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When MTV Still Played Music and Other Fairy Tales - The 80's #5

  Gather around for a twisted tale. More twisted than usual, anyway. A story from a mythical land where television channels were based on themes they actually stuck to. Whaaaaaaaaaat?? Truth. Like MTV - Music Television - played music videos. Of actual music. All day. On purpose. Gen Z'ers out there are going to believe this is folklore whispered by an aging writer staring nostalgically at flowered wallpaper and wondering where all the time went. Well... phooey. It's the truth. In the days of yore (the 80's), MTV wasn't just a content dump; it was cultural rewiring at its finest. We were hit with guitar solos, face melting riffs, synths, eyeliner, and a mystery glow from the ole boob tube that helped us cope with new and exciting feelings we didn't yet have words for. Video Jockeys (VJs) announced new videos like they were royal decrees. They told us what mattered.  We wore leather jackets indoors because it was cool and sunglasses at night because Corey Hart said s...
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New Coke: The Beverage That Asked "What if Failure Had Bubbles?" - The 80's #4

  The Day Marketing Took a Dump In 1985, Coca-Cola was wildly successful. The company made tons of money each quarter and their product was beloved by millions around the globe. And some executive looked at the numbers and said, "Yeah, but we oughta go full-on bat doo-doo crazy and hit the panic button anyway." Probably because he only had one yacht and drove a Ferrari instead of a Lambo. Thus, New Coke was born. Unleashed on an unsuspecting world by a boardroom full of suits who weren't happy just being bajillionaires. They'd clearly been drinking their own Coke Kool-Aid for far too long. Several things went cattywampus in this comedy of errors. First off, soda is soda, not a corporate chemistry experiment. However, somebody shared a power point... This led to charts and graphs with no solid informational proof being drawn up and nodded at because it had pretty colours. And finally, some dude named Gary said, "Consumers crave change," and nobody had the ...
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Walkmans and the Art of Ignoring Everyone - The 80's #3

  I don't know what kind of gadgets kids are grafting to their skulls or shoving into their earholes these days. Some kind of cybernetic mysticism is going on in the world around me, creating teenaged zombies attached to their devices. But we had the Walkman. It was 'compact' in an age when gargantuan Boom Boxes were a thing and caused semi-permanent spinal injuries. It weighed in at the low, low poundage of a mid-sized ham. It also provided an answer to a universal problem of the 80's: Other people existed, and sometimes they wanted to talk to you. Like, totally gross. The Walkman was liberation! Walk down the street and listen to your own soundtrack, pretending you were both star and way under-appreciated extra in your own  music video. Pop in a cassette, hit the play button, and suddenly for the next 90 minutes you were as emotionally unavailable as Mom during her afternoon soaps. Either that, or you burned through your third set of "value pack" AA-batteri...
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Why the Rubik's Cube Ruined My Self-Esteem - The 80's #2

  It had 54 smug square stickers. It looked like a Borg flagship named "Flamboyance."  But it wasn't a simple cube. Or a Rubik, whatever the heck that is. Well, it was. But it was more along the line of a little grinning plastic psychopath that broke the will of every kid who once thought they were good at puzzles. In case you missed it, imagine someone you love and trust handing you a block full of colourful, demonic, smaller blocks and saying, "Here, go twist this until it's perfect." So you do. For hours. Days. Entire geologic epochs. Until one day, the gift-giver finds you sitting in the middle of your bedroom floor, cross-legged, unwashed, surrounded by a circle of half-eaten Twinkies and muttering, "red to left, blue white up, yellow always right, right never green, orange beats itself, and where in the world is Carmen San Diego." It wasn't Twister in a twister... EF2 or otherwise. It was you, following the cult of Rubik, but spiralling ...
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Big Hair; Bigger Problems (The Great Follicular War of the 80's) - The 80's #1

 Some of life's constants: - Gravity - Taxes - Acupuncture at 50 miles per hour whilst downhill skiing amongst the majestic pines. That last one... probably just me. But a universal constant is the fact that every person who lived through the 80's as a teen was nearly suffocated at some point... by their own hair. And I'm not just speaking figuratively . No, quite literally in fact. Choked out by a chemically-enhanced, ozone-depleting cumulus cloud; a beauty-pageant thunderhead surrounding the dome. If you weren't there, you might believe I'm prone to exaggeration. How adorable. But let me paint you a picture: Imagine your head. Now double it. Now picture it after it's been plugged in to a small nuclear reactor fueled by volumizing conditioner and hairspray. That's your baseline. We called it Monday. On special occasions we added mousse. 80's Hair Philosophy Went Something Like This: If you didn't have to turn sideways to enter through an interior d...
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Zactly What You Deserve

  This alphabetical experiment IS about to close, and before we try to pretend that it was always under control, I think it's only fair - bordering on ethical - to try and explain what this series has delivered to you, the reader, and why. It's all your fault. So this post isn't what about what you read. And it's not the post you needed, but the post you deserve. Outcomes matter, people! You continued to show up voluntarily... those kind of actions carry a little friend I like to call consequence. And consequence has many faces. Sleeplessness Yes, sleeplessness. Not the dramatic, stare-at-the-ceiling blame it on dark roast after 9pm kind.  This is the brain reboot. Like your mind saying, " Dude! You can't reopen long-closed mental tabs like that and expect me not to freak out." There, in between REM cycles, your snoring mind ponders a weird metaphor you read that shouldn't have worked, but somehow did. How? I don't know, I just write this stuff. J...
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Yeti, Nessie, Sasquatch, and Dave

  There's a moment - the precision of which eludes me - when my brain stops trying to remember it belongs to a responsible adult human being and transforms into an organ belonging to an unsupervised improv troupe. It might be the coffee. It might be the fact it's usually 5am when I start these posts. It might be my duodenum trying to be a triodenum, who knows? Maybe that's just the hour when logic loosens its tie, reality checks its guns with the hostess, and my imagination starts inviting guests that would be unwelcome in anybody else's noodle. It's definitely the time when cryptids start making perfect sense and Dave becomes suspiciously involved in everything. I don't mean that Dave. I mean DAVE . The universal fall guy. The man who wasn't even real but was somehow responsible. The invisible dude we blame when admitting fault would generate paperwork. The need to apologize. Require personal growth. Clean other people's bathrooms. You know, that kind...
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Xena: Warrior Princess and Other Girls I Never Dated

  I didn't have many girlfriends growing up. In fact, I didn't have any... unless you count fictional characters, dreams, and possibly that mannequin at Sears I accidentally made eye contact with. But that's literally another post. It wasn't that I was unattractive. Let me tell you, I had Geek Chic up the metaphorical and literal wazoo. Quite possibly the lateral one, too, thanks to a couple of school bullies who I choose to believe were just jealous. Or on steroids and couldn't manage the aggression.  And it wasn't that I couldn't dance, recite poetry or do anything else that social situations required in getting to know someone. My problem was in the little things, like making eye contact and saying things without sounding like an orangutan trying to explain that he was constipated. Ughggh! It definitely wasn't a lack of interest. Like any young man entering the clumsy, always hungry and adorable only to grandma stage of life, I had a healthy curiosit...
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When Bald Became Beautiful and Nerds Ruled the World

  Yes, this is another "there was a time" post. There Was a Time... ...tragically recent if you ask anyone over 30, when being bald meant one of three things: You were old. You were stressed. Your hair follicles had called it quits early and filed for permanent retirement. With no benefits. At the same time, nerds were relegated to basements, classrooms, lockers, libraries, and the occasional comic book store that smelled vaguely of nacho cheese and the Old Spice aftershave they'd snuck off their father's dresser to impress "the ladies." They never met "a lady." Plural form? Fuhget-about-it. But somewhere along the way, the universe either got enlightened or a little bit confused. Because now, bald is beautiful. Nerds rule. And, let's face it, the world hasn't been the same since. The Bald and the Beautiful... Once, bald men were compared to cue balls, bowling pins, roll-on deodorants with arms, babies bottoms, polished glass, and prematur...
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Valley Girls and Frat Boys: Social Networking in the Eighties

  Because the Internet Was Still Using Training Wheels - a.k.a. "Books." Before - long before - social media and the sinister Mr. Al Gorithm decided for us which cat videos mattered the most, there was a simpler, louder and decidedly flammabl-er(?) time: the 1980's. A decade powered by synthesizers, questionable fashion choices, and hair so shellacked you could use it to cut through drywall in a pinch. It was also the decade that birthed a very specific form of social networking. It didn't require Wi-Fi, a vast army of followers, and didn't even know what public shame was. And it's chief architects? Valley Girls and Frat Boys.  Two tribes, dos vibes. But one unified goal: look totally rad and pretend you don't care who who's watching (even though you, like, totally did.) This wasn't 'networking' as we know it now. This was networking through proximity, copping a 'tude, and just  the right amount of aerosol to melt a medium-sized iceber...
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