have no idea how much I did not need to see that still image.
ReplyKlinger was my favorite
Replymandel was hopped up on some serious something for that music video.
ReplyThe articles here are no longer funny, this place is going to shit. Unsubscribing now!! I'm pretty sure I could entwine myself in xmas lights and take a flaming s**t and still not suck as bad as the writers here do
ReplyOMG. Saxophone player's insane googly eyes circa 1:43 in Mendel video.
ReplyIf you don't understand #1, you don't understand how much cocaine was around in the 1980s...
ReplyNo wonder Howie Mandel has that obsession with germs...that video would make anyone feel... dirty. My brain has been abused by its terribleness.
ReplySt. Elsewhere's final scene made me think the entire series had taken place inside the head of that guys autistic son. Anyone else get that?
ReplyYou got no taste. That Phil Collins song was, and still is, cool. The "absurd video" is supposed to be a commentary on the absurdity of other famous 80's music videos. Guess you didn't get it.
ReplyAm I crazy or was anyone else picturing Daniel Radcliffe in 40 years while watching the Phil Collins vid?
ReplyCouldn't make it past 1:09 of the Howie Mandel vid, I was staring at my spoon and contemplating all the ways to kill myself with it and that's when I knew I couldn't make it to the end, For those brave soul who finished it, God Speed!!!
ReplyI remember when AfterMASH came out, but never saw an episode. My question is why was Klinger wearing a female nurse's uniform? In Korea, he was trying to convince the Army he was insane, but what was the purpose after he was discharged and was working for a living? Did they think "Jamie Farr in drag is what really made MASH popular, so let's continue that gag!" or were they just lazy?
ReplyThat Howie Mandel video was like a repressed childhood memory of being molested. Painful to recall, but I've dealt with it and now I can finally move on with my life.....
ReplyOMG #1 was horrible - I feel sick for having watched it......
ReplyWhat DOO Ya DOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I do the Watisdiss Idonteven
I believe "dah fuk?" is an apt description.
Mr. Mendel, what you've just did is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever witnessed. At no point in your rambling, incoherent performance were you even close to anything that could be considered an amusing thought. Everyone on these internets is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no lulz, and may God have mercy on your soul.
ReplyI like the way you took an entire quote from a largely terrible Adam Sandler movie and applied it here. How witty and original.
Ooooh, your powers of perception are EXCEPTIONAL. I simply CANNOT ALLOW you to waste them here, when so much crime goes unsolved at this very moment. GO, GO! For the good of the city!
How are you a 'child of the 90s' if you were old enough for college then? If its a joke, its a bad one or I'm just not getting it.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIf a person was born in the 70's then he would be old enough for college by the 90's and would therefore have lived through the 80's as a child and teen.
How are you such a colossal asshat?
I've got to agree. CHILD is the operative word. If you were in college in the 90's, you were a CHILD of the 80's.
Wow. Someone who is actually familiar with Genesis' earlier prog era!
ReplyBut I swear I don't remember the Laverne and Shirley cartoon.
For After MASH, they *could have* borrowed from the dozen or so MASH novels, like MASH Goes To Maine, or MASH goes to New Orleans. But noooo, they had to go to Missouri instead!
Oh god, watching the number one video makes me feel really uncomfortable for some reason. It also looks a lot like Mandel is on really a lot, a lot of cocaine. That's the only way that f*****g gibberish could be anything but that.
ReplyAlso contributing to that theory, it appears that he begins violently assaulting a woman at around the 1:30 mark. And it doesn't look like he's fuckin' around either. He grabs her face and seriously looks like he's going to break her neck or something.
I guess a question for her would be "what do you do when Howie Mandel grabs your head and tries to violently murder you?"...and I can guarantee the answer is not to do the watusi. That's the s**t that got her in that position to begin with.
I grew up in the 80s and I still don't know who the crap Howie Mandel is. They made a big stink when he got some game show, but no one could tell me why I should know who he was. Wiki didn't help.
ReplyLittle Monstters? Bobby's World? Other crap-tastic 80s comedies?
I remember him from St Elsewhere, as an annoying twit, no changes there, except the hair. Mark Harmon on the other hand, has aged much more gracefully.
Its stuff like this that makes me LOVE the 80's... Anything could go, regardless of how ridiculous it was, and I love that... things are so held back and conservative now.
ReplyFor every thing we allow now that we didn't then, there are several things you just can't do anymore. Hell 80's shows are censored now. Try watching a re-run of the Golden Girls, they bleep a couple times an episode on CABLE. You could watch it uncensored with rabbit ears in the 80's.
Alright, I've seen golden girls a number of times (not of my own volition, but I've still seen it quite a few times), and I can honestly say I do not recall ever once hearing them bleep something. Of course there were a whole, whole lot of episodes of that particular show, so I doubt I've seen the majority of them, but I would have expected to have seen at least a couple instances in which they bleeped stuff if I can supposedly just watch any old re-run of the golden girls from the 80s and see them bleep stuff "a couple times an episode".
Plus, the only thing here that's just meant to be sort of insane is number one. The rest are examples of things that are straight up bad, and it doesn't matter when something is bad, bad things are always bad.
And maybe people just don't like things that go regardless of how ridiculous they are? Maybe most people look at something like number one and just feel terrible watching it?
Also, no, we aren't more conservative now, we're just different now. You could say what you are about literally any time. I'll bet the eighties are probably pretty 'conservative' (by your definition) compared to many times before that. I mean, hell, society was so permissive back in the middle ages! I mean, you could rape and pillage and most of the time there was no one to stop you! There weren't even drug laws! Kids were basically treated like adults back then! There weren't any special kid's toys or kid's events. And political correctness was non-existent! You could say just about anything you wanted about anyone and no one would stop you! Censorship was hardly even invented! If you had a disagreement with someone, you fought that s**t out! There wasn't any of that pansy diplomacy! Those were the good times, right?
But then again, the middle ages were pretty conservative compared to back before civilization was even established and we were just roving groups of recently evolved apelike creatures fighting for survival. Anything went back then. There were literally no laws and no one to tell you how to do things! How awesome!
My point is that people become politically correct out of consideration for others. It may be bullshit, and we may not agree with what they consider appropriate, but we still do it anyways. Saying "screw what people want, I'm going to do and say what I please!" doesn't just work one way. We need to all be considerate of each other, no matter what others may think. And there are plenty of outlets where political correctness isn't taken into consideration.
Of course people take political correctness too far sometimes, as some people just look for excuses to get offended and huffy, but at the same time as people become more tolerant of others, so too do they become more tolerant of others' views, and the idea that we shouldn't be tolerant of others because some people don't like not just letting loose with whatever they please is just absurd.
You're partially right. They don't bleep it, but they do edit things out. Probably cause it's Hallmark channel, and let's face it, that channel sucks.