HALLOWEEN QUICKIE 

In honor of Halloween (or Samhain if you're old school Gaelic), I thought I'd pay tribute to a few horror films that scared the pants off me over the years. 

FRIDAY THE 13th (any of the early installments, but particularly Part II)

I wasn't seeing these in the theater as a kid, because I was only like seven years old when the first one was released. But then around 1981 something awesome happened, and my parents and every other family in our neighborhood got premium cable (including HBO, natch), so of course we young'uns were forever trying to sneak glimpses of forbidden R-rated flicks like the raunchy teen comedy Porky's and any and all of the gory slasher flicks that movie studios were cranking out at the time. And the undisputed Mack Daddy of all '80s splatter fests was definitely Friday the 13th. 

My favorite memory of this film was in the summer of 1982 (yeah, I don't know why I have a freakish memory for dates, I just do) and I was over at Ridley and Rianne's house, the next door neighbor kids I was tight with. It was also the summer I was finally allowed to play outside after dinner, which was a HUGE deal to me at the time. Anyhoo, Ridley and Rianne had a babysitter one night--Joe P--a teenager who lived in the house behind us. Yes, people hired teenage boys to babysit back then; parents of Gen Xers were chill like that (plus everyone knew everything about everyone in our 'hood, another hallmark of that era). Personally, I thought Joe was super cute and I was a bit jealous several years later when I heard from my Mom that he'd gotten engaged. Maybe I thought somewhere in the back of my mind I'd have a chance with him one day, because that's how teen girls think. But whatever. 

So I was hanging at Ridley and Rianne's that evening, and since their parents were off at a fondue restaurant or a key party or whatever hip '80s parents did on their nights out, the three of us kids tuned in to HBO to try to catch us some Friday the 13th Part II while Joe was preoccupied with a phone call (probably chatting up some girl). It was the part in the movie where a female camp counselor goes skinny dipping alone in the lake at night (as you do), and a male camp counselor happens by and takes the opportunity to steal her clothes. The skinny dipper chick climbs out of the lake butt naked to chase the guy through the woods (as you do), then the dude steps into a rope trap that snatches him up and he's hanging there upside down from a tree when the girl catches up to him and she's all, "You prick, why'd you steal my clothes? Oh, you're caught in a trap. Hold on, I'll go find something sharp to cut you down with." And the girl wanders off into the darkness and the guy is hanging there like a slab of beef and that's when Joe finally notices what we're watching, and he's like "Hey you little shits, turn that off! These two are about to get killed. Believe me, you DO NOT want to see it." And the three of us beg to differ--we kind of do want to see it but we're also more than a little freaked out by the whole scene, so we turn off the movie and Joe sends us outside. So we're sitting on the driveway and it's just beginning to get dark, and we're of course discussing the skinny dipping and the guy hanging upside down in the trap and the almost-killing we just saw, i.e. "How do you think the killer gets them?" et cetera.

Then suddenly from out of the near-darkness, a wadded-up candy wrapper whizzes by our heads and the three of us shriek and jump about eight feet into the air. We turn to see Joe standing behind us, laughing his ass off. Ah, Joe. What a loveable scamp you were.

Epilogue: Years later I watched the film in its entirety and finally learned how Jason Voorhees offed the clothes stealing guy and the skinny dipping girl. It was gross, but strangely anti-climactic. In my mind, I think I'd built it up to be something pants-shittingly horrific, when really it was just a run-of-the-mill, slasher-flick knifing for both of them.

That said, the theatrical trailer still gives me the willies: 

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS

Yes, it's the original "The calls are coming from inside the house!" babysitter movie, and it fucking terrified me back in the day. It's got some odd pacing though, because the really messed up shit happens during the first 20 or so minutes of the film, and then it turns into sort of a police detective thriller, then ramps back up again in the final 10 minutes. But as a kid who did a lot of babysitting between ages 12 and 17, When a Stranger Calls scared me shitless, yet I never missed it when it was on TV. 

One time I was around 16 years old and at the home of the Walkers, some family friends that I babysat for frequently whenever I was home from boarding school. I put their young son to bed and I was channel surfing when I came across WaSC, and made the ill-advised decision to go ahead and watch it, even though I knew damn well how much it freaked me out. (Did I mention it was late at night and the Walkers' living room had several large windows? Yeah.) So I watched the whole movie, got predictably spooked, then when it was over.....the telephone rang. I sat there on the couch for a minute, thinking how fucked up it would be if I answered the phone and no one was there. I answered it anyway though, because--duh--it was 1989, caller ID didn't exist yet, I was the babysitter, and therefore expected to answer the phone. So I picked up the receiver, said "Hello," and....dead air.

Dun, dun, DUN!  

Spoiler alert: I'm still alive to tell the tale, obvs, and so is the Walkers' (now 36 year old) son. Still, the asshole who called and hung up on me that night? Fuck you, whoever you are.

CARNIVAL OF SOULS

Damn, I love this one so much. LOVE. IT. 

It's not exactly horror movie sort of scary; it's more Twilight Zone-esque, which--truth be told--is my favorite kind of scary. If you haven't seen it....for God's sakes, why not? 

None of the trailers do it justice. The film is BRILLIANT. 

One of my favorite bits of trivia: Sidney Berger, the actor who plays John the creepy neighbor, ended up having a long and distinguished career as a theater director and drama professor at the University of Houston. He died in 2013, and by all accounts was a real sweetheart of a guy. 

Read his obit here. 

But go watch Carnival of Souls first. 

Well I wanted to make this list longer, but I procrastinated and now I'm all out of time, kids. Time to go put on my costume and get spooky! 

  

 Sinead was just a badass.

I agree with this statement from Moz. He is 100% correct. The music industry and the media treated Sinead like absolute dogshit, and then one day she's gone and immediately we are waist-deep in sniveling, insincere, bullshit "tributes" from the same people and corporate entities that mocked, degraded, and dismissed her while she was alive. 

So I won't go there. I'll just say that Sinead O'Connor was a true artist and a genuine feminist, and how fortunate everyone--particularly Gen Xers who grew up with her music and her no-fucks-given, THIS-is-how-you-stage-a-fucking-protest badassery--was to have her around, unapologetically pissing off the mainstream, and doing her thing on her own terms.

I remember the Bob Dylan tribute concert in 1992, taped shortly after Sinead's infamous appearance on SNL. The show was an all-star event featuring (among others) Tom Petty, Eddie Vedder, John Mellencamp, Tracy Chapman, Willie Nelson, June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Chrissie Hynde, Sinead O'Connor, and of course Dylan himself. It was a concert to celebrate Dylan's 30 years in the music industry (which is funny to think of; while it's certainly a milestone, 30 years doesn't seem as long now as it did back then). 

My Mom taped the concert when it aired on PBS and we watched it together. It was generally a good show, but the thing that everyone remembers today is Sinead getting booed by the audience when she took the stage for her performance. Mom and I were appalled. We both had the same reaction: WHY THE HELL is an audience at a FUCKING BOB DYLAN SHOW booing an artist for staging a protest? Had they ever heard "Masters Of War," "Chimes of Freedom," "The Times They Are A-Changing".....literally ANYTHING Dylan has ever recorded or performed? Or perhaps they got lost on their way to an Anita Bryant concert? 

Seriously, FUCK that audience, every single one of them. 

   Kris Kristofferson has my undying respect for standing up for her.

But enough about that. Sinead was an amazing artist and deserves to be celebrated for her work, too. 

It's kind of a bummer that "Nothing Compares 2 U" is considered her signature song, when (in my opinion) it's so inferior to everything else she recorded. Take "Mandinka" for instance, which still sounds as fresh and innovative as the first time I saw the video on 120 Minutes back in the late '80s.

"I'm dancing the seven veils, want you to pick up my scarf...."

And this one, from the summer of 1991.
Gorgeous, devastating.
(The video features her firstborn son, Jake.)

But the quintessential Sinead O'Connor song in my mind will always be "Emperor's New Clothes." It was my favorite then, and still my favorite today. It just says it all really, encapsulating her whole career and so many other aspects of her life.

"Everyone can see what's going on.
They laugh 'cause they know they're untouchable,
not because what I said was wrong.
Whatever it may bring,
I will live by my own policies,
I will sleep with a clear conscience,
I will sleep in peace."

***Mic drop.***

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY
"Dare to Fall in Love" 

A disclaimer: my inclusion of this entry in the RFO series does not constitute endorsement or approval, because, well...it's kind of shit.

In the midst of a recent insomnia-fueled Googling session, I was trying to find the name of a half-remembered song. I didn't even care for the song that much, but some of lyrics had become inexplicably lodged in my brain and that was enough to activate my OCD need for a definitive answer.

I'm a bit surprised that I was able to actually find the song, because the only lyrics I could recall went something like, "One kiss, it's a something something thing, I get what I deserve, if I something something thing." Well, it turns out the song is "Dare To Fall in Love" by someone called Brent Bourgeois, and it was released in 1990. 

According to Wikipedia, the song was only a modest hit but it received a fair bit of play on VH-1 back in the day. This puzzled me, because I was 16-17 years old in 1990 and I sure as shit wasn't watching VH-1. That changed later on in the '90s when the former soft rock music channel started producing fun shows like Pop-Up Video and the insanely addictive Behind the Music series, but in 1990 I was still very much a devotee of MTV, grooving on 120 Minutes, Post Modern, and--embarrassingly enough--Totally Pauly. You see kids, in 1990 I thought Pauly Shore was funny and irreverent with his stoner patois and oddball antics; this was before I learned that his bohemian hippie shtick was merely a gimmick and he was actually a privileged Hollywood brat who lucked into a standup career by an accident of birth (his parents owned The Comedy Store). I also thought Totally Pauly (I didn't yet know him as Pauly Shore) was kind of hunky, a view that some of my high school friends also shared, just so you know I wasn't the only freak who lusted after the future star of Jury Duty.

Give me a break, I was young and naive. We all were.

 

Oh hell, since I'm in confessional mode and we're being real, I also thought Married With Children was funny and irreverent. Yeah I know, but hey, at least I can proudly say I never watched Saved By the Bell. In fact, I didn't know anyone my age who watched that fetid turd of a show. I suspect SBTB was the type of pop culture ephemera purportedly aimed at high schoolers but really only watched by middle schoolers, kind of like how 13-year-olds read Seventeen magazine while actual 17-year-olds were reading Cosmo. 

True story: today whenever Saved By the Bell is mentioned as some sort 

of beloved Gen X touchstone....I die a little inside.   

Anyway, I don't know for sure where I heard this "Dare to Fall in Love" song, but I think I most likely encountered it through the piped-in music station at Milano's Pasta To Go, the Italian fast food joint in Broad Ripple where I began my illustrious, short-lived career in food service during the summer of 1990. The restaurant's sound system played a perpetual stream of the soulless adult contemporary dreck of the day; I swear I heard "Hold On" by Wilson Philips about 35 goddamned times during every one of my shifts. I still get PTSD flashbacks when I hear the opening chords of that syrupy song. There was also a shit ton of Gloria Estefan, Michael Bolton, Peter Cetera, Kenny G, and the like. It was hell. That's the reason I strongly suspect that this barely-one-hit wonder by Brett Bourgeois was foisted upon my tender psyche during the summer I was slinging pasta at Milano's and trying to remember why the hell I'd signed up for this shit.

Man I hated that job, but I guess that's sort of the point of having a fast food gig when you're a kid. It's important that you learn early how much working in fast food sucks so you can spend the rest of your life staying as far away from that career choice as you possibly can. To add insult to injury, I was the youngest employee there, so my dickhead manager Byron made me do like 90% of the grunt work. Whenever business was slow and Byron was around, I could be found mopping the floors, washing the windows, and (shudder) cleaning the toilets. I think since it was my first job, Byron felt the need to school me on having a strong work ethic. Either that, or he was just a prick. Probably a bit of both. 

There were a few high points though. One time I was working a late night shift with a skeleton crew that consisted of myself, Carl (the cool manager), and Doug the kitchen guy, when Don Hein--the sports anchor from the Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR--rolled up in the drive-thru. I remember this mostly because he ordered manicotti and when he got to the window, Carl informed me that, oops, we were out of manicotti, and when I had to break the news to Don Hein he got really pissed off. I think Carl offered him some free breadsticks or something, trying to smooth things over. It didn't seem to work because ol' Don just heaved a loud sigh and said, "Oh for Christ sake, just forget it," then peeled out of the drive-thru in a huff. Carl and Doug and I sort of looked at each other and we were like, hey, wasn't that Don Hein? And then we laughed. You had to be there I guess, but trust me. It was funny.

Do not come between this dude and his manicotti. Seriously, just don't.

Then there was Mike, one of the cooks that I used to goof off with whenever we were left unsupervised. Mike was one of those hip hop loving white guys who sported an early '90s "fade" hairstyle with complicated designs shaved into the side of his head. To be fair, I'm pretty sure he was one of the few white dudes who came by his urban trappings honestly since he was an incoming senior at Broad Ripple High School (David Letterman's alma mater!), which, yeah, it was in Broad Ripple but was also an IPS school, thus a lot rougher than other northside schools. Mike and I had a bit of a flirtation going on, but he was really only interested in ladies of color so I don't think he ever took me seriously as potential girlfriend material. We had a lot of fun, though. We used to hang out in the kitchen where he would crank up WTLC (the local rap/R&B radio station), and he would always go nuts when they played Bell Biv DeVoe's Poison, one of the big tracks of the summer. Personally I couldn't stand that song, but I enjoyed watching Mike dance around the kitchen to it. He could bust a move and was really good at the sort of hip hop/club style of dancing that I now associate with Bobby Brown--lots of running in place and throwing of elbows and such. 

BUT there did happen to be one hip hop tune that even I--the Depeche Mode-loving, 120 Minutes-watching, clove smoking fashion victim that I was--could not resist, and that song was Digital Underground's The Humpty Dance. I think Mike considered it a personal triumph when he got me to do The Humpty Hump with him, right there in the kitchen. (No, it wasn't a sex thing.)

"This is my dance y'all, Humpty Hump's my name!"

Then there were the various "older" (twentysomething) guys that came in on the weekends to line their stomachs with pasta and other carbs before a heavy night of barhopping in Broad Ripple. Yes, sometimes they were cute, and sure, oftentimes they didn't care how underage I looked, and of course, I'd be lying if I said my dumb ass wasn't flattered by their inappropriate attentions. Whenever they asked me where I went to high school, I'd dodge the question by saying, "I go to school in southern Indiana, I'm just here for the summer." (Which was TRUE! You couldn't say that wasn't true, dammit.) And they'd be like, "So you're in college? Where?" And I'd say "I go to a private school down near Evansville. Marian Heights? Yeah, it's really small, you probably haven't heard of it." And with no way to verify what the hell or where the hell Marian Heights was (ah, the joys of the pre-internet age!), they bought into my bullshit. Not that I ever benefited from this in any real way, but standing behind the cash register in my hideously dorky Milano's uniform, a bit of ego-fluffing now and then certainly didn't go amiss. What can I say? I was every inch the Stacy character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. 

"You look like you could still be in high school."

"Ha. Yeah, everybody says that."

Unlike Stacy, however, I didn't have a Linda to fall back on. I was sadly Linda-less. That really sucked for me, because if ever there was an unsophisticated 16-year-old need of a hip, worldly-wise older girl to shepherd me through what would be an increasingly difficult year in my teenage existence, it was my awkward self.  

I did have a Gretchen, however, but she wasn't much help. Although she was friendly enough, my fellow cashier Gretchen was one of those girls who was convinced that any and every male who came within a one-mile radius must be madly in lust with her. I mean, Gretchen was girl-next-door cute in a preppy sort of way, but she wasn't exactly the teenage temptress she fancied herself to be. For instance, like some dude would wander up to the counter to ask for extra packets of parmesan cheese, and as soon as he was gone she'd be all, "Oh my God, did you see that? He was totally hitting on me! You mean you didn't notice? God he's being sooooo obvious, it's really annoying." She pretty much swore that every single male employee at Milano's, even sweet, laid-back, grandfatherly Carl (the aforementioned cool manager), was hopelessly obsessed with her. I didn't see it, but whatever. I wasn't going to be the one to burst her bubble.

I do remember a funny incident where Byron (the dickhead manager) called Gretchen, Mike, and me into his office for a Serious Talk. Apparently it had come to Byron's attention that certain members of "the team" were utilizing the Milano's store phone for personal calls, thus wasting the company's time while they were (GASP!) on the clock! (Yes, that's exactly how Byron spoke: he was your garden variety, cartoonishly sincere, middle management hack.) Anyway, Gretchen immediately piped up and was like, "Yeah, that was probably me. See, my dad called me here at work because he heard a rumor that I'm dating this older guy, and he's trying to keep tabs on me, and yada, yada, yada," and just gabbled on and on for like five minutes as Byron's eyes glazed over, and Mike bit his lip to keep from laughing, and my brain floated off somewhere into the stratosphere. Finally Byron--pissed off that his big Teachable Moment had been hijacked by Gretchen's inane prattle--just cut her off mid-sentence and he's like, "Right. Bottom line, no personal phone calls on the clock. Got it? Good. Back to work."

Besides Gretchen, there were a few other cashiers I worked with. One was Maggie, a pretty blonde Butler student. I was usually paired with Maggie on weekdays, and we would often reward ourselves for surviving the lunch rush by splitting an order of mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. Milano's was the first place I'd ever encountered mozzarella sticks and I thought they were the greatest culinary invention ever. I mean, cheese--fried AND battered? Yes please! I never got to know Maggie all that well but I thought she was cool, although I remember Mike having some vague reason for not liking her. I think he claimed she was stuck up or something. Whatever. She shared her mozzarella sticks with me. She was a good egg.

Then there was a girl called Christy. She was hired a few weeks after I was, so she was the "new girl" for a while. She was quiet and a bit awkward, but nice enough. I remember us bonding over our shared dislike of Madonna's "Vogue," another song that was everywhere that summer. We both agreed that it was dumb and annoying. (I was a fan of Madonna's first three albums, but by 1990 she'd started in on that "I'm a serious artiste" bullshit, and I was over it.) Then one evening, I arrived to work the dinner shift to find that Christy had just up and quit earlier that day. Apparently, she had refused to wear the sandwich board.

For the uninitiated, this is an example of a sandwich board:

Of course, the purpose of the Milano's sandwich board was not to broadcast the wearer's desire to discuss male genitalia; it was meant to advertise the restaurant. The sandwich board was Byron's bright idea, of course, and he made it mandatory for every single one of us (excluding the managers) to do the sandwich board walk of shame up and down Broad Ripple Avenue. We all thought it was lame, but I didn't mind it too much because it was at least a chance to get outside and away from the store for a bit. I mean, I felt like a complete dork walking around wearing the stupid sign, but I considered it a small price to pay in exchange for an hour of freedom while still on the clock.

My coworker Christy, however, was not so chill about it. When she arrived at work that day to find it was her turn to do the sandwich board shuffle, she put her foot down and said no. Byron informed her that she could either comply or hang up her Milano's apron forever. Christy chose the latter. I remember Mike being livid--absolutely livid--about the whole situation. He was like--what--did this bitch think she was too good for sandwich board duty? I didn't get why he was so bothered about it. Actually, I was inclined to side with Christy. I mean, fuck Byron, and fuck his stupid sandwich board. Damn the man, fight the power, and all that jazz. Good for you, Christy. I hope you're still raging against the machine, wherever you are. 

Image source: Mississippi Mayhem on Etsy

Speaking of The Man, I got called on the carpet myself that summer for inadvertently charging an expired credit card. You see kids, back in the day when a customer wanted to pay with a card, we had to take the card and run it through this contraption that Google tells me is a "manual imprint." It was a pain in the ass, is what it was.

I should mention that credit card transactions were extremely rare, since 99% of our customers paid with cash, as was the norm; Milano's was considered ahead of its time since we were one of the few fast food restaurants that even accepted credit cards back then. It was so long ago that once in a while I'd even get people asking if we accepted personal checks as payment, and I was supposed to say brightly, "I'm sorry, we no longer take checks, but we do accept Visa and Mastercard." 

When we did get a customer paying with credit, we had to ask for a driver's license to check that the name on the card matched up with the ID, and--most importantly--we had to verify the credit card's expiration date. Guess what I forgot to do late one night when some jackass handed me a card that had (apparently) expired the month before? Yep.

Dude, Byron was pissed. When my oversight was discovered a few days later, he made a big production out of calling me into his office to show me a photocopy of the credit card imprint and asking if I saw anything wrong with it. (Can I just say that condescending bosses who treat their employees like they're first graders should be shot out of a cannon and into the sun?) I looked over the paper, and finally I was like, "Okay, I see it. The card was expired." Byron was like, "Yes, very good! Congratulations, you got yourself a written warning." (Oh, the bastard was loving this.) So he pulled out this official looking sheet of paper that basically stated that I'd fucked up, that it had been brought to my attention that I'd fucked up, that I understood the extent to which I'd fucked up, and would I please sign on the dotted line below to acknowledge that I'd fucked up? It probably also said I was a lawless degenerate who shouldn't be allowed to breed or vote. I don't know, I didn't really read it. I just signed the damn thing and got the hell out of there. 

I think Byron was expecting a bigger reaction, probably hoping that I'd burst into tears and grovel at his feet for forgiveness or something, but really I couldn't be arsed. Mostly because it was the beginning of August, I'd given my two weeks notice the previous week, and I had like four more shifts left before I said arrivederci to Byron and Milano's. 

At the end of my afternoon shift on the last day of work, I hugged Mike and Gretchen, promising to visit whenever I was back in town on school breaks (which I actually did a few times), then clocked out and quickly scooted my ass out the door in order to avoid bidding Byron a final farewell. It was real, it was fun, but it hadn't been real fun. As I said earlier, it was a summer job. You weren't really supposed to like it.  

As for Milano's, I'm sad to say that the restaurant folded around 1993 or so--about the time Fazoli's opened up a bunch of Indianapolis locations and swallowed up Milano's customer base. 

Fuck off, Fazoli's. Your spaghetti sucks.

The building (strip mall, actually) that housed Milano's is still standing, and although 1035 Broad Ripple Avenue has been home to various small businesses over the last few decades, it's now a Mexican cafe called Biscuits. I've never been there, but my sister tells me they serve a really good brunch. Looking at their Yelp page, it's changed a lot on the inside. The biggest difference (besides the Mexican-inspired decor) is that they've rearranged things to a diner-like setup where the kitchen is front and center and you can see the food being cooked right there, whereas with Milano's, the kitchen was hidden in the back where the cooks could goof off 80% of the time and the cashiers like me were at the counter on the frontlines.   

But I am happy to report that the storefront proudly sports 

the same green awnings from the Milano's era.

Oh hell, now see what I did? I got all carried away talking about my teenage years and summer jobs and fast food pasta joints that I completely forgot the reason I started writing this post in the first place. 

Anyway, yeah, Brent Bourgeois and "Dare To Fall in Love." There's not a lot to say about the song, it's just your typical soft-rock yuppie ballad. The video is nothing to write home about either; just some arty shots of bored-looking models floating around a hotel room while Bourgeois (apparently that's his real name) lounges around lip syncing moodily. One notable aspect is Brent's hair, which manages to combine two of the worst early '90s hairstyle trends: long, thin, 90210-inspired sideburns and a greasy, over-gelled mullet. 

According to his Wikipedia page he now records Christian music, which I can totally see because he looks a lot like the lead singer from Creed. 

Damn, I mean....he really looks like the guy from Creed. WOW. Are we sure he's not Scott Stapp's dad? (Apparently he's not, but holy shit, the resemblance is spooky!)

  

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY
"Don't let it get me, don't let it get me, don't let it get me...."

Perhaps this is a little-known symptom of memory loss in aging Gen Xers: you start mixing up your Martha Coolidge movies. Then before too long, you're confusing Amy Heckerling movies. And by the time you get to where you're mistaking Say Anything for Singles, you're well on your way to an early Alzheimer's diagnosis. But I'm probably over-thinking this.

At any rate, I woke up with this song in my head the other morning and now I'm kind of obsessed with it. For some reason, I was convinced that it was featured in a scene from the 1984 Martha Coolidge flick Joy of Sex, where a horny teenage boy is seen pedaling a 10-speed bike down the street to his girlfriend's house, psyching himself up to get laid for the first time. The thing is, I don't know why I thought the song was from Joy of Sex, a movie I only had vague recollections of from clandestine late night HBO viewings as a preteen. Plus, Joy of Sex was pretty lame, so it's not a film that I would've sought out all that much back in the day. It's definitely no Valley Girl, which is the movie that Martha Coolidge is (rightfully) remembered for, because Valley Girl kicks ass. Better story, better actors, and a KILLER soundtrack. I've also seen Valley Girl like, WAY more times than I ever saw Joy of Sex, for all the reasons mentioned above. And, it starred Nicolas Cage back when he was still badass. Yes children, long, long ago in another time, another place, another dimension known as the early '80s, Nic Cage was really fucking cool. 

via GIPHY

Be still my heart.

I love this movie. Love it. One of my favorite scenes is the one where Julie, the titular "valley girl," flips out at her hippie mom for refusing to yell at her after she stays out all night. "Like, why can't you guys just punish me like other parents do?" "Bad karma, dear." I love that line. The hippie mom was played by Colleen Camp, by the way. I only recently found out that she was the same actress who played the sexy French maid in Clue. Random bit of trivia there.

But back to the rather joyless Joy of Sex movie and the song I was so desperate to find. I had no idea what the song title was, so I couldn't Google it. I could only remember the familiar refrain: "Don't let it get me, don't let it get me," along with the image of that preppy kid riding his bike down the street. Like I said, I was somehow convinced that it was from JoS. Why? I have no idea. But I did manage to find the full movie on YouTube, and decided to watch it the other day while I got some unpacking done. I found out a few things:

• Colleen Camp (hippie mom/French maid) was also in JoS but she was truly awful in it, horribly miscast in a "comic relief" role as a narcotics officer going undercover trying to sniff out all the stoners at the high school. It was a really dumb subplot that, like most of the movie, fell totally flat.
• Christopher Lloyd played the main character's surly gym coach father, and he was actually pretty funny in it. One of the film's few bright spots.
• There was this one part in the movie that my brain had somehow retained after all these years, although I was beginning to think I'd imagined it. It was a scene at a drive-in with a carload of teenage boys sticking their asses in the air and lighting their farts on fire while screaming "Blue flame!" Their combustible flatulence finally succeeds in blowing out the car windows, causing mass pandemonium among the teenage couples making out in the surrounding vehicles. Okay I'll admit it, that made me laugh. I'm not made of stone, people.     

And the song. The song! It was nowhere to be found in Joy of Sex. Frustrated, I Googled "songs featured in Valley Girl," but there was nothing titled "Don't Let it Get Me." There was, however, a Sparks song called "Eaten By the Monster of Love." I found a recording on YouTube, and yep! That's it. And it WAS in the bike riding scene from Valley Girl, after all. Why did I think it was from Joy of Sex? Early onset Alzheimer's? I'll be 46 next week. Still a bit young for that, but who knows? 

No matter. Here is the full version of the song, and it's all kinds of awesome. 

The only reason I knew the name Sparks is because of "Cool Places," that song they recorded with Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's, which also happens to be the jam. (Jane Wiedlin can do no wrong in my book.) Bonus! Here it is:

Fuck HBO for cancelling this show. 

When Togetherness debuted last year, I wasn't all that interested. The previews made it look like a grown-up rip-off of Girls (a show that I continue to love, even for all its flaws) only instead of navel-gazing Brooklynites it's a navel-gazing couple and their two slacker friends. But then I checked out a few episodes and damned if Togetherness didn't suck me right in. 

Season two has been even better than season one, kicking things up a notch as shlubby struggling actor Alex (male slacker friend) lands a movie role as a "sexy vampire," which is so off-the-wall for that character that it kind of works.....

Yes, this dude as a middle-aged Lestat in a ruffled shirt. So wrong, yet so right.

Michelle confesses her one night stand to Brett, and he responds by barfing in her lap....

Then Alex and Brett take off for a "lost weekend" in Detroit....

And there's the episode where Tina creates a distraction at the fundraiser party by bursting into an awesome rendition of Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" so Michelle can snoop in that weird chick Anna's email....

I had no idea Amanda Peet was this funny. 

And UGH! Seriously, why is HBO cancelling this show?!?!?

Well isn't that special?

Since the dawn of the family sitcom, television writers have had a weird hard-on for sneaking in important moral lessons and cautionary tales along with the requisite wisecracking kid characters and canned laugh tracks. This phenomenon is widely known as the Very Special Episode (or VSE) and the 1980's were rife with them. 

Some Reagan-era sitcoms were more "special" than others. I remember learning about leukemia, epilepsy, racism, child molestation, drug addiction, bed-wetting, rabies, teenage gangs, gambling, hitchhiking, kidnapping, runaways, gun violence, and grand theft (and that was just on Different Strokes!). 

While sitcoms of the eighties seemed particularly obsessed with teaching us impressionable latchkey kids about how fucking dangerous and evil the outside world was, the VSE trend seemed to continue into the 1990's. Although I had long outgrown family-friendly sitcoms by that point, I understand there was a Full House episode where one of the daughters decided she was too pudgy and put herself on a crash diet, prompting her parental figures to take her aside and say something like "But honey, it's what's on the inside that counts!" (like that's ever worked on any teenager, anywhere) and the infamous Saved By the Bell ep where future Showgirl Liz Berkeley took too many "caffeine pills" and had her sad little meltdown. Oh, please. These coddled Gen-Y/Millennials wouldn't know a Very Special Episode if it got them hooked on crack. In the touchy-feely nineties, no one in TV Land was being pummeled by alcoholic relatives, or getting "special hugs" from scary uncles, or offing themselves with pills, or being groomed by fat pedophiles. They didn't pull any punches with us in the eighties. That's why we're all hardcore, and these youngsters are so damn soft. 

Check out the shit we grew up with.   

"SAY UNCLE" - FAMILY TIES

This is the heartwarming episode where Uncle Ned (Tom Hanks!) comes for a visit. Turns out that Uncle Ned Donnelly has a wee problem with the drink (oh those Irish stereotypes). After Drunkle Ned runs out of whisky and beer, he chugs a bottle of vanilla extract and says "It's not Miller Time, it's vanilla time!"* then smacks Michael J. Fox's stunt double across the room like he's auditioning for Laurence Fishburne's role in What's Love Got To Do With It. Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

"I learned it from watching YOU, Uncle Ned!"

Careless Memories: This is where I got confused, because I remember that Family Ties had quite a few guest stars who went on to have big careers--River Phoenix, Christina Applegate, Courtney Cox, Geena Davis, Crispin Glover, and Hank Azaria, among others--but I could have sworn that in this particular Very Special Episode the visiting alcoholic relative was played by Michael Keaton. A reasonable mistake, I guess, since the family of Family Ties were--duh, the Keatons--but I think it was also because Michael Keaton and Tom Hanks played a lot of the same type of characters during the eighties; hyperactive funny guys whose cheerful personas concealed a darker side.

Funnily enough, there are actually two Family Ties episode involving a weird uncle. The other one is family fuck-up Uncle Arthur, who makes a pass at Mallory. (Alex: "But Uncle Arthur's known you all your life. He used to bathe you when you were a baby." Mallory: "Yeah, well, I think he wants his old job back." )

The episode is titled "Give Uncle Arthur a Kiss." Yeah, they went there.

I don't remember seeing the Uncle Arthur ep at the time of airing, because it's from season 1 of Family Ties and I wasn't watching the early seasons at the time because they were really lame; it wasn't until season 2 or 3 (around the time of Meredith Baxter-Birney's pregnancy) that the show got a lot better. I'm thinking that Michael J. Fox's growing popularity gave them more freedom (and a bigger budget maybe) to fire the hacky writers and hire good ones. I tried to find internet articles supporting this claim, but no dice. I do remember a write-up in People magazine calling Family Ties "The most improved show on television," so it seems that at the time the general consensus was that the show started out bad and then surprised everyone by getting funny after it had been on a few years.  

*kids, get an old person to explain that joke to you.

"BREAKING POINT" - THE FACTS OF LIFE

I wasn't that into Facts of Life in its heyday. I guess the travails of a group of teenage girls at a private boarding school were a bit beyond me at the age of eight. Ironically, of course, I would end up going to a private boarding school when I was fifteen. But that's another story. As a young 'un, sitcoms like Different Strokes and Silver Spoons were more my speed. I do, however, recall watching The Facts of Life at my friend Heather's house, because her older sister Shannon (the most sophisticated middle schooler I'd ever known) was a big fan of the show. 

This VSE--which I see after Googling "The Facts of Life + suicide episode"--is called "Breaking Point." In it, a girl named Cynthia who we've not seen before and won't be seeing again, is the new golden child of Eastland. She even looks set to defeat class princess Blair Warner in the student council elections. Oh, the humanity! So there's a big build-up to Mrs. Garrett tabulating the election results while Blair divas around, kvetching about having to settle for Vice President if Cynthia wins the coveted title. Meanwhile, this Cynthia chick modestly proclaims how winning isn't important and how she's happy just to be nominated President and blah-dee-blah. She seems vaguely distracted by a bunch of phone calls from her rich parents, and keeps retreating to her room for privacy. Then it turns out that Cynthia is the big winner after all, and Blair is shattered and Cynthia is sort of blase about the whole thing. No one can figure out why she isn't more psyched. 

So in the next scene everyone is sitting around the kitchen and Tootie runs in and screams that she just found Cynthia unconscious in her room next to an empty bottle of pills. Chaos ensues, an ambulance is called, and the girls subsequently hunker down to wait for news. Later, Mrs. Garrett answers the phone and it's the hospital, calling to report that Cynthia is dead as a doornail. Everyone is like, "Why did she do it? She was pretty and popular and smart and she just won the student election!" 

The girls and Mrs. Garrett start packing up Cynthia's room and discover that they're to send her belongings to her mother's new address in Nevada. But why Nevada? Blair wonders. "The only person who lives in Nevada is Wayne Newton!" Heh. Y'know, that's funny, because as you might know, I happen to live in Nevada now. Anyway, they deduce that Cynthia's mom has set up residence in Nevada because she and Cynthia's dad are divorcing. Everyone's like, "Oh! That's why Cynthia seemed all weird and distant!" And this is when I call bullshit, because it was the 1980s, not the 1950s and the days of people going off to Nevada for divorces was ancient history by that point. But okay, whatever. 

Mrs. Garrett then gives all the girls a pep talk, saying "If you find yourself at the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on!" One of the girls suggests setting up a suicide hotline at Eastland. And everyone hugs and all that crap and thus the Melancholy Ballad of Cynthia comes to an end. 

Careless Memories: Not many, although I do remember thinking, "Wow, divorce sucks. I'm glad my parents are never going to break up." Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. We'll see how long that delusion lasted. 

"THE BICYCLE MAN" - DIFFERENT STROKES

(a.k.a. "The One With the Pervert," "The One Where Dudley Gets Molested" 

"That One Fucked Up Different Strokes Episode," etc.)

Bicycle Man pours the kids a little vino.
And yes, Dudley is shirtless.

This one is the mother of all VSE's. If you were a child in the eighties, this episode is seared into your retinas like footage of the Challenger disaster. You can't forget it, no matter how hard you try. Years of therapy couldn't erase this one. In retrospect, it's no wonder we Gen Xers are known for being cynical and disenfranchised. Dude, we've seen things. Things you don't even know about. Things you couldn't handle. You think that stupid Saved By the Bell episode with the weak caffeine pill story arc was intense? Whatever, man. You don't even know.

First of all, this was a two-parter, so you knew shit was gonna get real. Part 1 of "The Bicycle Man," introduces Mr. Horton (Christ, they gave him such a molest-y name, too. Why not just call him "Chester"?) He's a funny, friendly bicycle shop owner that the Drummonds are suddenly really tight with. The episode opens with the fam (Mr. Drummond, Kimberly, Willis and Arnold) returning their rented bicycles to Mr. Horton's shop after a ride through Central Park. Mr. Horton--who juggles oranges and jokes around with Arnold because he's just a fun guy!--tells Mr. Drummond he hates to see him throw away his money on bike rentals when it's more economical to just buy some for the kids. Drummond is hesitant (like the Park Avenue millionaire can't spring for a damn kid's bike? What a cheapskate!). After some browbeating, Mr. Drummond agrees to buy Arnold a bike. Mr. Horton offers to toss in a free radio if Arnold passes out flyers for his bike shop to the kids at his school. "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours," he tells Arnold, who replies, "You keep coming up with these presents, you can scratch me all over!" 

Uh oh.

So Arnold gets his best friend Dudley to help him promote the shop, and the next thing you know Arnold is popping by the bike shop to pick up more flyers. As he comes in, Mr. Horton is seen escorting a little tow-headed boy out the door, saying, "Don't tell your parents I gave you all that candy. Let's make it our little secret," painting Horton's pre-vert status with a pretty broad brush (the show wasn't known for its subtly). Arnold gets there, exchanges some jokey banter with Mr. Creepypants, who invites him to his apartment in the back of the shop (WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!) to eat some ice cream and check out all his cool toys and video games. "Gee Mr. Horton, you sure understand kids!"

The clue phone was ringing. No one answered.

The next time we see ol' Horny Horton, Arnold has brought Dudley by the shop to see about a free radio for his pal. Mr. Bike Man is, of course, delighted to meet Dudley and immediately brings them to his sketchy backroom apartment to have some pizza and look at comic books. But--oops--Horton has "accidentally" left one of his porno mags out with all the comics. Yup. So Horton comes back from the kitchen with the pizza and the kids are all bug-eyed over the nudie book. But Bike Man's not mad! No, he explains to the kids that there's nothing wrong with the human body and that "you can have a lot of fun with your clothes off." (Oh God. Hold me.) To illustrate this, Horton brings out a bunch of photos of himself skinny-dipping with some young boys and holy shit I'm not even kidding about any of this. Then he gives the kids some red wine, produces a camera and suggests that Arnold and Dudley play "Tarzan" with him. This involves Dudley taking off his shirt and posing with Arnold in front of a house plant, then the words TO BE CONTINUED flash ominously across the screen.

NOOOOOO!!!!!

Careless Memories: A little backstory. I was nine years old when this episode aired and my parents had just split up (told ya!). I remember that little detail because I watched Part 1 of "The Bicycle Man" at my mom's new apartment (it was a weekend visit; Different Strokes aired on Saturday nights). Needless to say, my mom was a bit freaked out by this episode and made a point to have a Serious Talk with me afterwards, saying something along the lines of "Um, you know it's not okay for a grown man to invite children over to his place for wine and dirty magazines and 'Tarzan' games, right?" Despite being a rather naive and sheltered kid at the time, I confirmed that, yeah, I got it. I mean, the show was pretty obvious in setting up a "That boy ain't rahhht" vibe about Mr. Horton. Helen Keller would have sensed something rotten in the state of Denmark with that guy. So the next weekend I was back at home with my dad, who was warned by my mom in advance that I was going to want to see Part 2 of the Creepy Bike Man Different Strokes episode. I know my Dad was like, "Oh, great. This will be awkward." (My dad didn't handle awkward very well.)

Anyhoo, back to the nightmare.

Part 2 of "The Bicycle Man" opens with a solemn-voiced narrator describing scenes from last week's Very Special Episode, complete with creepy freeze-frames of Arnold and Dudley drinking wine, Mr. Horton showing the boys his "skinny-dipping pictures" and convincing Dudley to get shirtless to play "Tarzan" with Arnold while he snaps photos. I really cannot convey in words how much more disturbing the narrator recapping the previous week's scenes makes this already disturbing episode. Check it out if you want to see for yourself, but I wouldn't advise it.

Trust me, it's not for the faint of heart.

We dive right in, back with Mr. Horton and the boys and the Tarzan game, and the show wastes no time in ramping up the creepiness, taking it to a whole new level now with Horton getting the bright idea of handing the camera to Arnold so Horton can get down on all fours to allow shirtless Dudley to hop on his back (in case it's unclear, Horton's pretending to be the lion that Tarzan Dudley "wrestles." Oh my God.) So that happens, and then Mr. H decides it's time for another round of libations to really get the party started. He pours Arnold and Dudley some more wine, prompting Arnold to make the "L'chaim!" toast (I love when writers throw in some random Hebrew). Then the door to the shop out front rings and Mr. Horton is like "Oh, it's a customer. I'll get rid of them." Right. Be sure to get rid of any potential customers in case they want to give you money in exchange for goods and services in order to keep your goddamn piddly-ass bike shop open, Genius. It just shows what a dedicated pervert this Mr. Horton is. Don't interrupt him with store business when he's in the back cavorting with prepubescent boys!    

Horton goes out front to discover that the customer is--Duh duh DUH--Mr. Drummond, dropping by to pay for Arnold's bike. Shit! Drummond gives him the money and Horton tries to hustle him out of the store, but Mr. Drummond seems to want to hang around and reminisce about the time his old man bought him his first bike and Horton is like sweating bullets and keeps trying to blow him off, but Drummond won't take the hint and leave. Arnold peeks out into the store, sees his dad, and panics. He and Dudley flee out the back door (oh, of course there's a back door).

A while later (a few days? A few months? It's not clear) Arnie and Duds are back at the bike shop again, because it's a Very Special Episode and the script requires them to be a bit dense when it comes to middle-aged dudes who want to be their super-special-secret friend. Mr. Horton's like, "Hey guys! I got some Boston creme pie and cartoons! Come on back!" But the cartoons he shows them are the X-rated variety in the vein of Fritz the Cat. At long last, Arnold realizes there's Something Not Quite Right about all this and gets the hell out of there, leaving Dudley to watch dirty cartoons with Mr. Horton, who tells him that after the video is over they can play "Neptune, king of the sea" in the bathtub. Oh dear.

Yeah, okay. Let's cut to the chase because I seriously need a Silkwood shower after revisiting all this shit. Arnold gets home, spills the beans about Horton, then Drummond, Dudley's dad and the police all converge on Horton's bike shop to find Dudley in back, coming out of the bathroom all dazed. Duds tells the cops that Horton gave him a pill that made him feel kinda funny (translation: he slipped him a quaalude) and then "he tried to touch me." Thank Godfully, that's as Special as things get in this Very Special Episode. Dudley's dad hugs him and tells him it's not his fault and he's not going to punish him. Later, back at Casa Drummond, Arnold tells his dad he's disappointed and feels like he can't trust anyone now. This leads his father to assure him that most people are okay, but (basically) any adult who plies him with gifts and sweets and wants to get overly familiar is Stranger Danger! and to tell an authority figure ASAP. Then Arnold concludes that "some hugs and kisses are okay" and hugs his dad and everything is peachy and normal again.

Wow. As I alluded to, this is all so much worse as an adult, reading between the lines and seeing all the plot machinations and subtext. I now need to binge-watch some Seinfeld to recover my snarky, detached Gen-X sensibility.

Deliver me from this evil, O Mighty Kramer.

JOT

So then there's this little bit of 1960's weirdness, a religious cartoon that they used to toss in among secular cartoons when I was a kid. The five-minute animated shorts centered around the adventures of a little white blob called "Jot." He'd do something evil like break a toy or not wash his hands before Sunday school and then some off-screen authority figure would make him answer for his sins and wrap it all up with a Bible verse at the end. There was also--weirdly enough--some very flower child psychedelia thrown in with his escapades, like in this short where he lies to his mother about stealing a cupcake and then has some sort of trippy freakout when his conscience gets the best of him. 

Due to his meltdown, Jot never gets around to eating the cupcake. Personally, I think it would have awesome if they had the little guy eat the cupcake and then start tripping balls. That would send a fun message: "Kids, don't steal sweets from authority figures because they'll put hallucinogens in the ingredients to catch you out, you thieving little bastards."

I'm pretty sure I hated Jot, probably because I resented having preachy morality lessons crammed in between secular weekday cartoons. It would have been one thing if they'd confined it to the Christian channel, but having to endure creepy religious crap when you just wanted to watch Caspar the Friendly Ghost really sucked.   

My most significant Jot-related memory was playing ping-pong with my friend Heather, age 8 or 9, in the basement of my neighbor's house (our elderly neighbors across the street regularly invited us kids in for snacks and games; if I remember correctly their grandchildren lived out of town, so us neighborhood urchins were sort of their grandkid surrogates). Heather and I would take turns slamming the ping pong ball across the table as hard as we could, pretending it was Jot the Biblical dot-goblin.

Well, what do you want? We didn't have violent video games back then. We had to use our imaginations. 

I'd still probably wear this t-shirt, though. For kitsch value.