Daniel85

The Motown 25 TV special is best remembered for Michael Jackson introducing the world to the moonwalk, but to me the most interesting thing about that night (I speak as if it wasn’t aired two years before I was born) was when Lando Calrissian joined the Jackson 5 on stage for their reunion performance.

Marlon Jackson wasn’t available for the reunion, so the General (an old friend of the Jackson family) came along to help out. Check it:

Amazing how General Calrissian found time to learn all the Jackon 5’s songs and dance steps in between waging guerilla war on the Empire and feeding his gambling habit.

(Behind-the-scenes photo of father Joe Jackson guiding Lando the stage, under threat of violence).

More random 80s Aussie crap on YouTube.

Check out this clip from Countdown in 1983, featuring Ross “Eagle Rock” Wilson’s one-hit wonder wife:

Oh, I probably should have warned you to avert your eyes for the first few seconds. Sorry about that.

Did you catch Molly Meldrum doing what he does best (acting like a total tool)? Gotta love Molly.

I like how the song has nothing to do with aerobics, but that’s the theme they went with for the dancers. Olivia Newton-John must have cancelled at the last minute, so they were stuck with an aerobic dance troupe.

And you get a few seconds of a K-Mart ad The Swingers at the end. Bonus!

Anyone ever read this book as a kid? There was a TV series too, which I’m trying to track down. Gotta love late 80s Aussie bogans.

I guess the main/only reason I liked the book (and TV show) was because it was set in Geelong/Melbourne, and so all the references to things like Torquay, Kardinia Park, Eastern Beach, and school trips to the Old Melbourne Gaol were validating to a piss-ant little Geelong kid.

Anyway, I found a copy of the book at an op shop yesterday, and flipped through it for any mention of G-Town. I came across this stirring passage:

‘Carn the cats (sic),’ bellowed the crowd.

The rain poured down. It was freezing. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was snowing soon.

Finally the last siren went, heralding the end of the game. What a match! Geelong had lost by a goal, and Jacko was standing on his head, kicking his legs in the air. He didn’t care. He was a cert to be up before the Tribunal for mangalating three Richmond players. By the time we got the train back to Geelong I was wondering if it had all been worth it. There were certain advantages to watching the match at home in front of the telly, except for Herohead, who kept telling everyone how to play the game all the way through.

‘Mangalating’. ‘A cert’. Hahahahahaha.

And ah… Jacko. Such a fucking lunatic.

“Oi!”

I don’t think there’s a house in the world that’s never had at least one of Bill Cosby’s books. No-one ever reads ‘em, but I guess people just like having Bill’s reassuring, leonine head on their bookshelves. 

Not to be outdone by his onscreen dad, Malcolm-Jamal Warner put out a book in 1988 to capitalise on the popularity of the Theo Huxtable character.

The book is pretty much just Malcolm-Jamal Warner jiving on teenage problems, using some of his hundreds of thousands of fan letters to illustrate points about problems facing ’teens of today’.

It’s pretty banal stuff, but there are some hilarious letters printed. Before the Internet, writing fan letters must be how idiot 13 year olds got their kicks. Here are some of my favourites…

Here’s what I read. I read that Bill Cosby has all this Jell-O and Coke in his closets because  otherwise he’d be in trouble with the police and the government because he has to really use them like he says on the commercials.
- Alice, 12

How is it going to school with Rudy and Vanessa and all? It must be easy if you sometimes have to do second grade stuff with the little kids. I wouldn’t mind some of that.
- Andrew, 14

You are my eighteenth favorite star. Ahead of you is Lisa Bonet, Michael J. Fox, Michael Landon, Magic Johnson, Eric Dickerson, Pee Wee Herman, the guy from “Growing Pains,” ALF, Christie Brinkley, Bill Cosby, Bruce Springsteen, and some others I can’t remember.
- Aaron, 13

Ahhahahahahaha. That is so insulting. He doesn’t even know Kirk Cameron’s name, but he still likes him more than Mal-Jam.

Could you do something to let me know you got my letter. On the show, try to do this for me, wave or something, or say something about me because I never miss “The Cosby Show.” That’s my family show. Just say, “My friend Alan wrote me from Connecticut.”
-Alan, 11

My Cabbage Patch Kid is named after you. Theo, not Malcolm. I hope you don’t mind.
- Melissa, 10 

That is so 80s. 

Best fan letter ever: 

I wrote Michael Jackson and he wrote back and you’re not half as famous so I’m expecting you’ll write back, okay?
- Cody, 15

Have you ever wanted to date Lisa Bonet, and if you did how far did you and Lisa go? And did you ever think about dating Phylicia Rashad or is she just like a second mother to you?
- Jason, 15

That’s pretty desperate, Jason.

I like your show. I don’t watch it very much because I made a bet with my mom to not watch TV for a year for one hundred and fifty dollars. It ends on June the first.
- Dewey, 9

Who the hell makes a bet to abstain from watching TV for a year? He’s not even sticking to it, though, cos he still watches The Cosby Show, just not ‘very much’.

I changed my mind, this is the best fan letter ever:

Do you talk hoodlum? If you do, the next time I see you (like I’ve seen you before), I’m going to kick you in the neck and beat you with a chair. Hoodlum talk is ignorant.
- Gregory

Whoa. This guy certainly stands by his ideas about positive images of black youth.

Mal-Jam doesn’t care, though, cos he concludes the chapter this letter appeared in by saying:  

So, yo- let’s do ‘dis!

That that, Gregory! You don’t fuxtable with Theo Huxtable.

Here’s something of a confession from Mal: 

Fighting is a big part of growing up, at least for a guy. (After all, I can only speak from experience here.) Girls fight too. I see it all the time, and I guess it’s not so different.

He sees girls fight all the time? What kind of places was Bill Cosby taking Mal-Jam to after work?  

Sometimes I’m nervous about calling somebody up to go to a movie, or to hang out, whether it’s a guy or a girl.

There are some things even “The Cosby Show” can’t change. I thought that would be helpful for a lot of you to know.

I didn’t know Malcolm-Jamal Warner was bisexual, but there you go. More power to ya,  Mal-Jam.

Oh, and if you don’t know what this blog entry’s title is about, inflict some appropriate physical punishment on yourself for your lack of 80s TV knowledge, then watch this clip from The Cosby Show: 

The cartoon intro reviews seem like a hit, so here’s another one.

Anyone remember ‘Denver, The Last Dinosaur’? I know I watched this show way back when, but I really don’t remember much about it except for the awesome theme song. Enjoy:

Quite disturbing, in hindsight. As if the line ‘he’s my friend and a whole lot more’ wasn’t icky enough, the kids are seen frolicking with their dino buddy while that line is sung. Let’s see… last dinosaur, Cretaceous… 65 million… yep, that’d make Denver the First Pedophile, too.

The show came out at that time in the late 80s/early 90s when dinosaurs were HUGE, and I don’t mean that as a pun. They were everywhere. The Land Before Time, Dino-Riders, that ‘Dinosaurs’ sitcom that lasted for like three episodes, the Flintstones on home video… and then Jurassic Park came along and capped it all off in ‘93, proving once and for all that dinosaurs are fucking awesome.

The juxtaposition of neon lights and rock lettering on the logo is just too cool. It reminds me of those episodes of The Flintstones where they’d go to ’Bruce Springstone’ concerts in ‘Rock Vegas’. And those electric guitars/keytars look like they’re straight outta The Jetsons Movie.

I love that bit where they show the world of the dinosaurs, and the t-rex and parasaurolophus are snapping at each other as if they’re in some kind of prehistoric bar fight. That’s no contest, man. A parasaurolophus will FUCK YOU UP. More like P-Rex!

As I recall (not having seen an episode since I was like 5 years old), the show featured a bunch of multiracial stereotype kids (seriously… they were like doppelgangers of the Burger King Kids’ Club) who found Denver’s egg and hatched it. This relies on the time-honoured kids’ entertainment plot device whereby children who find aliens or dinosaurs or nuclear weapons don’t tell any adults about it, and instead just fuck around with it themselves.

The episodes all revolved around the kids helping Denver escape from some record producer whose intentions toward Denver were those of Carl Denham toward King Kong, all the while showing him a good time late 80s style. You know; skateboarding, fluoro clothing, pink sunglasses, bleach-blonde mullets, Walkmans with Van Halen mix-tapes in them…

I’m pretty sure that amongst all the extreme sports and hair metal there were various social and ecological messages in the show’s storylines. Denver was part of the same tradition to teach kids progressive values as Widget the World-Watcher and Captain Planet. Didn’t work, Mr. Turner! This generation turned out just as materialistic and unconcerned about social and environmental issues as our predecessors.

… I submit the greatest picture in human artistic history, since the first caveman drew a dick and some boobs on a cave wall for kicks:

The only way that could be any more 80s is if Eddie Murphy was to E.T’s left, and Mr. T was standing behind them with his hands on his hips, looking all menacing.

That’s from The E.T. Storybook, by the way, a fabled collector’s item which comes with a record (those big, black things that look like CDs) of Michael Jackson reading the story. I’ve yet to get my hands on a copy, but I just have to believe that the signal to turn a page is not a chime or a twinkle like other books-on-tape, but one of Michael’s trademark ‘hoooo’ cries.

Seriously, though- that twinkly chime sound is the stuff childhoods are made of.

My mum was in one of her twice-or-thrice-annual nostalgic moods tonight, so she had all our old photo albums spread out across the lounge room. This poring over photos may have something to do with my impending 21st birthday, and the threat that she's been making since I was about ten years old to print a picture of my naked tush in the bath in the birthdays section of the newspaper on my 21st. I don't really care; I don't even want a party for my 21st. Not a big deal to me.

Embarassing child nudity pics aside, though, I was pretty excited to see this happy snap that mum turned up:

Looks like I was having fun there. It's strange- I have never seen that photo before. I remember the Superfriends pyjamas, and that guitar (it only played an electronic rendition of "You Are My Sunshine"), but not together. I guess it's in about '88 or '89. That's pre-Turtles for me. A year later and I would've been wearing a Donatello costume to bed.

I'm a bit freaked out about the Superfriends thing, actually, in light of the terrible loss of Alex Toth on Saturday morning. I was just watching some episodes of Space Ghost on the Friday before his death, and now this picture of me in my Superfriends jammies shows up. Scary.