End of the 80s!

Well goodbye to the 80s! I wonder what the next decade will bring?!

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Last night I was at an 80s nostalgia party - which is kind of odd but also very fitting. There were posters all over the house with the top "phrases" and "sayings" of this rather forgettable decade, mixed and matched with pictures in a way that initially seemed random, but perhaps was not...

"Where's the beef?"	Dan Quayle
"Grody to the max"	Don Johnson
"You, Sir, are no Jack Kennedy"	"We Are the World" video
"Who shot J.R.?"	George Bush
Boy Toy	Dr. Ruth
"Gag me with a spoon"	Oliver North
Power Lunch	Scene from The Breakfast Club
Bimbo	Reagan, Bush and Gorbachev
Carb Load	Donald Trump
"Girls just wanna have fun"	Clarence Thomas
"We start bombing in five minutes"	Some hair metal band
"Just say no"	Scene from Ishtar
"Preppie	Eddie Murphy as Buckwheat
"Radical!"	Woman in big-shouldered power suit
"Totally tubular!"	Berlin Wall coming down
Valley Girl	Sun City, South Africa
Buppie	David Letterman
Passive/Agressive	Christie Brinkley
"Wicked!"	Tiananmen Square
"Gnarly!"	The Supreme Court
"Plate o shrimp"	Scene from Footloose
"I'll be back"	a grid with a bunch of triangles
The Brat Pack	Madonna
Space Cadet	a Rubik's Cube
"I've fallen and I can't get up"	Pac Man screen
Wine Coolers	Democratic presidential candidates, 1984
Material Girl	Mr. T
Power Tie	Scene from Blue Velvet
Golden Parachute	Nancy Reagan with Papa Smurf
"I want my MTV	Space Shuttle Challenger
Star Wars	Leg Warmers
Slam Dance	Falklands War
Spokesmodel	E.T.

and so on.

The food? Well, sushi, pesto pasta (you know, the carbo load) oat bran muffins... someone even brought a six pack of New Coke. Repo Man was playing in the other room.

The hostess was wearing leg warmers and the host had on a power tie. Pretty awesome.

Well, I got pretty wasted. I don't really remember everything, except that there was a Madonna wanna-be contest, followed by some slam dancing. It was rad!

6 24 1984

Coming Soon!

5 6 1983

Coming Soon!

4 29 1972

Coming Soon!

Sesame Street Recap: EP001S01

So I know this kid who kept begging me to watch this show with her - it sounded a bit silly - just a kid's show with puppets - but it was actually a lot cooler than it might sound.

After opening with these rather charming but clunky animated clay dinosaurs, it starts off with Gordon (apparently one of our main neighbors, a very handsome African-American gentleman who lives at 123 Sesame Street with his lovely wife, Susan) introducing all of the characters to a little girl named "Sally", as well as "us", the viewers.

So, we meet Big Bird, who looks like a giant canary, and seems a bit dizzy. That or he is supposed to be a little kid.

Then we meet Ernie and Bert, who are typical NYC apartment dwellers:

They, in turn, introduce us to Solomon Grundy (this is starting to feel a little like The Saragossa Manuscript). I'm expecting Solomon Grundy to come out and introduce the next character.

Then we continue on the "wash"  theme with a short film, then Ernie again washing up.

(Very stream-of-conciousness/associative stuff.  This, along with the urban setting, makes me feel like Allen Ginsberg or Gregory Corso is in the back room writing sketches.)

It gets even more abstract with a bunch of dots blinking around the screen.

Then we get this "song of 3" thing,

Note Muppet creator Jim Henson in this.

Which has some blinding animation and some very annoying kid singers (really not a fan of that - this one comes across like a hyper version of that Frank Sinatra song about the little 'ol ant.) I sense though that the baker at the end is going to be reliably amusing.

Well, we go on a milk tangent, meet Oscar, a grumpy orange garbage monster, more animated clay animals, a bunch of stuff about over, through and through, more dots, and a song from "Oliver" (I left the room for a Pepsi at this point).

When I get back, we find Ernie again (sans Bert) buying milk (again!) from Mr. Hooper, who seems like a transplant from the Lower East Side. We get a "song of 2" song, some more animals, another 2 song,  then a gorgous "E" animation by the Hubleys, which is the highlight of the episode so far.

We get a slightly unmemorable sketch about a picture being hung up, and this great "token white guy" named "Bob" (how is that for a token white guy name?) showing Sally and Kermit the Frog how to make a W out of a dollar bill.

Wanda the Witch is an aliterative story that has an irritating animation flub at the end with a witch's face that is ostensibly in FRONT of a cauldron appears behind it. Otherwise, had a nice feel to it.

Carol Burnett comes out and makes a snappy one-liner, we stick with W until the end, get some closing credits and some groovy music.

From what I understand, this show is supposed to be like a media-savvy version of the federal Head Start program. I think it will do well, though they may want to consider stripping down the "sponsors" into a more digestible size (letters and numbers are the sponsers of the show, as opposed to advertisers.) This episode has the sponsors E, S, W, 2 and 3. In fact, the whole format is like that of a fast-paced network program, except educational and with no commercial interests. I am sure the jury is still out as to how the networks feel about this kind of co-option.

The kid loved it. I thought it showed a lot of potential. Who knows, maybe they will cancel it after a few months, because the kiddos miss their toy commercials and meaningless programming. We will have to see.