All good things must come to an end, and so I must bid farewell to 80’s month. In my opinion horror films were one of the decades greatest contributions. Generally speaking, I don’t really look back at the decade with much fondness. I always wished I had been a kid/teenager during the 70’s. I’m still not at the point where I can look at pictures of my teen years with warm fondness. I mean honestly, hair just shouldn’t be that big! I would leave the house looking parent friendly but when I got to school I would put on my skintight jeans and pull out the black eyeliner and the purple and blue eye shadow and then tease up the old perm. My parents would have never let me leave the house looking this way! Bad perms, rat-tails, camel toe, neon, musical montages, hair bands, the start of Julia Roberts career. So damn many reasons to curse the 80’s! I barely scratched the surface of 1980’s horror. I will definitely do another 80’s month before the end of the year. But in the meantime, here is a list of People, Places and Things, other than horror, I actually liked from the decade.
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ROLLER SKATING!
Every Friday night and sometimes Sunday matinees we would go to The Great Skate Place. I had many different coloured pom-poms to match all my clothes that I would affix to my well worn Dominion roller-skates. I had so many sparkly stickers on my skates you couldn’t even see the white of the boot. I was okay at roller-skating, but I really admired the guys that would go whipping around the rink doing all that fancy foot crossing stuff. I hated couple skates though! Both times I tried I took the poor guy down. I am completely miserable at slow dancing too. I once caused 4 people to go down at a school dance.
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SCTV!
Like most of my favourite things from the 80’s this, most brilliant of all comedy shows started in the 70’s but carried on through 1984. SCTV always made me laugh harder than Saturday Night Live. Always! SCTV Featured what I believe to be one of the best troupe of comedians ever assembled, we have John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, Tony Rosato, Robin Duke and Dave Thomas. SCTV was basically a collection of hilarious skits that were presented as television programming for an independent station in the city of Melonville headed by program manager Guy Caballero. Pure comedy gold!
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THE VIOLENT FEMMES!
Much of what I liked musically came out in the 70’s but continued on in the 80’s like ‘The Ramones’, ‘The Clash’, ‘Tom Waits’, but the one band that was actually from the 1980’s that I loved to the point of obsession was The Violent Femmes. They whined their way into my teenage heart and I literally knew every word to every song. It was of course their self-titled album that won me over but their live shows were amazing and exhausting. It’s a lot of work bobbing up and down for an entire show! I hope they know this will go down on their permanent record.
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HARRISON FORD!
I wasn’t allowed to hang posters on my wall so I had just one poster that hung on the back of my bedroom door. That poster was of Harrison Ford as Hans Solo. It’s hard to believe I had such a major crush on Ford now. I don’t think he’s done a film I could stomach in probably 20 years. But back in the day, he was Hans Solo, Indiana Jones and Rick Deckard.
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CANADA’S WONDERLAND!
I remember Canada’s Wonderland opening when I was a pre-teen and we basically harassed my dad daily until he finally took us. This place became a staple in my teen years. For starters I love rides, especially rollercoaster’s, and as an added bonus they had a music venue on the premise. Sitting on the grass watching a band was the best thing ever!
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RECORDS and RECORD STORES!
My secondary passion after horror films is music. I worked for a few different record stores during the 90’s about 6 years in total. It was lots of fun. Shit wage, but you got free stuff including lots of free shows, and you got to work with people that loved music as much as you did. When I was a kid though, I loved going downtown Toronto to what I used to call “the big record” due to its large neon record sign, but it was actually Sam The Record Man’s flagship store. I would just be in awe at the sheer volume of stuff they had in there. I thought working in a record store was probably about the coolest job a person could possibly have. Other than rock star or horror movie actress of course! But the real fun wasn’t the store, it was the record itself. The packaging was so creative and usually contained all manner of information relating to the music like lyrics, info on the band etc. Sometimes the discs were coloured and sometimes they even had pictures on them. I remember my parents had the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar and it folded out three times and had a booklet affixed inside that had a million pictures from the film. You just can’t get cool crap like that anymore. Awesome! I really miss records and record stores.
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ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER!
Come on! Didn’t everyone love Arnold back then? Terminator! Predator! Running Man! These films rocked my world back in the day. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact he is now a governor. The man was infamous for being large, intimidating and uttering cheesy one-liners with an Austrian accent. Who can resist doing a bad Schwarzenegger impression? Head for the choppers!!
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MADELINE KAHN AND MEL BROOKS!
I thought Madeline Kahn was the funniest woman alive when I was a kid. I was a big Mel Brooks fan and she was a regular in his stable of comedians. My two favourite Mel Brooks comedies to this day are ‘Blazing Saddles’ and ‘Young Frankenstein’ which both came out in the 70’s. But ‘History of The World: Part 1’ was the first Brooks comedy I ever seen in the theatre. When I was a kid this movie made me laugh so hard I actually squirted coke out of my nose and had a nose bleed on and off for 4 days. This one definitely does not tickle me in the same way it used to though. But it was Kahn who’s career I followed. I literally seen everything she was in and was even a big fan of her short lived television show ‘Oh, Madeline.’ She was such an interesting looking woman, quite beautiful and unique and she had great comedic timing not to mention she was just so damn likable!
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ARCADES!
How many days did I skip school to go hang out at the Arcade? I use to frequent a place called ‘Joe’s’ which was a record store upstairs and an arcade downstairs. I can’t recall the name of the mall it was in, but I spent many hours watching MTV music videos on their big screen TV and trying to get my name on the MS. PAC-MAN leader board, which I did, for 3 days my initials proudly sat in the 3rd spot of the rankings.
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PINK FLOYD’S MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON TOUR & THE CANADIAN NATIONAL EXHIBITION!
I loved seeing shows at the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition). I love outdoor music venues, junk food and rides; it was basically nirvana for me. I haven’t a clue how many shows I seen there during the 1980’s but one of the most memorable without a doubt was Pink Floyd’s Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. I don’t think there were too many people there that weren’t stoned or drunk, myself among them. They sounded awesome live, even better than they did on vinyl. The band themselves barely moved for the whole show but the incredible sound and the huge screens showing Floydian images took me to another place. A place I don’t get to go nearly often enough!! And of course there is the giant pig, which I understand from ‘The Simpsons’ Peter Frampton later bought at a garage sale.
GOREGIRL'S DUNGEON 