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 The Eighties: Mankind's Golden Era First published 3/14/1996 These kids now, though, they don't appreciate what they have. They act as if there's always been stereo TV and CD players with remote controls. Well, in my day we didn't have CD players with remote controls. If you wanted to change the track you had to get up off the couch and push the button yourself. And that was good! It kept us strong! Not weak, like these simpering little turds three years younger than me and my friends. We didn't have fifty seven channels of TV... no, there were only thirty, and they were in mono. It was fine! We had to use our imaginations to try and figure out what would have been on those twenty or so extra channels if they existed, and what it would have sounded like in stereo. It was good! It brought families together. A matter of fact I'll go out on a limb and say just about everything they have now we had almost as good back in the late eighties. Now they have "Friends," then we had "Cheers." Now they have the "The X files," then we had "In Search Of..." re-runs. About the only sort of cool thing which exists now but didn't exist back then is the internet. It actually did exist, mind you, but the only people who knew about it were big fat geeks. The rest of us may have had our primitive computers and 1200 baud modems, but we were afraid to turn them on for fear of starting a nuclear war like Matthew Broderick almost did in "War Games." But these kids now, they have no fear. They haven't seen "War Games," or probably any Matthew Broderick movie, so don't blame me if somebody triggers Armageddon because they were trying to download pictures of Bill Matheson from ITV's web site. Another thing that bugs me: all this seventies retro. The kids are wearing sideburns and Star Wars T shirts and flare jeans. Why all this nostalgia for the seventies? What's wrong with good, old fashioned, nostalgia for the sixties like we had back in the eighties? Ok, I understand that the kid in the wide jeans and the polyester Love Boat T-shirt is just trying to fit in and look cool like I was at his age. But are you really sure that he means it? Is he for real or is the whole outfit done with a sense of irony -- is it all just a big joke? When I was a kid, you knew where you stood. When I wore camouflage pants and leather ties and grew a skinny pony tail I was dead serious. I didn't realize it was a joke until just recently when I looked at some old pictures of myself. Back in the late eighties we didn't pierce our nipples -- at least not on purpose. We thought that plaid was for lumberjacks and leaded gasoline was good for you. Now, Sting's gone bald and the "Where's the Beef?" lady has died and John Travolta's a big star again and he probably won't ever make another one of those amusing movies where the baby talks. They call this progress, but I call it crap. I'm so upset that I think I'll go put on a Bannanarama record and have a nap in my waterbed.
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