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Sep. 14th, 2006 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWell. It would appear that despite graduating from high school in 1988 and actually living through the eighties, I know fuck-all about eighties music.
Big surprise there... I'm clueless about bands and music. I hate rather a lot of alleged "eighties" quizzes because they ask about shit that wasn't really important for anyone alive IN the eighties who was over the age of twelve. In 1983, I was thirteen. I remember Sarah Jessica Parker BEFORE she was in Sex in the City, back when she was a square peg. (Google is your friend.) Questions about Saved By The Bell do not define the 80's for me. Saved by the Bell aired in 1989. In 1989, kiddies, I was in college. I did not have time in my busy social schedule (drinking and fucking, mostly) for after-school television shows aimed at the barely-teenaged set.
For the same reason, I missed out on My Little Ponies, which hit the scene in 1982-1983. I was thirteen and while I really liked ponies (and still do, have two of my own even in my adulthood), I was a bit old for My Little Pony. Rainbow Brite, similarly, missed me. I was old enough that the Smurfs were fucking stupid. Same with the Care Bears. (I was very cynical very young, okay?)
The eighties I remember included things like Hostages in Iran (ended in early 1981) and The Pepsi Challenge (big advertising campaign) and Where's the Beef? (another advertising campaign) and Tipper Gore's PMRC kerfluffle over that damn Prince song. My eighties had a lot about AIDS!! (we had special assemblies in school about AIDS because it was fucking *new* and people didn't really know how folks got it.) I remember when Rock Hudson died of AIDS as well as a lot of blameless people with hemophilia before they started testing the blood supply.
I remember the sony walkman (sort of a prehistoric iPod thingie) and how the CD market eclipsed vinyl. I remember Betamax vs. VHS and I remember how the *small* (3.5") floppy disk gradually displaced the larger 5 1/4" floppy disks that were really floppy. There wasn't internet to speak of in my world. We had an Apple II. I have played Pong. I have played MoonPatrol (on the Apple IIe) and LodeRunner (which I adored) and Choplifter. I remember video arcades and Mr. Do! and Centipede and PacMan and Galaga. The Beastie Boys lyric about And if you play Defender, I can be your Hyperspace actually means something to me.
I remember a lot of dumb-ass fashions, like legwarmers and wearing beads on safety pins on your shoelaces. I remember the neon-colored shoelaces and white leather hightops. I remember acid-washed and pegged designer jeans with teeny little holes for ankles and feet. I remember Brooke Shields before she was postpartum depression, back when she was claiming NOTHING came between her and her Calvin Klein jeans. I remember batwing shirts.
I remember The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink and fuck it all, I remember Wargames. I've seen The Last Starfighter and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I saw the first set of Star Wars movies IN THE THEATER when they came out. I remember an amazingly high number of Halloween and Friday the Thirteenth and Nightmare on Elm Street horror movies.
I remember when Reagan got shot and when Challenger exploded. I remember Olympic boycotting and how the communists were the bad guys back then. I remember when people fucking defected, okay? People don't defect anymore. (Might as well not even EXIST at this school.)
I remember that typing (not "keyboarding") was taught on fucking typewriters with actual paper in them... and only the kids in the "business" curriculum took that stuff anyway. (I learned to type in college (self defense as an English major with papers to churn out) and didn't get good at typing until I discovered IRC sometime in the mid-nineties. I currently type about eighty words per minute, which is plenty for my purposes.)
I remember when Michael Jackson was a nice-looking black man instead of a spooky-looking white chick.
I was really there for the eighties, though not apparently there in phase with the people who write these quizzes.
| You Scored 45% Correct |
 You know some 80s stuff Like that Paula Abdul was a star back then But you're not sure who Suzie Q was And you don't know what Samantha Fox was really famous for! |
Big surprise there... I'm clueless about bands and music. I hate rather a lot of alleged "eighties" quizzes because they ask about shit that wasn't really important for anyone alive IN the eighties who was over the age of twelve. In 1983, I was thirteen. I remember Sarah Jessica Parker BEFORE she was in Sex in the City, back when she was a square peg. (Google is your friend.) Questions about Saved By The Bell do not define the 80's for me. Saved by the Bell aired in 1989. In 1989, kiddies, I was in college. I did not have time in my busy social schedule (drinking and fucking, mostly) for after-school television shows aimed at the barely-teenaged set.
For the same reason, I missed out on My Little Ponies, which hit the scene in 1982-1983. I was thirteen and while I really liked ponies (and still do, have two of my own even in my adulthood), I was a bit old for My Little Pony. Rainbow Brite, similarly, missed me. I was old enough that the Smurfs were fucking stupid. Same with the Care Bears. (I was very cynical very young, okay?)
The eighties I remember included things like Hostages in Iran (ended in early 1981) and The Pepsi Challenge (big advertising campaign) and Where's the Beef? (another advertising campaign) and Tipper Gore's PMRC kerfluffle over that damn Prince song. My eighties had a lot about AIDS!! (we had special assemblies in school about AIDS because it was fucking *new* and people didn't really know how folks got it.) I remember when Rock Hudson died of AIDS as well as a lot of blameless people with hemophilia before they started testing the blood supply.
I remember the sony walkman (sort of a prehistoric iPod thingie) and how the CD market eclipsed vinyl. I remember Betamax vs. VHS and I remember how the *small* (3.5") floppy disk gradually displaced the larger 5 1/4" floppy disks that were really floppy. There wasn't internet to speak of in my world. We had an Apple II. I have played Pong. I have played MoonPatrol (on the Apple IIe) and LodeRunner (which I adored) and Choplifter. I remember video arcades and Mr. Do! and Centipede and PacMan and Galaga. The Beastie Boys lyric about And if you play Defender, I can be your Hyperspace actually means something to me.
I remember a lot of dumb-ass fashions, like legwarmers and wearing beads on safety pins on your shoelaces. I remember the neon-colored shoelaces and white leather hightops. I remember acid-washed and pegged designer jeans with teeny little holes for ankles and feet. I remember Brooke Shields before she was postpartum depression, back when she was claiming NOTHING came between her and her Calvin Klein jeans. I remember batwing shirts.
I remember The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink and fuck it all, I remember Wargames. I've seen The Last Starfighter and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I saw the first set of Star Wars movies IN THE THEATER when they came out. I remember an amazingly high number of Halloween and Friday the Thirteenth and Nightmare on Elm Street horror movies.
I remember when Reagan got shot and when Challenger exploded. I remember Olympic boycotting and how the communists were the bad guys back then. I remember when people fucking defected, okay? People don't defect anymore. (Might as well not even EXIST at this school.)
I remember that typing (not "keyboarding") was taught on fucking typewriters with actual paper in them... and only the kids in the "business" curriculum took that stuff anyway. (I learned to type in college (self defense as an English major with papers to churn out) and didn't get good at typing until I discovered IRC sometime in the mid-nineties. I currently type about eighty words per minute, which is plenty for my purposes.)
I remember when Michael Jackson was a nice-looking black man instead of a spooky-looking white chick.
I was really there for the eighties, though not apparently there in phase with the people who write these quizzes.
