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25 nostalgic things you remember from a specific year or decade!

Started by retrorussell, June 30, 2022, 03:32:12 AM

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retrorussell

1977
1. No doubt the biggest bit of news of the year: Elvis Aron Presley buys the farm at only 42.  Years of letting his body just go to waste (and prescription drug abuse) did the King in.  This was one of those important announcements that would interrupt a show, where something like a word saying NEWSBREAK would appear onscreen and you'd hear typing going on in the background.  You'd be like, "Uh oh.. what happened?"
2. My first year of grade school, at Garden Home School.  I was a cute kid but very shy and insecure.. girls in my classes would totally take advantage of me and treat me like dirt.
3. The Bee Gees' little brother Andy charts his first of 3 #1's: "I Just Want To Be Your Everything".
4. I remember being sad that THE JOKER'S WILD ended in 1975.  That is, until it was brought back in syndication 2 years later!  I loved the show so much I dreamed multiple times that I owned a lever and the 3 slides in my bedroom.  I always loved Jack Barry, despite the scandals of the '50s.
5. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is not surprisingly a smashing success at the box office-- it made a major star out of John Travolta (moreso than his initial exposure on WELCOME BACK KOTTER)-- due to the disco craze being in full swing.  Its soundtrack is just as much a hit if not more.  Even as little kids we laughed at how ridiculous the "point" dance was.  I always nicknamed him "John Revolta".
6. BLAZERMANIA!  RIP CITY!  Etc.  The Portland Trailblazers win their only championship.  Big redhead Bill Walton has a series to remember as they storm back from a 2-0 deficit to knock off Dr. J and Daryl Dawkins and the Philadelphia 76ers in the title game.  I was too young to really grasp the importance this had on my city but I did read the papers.  A parade went near Pioneer Square downtown with fashion nightmare Jack Ramsey grinning ear to ear.  My dad's rusty old Suburban had one of those stick-on wagging fingers that said RIP CITY on the back.
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7. Beloved comic Groucho Marx died.  It was sad to see him interviewed on talk shows like The Mike Douglas Show and others where he was clearly winding down.
8. A ton of smash hits debuted this year: THE LOVE BOAT, CHIPS, FANTASY ISLAND, INCREDIBLE HULK, SOAP, EIGHT IS ENOUGH, HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES, LOU GRANT, LIFE AND TIMES OF GRIZZLY ADAMS, FISH, JAMES AT 16/17, SHA NA NA, etc.
9. We watched the hell out of THE NEW ADVENTURES OF BATMAN.  Good to hear old Adam West and Burt Ward voicing their characters.  Not a big fan of Batmite.  Batgirl was quite the hottie!
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10. Oh man.. LOVED the LAFF-A-LYMPICS!  A Hanna-Barbera all-star extravaganza up the wazoo-- with an Olympics theme!  All the classic characters including the famous 70s ones (Jabberjaw, Captain Caveman, Hong Kong Phooey, etc.).
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11. The prototype for the awesome PRESS YOUR LUCK (1983-86) is the rather cool and technically impressive SECOND CHANCE.  I was freaked out by the "wank" noise by the devil when a player landed on one (yes, devils and not whammies, but they did the same thing).
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12. I remember watching the rather dumb SKATEBIRDS (a cartoon variety show with some live-action sequences) and C.B. BEARS (another cartoon variety show).  I actually kind of liked THE ROBONIC STOOGES cartoon on the Skatebirds show.
13. 2 commercial jets collide over the Tenerife, Canary Islands; over 500 die.
14. Led Zeppelin sets a then-record for indoor stadium attendance for a concert at the Pontiac Silverdome.
15. STAR WARS!  We saw this at the Family Drive-in.  I remember we drank Fresca and I got freaked out by the severed hand that Obi Wan cut off.
16. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was also really big-- we saw that at the same drive in.  Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo...
17. A coup attempt in Angola leads to thousands of deaths.
18. Apple II computers go on sale.
19. The US Department Of Energy is created.
20. The Atari 2600/VCS is released!
21. 3 members of band Lynyrd Skynyrd die in a plane crash, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant.
22. The Sex Pistols' awesome album NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE'S THE SEX PISTOLS is released.
23. Peter Finch receives a posthumous Oscar for NETWORK.
24. Oscar winner Joan Crawford dies.
25. Marc Bolan of the band T-REX dies in a car crash.  It's said that his tires were improperly inflated by a gas station that led to his accident.
"O the legend they say, on a Valentine's Day, is a curse that'll live on and on.."

ER

Memories of 1992

1.   Talk about lucky, in 1992 mob boss John Gotti got room and board for life---plus round the clock security----all for free!

2.   The HAL 9000 was said to have come into existence on January 12, 1992, and NPR marked the event with a segment I heard on the way to church. When I got there the line for confession was so long I just went back to my mother, who was kneeling at her pew with her eyes closed. I recall all this because I have a tormenting condition called parahyperthymesia, which was first suspected in me that same month in 1992. When I was eighteen I would almost marry a man who had synesthesia, which left him hearing colors and smelling noises. Imagine if we'd had kids.

3.   The Cartoon Network began, and The Cosby Show went off the air, though true to form, I'd never watched a single episode. Besides, The Simpsons came on opposite Cosby for a while, so it was no contest there. I did used to watch Unsolved Mysteries with my best friend, Gina, which her ten-year-old brother, Mark, always called "Uncircumcised Mysteries" just to bug her. I thought it was funny.


4.   Silicone breast implants were deemed unsafe by the FDA, though my cousin still got them right after she turned eighteen that year. When she came around and showed them off poolside, I told her, "I think you looked better before, Dee." (Which I think is true of most women who get bust enhancements.) This remark made me have to duck a chlorine tablet tossed at my forehead. Later she'd have the silicone removed and get (even larger) saline implants.


5.   During her "annus horribilis" the Queen's home, Windsor Castle, caught fire and took extensive damage. What's more, her sons' marriages fell apart, and Scott Thompson quit impersonating her. Poor Queen.

6.   I was alone in my basement while my parents had a party, and a man named Dane, some guest's date she barely knew, came down and said grossly inappropriate things to me. I finally told him I was thirteen and he backed off and said he thought I was seventeen. (What?) After my embarrassment died down, I told my parents, though Dane denied everything to the police. My grandpa offered to go shoot him, which was a kind gesture.


7.   Around this time the heavyweight boxing champion who was the future star of Mike Tyson Mysteries---sorry, I'm drawing a blank on his name---went to prison for raping a beauty contestant.

8.   Because my mom was always a half-hour late to pick me up from school (no buses) I was standing in the lobby one day in seventh grade while an after-hours faculty party was being prepared in the cafeteria, and that twelfth-grade intern who'd bedazzled my hormones was helping set it up. He asked if I wanted a piece of cake while I waited, but cautioned: "This is Catholic school, so of course it'll be plain white cake with plain white icing and be very, very plain tasting. The plainest cake ever baked in the ovens of mankind." I took the slice he cut for me home carefully wrapped in cellophane and let it sit on my desk all summer, sometimes staring at it like a holy relic, wondering what parts of the plastic his fingers had rested upon. I don't think it ever occurred to me to eat the darn thing.


9.   Dan Quayle's "Murphy Brown" speech created buzz for all the wrong reasons, but did virally blur lines between fiction and reality in ways that were ahead of its time.

10.   A bunch of doves got engulfed in the fires of the Olympic torch on live TV in the opening ceremony in Barcelona. I was watching as the flames erupted all over the birds roosting there, and turned and said to my mom, "Uh, they all flew away, right?" She said quickly, "Of course." Yeah, right, those doves got crisped. (Correction: I think what I saw was a replay of doves getting fried at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, since I can't find a reference to it happening in Barcelona, just Seoul, but I do remember watching doves burn up during the Olympics that year.)


11.   During riots following the acquittal of LAPD officers, whom all but the blind could see had criminally beaten Rodney King, Korean store owners proved looters could be deterred with guns. I remember one of those nights Sean Penn was on Arsenio, in an otherwise empty studio, while outside the city was burning.

12.   My dad's job took him away for five weeks that fall, and though it had happened fairly often as I grew up, sometimes for much longer times, I never got used to it. We couldn't know where he was going, we couldn't know when he'd be back, we couldn't communicate with him for any reason, and I not only missed him, I worried about him. In my childhood when my brother Daniel died as a newborn, we couldn't reach my dad to tell him, and he was not at the funeral, where my mom, burying her second baby in three years, barely held together. I got mad at my mom when she left my dad and went "home" when I was sixteen, and it took years to realize that the question wasn't why she left, but how she lasted as long as she did.


13.   While visiting my overseas grandparents that summer, I first read The Haunting of Hill House still a favorite. It was Stephen King in Danse Macabre who pointed me toward it at a time when King had been the author I was into more than any other, and who spoke with the voice of God when it came to book recommendations.

14.   Julia Child turned eighty, and PBS ran an all-day "birthday party" for her with a French Chef marathon. If you donated a hundred dollars you got your name added in calligraphy onto a three-foot tall card being sent to Julia Child on behalf of the station. Hearing that, I asked my mom if we could donate and she said we could, so I have always hoped when Julia Child opened the card at her house, she saw our names somewhere inside, wishing her happy birthday.

15.   It was Bush, Clinton, and Perot vying for the most dangerous job in America, and in '92 most news maps showed Democratic states in red and Republican ones in blue, which if you ponder it made more sense. I'd rarely seen my dad happier than when Bush lost Clinton won.

16.   To raise money for AIDS research, the Monday after Easter there was a Freddie Mercury tribute concert in London, watched by a billion people worldwide. It was the biggest concert ever, excepting Live Aid seven years earlier, where Queen had dazzled in the same stadium.

17.   On the subject of AIDS, Isaac Asimov fell victim to the disease in 1992, contracted following a blood transfusion, though the fact that this caused his death, initially explained as organ failure, would be hidden for another ten years.

18.   I had my cousin Allie over to swim, and she asked if I wanted to see something cool, then twisted open an ink pen and showed me that the inside was filled with cocaine. "Awesome, huh?" she said. But I didn't think so. Eventually that s**t almost killed her. Me, my one drug experience in 1992 came when I chugged a two-liter of Crystal Pepsi and didn't quit talking the rest of the day because of all the caffeine.

19.   A public school boy in my neighborhood got ahold of a copy of Madonna's book Sex, the publication of which created a predictable media storm in '92. He tried to get me to look at it with him while I was at his house watching him play Nintendo, but I wouldn't. When he held the open book up to my face, revealing something lurid, I called him an "eye raper" and went home.

20.   Pearl Jam's Jeremy video was a much-talked about and much-aired teenage cultural milestone of 1992. My mom told me she'd leave it up to me as to whether I watched it at my friend's house (we didn't have cable and only had one TV set), but said she hoped I didn't. Well of course I did and failed to see why anyone would make a big deal about it, so I told my mom I thought it was way worse to watch a war movie where lots of people got shot, than a video about one kid shooting himself. She agreed but asked if I thought either made for nice subject matter. Well, no....


21.   In eighth-grade philosophy I had one of my favorite teachers, a genuine monk named Brother Smith, who was hilarious. He introduced me to G.K. Chesterton, and it was to him that I first came out at my school as an agnostic. (Administration cared less than I was hoping.) He said most people outgrew agnosticism and was sure I would too, which I thought was condescending, and told my favorite college student so during one of our many long distance talks. He looked the subject up at the University of Michigan's library, and read where an encyclopedia said being an agnostic was more common in people under forty. Whatever. Anyway, Brother Smith and Brian were basically right, I came to believe in God, just would not always be God's biggest fan.

22.   While we were in a strip-mall Korean nail parlor where I was told no one spoke English, Dana, who was always telling me I needed to develop "the art of not giving a goddamn" demonstrated as we got manicures by loudly saying that losing her virginity at thirteen back in 1987 had felt like ripping the quick off a fingernail, "only worse." A fascinatingly disturbing topic to my young ears, but then she went into this rant about how she'd take any bet that despite what I thought I'd never get through high school a virgin, because: "You're the type you have to watch." I kept glancing around at the Korean ladies, wondering if they knew what she was saying, but Dana shook her head and waved my unspoken concerns away, so I huffed back this sanctimonious spiel about how I'd also take any bet that she cared to make that I would indeed finish high school a virgin no matter what she thought she knew about me, so there! After my speech the Korean ladies looked at me and started to laugh, and I found out Dana knew these women personally and all spoke English just fine.

23.   Johnny Carson retired after thirty years on The Tonight Show, and a girl from school named Kate taped the final show because she said it was "history." This same Kate had a scar on her lower back that gossip said resulted from a vestigial tail being removed when she was a baby. I often heard that said but she hotly insisted she got it sliding into a rock on a creek bank, which Occam's Razor suggests was probably the truth, darnit.


24.   I was having dinner with my grandparent one spooky autumn night down the road from where one of the most tragic nightclub fires in US history had happened in the '70s. By coincidence, I'd just watched Sightings, a paranormal show, about the location of the fire, which researchers claimed was overrun with demons drawn by the tragedy. In daytime that seemed silly, but it was night, the restaurant was almost empty, and when I walked alone down this long shadowy hall to the restroom, I started remembering that show, and ran back to our table. When I confessed to my grandma what had gotten into me, she said, "Oh, dollbaby, do you want me to walk with you?" The shame of my grandma escorting me to the loo overpowered my fear, I did go alone, but it was the most nervous pee I'd take for years.

25.   I got my first job, working at Blue Chip Cookies, where (overpriced) gourmet sweets were made and sold. All the manager said when she hired me was, "You're obviously under eighteen, so you can only work certain hours." Doing two hours after school three times a week for $4.50 an hour, around twenty bucks a week, was fine by me. It wasn't a bad job, I weighed and boxed cookies for mostly nice customers, but after only being there about a fortnight the manager came to me holding my tax forms and said, "Are you seriously only thirteen?" I admitted I was, and she said, "If you were looking for a job I figured you were at least in high school, but I can't have someone your age working here." And just like that I was back among the unemployed. For the record, I think I looked a little older than my age, and had a way of speaking and presenting myself more maturely than most middle school kids did, so I guess she'd assumed I was two or three years older. Blue Chip Cookies soon went out of business anyway.

And that was 1992!

What does not kill me makes me stranger.

retrorussell

1978:
1. A promising start for the defending champs, my Portland Trailblazers, crashed when several key players, including Walton and Lucas, went down with injuries.  The 50-10 start that season (!) ended with a 58-24 finish and a playoff loss to the Sonics.  I remember yelling "DAMN IT!" as the Sonics won the final game and my mother was positively mortified.
2. HALLOWEEN becomes, at the time, the most successful independent film and makes Jamie Lee Curtis a star and John Carpenter's career takes off.
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3. Because it was rated PG my mom dropped my sisters and I off at the Joy Theater in Tigard to watch INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.  Holy crap were we traumatized!
4. We had a couple major ice storms in the late 70s, starting in 1978.  I remember waiting for the bus and getting pelted with marble-sized hail!  Also, power lines were hanging low with long icicles.  I remember walking with my mom once and she freaked when she saw me trying to break off one!
5. The final film with Bruce Lee is GAME OF DEATH, which he had started 5 years before, then died early in production.  Seeing Bruce fight 7'2 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was something else!
6. Other big flicks were UP IN SMOKE, LORD OF THE RINGS (which we also saw at the Joy Theater), SUPERMAN, DEATH ON THE NILE, EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, JAWS 2, THE WIZ, THE DEER HUNTER, WATERSHIP DOWN, ANIMAL HOUSE, HEAVEN CAN WAIT, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, DAMIEN: OMEN II, and of course..
7. GREASE is the word!  Olivia Newton-John (OMG was she hot) and hyena-grinning John Travolta star in a crazy 50s musical.  Hit singles released from the film included "Summer Nights", "Grease", "Hopelessly Devoted To You", "You're The One That I Want" and "Greased Lightnin'".
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8. Scumbag director Roman Polanski exiles to France after pleading guilty to sex with a 13-year old.
9. The Afghan War begins when the Afghanistan President and his family are murdered.
10. The first comic strip of GARFIELD is published.
11. Massive earthquake in Tabas, Iran kills around 15,000.
12. Pope John Paul's papacy only lasts 33 days when he is found dead at 65.
13. Jonestown: Reverend Jim Jones leads his People's Temple into a mass-suicide in Guyana; 918 die.
14. George Moscone, mayor of San Francisco, is assassinated.  His replacement, Dianne Feinstein, is the first woman to take that job.
15. Serial killer John Wayne Gacy is arrested.
16. SPACE INVADERS debuts; it is a worldwide smash and causes a yen shortage in its native Japan.
17. TV show debuts: DALLAS, TAXI, DIFF'RENT STROKES, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, WKRP IN CINCINNATI, MORK & MINDY, VEGAS, 20/20, THE INCREDIBLE HULK (the 1977 version was a pilot movie), KIDS ARE PEOPLE TOO, and THE WHITE SHADOW.
18. Plenty of game shows to make me happy: TIC TAC DOUGH returns with a very new look, a very mean dragon and really revitalized Wink Martindale's career.  Also loved the giant cards of CARD SHARKS and the fact that players could now roll the dice on their own on THE NEW HIGH ROLLERS.  And of course, MATCH GAME '78 and MATCH GAME PM.
19. Cartoons: THE ALL NEW POPEYE HOUR, BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, CHALLENGE OF THE SUPERFRIENDS, DINKY DOG (I remember that one!), BUFORD/THE GALLOPING GHOST, FANGFACE, GALAXY GOOF UPS, and YOGI'S SPACE RACE.
20. The Washington Bullets (now Wizards) win their only title thus far, in a close 7 game series against the Sonics.
21. The only Super Bowl to award 2 MVPs in one game: Harvey Martin and Randy White, both Defensive Linemen for Dallas as the Cowboys beat Denver 27-10.
22. Leon Spinks beats Muhammad Ali for the world heavyweight title, then loses it back to Ali later this year.  It's the first time a boxer has won the title a total of 3 times.
23. The Yankees win back-to-back World Series titles.
24. The Montreal Canadiens win their 3rd straight title! (they would make it a 4-peat in 1979)
25. Mini series/made for tv movies: DARK SECRET OF HARVEST HOME, A CHRISTMAS TO REMEMBER, DEVIL DOG: THE HOUND OF HELL, THE INITIATION OF SARAH, KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK, RESCUE FROM GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, STRANGER IN OUR HOUSE, SOMEONE'S WATCHING ME!, and... THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL.
"O the legend they say, on a Valentine's Day, is a curse that'll live on and on.."

ER

Hey, retrorussell, do years from past lives count?  Like:

Memories of 1102 AD

That darn knight I married went off to the crusades and left me stuck in the castle with the kids and his mother. Things were so much better last life in Babylon....

What does not kill me makes me stranger.

retrorussell

Quote from: ER on July 22, 2022, 10:59:47 PM
Hey, retrorussell, do years from past lives count?  Like:

Memories of 1102 AD

That darn knight I married went off to the crusades and left me stuck in the castle with the kids and his mother. Things were so much better last life in Babylon....


There could be a separate thread on that I suppose..
A little too "Shirley McClaine-y" for me, personally..
"O the legend they say, on a Valentine's Day, is a curse that'll live on and on.."

ER

Memories of 1990

1.   On January 1, 1990, I wrote a list of questions to myself for me to answer on New Year's day 2000, and kept it in safe place til I answered the questions ten years later. Lotta water passed under the bridge between those times.

2.   The '90s were fast out of the gate, and it was like they were determined to kill off the '80s as soon as possible. In January the Simpsons left their '80s home, The Tracey Ullman Show, and before 1990 was done, '80s hair metal had spun toward decline, Mike Tyson had lost his championship belt, Yuppie role model Donald Trump had gone broke, and the Cold War came to an end, really screwing up '80s action movie franchises.

3.   The Berlin Wall was brought down, and in the true spirit of capitalism, pieces of it were sold as souvenirs. Germany soon reunited, and things seemed to be going the right way.


4.   After promising that we could read his lips, no new taxes, President Bush raised taxes. He did give an anti-drug talk broadcast live in every school in America, and we were grateful it got us out of fifth grade class when they rebroadcast it to us in one of our DARE sessions about a year later. He compared saving one of our friends from drugs to a boy on the beach saving individual starfish lost at low tide. I thought it was a sweet comparison, but most kids I knew smirked.

5.   The Hubble telescope began its mission, and people never looked at the universe the same way again. A cosmonaut who went to space once said he didn't see God there, but Hubble may have shown us God's dazzling handiwork.

6.   During Lent my friend's eight-year-old brother had to do a report about the Holy Roman Martyrs, and I gave him some help with it, so between us the paper went full-on blood and gore and had the martyrs death-rattling as they got their limbs chewed off by lions in the Coliseum. When his teacher gave him his paper back she reminded him of the word "Holy" in the assignment and graded it an F for all the upside-down crucifixions and pregnant saints being burned alive while their insides got torn out by elephants. He was so proud of that F...


7.   Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister, a job she'd held since 1979. Sometimes it seemed Thatcher was a little too enamored with being disliked, but today many say her far-right policies were a blueprint for stepping off a path that was leading the UK toward socialism.

8.   A long-planned tunnel linking Britain and France was completed, though the actual Chunnel would not open for traffic for four more years.


9.   Magic-Eye books were cool because they let you view 3-D images without glasses, and I spent several sessions with one trying to see the pictures supposedly hidden behind what looked like visual noise. Finally a pyramid and camels and palm trees leaped out at me from the gibberish, and I was hooked.

10.   MC Hammer's Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em opened a door to Vanilla Ice's song Ice, Ice, Baby, which had a riff that tried to piggyback on Queen/Bowie's Under Pressure. EMI's lawyers soon noticed. Thankfully Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares To U got lots of radio play and was a pretty song.


11.   That May, Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Junior died on the same day, and you could hear how that tragedy affected Kermit, because he never sounded the same after that.

12.   On Memorial Day, my parents and I heard Desmond Tutu give a speech downtown, then we went to a farm belonging to a friend of my dad's where there was a pig roast, which I found a VERY disturbing sight and promptly became a vegetarian.


13.   The first time I saw Edward Scissorhands I was blasé, but it grew on me. Ghost I thought was boring except for the psychopomps that dragged the screaming dead away. Misery was one of my first experiences with seeing a movie based on a book I'd read. Home Alone was mega-popular in 1990, so I disdained it.

14.   Dana (yeah, gotta mention you and keep the streak going) went through a stage of worshipping Sylvia Plath and trying to get me to connect with her. She told me this long, dramatic, somber account of Plath gassing herself in her kitchen, and I asked, "Did her family keep cooking in that oven?" Dana F-bombed me and asked what that had to do with things, but you know, I still wonder if they did.


15.   My mom was still in her twenties for the first half of the year and had great taste in music. I was two years from teen rebellion and I liked music she liked, making her my introduction to some great bands, like Love and Rockets, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Kate Bush, Concrete Blonde, k.d. lang, Queen, and above all, U2. She and I would crank up the stereo downstairs and dance and dance.

16.   My Aunt Christie went to Italy and brought me back a stone picked up from Mount Vesuvius to add to my collection of rocks and soil from all around the planet. Also in '90 she took me to a Democratic fundraising event where Tipper Gore and John Glenn spoke, and in general she seemed closer to me than to her daughter, my cousin Allie, who was awful to my aunt in so many ways. Aunt Christie would be a hugely influential presence in my life til I was thirty-six, and she was a great person.


17.   I started reading Stephen King in a big way that year and when ABC made a two-part movie out of IT, I taped it and rewatched it often. (I was SO GLAD the series left out "that one part.")

18.   My grandpa took my cousin Jared and me to the World Series in October, where he bought fourteen-year-old Jared a beer that got him tipsy enough to stand up on his seat and cheer. I had more fun seeing normally reserved Jared be red-cheeked and goofy than I did watching what back then was still the biggest sporting event in America. Grandpa's  team swept, by the way.


19.   I saw an episode of Twin Peaks, and it awed me. It was doing things like no other show I'd ever seen, and had the best music I'd ever heard on TV. I went home and raved about it, and my normally permissive dad said, "That show with the murdered girl wrapped up in plastic and the town full of weirdoes? I don't think an eleven year old should be watching that." I protested I was almost twelve, but no dice. Thus did Twin Peaks became forbidden fruit to me. When I finally did watch it in the future it didn't seem as good, and many things are like that, letdowns from what you imagine they'll be. (Except for fire and ice cheesecake, which I first had in 1990, and which remains awesome.)

20.   Ken Burns' The Civil War, shown on PBS, seemed something almost everyone I knew watched, leaving me griping to my dad that seeing a TV show about 640,000 deaths was fine, but watching Twin Peaks about one dead girl was verboten? (He spoke German, so I slipped in that word, you see.) Comparing the body counts of war movies with those of other types of shows was an argument I'd use over and over in the near future, as I've mentioned, since I thought I was being original and was rather proud of my logic.


21.   An expert predicted the New Madrid fault near the Mississippi River would slip on December 3rd and cause a quake like the one in 1811 that'd knocked the President out of bed in the White House halfway across the country. Cities were forecast to collapse, millions to die, and we had to live with that hanging over us for months til December 3rd came and went and no quake happened, so to my crushing disappointment I had to take my mid-term exams after all.

22.   Once AGAIN, I didn't see or talk to my dad for nearly all of the last six weeks of the year, and hated it, so I wrote him a long, sad, bitter letter, emptying my innermost soul and telling him I loathed his job and how much of his only child's life he was irreplaceably missing. When he got back at Christmastime I was so glad to see him that I put the letter away and wouldn't show him til I got a bright idea in 1995 when I was mad at him for (rightly) bringing me back to focus when I had gotten out of control. (Not with drink or drugs, just with the way I was being about a lot of things.) In 1995 he read this letter from the past that I hoped would break his heart, but with the maddening patience he was showing me even as he curtailed my life to the point of taking away almost everything, he said, "Honey, my mother is dying, my wife left me, my daughter is trying to go on a hunger strike, and I'm in a fight with my sister who wants to sue me down to the shirt on my back for something you did, so sorry but your emoting from 1990 doesn't wound me like you want it to." And he was right, teenaged me had really wanted to use the sadness of my sweet little eleven year old self to torture him into easing up on me in '95, but the man was just too smart.


23.   That Christmas I was given the thing I wanted more than anything except selective invisibility, this composite Prince "sweet spot" tennis racquet like Martina Navratilova used, and I was SO happy! Ironically it would be a fall onto the handle of that same racquet during an overly-ambitious on-court dive four years later that would cause a freakish internal injury that'd nearly kill me. After that the once-worshipped racquet took on a malevolent aura so that I didn't even like looking at it. I was also never as good a tennis player again.

24.   Two days after Christmas we got seven inches of snow, so Rachel and Gina and Mark and I made forts and had flung-snow battles into the late night, even tossing snowballs to Rachel's dog, Mercury, who could catch anything. Then the day after that it was seventy degrees, leaving me sunburned. It was strange weather, even for where we lived, which lies below a shifting jet stream boundary.


25.   What could be bigger in a remembrance of 1990 than Operation Desert Shield? Even the East Bloc falling in on itself didn't seem quite as intimately pressed into everyday life as the nation going to war for the first time in a generation. Newspapers were forecasting months of conflict and thousands of US deaths, maybe even a nuclear war if Saddam used chemical weapons on Israel like he vowed he would. As 1990 waned I remember everyone held their breath and hoped for the best, not knowing the greatest decade of modern times lay ahead.

And that was 1990.


What does not kill me makes me stranger.

RCMerchant

2001-
I remember 9/11. I was at work and saw the Twin Towers get hit by an airplane on TV in the office, when I was going outside at break to have a smoke. I left for home and turned on the TV. My brother Richie was outside sitting on the back porch. I called my Ma to make sure she didn't go to Manhattan that morning. She could see the smoke from Long Island.
Supernatural?...perhaps. Baloney?...Perhaps not!" Bela Lugosi-the BLACK CAT (1934)
Interviewer-"Does Dracula ever end for you?
Lugosi-"No. Dracula-never ends."
Slobber, Drool, Drip!
https://www.tumblr.com/ronmerchant

retrorussell

1982:
1. I think it was this Christmas that I got a Texas Instruments 99 (TI-99)!  Cool computer for its time with  BASIC programming and cassette memory.  Didn't have a printer, monitor or floppy drive but still had fun with it and had it hooked up to an old B&W tv.

2. Also got this cool handheld for that same Christmas: EPOCH-MAN!  It was a neat combination of Pac-Man type LCD game, stopwatch, calendar, clock and alarm!  I got one from a Gaming Convention in recent years!

3. Loved this album at the time, since I was big on video games:

4. The Tylenol scare!  7 die in the Chicago area from cyanide poisoning in Tylenol capsules.
5. One of the most celebrated teen comedies of all time is FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH.  It sends multiple young actors' careers off and running (especially Sean Penn's) but Ray Walston's performance as Mr. Hand is what really drives the movie IMHO.  Also brought the Cars song MOVING IN STEREO into our conscience with the "emerging from the pool" scene.
6. Jason Voorhees gets his iconic hockey mask for the first time in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III- IN 3D.
7. My stepmom who I did not always get along with (and moved out years later because of this) I must admit did throw great birthday parties.  I had ALL the kids I knew from school over.  I remember my birthday cake saying PAC MAN FEVER on it!  Waka waka!
8. My stepmom  I also must credit for a great system of getting me to improve my schoolwork which started this year: a list of things to make sure I did for a whole month (like get A's, have zero missing assignments, get 100% on quizzes, etc.) and I would get rewarded with a new Atari game!
9. Falklands War: Argentine forces take over the Falkland Islands; they are retaken by the British later this year.
10. Big hits I remember enjoying at the time included MICKEY, CENTERFOLD, GLORIA, MANEATER, WHO CAN IT BE NOW, BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG, ROSANNA, and EYE OF THE TIGER.
11. Speaking of EYE OF THE TIGER, it's Rocky vs. Mr. T in ROCKY III!  Surprisingly decent flick.
12. Isreal invades Lebanon.
13. Beloved family sci-fi classic E.T. debuts.  I had to wait a while to see it after its release; the lines to the theater went on for BLOCKS.
14. A big musical celebrity event occurs in Central Park: The Nuclear Disarmament Rally.  Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt play for 750,000.
15. Korean religious leader The Reverend Sun Myung Moon is sentenced to 18 months in jail and $25,000 for tax evasion/conspiracy to obstruct justice.
16. Poor ol' Vic Morrow.. during the filming of TWILIGHT ZONE.. THE MOVIE a pyrotechnic effect causes a helicopter to malfunction and kill the veteran actor and 2 child actors.
17. Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel is assassinated in Beirut.  This leads to the Lebanese Civil War in which thousands of Palestinians are killed.
18. Princess Grace of Monaco (formerly Grace Kelly) is killed in a car crash in Monaco.
19. An NFL strike by the players cuts the regular season down to 9 games.
20. Crazy finish between California and Stanford:  Assuming Stanford has won, the Stanford marching band gets on the field during a kick return by Cal.  However, with 5 laterals, Cal pushes through the band and into the end zone to win!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1
21. THRILLER!  The epic album, and the video directed by John Landis!

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1
22. The first computer virus-- the ELK CLONER-- infects Apple II computers via floppy disk.
23. Some famous deaths: PAUL LYNDE, VICTOR BUONO, HANS CONREID, THELONIOUS MONK, LEE STRASBERG, JOHN BELUSHI, RANDY RHOADS, WARREN OATES, CARL ORFF, ROMY SCHNEIDER, RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER, SATCHEL PAIGE, KING KHALID OF SAUDI ARABIA, CURT JURGENS, HENRY FONDA, INGRID BERGMAN, KEN BOYER, CRISWELL, FERNANDO LAMAS, DOMINIQUE DUNNE, JACUES TATI, MARTY FELDMAN, MARTY ROBBINS, WILL LEE (Mr. Hooper on Sesame St.), JACK WEBB.
24. The San Francisco 49ers win their first Super Bowl!
25. Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini KOs Duk Koo Kim, who dies 4 days later from sustained injuries.
"O the legend they say, on a Valentine's Day, is a curse that'll live on and on.."

ER

Memories of 2007

1.   Landon---my future husband/long-term partner in quaint mayhem---spent new year's day wondering along with me what was up at the party we'd been to the night before in the gaslight district, at the 19th century house of a Russian man and his American wife who said they worshipped "all higher powers including Satan." They did this bizarre rite at the stroke of midnight to ask that "the spirits" give all of us a good year.

2.   In the news, Bob Barker stepped down on The Price is Right; the iPhone became the latest must-have; Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair; for a while Lonelygirl15 had YouTubers thinking they were watching a girl raised by a death cult; Twilight was briefly bigger than Harry Potter; and MySpace was still top dog in social media, though not for much longer.


3.   The greatest headline in the history of mankind followed a would-be terrorist attack on the Glasgow, Scotland airport. It read: "I Kicked A Burning Terrorist So Hard In The Balls I Broke A Tendon In My Foot." Truly a hero for our times, though as I said back then, just imagine if the order of the two body parts had been rearranged in that sentence.

4.   As for women in politics in '07, Hillary Clinton was aiming for the Oval Office, and Nancy Pelosi was elected as first female Speaker of the House, but sadly former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto met a violent death. I always thought she had pretty eyes.

5.   GWB announced the "surge" in Iraq. It played well at home, while elsewhere lots of people died for short-term gains. I went to two funerals that winter of men who otherwise might have survived the conflict, but for the surge they were removed from their regular positions and reassigned with front line military units where they did not belong. Not everyone who deserves a star on the wall gets a star on the wall. Not by a longshot. The wall should be full of stars.

6.   Shifting gears, The Deathly Hallows finally revealed Harry Potter's fate, while onscreen The Order of the Phoenix let us see ol' Dumbledore was a badass!

7.   After video of a young man's bad afternoon went viral, people went around merrily exclaiming: "Don't taze me, bro!"


8.   Juno made anyone ever knocked up as a teenager wonder why her experience wasn't as sweet as it looked onscreen. Hmph!

9.   I liked Borat on Da Ali G. Show, and laughed myself silly during the movie, but looking back the whole stunt seems like a mean-spirited betrayal of trust and hospitality. Eh, you live, you learn.


10.   Landon and I traveled a bunch in our last child-less year. We spent three weeks wandering New Zealand, and did another week in Los Angeles. We also went to Mackinac Island, Houston, Cleveland, Portland, Oregon, Milwaukee, Chicago, Memphis, Birmingham, and Mobile. Passing through New York on another trip I saw Annie Leibovitz.

11.   I was in a car with Clare, who pointed to a man in a Blink-182 shirt inside Taco Bell with his friends, and told me he'd once been a jerk to her, so I told her, wait here. I went in and said to the man, oh, hey, you're Rich, right? Then started talking away while he tried to place how he knew me. (He didn't.) Finally I said how mean some (non-existent) girl named Jill had been to him, having had no right to dump him and make fun of him to everybody just because he happened to have a small penis. Rich's friends were suddenly all ears as I went on saying nobody even likes Jill, and it's not his fault his penis is small. He started ranting at me, and I said, fine, look, I don't blame you for still being sensitive about the way Jill treated you for your small penis, but you're being rude to me, Rich. As I left I heard him telling his friends he didn't know any Jill, and what I said about his anatomy wasn't true. When I told Clare what I'd done, she was appalled but still laughed driving back. Hey, if I love you, I'll do anything for you.

12.   I had a pass that got me into critics-only screenings of several movies that year, including The Good German. Funny to see people taking notes while watching a movie. With the pass I also saw 300 with all its oiled, shirtless men, and described it as a gay fantasy flick. For some reason straight guys didn't seem to appreciate my insight.


13.   My buddy Rob married his girlfriend Tara in a Norse pagan wedding which included a fertility rite in the name of the goddess Freya; very soon they were endowed with a son. In fact babies dominated 2007. My best friend Gina got married and soon was expecting my goddaughter Courtney. Clare got pregnant with my future and badly-named godson Brian. Another friend of mine, Mandy, added a little girl to her big Mormon family. And Greg, a sweet boy who'd doted on me in college like no other guy ever doted on me, told me he and his wife were likewise expecting a little boy. Must've been something in the air that year, huh?

14.   The Sopranos finale was kinda messed-up; streaming on Netflix and Hulu became a thing; so did Amazon's Kindle; Keith Richards bragged about snorting his dead dad's ashes, setting the bar higher for grieving sons everywhere; and New England sports fans got championships by the Red Sox and the Celtics (who really should learn to pronounce that name right).


15.   I went to many plays that year, including taking Tyler, then age eight, to see The Lion King on stage. He spent a lot of that summer with me, and it was the first time I ever really let myself think Dana might have been onto something in picking up signs that Tyler was not going to grow up arrow-straight.

16.   A writer's strike paralyzed scripted TV and led to such bizarre programming as Conan O'Brien spinning his wedding ring on a desk.


17.   Boris Yeltsin died, as did Anna Nicole Smith and writer David Halberstam, whose three-inch thick cultural history of the 1950s I'd been reading all year. Another sad death in 2007 was Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, who had millions pulling for him after he broke his leg. Outrageous internet rumors of Elmer's releasing a commemorative Barbaro glue turned out to be fake news.

18.   A mid-air collision between two small planes resulted in wreckage...and pieces of the pilots...falling partly onto my Mom's co-worker's roof and lawn. It was so bad he proclaimed he couldn't live there anymore, moved in with his boyfriend, and put the house up for sale.


19.   A twenty-year-old Wisconsin man received probation and counseling after he was arrested for having sex with a dead horse (not Barbaro!) and later a dead whitetail deer.

20.    I did a DNA test to see where my ancestors came from and along with the expected bits it showed up traces from the Indus Valley, from Berbers of North Africa, Basques from Iberia, a marker in Syria, and another in Tuscany, revealing how much humans in the past moved around and got to know one another.

21.   At forty-seven my mom had a mammogram for the first time, which not only found zero cancer, but the technician, an English lady who reminded Mom of Sharon Osborne, told her she had the breast firmness of a twenty-five year old. I was not only relieved for my mom's healthy result but took the nurse's firmness comment as a hopeful forecast for my own future.

22.   I didn't care for The Hills, but credit where it's due, Lauren Conrad definitely knew how to rock some cool braids. I tried to duplicate a few around this time, and usually failed. Another failure in 2007 was when I took a class in Sufi dancing and was told if you did it right, you never get dizzy. I did not do it right and had to call Landon to give me a ride back because I was too motion sick to drive.


23.   While Landon was restoring a 19th century inner city house---always trying to get into Architectural Digest---a methed-out Appalachian walked in and asked him for money. When told no, the crazy-eyed, sweat-dipping addict produced a pistol and said he was going to kill him for thinking he was better than him. After a tense minute the man left. I could tell something had happened when Landon called me, because he had this giddy, shaken-up tone to his voice. I drove straight down and got there as the police were leaving and we went and had beers, then I told Landon he was an idiot for being in that neighborhood unarmed. He found out something that day I already knew: it is amazing how fast a brush with sudden death can translate into arousal.


24.   Most everyone I knew in 2007 agreed it was almost pathetic for charismatic Illinois Senator Barack Obama to try to run for the Presidency during what we all were sure would be Hillary's easy ride to the White House. "I think he just wants her to make him VP," I remember saying dismissively, happy about a Clinton return, not knowing I was a year away from becoming the family apostate and doing something the young me never would have guessed: voting Republican for the first time in my life.

25.   Though I wouldn't register til early '08, I first stopped by a website called BMDO and thought the place was weird. I definitely do weird.


What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

Memories of 2008


1.   Early in the year, in the last spurt of childless twenty-something craziness, Landon and I, in possession of a bit of spending money, traveled to northern France, took a train through the Chunnel, then drove all across Britain from Cornwall to Scotland, and finally ferried over to Ireland
.
2.   In Pere Lachaise I kissed Oscar Wilde's tomb while wearing red lipstick, a tradition now impossible due to Plexiglas, and a groundskeeper told us Jim Morrison is not really in the grave marked as his. Speaking the language made for interesting moments, and some things I overheard Parisians saying included: "Yes, they are Americans but they somehow don't have big asses."; "I wish tourists would get out of the way of people who know where they're going."; "Americans always smell strange." Truthfully most French people were fine and many delightful.

3.   Long story short, I got pregnant in either Scotland or Ireland, not entirely accidentally but sooner than I was thinking it was going to happen. We later flipped a coin to decide where the monumental deed was done, and Scotland won the toss as origin-place of our baby. Best trip ever!


4.   In this year of personal new beginnings, there were endings in the world. Heath Ledger overdosed, Tim Russert and Bernie Mac died of coronary events, Charlton Heston lost a battle with Alzheimer's, and the man who'd played Bozo the Clown terrified his last coulrophobe this side of Heaven.

5.   Breaking Bad and True Blood debuted on TV, as did Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which had a delightful Saturday morning cartoon feel. In movies, there was Cloverfield, The Dark Knight, The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, and Twilight.


6.   Popular music, however, continued a 2000s trend of mostly sucking society's brains out through the ears. (Confession, I did sort of think Katy Perry's Hot N Cold had a good beat.)

7.   I discovered writer Michael Swanwick, and read him a lot. If you like science fiction and don't know his work, you're missing out.


8.   In the news, Ted Kennedy's health failed due to a malignant brain tumor; half of the world's Blockbusters closed; the governor of Illinois got busted for lots of stuff, while New York's governor resigned after a sex scandal; Guitar Hero was humongous; India introduced a $2,500 car; the Beijing Olympics had a great closing show; and Castro retired after a half century of attempts on his life. (To more or less quote Furious Styles, "Somebody musta been praying for him.")

9.   My godson was born, and to be a godmother I had to be in a so-called state of grace, so I went to confession for the first time since the '90s, and there made the mistake of telling the priest I was only doing it to play by the rules. He said if I didn't believe in the sacrament, I had no business being a godmother. Point taken, but he still heard me out. Not long later I had to do it all over for my goddaughter, Courtney.


10.   In the church, where I had to promise on a baby's behalf to renounce the devil "that great liar and deceiver," I had a moment when for several seconds I honestly could not say the boy's name, Brian; it was like it would not move past my throat. Guess after eight years that word still conjured pain, huh? Frankly I've never been good at ceremonies, and at my confirmation as a little girl, I got in a giggling fit in front of the archbishop. Sure, it's charming when you're seven but try being twenty-nine and feeling dozens of people awkwardly waiting, and a grandmother with a long and unforgiving memory glaring at you with white-hot loathing she'd been storing up since 1999, and which you only that moment realized existed.

11.   That summer Michael Jackson recorded his last original song, Best of Joy, intended for an album he never lived to finish.


12.   There was a 5.6 earthquake two states over that rattled my house and sent a watercolor to the floor. Also that year five tornadoes hit the area in one afternoon while we were in a lakeside cottage which had no basement. In my diary I ranked it in the top five worst storms I'd ever experienced. Then that fall Hurricane Ike did the improbable and retained tropical storm force hundreds of miles inland and rolled across our city, leaving about 90% of a metropolitan area of 2.3 million without power for up to two weeks. On the plus side, devoid light pollution I'd never seen such starry skies.

13.   I got hit with news I had to work in Boston for a short-term assignment. It's never been a city I've done well in, and in 2008, pregnant and homesick, I begrudged every minute spent there, surly and overworked for my condition.


14.   Prince Harry served in combat in Afghanistan in '08, and soon the press was jumping all over him for his raucous partying when he came home. Sorry but in my book a soldier returning from war deserves to let off a little steam.

15.   That year I met my oft-hilarious friend Edie, a self-described LGJP----Lawn Guyland Jewish Princess---who has been a trip to know. One of her maxims is if a woman has sex with her husband more than once a month---or twice if he never complains about her spending---she's spoiling him. She sometimes calls me shiksa, I sometimes call her Jewess, but we're great buds and she takes me bris-crashing for the free food and swag.


16.   Britney Spears was held for involuntary psychiatric evaluation, and later had her father appointed overseer of her finances. Poor Britney was not even allowed unsupervised visits with her sons.

17.   For her 48th birthday I took my mom to hear Fresh Air host Terry Gross give a talk. While driving we saw a bumper sticker that said: Visualize World Peace, Or I'll Punch You. It was one of those moments you laugh hysterically over something not that funny, and we laughed til tears were rolling.


18.   On November 4, 2008 junior Illinois Senator Barack Obama became President-elect of the United States, beating war hero John McCain by ten million popular votes.

19.   Me, I was in labor that day, soon undergoing the only conscious out of body incident I've experienced. I'd had enough of all the pain, and was suddenly shocked to notice I was above the tilted hospital bed looking down at myself still pushing away. Instantly I was back inside my body, but I've never forgotten that split second of being somewhere else.


20.   A day earlier if you'd asked me if I knew what love felt like, I'd have said yes, but when I held my minutes-old daughter for the first time, I realized any love I'd ever felt to that point in my entire life had been eclipsed. It's like the highest of all loves lies dormant and only activates when you have a child. Maybe "joy" is the right word, but there was no emotion that had ever come remotely close.

21.   Moving on.... "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials amused me longer than they should have. They launched some great parodies too. ("I'm a bra, I'm a jock strap.")


22.   Bill O'Reilly, a man not nearly so dexterous when he wasn't on his home turf, had an on-air cat fight with the eternally hormonal hosts of The View.

23.   The Great Recession almost steered the economy onto the shoals of depression, but dang there were a lot of bargains on offer if you had two bucks to rub together. Like Subway's new $5.00 eleven-inch foot longs, so underpriced franchisees lost money.


24.   Dracula's Lament, the song from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, was so hip I downloaded it and listened to it about a quadrillion times. I still like it!

25.   After living for most of my life with an oft-confided premonition that I was to die at age twenty-nine, I turned thirty that December 24th, and felt deeply relieved, not least because kids never forgive a parent for dying, you know.

And that was 2008.




What does not kill me makes me stranger.

Alex

1999.

1) I started finished my first year of my 2nd HND and started on the second year. Because I'd found child porn on a former friend and classmate's computer the year before, I and the other person who had been there when it was found were put into a different class from him, which I felt was unfair. If anyone was to be moved, it should have been him.

2) After several attempts to have sex with me were turned down accidentally, I finally ended up having a one-night stand with a girl I was at college with. By the time it happened, I don't think either of us really wanted it anymore although there had been times in our relationship when one or the other did want it. There were some reasons why it happened, but they weren't good ones. The sex itself was mostly poor. The only plus I have is that it did allow me to add another country to the list of ones I'd been to bed with a woman from, although much later on have sex with another woman from that same country, so it doesn't really even have that as a consolation. It seemed odd to me that a woman who was so desperate for sex with so many men would just lie there and do nothing (she didn't like anything but the missionary position). I've been told there is no such thing as bad sex. This night proved that to be wrong. She was an attractive girl, but just didn't really do it for me. I was getting close to 30 at this point while she was still a teenager. This remains the biggest age gap I've ever had between myself and a partner. I had very quickly learned the previous year that girls who had strict parents went absolutely wild when they got to taste freedom for the first time.

Mind you, this would not be the only time I'd have sex with a woman I wasn't physically attracted to. The other times though generally managed to be fun regardless. I've always felt vaguely proud that I've always been able to perform even if I didn't overly want to.

3) The euro was established. People started getting angry that this might one day replace the £ and was the source of many a fist-shaking newspaper headline. Oh if only they knew then how it would all work out.

4) Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic all joined NATO, seeking protection should Russia ever end up trying to dominate them again. This seemed highly unlikely to ever happen though due to the mess that nation was in. Oh if only they knew then how it would all work out. Doubtless more nations would have been clamouring to join.

5) An F-117 was shot down over Yugoslavia. China & Russia are believed to have gotten their hands on the wreckage. The Chinese embassy in Kosovo is accidently hit by a B-2. This later event would happen on my birthday and would greatly upset the girl mentioned in 2 above.

6) The suspects in the Lockerbie bombing are finally handed over for trial. They are generally seen as being patsies in the UK being handed over just to get the sanctions off Libya and not really the ones responsible. I would be sitting in a pub with a woman many years later, when I would finally see justice done, when I saw a terrified Ghadaffi dragged from his car to be shot. I got an immense sense of satisfaction out of that, although I did wish his ending had been longer and more drawn out rather than being over relatively quickly. Then again, how could you punish him enough so it was equal to what those who died that night and the pain felt by those who knew them?

I would be disappointed by the rest of the world seemingly welcoming Libya and Ghadaffi back into the international fold.

7) The Scottish Parliament is officially opened despite attempts by the Tories to sabotage and weaken the project. This would lead to a long (and ongoing) struggle between Edinburgh and London over what powers each should hold.

8) India and Pakistan have a short war which India wins. A few months later another war would almost break out when a Pakistani military aircraft is shot down over India territory.

9) The Dreamcast is launched. I ignore it because I am a PC guy.

10) After bombs kill several hundred Russians, Chechen terrorists are blamed and the Second Chechen War is launched by a recently elected Vladimir Putin. Russian agents however were actually caught by Moscovite police planting bombs and were ordered to release them. This would not be the last false flag operation used by Putin. He is able to use this to get promoted from his position as Prime Minister to that of President though when Boris Yeltsin retires before the year is out.

Oh if only back then we'd known how that would turn out.

11) Australia votes not to get rid of the queen. While I don't have anything against her, I don't particularly understand why they wouldn't want their own head of state.

12) Kuwait gets rid of the right of women to vote. With memories of Maggie Thatcher being in power, this doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me.

13) I start taking part in weekly pub quizzes in a bar (The Black Cat) over our lunch hour. This leads to me missing several classes while I wait for the scores, or just decide I'd rather have another beer than go sit in a classroom.

14) The millennium bug is big news. We figure on the one hand it is a storm in a tea-cup, but at the same time that it will provide us with a lot of work and money.

15) After several years of not watching it, I take a casual interest in Pro-Wrestling. The Rock seems more interesting than Hulk Hogan ever was.

16) Travelling to and from college is an approximately hour-long trip which allows me to read more books than I've had time to for many years. I do my best to look hostile and mostly always get a seat to myself.

17) Having done a 12-hour shift at work and then cycled home I was surprised to be awoken by a phone call at 3 or 4 in the morning to hear Susanna angrily asking how much I would charge to murder her sister. They had gone to the cinema together and a guy had tried to chat her up. She'd turned him down, but her younger sister had been interested and got the guy's phone number. She was outraged that her sister would move in on her territory (her words). I can't believe that after this I still went and slept with her, but things like this were part of the reasons why I didn't want to get into a relationship with her. It would not be the last time she'd ask me to hurt or kill someone for her. She was one freaky deeky girl.

18) I can't remember what job I took this summer. I know I was doing something, but what the hell it was, has faded into the mists of time. My best guess is that this is when I was working as a slaters labourer in the building industry working with Wattie and Jock. I hope they are both retired by now. Wattie was the elder of the two (in his 40s or 50s), and his back was screwed from years of carrying loads in an unsafe method. Jock was in his mid-30s. I did use to work with people who were older then than they would be now though, and they were really f**ked up physically. I told them my cunning way of getting laid. I'd lie about still being a virgin and women would want to be my first, something I had never mentioned to anyone else from that day, until today.

19) I refused to get involved in the big celebrations for the end of the millennium, preferring instead to spend the time with my family. It just seemed to be fireworks and alcohol anyway, which I was quite capable of having at home. I was glad though that it wasn't John Major in power, taking us into a new era anyway. It would have been a bad start.

20) I started running a game of Werewolf: The Apocalypse for my younger brother and his friends. Wanting an experienced player, I started looking online for another player. What I got was Fat Dave.

Fat Dave was a bi-sexual (unsuccessful) actor who was my first ever problem player and I would learn a lot from dealing with him when it would come to similiar players in the future. He thought he should permanently be the centre of attention and was constantly making belittling remarks to everyone else playing. One night after I treated him back the same way he sent me an email accusing me of being a b***h. The next session involved the players basically time travelling and going back to the era of Vietnam to find the location of a MacGuffin. I had prepped a lot of era-appropriate music, but Fat Dave had brought a CD of Bauhaus which he insisted on me playing. To keep the peace I put it on for a couple of songs, but no one else was enjoying it so I took it out of the CD player and put on my original soundtrack. He would then pointedly sit the CD case beside me. When I ignored that, he took the CD out of its case and put the disk beside me.

When I still ignored the disk he lept out of his seat and roared "Are you taking the p**s out of me?" I quietly told him to sit down (already having decided due to his behaviour that at the end of the session I was going to talk to him privately and tell him that him being in our group wasn't working out and he was no longer welcome). When he didn't I decided to get up out of my seat. I don't know exactly what my face was like when I stood up, but it was enough to make Fat Dave realise he'd pushed things too far. For his trouble he got kicked out of my house, leaving behind only a smell that strongly suggested he had shat himself.

One of his friends tried to make peace between us, but I'd already moved on and didn't care. I didn't need an apology from him, nor did I feel like giving one. He would then try phoning me one night and hanging up whenever I answered, but the night he tried I was the only one in the house and I only answered the phone the first time it rang. I then went out for the night and the number of calls from him for the rest of that night amused me greatly.

21) It seemed odd to me this year that I'd lived for an entire quarter of a century this year not to mention having seen 3 decades. I'd been stabbed enough times that I didn't think I was going to be around for too much longer.

22) I had a spot on my wrist that had always bugged me. I decided this year that it had annoyed me enough that I was going to cut it out. I now have a scar where it used to be.

23) I listened to Marilyn Manson for the first time. I liked a couple of his songs, but in general, seemed a bit too screechy for my taste. Just after this, he would be blamed for a school shooting, rather than something sensible, like say guns.

24) I went to the cinema for the last time with Suzanna. We went to see South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Unlike when we watched Armageddon, she would not burst into tears at the end. I got a bad feeling about The Phantom Menace though and avoided going to see it for quite a while. Indeed it would be a year or so before I bothered. Payback and Virus would be my favourite movies of the year, both films I picked up on both VHS and later on DVD. Other ones I'd enjoy though would be The Matrix, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels,  ExistancZ would just be weird. I would take my younger brother and his friends to the cinema to see The Blair Witch Project as a birthday present. He had dyed his hair pink at this time and this had some police staring at him. He was worried about it, but I told him that the police didn't enforce the laws of nature, and he'd be safe. We went to see Rob Halford live, and I accuse him of trying to get a backstage pass off Rob with his pink hair...

25) The phrase MILF entered the popular lexicon, replacing the term Yummy Mummy. I still prefer the older phrase.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

indianasmith

Some Memories from 1985:
1.  Having come home on leave from the U.S. Navy to get married on Dec. 15, I loaded up my new bride and we boarded a military flight for Yokosuka, Japan.
2.  Navy Housing found us an apartment off-base in a suburb of Yokosuka called Kita-Kurihama, where we would live for the next year.
3.  After a frantic week of buying furnishings for our apartment, I had to get underway for a month-long deployment.  Patty returned home to visit her Mom, who was not taking the departure of her daughter very well at all.
4.  We came back to our home port for a brief visit, and then sailed forth again, with a planned port call at Sasebo, Japan in April.  Since we were scheduled to be there for several days, I planned for Patty to take a train down and meet me there.
5.  After two days in Sasebo (after which we were supposed to join the 7th fleet for an extended Indian Ocean deployment), my ship the USS Lockwood was scrambled from port because the Russians were doing their largest naval exercise in the Pacific since WW2.
6.  For three days we shadowed an entire Russian battle group.  I got to see a Russian aircraft carrier at a range of less than a mile, and we got buzzed by Soviet MiGs several times.  Our captain told us he'd informed the Russians that they could send back to Vladivostok for more ships if they felt intimidated by our presence (there were 11 of them and one of us!).
7.  We were relieved in our surveillance by the flagship of the 7th fleet, the USS Blue Ridge, which then got all the credit on the news for intercepting and surveilling the Russians (typical of the "Blue Pig" as we called her).
8.  A cracked boiler forced us to return to Yokosuka, instead of proceeding to the Indian Ocean with the rest of the fleet.
9.  After the boiler was fixed a month later, the Lockwood entered dry dock for its scheduled five-year overhaul.  For the next six months it was almost like being on shore duty!
10.  I took my wife sightseeing all over Japan, including several visits to the beautiful shrines and temples at Kamakura.
11.  We went on a tour package to climb Mt. Fuji, the day after I'd stood an all-night watch on the ship.  I made it within 200 feet of the summit, where we spent the night in a hostel.
12.  We were supposed to climb to the summit early the next morning to see the sunrise, but I got severely altitude sick in the night and missed reaching the top of the mountain.
13.  I had a picnic and clam bake at "Monkey Island" in Yokosuka Bay for several of my shipmates and their spouses.  The clams were delicious fresh out of the harbor.
14.  Our captain introduced a program of morning PT for the whole crew which pretty much everyone hated.
15.  Patty broke her arm at karate practice one evening and had to have a long pin inserted to hold the tip of her ulna in place while it healed.
16.  Despite the broken wing, my wife insisted on cooking a Thanksgiving dinner in our tiny apartment for several of our shipmates who couldn't go home for the holiday.  The turkey burned, but the guys loved her for trying.
17.  My brother, on his way home from seven years working in the Sinai Field Mission, came to Japan to visit us and we took him on a bus tour of the "Fuji Five Lakes" region, which is quite lovely in the winter snows.
18.  I got within a few miles of the famous "Suicide Forest," but was unaware of its existence at the time.
19.  I saw "Return  of the Living Dead" in the theater for the first time.  Linnea Quigley's "tombstone dance" carbonated my hormones.
20.  Our friends Mike and Priscilla had the entire original run of STAR TREK on a new format called Laser Disks - like DVD's but the size of a record album.  We were assured it was the wave of the future for home video viewing.
21.  A large apartment opened up on base, and Patty and I bid farewell to Kita-Kurihama and moved into a sixth floor flat that was three times as big as the one we had, at least!
22.  The Lockwood finished its overhaul and put out to sea for a shakedown cruise to test out its new weapons and radar systems.
23.  Coming back into port, those radar systems didn't keep us from getting slammed into and nearly cut in half by a Filipino ore carrier.  Miraculously, no one in our crew perished (although our Captain's career was a casualty).
24.  I wrote a song about the collision to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."  I still sing it every now and then.
25.  Patty and I celebrated our second Christmas as a married couple, and the first one in a place of our own.  It was kinda nice. (Edit after my wife read this -with a very limited budget for a tree and decorations, Patty made and decorated a large star out of cardboard and felt to go on top of our tree.  We've had many larger, nicer tree toppers since then, but that star is still placed on our tree every single Christmas to this day!)

And that was 1985!
"I shall smite you in the nostrils with a rod of iron, and wax your spleen with Efferdent!!"

ER

That makes the Christmas tree star all the more special. Wonderful story there, and a great read about an eventful year.  :thumbup:
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

Memories of 2009: Sex, drugs, classical music.

1.   It was a year for celebrities dying: Ted Kennedy, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mayes (remember him?), Natasha Richardson, Patrick Swayze, and Brittany Murphy. I also mourned King of the Hill shuffling off to syndication afterlife.

2.   I probably shouldn't put this, but screw it, I was really proud of it at the time. I lost the weight from being pregnant with my daughter, and was 124 pounds by winter. In your face, baby weight!


3.   Speaking of my daughter, we got pestered by "some" in our families about having her baptized, which I called a placebo, but finally Landon, who is utterly uninterested in religion, said, if it's only a placebo, and it makes our loved-ones happy, what's the real objection? So I caved.

4.   In the news: Captain Sully crash-landed his jet in the Hudson River; Analog TV was phased out for digital, and the government gave away free converters; Avatar broke box office records and briefly launched a 3D craze; Economists claimed the Great Recession ended, yet both Chrysler and GM filed for bankruptcy; and swine flu broke out globally.


5.   On TV: Susan Boyle wowed millions on Britain's Got Talent; The Vampire Diaries, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, Caprica, and Jersey Shore (shudder) debuted; while Conan took over The Tonight Show.

6.   I saw a French movie called Girl Cut in Two that was close to high-art porn. I set foot in a Wal-Mart for the first time in my life that year and was quietly describing a lurid scene in the movie, when an overweight woman wearing stretch pants and with obviously great hearing glared at me from the opposite end of the aisle. Welcome to Wal-Mart, I guess.


7.   Thirty-three-year-old Aunt Sarah, who had previously lived in Atlanta for several years before returning to Ireland, moved in with Landon, our daughter, and me. I loved the arrangement, but even though I do not have a reputation for being jealous, I began to get this feeling that my aunt and Landon had had something happen between them. I had no evidence for it, but the feeling wouldn't go away. I decided if it had happened the consequences of verifying it would be so horrible for my family that I said nothing, and apparently hid my suspicion so well that when in a heated moment in 2014 I finally did fling an accusation at Landon, his shock convinced me I had been wrong, leaving me feeling very relieved, very low, and very glad my aunt, at least, never knew I had thought this.


8.   I was offered the task of going through stories and poems written by a nineteen-year-old boy unknown to me, who had hanged himself eight years earlier, and his family wanted the writing he left behind catalogued. It was Fed-Exed to me in a box and came with a thousand page S.O.C. journal this young man had kept til close to the end of his life. I was deeply affected, and soon felt like I knew this dead boy. I wrote in my own diary that it was like he had crawled into a cave and darkness swallowed him, since as time went on I could feel him losing touch with life around him. In the end the family kept the writings private instead of their original plan of submitting them for publication.

9.   Weddings, weddings everywhere. My cousin Adam, a selfish jerk, frankly, married the Brazilian girlfriend he'd been living with in Rio for about a year; His younger sister Allie, who'd been married in a civil service, got married in a church; The sister of that adoring boy from college I sometimes mention, a girl who was my friend in her own right (I seem to stay close to the sisters of guys with whom I've kept company) got married in Maine; Annnnnd my dad got re-married, wedding a nice lady named Barbara, who had a twelve-year-old son, Todd, a scientific prodigy aiming for Cal Tech.  I liked Barbara just fine, but stubbornly told everyone: "Just because my dad is marrying her does not make her my stepmother." I even posted that in here, and ghouk (if you remember him) replied: "Uh, actually I think it does." Ha.

10.    Spending money we shouldn't have, and which we could use nowadays, we went back to France, then to Ireland, where I saw my maternal grandfather for what turned out to be the last time, since he suddenly died a few weeks later. He was a truly good man, and with his passing I had only one grandparent left from that point til just last month.


11.   OK....I will tell you guys this story. Maybe a little insecure after having a baby, especially since I was caught up in wondering if the man I'd been living with for years had been "indiscreet" with my own aunt, one spring evening, feeling moody, I drove off wanting at the same time to be alone and not alone, so after being out a while I called a man I knew who was an artist my dad's company represented, and who was a year younger than me. This artist had a striking pseudo-androgynous beauty to him, we connected with each other, and there's no doubt that if I had not already been in a committed relationship, we'd have had something going.

He drove out to meet me, something that flattered my ego right there, and we sat on a bench, under an awning, in the rain, and it had gotten late, no one else was around on a night like that. The sound of the rain made me happy, the smell of falling rain was nice, the light gray mist that thickened the air in pauses between downpours seemed almost dream-like....and I sat there with this artist and watched and listened and felt alive in my place in the now, feeling what the Japanese call mono no aware, and just to have him there with me in that quiet rainfall was a thing of loveliness.

I told the artist I was happy with my life, happy to have a baby, not even stressed about turning thirty, but I admitted just lately I had also felt lost in the new landscape around me. Without saying anything in reply, he pulled me close to him and we stayed like that, and it was one of those moments in a lifetime where you wish time would freeze and go on and on and on.

A few minutes later though we said goodnight and went our separate ways, and never shared anything like that again, but it made me feel renewed inside.



12.   A friend of mine wanted to know if I would be interested in going with her to get a Qi-Gong exorcism, and I said, "You really have to ask???" The "exorcism" featured the drawing of symbols in the air around us, the burning of incense, and chanting, but the part that grabbed me was when one of the practitioners said something uncannily like what I had been told in the past by two unconnected people: "You have spirits of grief inside you, living in you like you are their house." I admit hearing that claim once again felt eerie, even though I said I didn't believe in Qi-Gong and didn't and don't.

13.   I started playing Fallout 3 and enjoyed myself immensely in the Capital Wasteland. It was the first of four Fallout titles I'd play in years to come.


14.   I was working on an air force base when I heard about the mass shooting at Fort Hood, an absolutely appalling event. I didn't know any of the thirteen who died or the thirty left wounded, but I did know people stationed there, so it was doubly horrible news.

15.   Mostly on a lark to fill the time while my baby took naps, I submitted a proposal to HGTV for a show I called Home Facelifts. I figured maybe Landon, who had been restoring 19th century houses for most of the decade and getting some nationwide notice in the field, could become a breakout TV star, but I never got anything back.


16.   We went to hear David McCullough lecture at a local university, and Landon asked if I noticed the man shook his butt when he walked. I hadn't (and I'm not sure why he was looking there), but to this day we still call that august author "the ass shaker."

17.   I was still doing a lot of Amazon reviews---long story why---and was listed as a top 150 reviewer, but Amazon wasn't going to let me use the phrase "dick in your face" for a review of the movie Bruno, til I convinced an Indian rep for the company it was a US colloquialism meaning "funny."  Evil of me.


18.   With my dad and Barbara, we---yes, by 2009 I'd become a "we"---went to Final Friday open houses and showing debuts at downtown art houses and galleries almost all year. It was cool, we'd get dressed up, see art, sip some wine, meet and talk to people in the field, then meander to another gallery to do it all again.

19.   We also went as guests of my friends Rob and Tara to an SCA Middle Kingdom feast that had the theme "The Courts of Love" referencing Eleanor of Aquitaine's 12th century sex parties. (To be clear, there was no sex at the SCA event...)

20.   But while I am thinking about sex, and honestly when am I not, one night I asked Landon to tell me a story from his pre-me amorous life, something he often did because we colorfully accentuate one another's perversions. Anyway, I got treated to a tale of him and some girl who worked at the TV station where he interned in college. They split a hit of LSD and had a night of intense physical experiences where their hands blurred when they held them together, and it was like they melted into one energy form gently sailing down a waterfall. Wow! Well, I made the mistake of telling my cousin Dana and she said, "What is it about girls talking men you know into taking LSD during sex?" I said, "What do you mean? Who else was there?" Wrong question! She said, "According to what your dad told my mom on his birthday in 1973 when they'd had a few beers, he had hot, trippy acid sex with some hippie girl he knew that summer at Columbia." Yeeeeah, Dee, I could've lived without that tale setting up shop in my head.


21.   I found out a man I knew online years before was killed by his unstable ex-girlfriend. I remembered him as funny and nice, someone who used to say he felt protective toward me. I laughed though when a mutual friend told me that back when I knew the man from a chat room, he used to tell his buds I seemed like a Catholic school virgin and he might have been making progress warming up to me, so maybe he could be "the one." Oh, that poor goofy man....

22.   My anything but tech-savvy impending mother in law accidentally included me on an email in which she aired some frank criticisms of me and included the thought that I had brainwashed her poor innocent son with my fey wiles. While reading that my head hit the desk. Repeatedly. We're fine nowadays.


23.   Through Edie I met a fifty-something non-practicing rabbi named Dan, someone who could discuss anything philosophical, and who spoke extemporaneously with the sort of polish usually found in much edited books. He described himself as a "brittle diabetic" and spent a lot of time in a wheelchair, so maybe that contributed to his being so acerbic. Still, in intricate depth the man knew all there was to know about every religion on the planet, and I think he enjoyed talking to me, since he dubbed me his "Shiksa scholar."

24.   Just before New Year's Eve I was asked by an intern taking surveys for a radio station what was the biggest lesson I'd learned in this decade, and I instantly said, "Men who have had sex with me should drive carefully." She wouldn't have understood, of course, but it entered my head to say that, so I did. I came home and answered questions about the 2000s I'd written for myself on New Year's Eve 1999, and then wrote questions about the 2010s for me to answer in December 2019. (This account of that long-ago day has been brought to you by: extra-strength parahyperthymesia!)


25.   News outlets had '00s wrap stories claiming 2000-2009 was the worst decade ever. It was by no means close to the worst decade ever. We endured no world war, no great depression, no civil war, no Black Death, no Krakatoa stealing our summer and bringing famine after global crop failure. People who hyperbolically said the '00s were the worst time ever were simply spoiled by the greatness of the '90s.

And that was 2009!
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

retrorussell

1984:
1. Just finished my first year of Jr. High School at Whitford, which is probably about 3 miles from where I live now.  I remember our end-of-year assembly playing "The Bird" and "Jungle Love" by Morris Day & The Time.
2. Lost of great blockbuster films.  GHOSTBUSTERS, GREMLINS, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, AMADEUS, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, PURPLE RAIN, KARATE KID, COTTON CLUB, THE LAST STARFIGHTER, POLICE ACADEMY, SPINAL TAP, 1984, DREAMSCAPE, THE NATURAL, PLACES IN THE HEART, GREYSTOKE, SPLASH, INDIANA JONES & THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, ROMANCING THE STONE, A PASSAGE TO INDIA and TOP SECRET and THE TERMINATOR.
3. Flicks I would see a lot on cable: BLAME IT ON RIO, MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON, ICE PIRATES, FOOTLOOSE, CLOAK & DAGGER, and REPO MAN.
4. What great music thumped over the radio/boom box this year!  Some of my faves: LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE BOY, FOOTLOOSE, AUTOMATIC, SELF-CONTROL, YOU MIGHT THINK, DRIVE, WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO GO, THEY DON'T KNOW, HEAD OVER HEELS, HOLD ME NOW, WHEN DOVES CRY, LET'S GO CRAZY, OH SHERRIE, DANCING IN THE SHEETS, CARIBBEAN QUEEN, CARELESS WHISPER, JUMP, WE BELONG, AGAINST ALL ODDS.
5. Plenty of crap in the box office too: DUNE, BEST DEFENSE, TANK, BOLERO, CANNONBALL RUN II, HARD TO HOLD, GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROAD STREET, OH GOD! YOU DEVIL, SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, WHERE THE BOYS ARE 84, SUPERGIRL, SLAPSTICK OF ANOTHER KIND, SHEENA.
6. The first PG-13 film is RED DAWN.
7. SPORTS: The Raiders win their last Super Bowl title, as the L.A. Raiders in a whooping of the Redskins.  The Clippers move from San Diego to Los Angeles.  The Celtics win a tight 7 game series with the Lakers in the NBA Finals.  Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and John Stockton are all selected in the NBA Draft (my Blazers took Sam Bowie at #2 instead of Jordan, to the scratching of many heads, though we did get Clyde Drexler later that draft).  Tommy Hearns KOs Roberto Duran to retain the WBC World Jr. Middleweight title.  The Detroit Tigers win the World Series over the Padres.  Gretzky and the Oilers win the Stanley Cup.
8. Summer Olympics in Los Angeles: Moscow boycotts the Olympics in response to America boycotting the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics over Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.  The US wins the most medals and most gold medals.
9. Jason Voorhees meets his end at the hands of a boy-- Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman)!  I remember being really impressed by the special effects by Tom Savini of the machete in Jason's face, then Jason falling on it and REACTING as it pushed through.  Super gory but super impressive!  FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL FRIDAY (FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV)
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10. The Macintosh computer debuts.
11. The Winter Olympics are held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
12. Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau retires.
13. US CIA Chief in Beirut, William F. Buckley, is kidnapped by the Islamic Jihad Organization and dies in captivity.
14. The classic puzzle game TETRIS is released in the Soviet Union on Elektronika 60 computers.
15. Cirque du Soleil is founded.
16. The US Embassy in Beirut is car-bombed by the Hezbollah.
17. The Provisional IRA tries to assassinate PM Margaret Thatcher, and fails (though 5 are killed) in Brighton.
18. Massive famine in Ethiopia leads to a Christmas relief all-star group BAND AID releasing "Do They Know It's Christmas?".
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19. PM of India Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards!
20. Murders of Sikhs across India follow the PM's assassination.
21. Several hundreds die in a Mexico City petroleum plant explosion.
22. A deadly methane leak at a Bhopal, India pesticide plant kills several thousands.
23. Near Christmas time, 4 black youths try to rob a white man, Bernie Goetz, on a Bronx subway train.  He shoots them, sparking a debate on urban crime.
24. The first official minivans are released: Chrysler Town & Country, Dodge Caravan, and Plymouth Voyager.
25. Watched TONS of this cartoon: HEATHCLIFF AND THE CATILLAC CATS!  Damn, that theme made me wanna dance!  "Heathcliff, Heathcliff, no-one should, terrify the neighborhood.."
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Oh that Cleo.. one of the early examples of sexy furry characters..
Another toon that I loved (and still do to some degree):
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PS: If anyone is interested, I have a YouTube series of videos detailing what I feel are the 20 best arcade games of each year of the 1980s, with at least 2 "flashback" sequences for each year.  So you get more of a visual treat than what you can get on this thread.  A taste:
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Russell Shiley/Crazyclimber80
"O the legend they say, on a Valentine's Day, is a curse that'll live on and on.."