Living In Oblivion

Mr. Peabody, set the way back machine for the “Decade of Decadence”:

Guys:  Collars up … Check!  “Members Only” jackets on … Check!  Swatch on, with Guard … Check!  Hair “business up front and party in the back” … Double Check!

Ladies: Leather and Lace or Spandex and Legwarmers … Check!  Ultra-teased hair or pony tail off to the side … Check!  “Val speak” fluent … Fer Sure, Fer Sure.

Then let’s start “Living in Oblivion”.

The 80’s were, like, “Alive and Kicking”, for my wife and I Saturday night when cover band “Tainted Love” took the stage and, like played one totally awesome 80’s song after another for two and a half hours straight.  It, like, totally reminded me of when you had to have your MTV (back when the “M” stood for Music, not Mundane, Duh).   Tonight, Michael Jackson was still black, Jordache Jeans, with a flat-handle comb in the back pocket, were cool and, to “Party like its 1999”, seemed so far away.

Even though the 80’s are loved by both sexes, tonight was definitely ladies night.  Lots of couples were there, of course, but, like, oh my god, the ladies seemed to have come out in droves, with all their girl friends in tow.  Twenty-somethings came for the 80’s experience, and Forty-somethings came, to feel like twenty-somethings again.  And the fashion explosion of colors (lots of neon) and styles was, like, totally grody … gag me with a spoon.  There were Madonnas, Belinda Carlisles and Debbie Gibsons for as far as the eye could see, but no Cyndi Laupers, which was such a drag. 

Now to the dancing, oh the dancing.

I hate to say it, but it’s true; white men simply can't dance.  It's just not in our blood, nor in our culture. Two words: Vanilla Ice. Stiff pale bodies, two left feet, no awareness that knees bend nor that hips sway or move. Every part of the white male body appears to act independently when attempting to dance, jerking rigidly to and fro, without natural flow. Which is the perfect form for Country-line dancing, the white man's triumphant contribution to the art of dance.   I actually saw, what Billy Crystal referred to in the classic 80’s romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally”, as the “White Man’s Overbite”.  The only men who are any good at dancing do it professionally; the rest of us are grunting clodhoppers, as can be seen at any given wedding, nightclub or “Tainted Love” 80’s retrospective.  Most women, by contrast, are capable of moving in an attractive way no matter what they do.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and at 11:30 pm it was time to head, wait for it … “Back to the Future”.

“Wait a minute, Doc. Ah... Are you telling me that you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?”
“The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?”

“This is uh... This is heavy duty, Doc. This is great. Uh, does it run, like, on regular unleaded gasoline?”
“Unfortunately no, it requires something with a little more kick - plutonium.”
“Uh, plutonium? Wait a minute. Are-  Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?”
“No, no, no, no, no. This sucker's electrical. But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need. “
“Doc, you don't just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium. Did you rip that off?”
“Shhhhhh!  Of course. From a group of Libyan nationalists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and in turn, gave them a shiny bomb-casing full of used pinball machine parts! Come on! Let's get you a radiation suit. We must prepare to reload.  If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour... you're gonna see some serious shit.”