Notes on the Mid-80s Bob Barker Era of "The Price Is Right"

We've known about the 24-hour "The Price Is Right Bob Barker Era" channel for a while now, but a recent household change to the DirecTV Stream provider (our roof dish is now just a useless artifact of technologies past) has made it much easier for us to tune in.  It's pretty much what the name implies: an unending string of "The Price Is Right" reruns from the Bob Barker years.  The channel has been playing as background noise around Cheese Fry Headquarters for about three weeks now.  We've slowly progressed from 1982 to 1985, which is right in the heart of the Cheese Fry's formative years where watching Bob Barker meant either: A) you're home sick from school or B) it's summer vacation.  Childhood nostalgia overload, audio-visual comfort food.

Here are a few thoughts about our ongoing experience with "The Price Is Right Bob Barker Era" channel.

* Obviously, there's a very appealing time travel effect at work in watching these episodes.  The crazy fashion; the poofy, teased haircuts; the charmingly low-tech prizes (lots of grandfather clocks and groovy stereo systems) are all from what sometimes seem like a different universe.
* It's always tricky to evaluate legacy media from a contemporary perspective.  Bob has that polished, tanned, Johnny Carson-style charm. He's got a quick wit and a pretty dry sense of humor.  But, as a product of that era (he was born in 1923 and started hosting the show at age 49), he's also... a little sexist and condescending to the women contestants.  Just when we think we're imagining it and being overly sensitive, Bob says something overt and we'll do a "did he just say that?" double-take.  Lots of housewife jokes, lots of "husbands are the boss" jokes.  Sometimes he leers, sometimes he flirts.  This came as a shock to us, spoiling our 1980s innocence.  It also probably runs counter to America's more recent fond memories of Bob as the spry, white-haired elder statesman during the last few years of his run.
* All these youthful contestants jumping and running around in their 20s and 30s?  They're all now senior citizens. 
* Kind of a bummer to consider that the show no longer tapes in the CBS studio in Hollywood.
* Some things never change: the show today still uses a lot of those goofy synth music cues.  And a lot of the games are not only still being played, but look the same.  Like, zero facelifts or redesigns of any kind.
* In elementary school, our crush was redhead "Barker Beauty" Holly Hallstrom.  But now, looking back, there's no question that it's blonde Dian Parkinson who was truly deserving of any and all schoolkid crushes.
* The "Ten Chances" game has always seemed really to hard to play.
* This stretch of episodes includes the rather unexpected death of genius announcer Johnny Olson in late 1985.
* There are almost no cars given away that cost more than four figures.  
* A lot of these prizes remind us of our fashionable aunt and uncle who lived in a swanky part of Houston.  The brass beds, the chrome and steel dinette sets (is "dinette set" even a term any more?), the polished cherry wooden secretaries (remember those?), the mustard yellow garbage disposals, the big color cabinet TVs.  These are the 1980s trappings of the upper middle class.
* The show gave away a surprising amount of mattresses and carpet.  Were those also considered luxurious perks?  Maybe back then there wasn't a mattress store on every corner.
* Apparently, the presence of air conditioning and power locks are distinctive enough to be merit mention in Johnny's "a new car!" script.
* So there's this big green train that the models use pretty regularly to present the items for bid for the folks in contestant's row, slowly rolling out from the wings and onto center stage.  (Trivia: that game the four contestant prospects play has a name: "One Bid.")  There's a green engine that pulls a green platform.  There's fake steam.  It's all steeped in mid-80s cheese.  But the best part is the "waaAAH-waaaahhh!" wolf whistle sound effect.
* We can verify here that Bob does indeed sometimes wear the same suit more than once.  This is a detail that would only become apparent to a screwball like us watching multiple episodes.
* These shows are really, really old, but we still recognize almost all of the pricing game grocery store item brands.  The breath mints, cleaning products, soups, spaghetti sauces, snacks, cold medicines.  These things you can still find on the shelves at your local grocery store.
* In those days, for whatever reason, the contestants definitely skewed to white women.  Also, we're not hardcore obsessive Drew Carey-era fans, so we are speaking with very little authority, but it certainly seems like the Barker shows welcomed a lot of military folks in uniform.
* We're all the way up to 1985 and still we're not seeing any gag T-shirts with funny "pick me!" text and pictures.  When did that become a thing?

Another treat on this 24-hour "The Price Is Right Bob Barker Era" channel is that sometimes they'll show really old episodes from the early 70s when it first went on the air.  Bob looks and sounds really young; the contestants all tend to be sheltered, slightly dim housewives; the color scheme are these horrible yellows, oranges, and browns; and - get this - there is no Big Wheel.  Three people play and the top two stick around for the Showcase.  Heathens.

Come on down to the the rabbit hole!

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Six thoughts on "Rock of Ages"

We don't typically review movies we see on cable, but this one deserves some sort of response.  

1. We loved the candy-colored 1980s Sunset Strip vibe, especially a loving recreation of Tower Records circa 1987 (remember those walls of cassette tapes?).  But having spent many years commuting on Sunset Blvd, something felt off here.  The landmarks looked right, but the geography was all wrong.  Among other things, it looked like the movie was suggesting Sunset ran north and south instead of the proper east and west.  And stores separated by blocks looked here like they were sitting side by side.  So we did some research and found out... the filmmakers "recreated" Sunset Blvd... on a rundown intersection in Miami.  Fail.
2. This is a movie that needed to be 95 minutes, tops.  You get in, you get out.  No one gets hurt.  No way does this fluff deserve 2 hours and 10 minutes of your life. 
3. Alec Baldwin is horribly miscast.  Wow.
4. We're not sure why the whole Catherine Zeta-Jones subplot even existed.  You cut it out, what do you miss?  Maybe one nice gag at the end.
5. Why not play it more straight and dramatic?  The filmmakers layer on this goofy, half-winking campiness to everything (we think that's one reason why Paul Giamatti is so awful), probably cultivated by director Adam Shankman.  But it doesn't work.  It feels like no one had faith in the story and so decided to treat it like a lark.
6. The reason to see it is for the 1980s hair band songs, especially some clever "Glee"-style mashups.  We grew up with most of these songs, so it a lot of it was fun.  But while we might give a pass to including Quarterflash's bluesy "Harden My Heart," we have to draw the line at Starship's "We Built This City," a song that we think Blender magazine once called the worst song ever written.  It's a song about not selling out.  The irony runs thick.

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Top ten 1980s all-slow-dance prom DJ playlist

Richard Marx, "Hold on to the Night"
The Bangles, "Eternal Flame"
Richard Marx, "Endless Summer Nights"
Phil Collins, "Groovy Kind of Love"
INXS, "Never Tear Us Apart"
Vanessa Williams, "Dreamin"
Peter Cetera and Amy Grant, "The Next Time I Fall"
Breathe, "How Can I Fall"
Bon Jovi, "Never Say Goodbye"
Deion Estes, "Heaven Help Me"

We're not proud of it, but it is what it was.

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Cassette tape rewind: freshman summer

The summer of 1986 was a time of transition for the Cheese Fry, leaving the brutally awkward and dangerous halls of an inner city middle school, complete with a daily 20-minute round-trip ride on a yellow school bus and the regular roars of airplanes taking off and landing a hundred feet over the roof, and preparing to enter the brutally awkward and dangerous (for different reasons) halls of a suburban high school.  MTV was king, riding our bike was starting to get uncool, and a fun Friday night was touch football under the streetlights after dark.

Here's the top ten songs this week 26 years ago.

1. Robert Palmer, "Addicted to Love" - Played to death at the time, both on the radio and in double-super-heavy rotation on MTV, this song has become shorthand for mid-80s pop.  The lyrics can be repetitive, but the grinding guitars and whap-whap-whap of the drums make it imminently enjoyable.  And for a 14-year-old, that video of sleek, barely-dressed women wearing bright red wet lipstick was fascinating on a number of levels.

2. Pet Shop Boys, "West End Girls" - We respect the artistry of this song and the lush Yamaha-keyboard mood, but it's rather dour.  And full of too many esoteric lyrics that likely only make sense if you know England.  It hasn't aged very well.

3. Prince and the Revolution, "Kiss" - Hated it then, hate it now.  Our pathetic school bus driver (she once decided not to drive her bus in the ice, but didn't tell anyone that was her plan so all of us kids were stranded in the freezing cold on our bus stop corners) always broadcast from her crap plastic Radio Shack transistor radio some local adult-contemporary station and, we kid you not, they played "Kiss" every single damn morning.

4. Van Halen, "Why Can't This Be Love" - 1984 was one of the first three cassette tapes we ever bought (other two: Huey Lewis and the News, Sports and The Police, Synchronicity - the more you know...).  We wore that thing out, playing it over and over.  While at the time we loved "Jump" now it's very clear to us the best song is "Panama."  So the departure of singer David Lee Roth was a worrisome development in the Cheese Fry's childhood home.  This single was the first one off the new Van Halen album 5150 featuring replacement singer Sammy Hagar.  It sounds like a Van Halen song, but then again it also sounds completely different.  Clearly, they had us with the opening weeee-eeee-ahhh bent guitar chord.
5. The Rolling Stones, "Harlem Shuffle" - We suspect this is rather humiliating for them, don't you think? "Sympathy for the Devil," it ain't.

6. Janet Jackson, "What Have You Done for Me Lately" - Remember when Janet - Ms. Jackson if you're nasty - was a legitimate music force cranking out these kinds of sexy, angry dance songs (unless they were slower, softer, more introspective ballads like "Let's Wait Awhile")?  This was one of several hits from her breakout album - remember when we called them albums? - Control.  It is definitely a time-travel song.  Hear it and you're instantly transported to the rundown 1981 hatchback you rode in during a secret lunch run, crowded full of fellow freshman.

7. Whitney Houston, "Greatest Love of All" - We're not afraid to admit that there are a great many Whitney Houston songs out there that we really like.  This is not one of them.  A textbook example of the kind of sappy, melodramatic cheese danish that was so very popular back before things like SoundScan started keeping track of what people actually liked and bought, not what record stores and music labels pushed on the public.  Gag us.

8. Outfield, "Your Love" - All together now: "Josie's on a vacation far away..."  One of the best pop songs ever recorded.  Seriously.  The end.

9. Phil Collins, "Take Me Home" - Another of the many hit singles from the Phil Collins juggernaut album No Jacket Required (we have a guilty-pleasure soft spot for the brassy "Sussudio").  We always liked the jingle-jangle synthesized background and the chorus has a nice soar to it.  But like so many Collins songs, it overstays its welcome by several minutes before that slow, slow fade-out.

10. The Bangles, "Manic Monday" - It's hard to fathom any 1980s teenage boy in American not having a crush on at least one of the Bangles.  Flirty singer Susanna Hoffs was the popular one, sure but we liked to go against the grain so our favorite was guitarist Vicki Peterson.  This is by far their biggest hit, imminently sing-a-long-able, and very much a child of the 80s, famously written by Prince (see #3 above).  It's sunny and peppy and wry, but we prefer the darker "Hazy Shade of Winter."

P.S. Will our kids think of the Bangles or Robert Palmer the same dusty, distant way we think of the Beatles and Elvis from our parents' generation?  Egad.

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Don't Worry, Do Brackets

The Cheese Fry isn't a big NCAA fan. Considering the time we waste on NFL and NBA games, it's probably a good thing we're immune to March Madness. But we can always appreciate the absurdity of a good pop-culture alternative bracket, like one that something called Mix107.7 created. It pits 1980s one-hit wonders against one another.

Here's how our brackets worked out.

The Sweet 16
"Catch Me I'm Falling" (Pretty Poison - you surely know it's from the Jon Cryer movie Hiding Out)
"Maniac" (Michael Sembello - whatever happened to him? who was he?)
"Cars" (Gary Numan)
"Relax" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood - which we actually quite hate)
"Puttin' on the Ritz" (Taco)
"Toy Soldiers" (Martika - sublime pop classic)
"99 Luft Balloons" (Nena)
"I Melt with You" (Modern English)
"Der Kommissar" (After the Fire - chh-chh ch-ch-chh ch-ch-chh)
"Heart and Soul" (T'Pau)
"In a Big Country" (Big Country - it's the name of our band and our hit song)
"Break My Stride" (Matthew Wilder - a roller rink standard at North Dallas' Starlight rink circa 1982)
"Funkytown" (Lipps, Inc. - another roller rink standard)
"Under the Milky Way" (The Church)
"Somebody's Watching Me" (Rockwell)
"Buffalo Stance" (Neneh Cherry)

The only number 1 seed to advance the the field of 16? "I Melt with You" The other three #1s fall early in shocking upsets - "867-5309," "Come On Eileen," and "Tainted Love."

Likewise, "Relax" is the only number 2 seed, advancing where other, seemingly stronger 2s ("Mickey," "I Want Candy," and "Too Shy") cannot.

The threes fare a little better - "Cars" and "In a Big Country" make it to the Sweet 16 while the insufferable "Whip It" and "She Blinded Me with Science" rightly fall.

So it's a bracket full of late-80s FM radio Cinderellas that get to the championship rounds.

The Final Four
"Toy Soldiers" (11) beats "Catch Me I'm Falling" (8)
"Buffalo Stance" (9) beats "Heart and Soul" (12)

And in the championship match:
"Buffalo Stance" (9) beats "Toy Soldiers" (11)

Vindication: "Buffalo Stance" is indeed one of our most favorite songs from the 1980s, though it came out late 1989 and almost counts as a 90s song.

That's one way to waste 20 minutes.

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"One adult, one child for Airplane 2."

We recently realized that all of the movie theaters of our youth, the ones attended on a regular basis by us and our father, are all long gone, torn down or reconfigured into some other kind of building. Northpark I and II, demolished. United Artists' Walnut Hill 6, now a pool hall. The General Cinema's Valley View, now a radio recording studio. Prestonwood 5, demolished. Northtown 6, reconfigured into something else.

Not that any of these were untouchable jewels. Back then, there was no such thing as stadium seating so the most you could hope for was a gentle sloping hill. And forget about aisles on the sides - most of those old theaters ran the aisle right down the middle, using up valuable audience real estate. THX sound systems were cutting-edge technology, the sort of thing you can now buy for your living room. As for fancy visuals, the big tentpole releases might come out in 70mm "at select theaters," as they say. Concessions were the big three: candy, popcorn, soda.

Thanks to the strange website Cinema Treasures, we stumbled upon the below movie ad newspaper clippings. Fascinating stuff if you're nostalgic 1980s nerds like us.

First, here's the Dallas AMC theaters. Judging by the movies, this is the late December 1982. Back then, movies played for a long, long time. Annie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and E.T. were all summer 1982 releases. We can't imagine a scenario today where a summer movie was still playing at Christmas time. Note the Peter Pan re-release. The home video era was only then starting to dawn - Disney's practice was to re-release its catalog of films every few years to take advantage of the new generation of kids.

The AMC Northtown 6 - no more than 10 minutes away from our ancestral home - plays a special role in Cheese Fry history. That's where we first saw Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. The theaters were small and boxy, stuck in a back corner of a rather lame 1970s mall anchored by a Woolworth's of all things and boasting those little pay booths were you could watch an old Woody Woodpecker cartoon for 25 cents. It's also the last theater that we can remember seeing the old-style skinny horizontal coming attraction movie posters.

Click on the image for a closer look.

And now here's a similar clipping for General Cinema theaters. This also looks to be late December 1982, though note the summer holdover An Officer and a Gentleman. Note also the lack of a PG-13 rating, which was still two years away.

The Valley View theaters were unusual in that they were downstairs. You'd buy your popcorn on the mall level, then walk down some (probably shag-carpeted) stairs to get to the auditoriums below. This was the mall the Cheese Fry grew up with, anchored by Sanger-Harris and Sears. It's in foreclosure now. You can't go home again, people.

Click on the image for a closer look.

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"Surf dudes with attitude... kinda groovy..."

We're way behind in posting odds and ends we consider blog-worthy. This clip is a prime example. It's several months old, but still oh-so-sweet.



"Saved by the Bell" may have been the bigger hit, but true TNBC connoisseurs like us know that its Saturday morning companion "California Dreams" was the far better show. (Editor's note: the truly best show that ever graced TNBC? The late great "Running the Halls.") Both "Saved" and "Dreams" were equally implausible, white-bread corny, and punctuated by those mindless cheers and whoops from the teeny-bopper studio audience. And both clearly offered a ridiculously tame, G-rated take on the realities of high school, surely formed by soulless focus groups and 40-year-old executive millionaires. But there was something edgy about "California Dreams." Maybe it was the ethnically-diverse cast. Maybe it was the somewhat realistic depiction of a struggling garage band. Maybe it was the supercute Heidi Lenhart. Maybe it was just the fact that the show didn't stoop so low as to offer a cartoon character as grating and insulting as Screech. Whatever the reason, lounging around on a Saturday morning in the haclyon early 90s, sometimes nursing a hangover, sometimes just trying to plan out the weekend... this was television manna.

Thank you, Jimmy Fallon. You get us.

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Attack of the 80s video games!

You've probably already seen this. It's the sort of clever video that one simply must forward to as many people as possible. If you haven't seen it, however, you're in for a treat: imagine the crudely-rendered characters of Atari 2600s and Nintendo NESs invading New York City. Funny and amusing... but also scary.


PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Arts and animation videos.

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Cassette tape rewind: College graduation

April 1994 was a good time for the Cheese Fry as its four-year college journey slowly wound down. Back then, the most pressing decision to be made was whether or not to skip a lame Film Criticism class (Tuesdays and Thursdays).

Here's the top ten songs from the week of April 16, 1994.

1. R. Kelly "Bump N Grind" - Really? This was a number one song? Are you as surprised as us?

2. Ace of Base "The Sign" - A fairly annoying song in its day, in constant rotation on the radio, but the years have been quite kind. Nostalgia has given it a glossy sheen. We turn it up when it comes on now.

3. Mariah Carey "Without You" - Mariah Carey's songs all sound the same, don't they?

4. Crash Test Dummies "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" - This is the one A+ keeper on this list, a deeply weird, deeply catchy song involving families who have seizures at church and kids who go directly home right after school. A karaoke staple for us. And a textbook definition of "one-hit wonder."

5. Celine Dion "Power of Love" - Whatever.

6. All-4-One "So Much in Love" - No idea.

7. Salt N Pepa "Whatta Man" - This one may not have aged well, but it's one of those hooky rap-meets-R&B songs before such a thing became so ubiquitous. (Plus Fox Sports used it to showcase Dallas Cowboy running back Emmitt Smith in a huge game against the Giants.) The quintessential Salt N Pepa song, of course, remains "Push It."

8. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" - We can take it or leave it. It's good, sure, but we won't be sad if we never heard it again.

9. Richard Marx "Now and Forever" - Marx was huge back in the Cheese Fry's high school days, so this must be the song that Marx figured would signal some kind of 1990s comeback. No idea what it sounds like.

10. Bruce Springsteen "Streets of Philadelphia" - Lots of people find Springsteen to be a modern-day poet, a genius of music and lyrics. The Cheese Fry is not one of those people.

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Five best movie summers of the 1980s

The Cheese Fry has fond memories of certain movie summers from his youth, most of them spent sitting in the uncomfortable molded plastic chairs at the Northtown Mall or Walnut Hill 6 theaters. (Both of which are long gone now, of course.) And this was all pre-stadium seating.

1. 1984 – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (released May 23), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (June 1), Gremlins (June 8), Ghostbusters (June 8), The Karate Kid (June 22)

2. 1983 – Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (May 20), Return of the Jedi (May 25), WarGames (June 3), Octopussy (June 10), Superman 3 (June 17), Twilight Zone – The Movie (June 24), Mr. Mom (July 22)

3. 1981 – Raiders of the Lost Ark (June 12), Clash of the Titans (June 12), Superman II (June 19), For Your Eyes Only (June 26)

4. 1982 – Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (June 6), E.T. (June 11), Firefox (June 18)

5. 1985 – A View to a Kill (May 24), The Goonies (June 7), Pale Rider (June 28), Back to the Future (July 3), Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (July 12)

Remember the General Cinema "feature presentation" open? Dig the groovy high-hat.

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"The world's biggest toy store"

Us Generation Xers all grew up with this TV spot. Images of Star Wars action figures dancing in our heads. Happy holidays!

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"Fists with your toes..."

Last week was the 20th anniversary of the theatrical release of Die Hard. The Cheese Fry remembers well his first encounter with that action classic: an employees-only, after-hours screening at the now-defunct United Artists Walnut Hill 6 movie theater. Suffice it to say, none of us had ever seen anything like it. So many movies over the years have ripped off, er, paid homage to Die Hard, it's easy to forget how revolutionary the film was back in 1988.

To celebrate the anniversary, Martians Attacking Indianapolis offers an exhaustive and insightful analysis of Die Hard.

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"We're back and we're bad, you're black and I'm mad!"

Top six lines from "Lethal Weapon 2"
6. "My dear officer, you could not even give me a parking ticket." - Crooked South African diplomat Arjen Rudd making it clear to Detectives Riggs and Murtaugh the ironclad extent of his diplomatic immunity. Made all the more scary in that exotic South African accent.
5. "After I shoot you through the door you can examine the bullet, now open up." - Riggs talking through the door to accountant-turned-government-witness Leo Getz (who just asked "Who do I know it's the police?"), which is the best role of Joe Pesci's strange career.
4. "Nailed 'em both." - Murtaugh's obligatory one-liner after he dispatches an assassin with an industrial nail-gun. You see, kids, back in the 1980s all movie heroes had to say pithy one-liners after killing their attackers.
3. "Have your brains ever seen the light of day?" - A chilling question from killer Pieter Vorstedt as he's screwing a silencer into the barrel of his gun.
2. "I'm not a cop tonight, Rog. This is personal." - It's a cliche now, of course, but it wasn't perhaps quite so stale a sentiment back in 1989. And few people can do steely, martryed determination like Mel "William Wallace" Gibson, so when he says this line in act three, we know he's about to get medieval.
1. "It's just been revoked." - The money line, the one that made audiences cheer. It's delivered by raspy-voiced Danny Glover moments after he puts a bullet through the forehead of Arjen Rudd. Rudd, you'll recall, just had the gall to shoot up A-list star Mel Gibson and then cry out "Diplomatic immunity!" to Murtaugh in the hopes of getting away with it.

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TV Guide back issue: 5th Grade

What were you watching when you were 10 years old and muddling through the fifth grade?

Sundays
6:00pm Central "Ripley's Believe It or Not" (ABC) - This is how Jack Palance and his raspy, emphysemic voice became a household name to Generation X.
7:00pm "CHiPs" (NBC) - Randi Oakes was a big deal in 1982, but if you look at these episodes today, she's pretty weird looking.
8:00pm "The Jeffersons" and "One Day at a Time" (CBS) - "Look, Mrs. Romano--" "Mizz Romano..."

Mondays
7:00pm "That's Incredible!" (ABC) - If you're ten years old, this is the coolest show ever. Remember when that one dude folded himself inside that little bitty plastic cube? Why'd he do that? What was the point of that exactly? Other than to be on the show?
8:00pm "M*A*S*H" (CBS) - Not always kid-friendly, but everyone in America was watching it so you watched it. Honestly, the Cheese Fry thinks this may be one of the most overrated shows in TV history. The episodes are all well-made, but is it really all that? The early "comedy" episodes aren't really funny and the later "drama" episodes are very self-important and pretentious.
8:30pm "Newhart" (CBS) - Still not as good as "The Bob Newhart Show." Mary Frann is no Suzanne Pleshette.
9:00pm "Cagney and Lacey" (CBS) - You watched it because your grandmother watched it. And because you thought Sharon Gless was kind of hot. In an early 1980s, feathered-hair sort of way.

Tuesdays
8:00pm "Happy Days" (ABC) - You ever see this show nowadays? It's kind of lame.
8:30pm "Laverne & Shirley" (ABC) - Didn't all fifth graders harbor a secret crush on Cindy Williams? We didn't say we were proud of it.

Wednesdays
8:00pm "Tales of the Gold Monkey" (ABC) - For those of us who obsessed over Raiders of the Lost Ark, a TV show ripoff like this was extremely bad-ass. The dog had an eyepatch!

Thursdays
7:00pm "Magnum P.I." (CBS) - The talky drama could be pretty boring for a fifth grader, but the action and the humor was fun. Other points of 10-year-old interest: the cool red Ferrari and TC's helicopter.

Fridays
7:00pm "Dukes of Hazzard" (CBS) - An instant classic, of course. Shepherd calling Lost Sheep, where can we get some of those exploding-tip arrows?
8:00pm "Dallas" (CBS) - If you lived in Dallas, this was required viewing for all citizens.
9:00pm "Falcon Crest" (CBS) - That was one cool theme song.

Saturdays
7:00pm "T.J. Hooker" (CBS) - Dumb action appeals to fifth graders. So does Captain Kirk with a gun.
8:00pm "Love Boat" (ABC) - You watched it because your grandmother watched it.
9:00pm "Fantasy Island" (ABC) - Ditto. "Who's dat, boss?"

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Cassette tape rewind: Sophomore year (part 2)

Back to the fall of 1987 and the Cheese Fry's 10th grade hell of senior pranks (please don't ask about the "I ride the bus" sign) and secret crushes. Billboard Issue date: October 17, 1987.

1. Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam "Lost in Emotion" - This actually made to #1? Go figure. Whatever happened to Lisa Lisa? And why the two names? She was probably a little too similar to Paula Abdul for her own good back in the day. Same sort of baby-girl voice and exotic ethnic look. A catchy song without question with a dreamy steel drum/marimba vibe.

2. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince "U Got the Look" - A truly great song, even with the rather dated lyrics "Your body's jammin'/Your body's heck-a-slammin'." When Prince is on his game, the guy is a genius.

3. Europe "Carrie" - Ouch. Among the worst of the hair-band 1980s power ballads. That's one musical trend that's particularly embarrassing for Generation X. But the Cheese Fry never liked this song. Seriously.

4. Michael Jackson "Bad" - I think we can all agree that Jackson peaked with Thriller. "Your butt is mine"? Eww.

5. Madonna "Causing a Commotion" - Catchy dance pop song, neither here nor there.

6. Whitesnake "Here I Go Again" - Among the best of the hair-band 1980s power ballads. I've got my cigarette lighter up.

7. Heart "Who Will You Run To" - The Cheese Fry definitely had a thing for guitarist/singer Nancy Wilson. She's the skinny blonde sister, not the pudgy brunette sister. Good stuff.

8. Levert "Casanova" - Hmm, this sounds familiar, yes. But can't remember the melody. Or the lyrics. Or what Levert looks like.

9. John Mellencamp "Paper in Fire" - Solid Mellencampian rural twangy rock. It aged nicely. The Cheese Fry wasn't a fan of the song when it was on the radio, but now it's definitely in the oldie-but-goodie category.

10. Bananarama "I Heard a Rumor" - Among the best dance pop songs of the 1980s. It's essentially perfect. A sonic masterpiece of fluff.

11. Tiffany "I Think We're Alone Now" - Cough-guilty pleasure-cough.

12. Expose "Let Me Be the One" - A fun song, but if Expose's songs were never played again, you'd probably never notice.

13. Fleetwood Mac "Little Lies" - Part of that little mid-80s hiccup of Fleetwood Mac renaissance. The darkly odd "Big Love" is the better song.

14. Billy Idol "Mony Mony" - One of those utterly annoying songs that top 40 radio played the all-hell-crap out of. Couldn't stand this stupid-ass song in 1987, can't stand it now. Even worse: the Thomas Jefferson H.S. drill team performed this as one of their numbers so the Cheese Fry had to actually play this song in marching band. Oh the humanity.

15. Whitney Houston "Didn't We Almost Have It All" - Yawn.

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Cassette tape rewind: Sophomore year

When The Cheese Fry was but a tater tot entering the 10th grade in the fall of 1987 and considering such topics as Algebra II and Economics, the following songs were on the Billboard Hot 100. The soundtrack of Generation X, whether on MTV or your local Kiss-FM radio station. Issue date: August 29, 1987.

1. Los Lobos "La Bamba" - Here's a song no one's likely clamoring to hear again. They played it a whole lot on the radio. But it sure came in handy in Spanish class when you had to recite a Spanish poem from memory. Mr. Hidalgo let us use this song.

2. Madonna "Who's That Girl" - Forgettable song from a forgettable movie.

3. Richard Marx "Don't Mean Nothing" - There's undeniably a guilty pleasure aspect to the repertoire of Mr. Marx's cheesy college-creative-writing-class lyrics, "tender" sensibility, and perfectly arranged power chords. This was his first hit; his prom power ballads ("Hold Onto the Night" and "Right Here Waiting") hadn't yet invaded our culture. "Don't Mean Nothing" is his most interesting song, cynically exploring the many ways that Hollywood screws artists over.

4. Suzanne Vega "Luka" - We can all agree that this is an Important Song, but do you really want to ever hear it again? The radio played the hell out of this. Luka lives on the second floor, upstairs from you, perhaps you've seen him before. Yadda yadda. We get it. And in hindsight, it's really pretentious.

5. Debbie Gibson "Only In My Dreams" - Textbook 1980s bubble-gum pop, all synthesizers and drum machines.

6. Michael Jackson "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" - Kind of hard to enjoy Michael Jackson music these days (exception: "Thriller" and "Billie Jean") knowing What We Know Now.

7. The Whispers "Rock Steady" - The first surprise of the list, one of those catchy R&B funk songs that you forgot how much you liked until someone reminds you of it. "And we begin to rock (dee-deeee) steady... steady rockin' all night long." Good stuff.

8. Whitney Houston "Didn't We Almost Have It All" - Typical Whitney ballad. Boring verses, great chorus. Whatever.

9. Starship "It's Not Over (Til It's Over)" - Seriously?

10. Dan Hill and Vonda Shepard "Can't We Try" - Very VH1.

11. U2 "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - The only song on this list considered today to be a classic. Those guys are the real deal, it seems. The perfect song representative of The Joshua Tree.

12. Dionne Warwink "Love Power" - We don't remember it, either.

13. George Michael "I Want Your Sex" - If you were going to put a 1980s mix tape in a time capsule, this song would have to be on it. So tame now, but it created a firestorm of controversy when it first hit the airwaves. And the jingle-jangle, woodblock backbeat still seems fresh.

14. Huey Lewis and the News "Doing It All For My Baby" - We all know Huey Lewis plateaued with the Sports LP. But an argument could be made for "Hip to Be Square." Maybe.

15. Whitesnake "Here I Go Again" - Hell yeah. Make the devil horns! One of the few on the list that could easily go back into heavy rotation on the radio.

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Top 6 Lucky Charms (c. 1989)

In order of most to least magically delicious.

1. Green clovers
2. Yellow moons
3. Pink hearts
4. Blue diamonds
5. Orange stars
6. Purple horeshoes

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"Don't you forget about me... Don't, don't, don't, don't..."

Here's a clever analysis of the John Hughes films, surely the most impactful 1980s pop culture force for Generation X that doesn't involve R2D2 or MTV.

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