25 Things I Would Be Doing on a Friday Night If It Was Still 1984

1. Trying to stonewash my own jeans, using bleach, because buying the real thing was too damn expensive. (And failing miserably with the home-school fashion update, effectively destroying the jeans and having to come up with the money to buy more…)

2. Playing quarters with my college peeps, never pausing to consider that it was probably the most unhealthy drinking game ever invented, and then not understanding why we all got the flu at the same time.

3. Wondering if Madonna will ever be able to do anything to top the “Like A Virgin” performance at the MTV Awards, where she rolled her ass around on stage in a wedding dress. Little did we know that she was just embarking on her mission of world domination and startling couture.

4. Wearing a polo shirt inside a button-down dress shirt, flipping the inside collar over the outside collar,  and thinking I was beyond cool, even if I was actually burning up and sweating to death.

5. Watching “16 Candles” and thinking that the scene where Molly Ringwald gets both the hot guy AND birthday cake while sitting on a dining room table, as a Thompson Twins song plays in the background, was the most romantic thing ever.

6. Watching Tina Turner and her enormous hair suddenly become popular again, managing to pick up several awards and a mystifying British accent somewhere along the line.

7. Learning, courtesy of Michael Jackson, that excessive amounts of hair product and shooting flames don’t work well together, especially if people are dancing and singing about drinking Pepsi.

8. Listening to the “Purple Rain” soundtrack for the 712th time, unaware that my relationship with Prince would one day change when he decided to wear those butt-less leotard pants.

9. Watching the Wham! Video for “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and really, really wanting one of those “Choose Life” t-shirts.

10. Running as fast as I could away from anyone sporting a mullet, although many of my relatives were felled by this horrible grooming choice. (“Business in the front, party in the back” is a slogan for a whorehouse, not a hairstyle, sayin.)

11. Wondering why people were still watching the “Dallas” TV Show. Didn’t they already shoot that one guy?

12. Listening to Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You”, and being surprised that she could feel anything after all those drugs.

13. Still suffering emotional after-effects from watching the glorious “Grease” duo of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John re-team in that wretched “Twist Of Fate” movie mess that disappointed everyone in the bleachers at Rydell High.

14. Wondering how in the hell voters could have re-elected a Republican president who lied about things, re-directed huge amounts of money to his rich buddies, tried to destroy the middle class, and had a questionable past relationship with a cinematic monkey. Little did we know that, deep in the heart of Texas, a drunken shrub thought that sounded like a lot of fun and was taking notes…

15. Learning how to do all the “Footloose” choreography, so I could be just like Kevin Bacon and rescue the music-deprived youngsters of a small town just by using interpretive dance…

16. Sneaking our underage asses into the only decent gay bar in town, because all the hip people knew that they played the best music. And there would always be pretty lights.

17. Learning, courtesy of Vanessa Williams, that if you want to keep your crown as Miss America, you probably shouldn’t be waving your hoo-hoo around in artsy black-and-white photos.

18. Watching Mary Lou Retton win 400 gold medals in gymnastics at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and watching Torvill and Dean at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo as they made ice-dancing the coolest thing on the planet for a few weeks.

19. Ignoring my friends as they babbled about this little movie called “Ghostbusters” that I should go see. I chose instead to sit through the 46-hour “Amadeus”. All I remember is Tom Hulce laughing and lots of powdered wigs.

20. Sitting around and watching the news, stunned that Elton John has just married a woman.

21. Getting fed up with those idiots that were still running around bellowing “Disco sucks!” despite the fact that disco had already flat-lined years before.

22. Watching Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” video and realizing that London was obviously a much more interesting place than Tulsa, Oklahoma.

23. Wearing nylon parachute pants that had more pockets and zippers than I had sense.

24. Discussing with friends this new-fangled music thing called a “CD”, and all of us agreeing that the format would never make it because it didn’t come with a really big album cover that you could stare at while recreational drugs kicked in.

25. Going to a frat party on campus, becoming acquainted with something called a beer bong, getting a bit carried away, things start to spin, best friends suddenly abandon you because a really cute guy just wandered in wearing loafers that have coins shoved in that odd little pocket over the toes, you trip over the cord to the phone because nobody knew wireless from squat back then, and you rip out the crotch of your fake stone-washed jeans as you tumble to the floor and the Eurythmics’ “1984” blares in the background.

  Ah, memories.