(no subject)
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.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-15 02:30 am (UTC)Clearly the test is defective.
I mean, look at my userpic, for God's sake.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-15 02:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-15 12:55 pm (UTC)For one thing they had a ton of garbage about sales and commercials and who pays attention that that?
They needed more punk questions, they needed more new wave.
As for Pretty in Pink? Yeah, I know it was a movie. They had at least two questions that had to do with it. I was so sick of Molly Ringwald at that point that I couldn't be bothered. Much less attend a movie that had *no* explosions, thank you very much. I preferred Adventures in the Forbidden Zone if we're going with the Ringwald theme.
60% on the quiz
Date: 2006-09-15 03:15 pm (UTC)The eighties, like the seventies in a lot of ways, are an under appreciated decade, IMHO. The world grew up a lot then. The whole map of Europe changed, technology made its first steps into the inexorable spread into every home and the US recovered from a huge hangover, finally entering the world economy instead of the post-war (WWII) US hegemony which spurred the unsustainable prosperity of the 50's and 60's. Other countries had rebuilt and redeveloped following the devastation of WWII and the US momentum, which we had largely been riding since then, was stopped in the 70's and restarted on a better foundation in the 80's.
I remember "Greed is good" and Reagan (I got a copy of the "tear down this wall" video from the Reagan Library for personal viewing pleasure). The rise fo the christian right and the Moral Majority. Being Republican was cool again. We finally started to come to grips with Vietnam. The Cold War died, along with ABC's of Dead Russian Leaders (by Tim Cavanaugh - Andropov, Brezhnev, and Chernenko, btw). David Stockman. Tip O'Neill. Dan Quayle. Gorby. Thatcher (Oooh, baby! I still have a pin-up of her somewhere).
I remember Madonna and then Vanessa Williams showing their respective booties in...erm...alternative magazines. I remember Alexander Haig and Alex Keaton.
I agree that punk, new wave, and the budding alternative scene were all short-shrifted in the survey (REM, U2, the Cure, etc. -- we're not talking underground, here). Best album ever? Joshua Tree - 1987. I remember hating radio so much that I completely switched over to punk, rap, and jazz for years as my preferred music consumables.
Big cultural trends in the eighties? The explosion of cable and movie rentals. Porn piggy-backing on both.
Rap. Public Enemy (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - 1988). The Beastie Boys going white suburbanite (Licensed to Ill - 1986). The Fat Boys. Run DMC. White kids buying most of the rap music.
The rise of the NBA. Michael Jordan. Larry Bird. Magic Johnson. Kareem. The Celtics, Lakers, and Pistons. The NFL East and the Niners winning practically every Super Bowl. Stolen bases were still cool. Forty homers a year meant something. The Yankees (mostly) sucked. Astroturf prevailed in baseball.
Parachute pants.
Rambo and subsequent Rambii. Terminator. Lots of Ahhhnuld movies. John Hughes movies.
Bloom County. Matt Groening's Life in Hell. The Simpsons on Tracey Ullman.
Nostalgia is sweeping over me. Unfortunately, I have to go do some work.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-15 07:46 pm (UTC)I learned to type on an electric typewriter in grade 9, but switched to computer programming (in BASIC!) in grade 10 once I knew the basics.