 |
|
|
Entertainment & Area Guide  |
|||||||||||||||||
|
Top Areas
St. Petersburg Times Online Tampabay.com Calendar Classifieds Movie Times Restaurant Guide Weather
Interactive
Calendar
Other features  Around Town Quick glance Attractions Beaches Golf Government Education Libraries Maps Museums Parks Spectator Sports Ybor Times
|
Diary of a Decade
By GINA VIVINETTO, Times Pop Music Critic © St. Petersburg Times, published August 4, 2000
Thriller. Like A Virgin. Born in the USA. Nostalgia is all the rage for the Me decade that began as video killed the radio star and ended with the fall of communism. New Wave nights at bars and dance clubs are more popular than ever. Retro '80 programs have got radio listeners' ears. Who can resist '80s flashback flicks like Grosse Pointe Blank and The Wedding Singer?
Remember Run D.M.C. and neon clothing? Wham! Choose Life T-shirts? Trivial Pursuit? Big fat shoelaces on Adidas sneakers? Cheers and Family Ties? Dig up your diaries, your scrapbooks, your embarrassing old yearbooks. If there's one thing we'll always have -- yikes! -- it's the past. Here, I'll get us started with the recollections of one Gen X'er who grew up in St. Petersburg, went to Gibbs High and realizes now that she will forever be a child of the '80s. Word. 1980: Dear Diary, everyone's supposed to be all excited about the start of a new decade, but what do I care? Being 9 stinks!
J.R. Ewing, too. "Who shot J.R.?" Who cares? My brother just got a Walkman. It's rad! Except he never lets me use it. He has a cassette of Rapper's Delight. It's so funny. It's these three guys talking about food and stuff and they make everything rhyme. My parents finally took the yellow ribbon off the tree in the front yard because they let those hostages out of Iran. Another thing, America isn't going to the Olympics this year because they're in Russia. Like I care! 1981: Dear Diary, I love Pac Man. My friends and I play at Aladdin's Castle in Tyrone Square. Some crazy man shot President Reagan, but he didn't die or anything. Did you know President Reagan used to be an actor? Isn't that majorly cool?
My mom watched the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana on TV. It was on all day! Luke amd Laura got married, too, but I bet you anything it won't last. His hair is weird. My parents got cable TV. That's where they show movies all day long. But better than that is MTV -- finally a reason to live!
Some nut put a bunch of poison in Tylenol and now all these people are dying. I love Boy George and Culture Club. That song Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? is so sad. I saw Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Everybody talks like Spicoli the surfer guy. Totally tubular!
All the girls at school wear headbands like Olivia Newton-John in Physical, but don't you think that's kind of generic? 1983: Dear Diary, who would want a Cabbage Patch kid? They're totally bogus with their squishy faces. Yuck! I saw Flashdance and it was super cool, all about this lady welder who dances and wears ripped-up sweat shirts that dip off her shoulder. This year Miss America is black, which is a big deal because that has never happened before. On the Motown awards Michael Jackson did this weird dance where it looked like he was walking on the moon. Everybody at school copies it now, except me. Everyone is into breakdancing, but I like New Wave music. It's so awesome! The Go Go's and Adam Ant. My friends and I all wear miniskirts and leg warmers. But in Florida, the leg warmers get kind of hot.
Everybody says President Reagan is gonna be president again. Gag me. All the cutest rock stars are from England. My very favorite band is Duran Duran. Theirs was the first concert I saw without my parents and I cried. Someday I'm gonna marry Nick Rhodes. The British singers have a video on MTV called Do They Know It's Christmas? for all those starving people in Africa. I saw Purple Rain. All the purple! What's Prince's deal? Oh, I saw another concert: Missing Persons. The lead singer has pink hair and wears hubcaps for a bra. J. and I sprayed our hair fuchsia with colored mousse. It looked gnarly! T., that kid in my English class, definitely likes me. But I think he wore parachute pants last year. Like, make me barf! He's got a cool pair of checkerboard Vans, though, so maybe he's not a dweeb.
I saw Madonna in concert. She's so cool. She wore a wedding dress when she sang Like a Virgin. My parents think she's slutty, but I love her! My friends and I all wore bows in our hair and tons of slinky black bracelets. J. wore a mesh top and cut up her black hose. (She did look slutty.) Some stupid band called the Beastie Boys opened up. They rapped and played guitars. They stank. They'll never go anywhere.
T. asked me to go with him, but now he wears goofy pastel sport coats and no socks with his deck shoes. I was like, "No way, Crockett!" M. got Nintendo for Christmas. (Jealous!) 1986: Dear Diary, in my homeroom class we watched the space shuttle Challenger explode on TV. Can you believe it? Everybody cried all day long. High school is okay. There are a lot of other New Wave kids at Gibbs High, I guess, because of that art program.
Here's something cool: S. got sent home from St. Pete Catholic for her rattail! She dyed it red, white and blue. We told her dad it was patriotic, but he's totally furious. 1987: Dear Diary, Gary Hart, that guy running for president, is busted. They caught him messing around with some model. The stock market crashed and everybody's freaking out. I dyed my hair burgundy. How can anyone take New Kids on the Block seriously? B., this guy in my English class, taught me that a "geek" is actually someone who bites off chicken heads. B.'s totally punk rock. He wears a leather jacket, which I tell him is barbaric, but secretly I think it looks cool. He makes fun of me for liking the Smiths. I borrowed his Ramones shirt. I'm not giving it back.
A. in my art class lent me a Public Enemy tape. Thank God; if I hear that Don't Worry, Be Happy song one more time I'm gonna flip out. On the bright side, they've come up with some drug called Prozac that's supposed to make you not depressed. I'm all: Sign me up! I got my nose pierced. It looks stupid. 1989: Dear Diary, what a weird decade. And look how it's ending. Can you say tumultuous? The Exxon Valdez spilled oil all over Alaska. The Berlin Wall is down. They say communism is dead. The Chinese army killed hundreds of protesters in Tiananmen Square. Sigh.
I skipped prom to see REM. I can't believe I'm supposed to go to college next year. Being 18 stinks. Mom says someday I'll look back and realize these were the best days of my life. As if!
© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.
|
||||||||||||||||
My mom bought me a Member's Only jacket so I fit in at school. I hate it. I hate these stupid Izod shirts, too.
1982: Dear Diary, everybody is freaking out over Thriller, but I think Michael Jackson is so grody, as in to the max! I saw E.T. and cried, but everybody at school ruins it by saying "Phone home" all the time.
1984: Dear Diary, The Cosby Show is so funny! Denise is so much like me, totally weird!
1985: Dear Diary, a bunch of American rock stars did another song for the starving Africans called We Are the World, but it wasn't as good as the British rock stars 'cause British music is so much better! We all watched the big Live Aid concert on TV.
