You Couldn't Ignore Me if You Tried

It took me a while to do it, but I finished up You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried by Susannah Gora this weekend. Since Pioneer Woman reviewed it and tweeted tidbits from it, I thought I might really like to read it. I am/was an 80s teen after all and could quote lines from The Breakfast Club on demand.

And I did enjoy it. Sort of. I think I had the same problem with the book that I had with the extras on The Breakfast Club DVD. Maybe I'm not old enough for that type of serious analysis yet. I think the book could have been half as long and twice as good, but that's me. It's a lot of pages and reads very academically, sometimes textbook-like. Me, I'm all about the info-tainment.

The behind-the-scenes look at movie making from script writing to casting to rehearsal to filming to trailers and premieres was very interesting. Also, the idea that I should have been offended at Allison's transformation in The Breakfast Club (but I wasn't because really, who doesn't want to be pretty and popular?) or that I missed completely the bad hairpiece at the end of Pretty in Pink (because the movie ending was reshot when audiences hated the idea of Duckie getting the girl)...those things are really, really interesting.

Gora does an excellent job of showing "impact on a generation" so if you're part of that generation and you have some time on your hands, maybe you should check it out.

The Power of 80s Music

Just a quick post as I'm late and on my way to the next crisis/meeting. AOL today has a list of the 10 records that you must listen to before you die. Here's a link to the list:
http://shopping.aol.com/articles/2008/09/19/10-albums-to-listen-to-before-you-die/
(Sorry, I'm on a mac and the link-y things don't work. Just paste and copy if you're interested. I might come back to fix it. I might not. So there.)
And I'd like to point out...U2, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Public Enemy, and Prince...all 80s, all on the list, fully 50% of the list.

I believe I am in good shape here. I listened to half of the list the first time around. And committed them to memory. I'm almost sure that I can sing several songs from Purple Rain and Thriller word for word. I'm not proud of it. It's just a fact.

Thank you, MTV

This post is the result of a lunch conversation on Monday. My quilt posse was there, Mundane Jane, and Mary (who needs a better blog handle Mary2Lemons, or Dos Limones for international flair? I'm not sure.) And as the conversation goes, somehow, the Sir Mixalot song "Baby Got Back" comes up. And I am disturbed. Not because of the conversation, but because I immediately know who, what, when and how about the song while others wonder what MJ is talking about. Well, that and because now that stupid song won't leave my head. I think that wondering what MJ is talking about is fairly common, but I'm either a whole generation away or I'm a total pop culture idiot savant (definition: person who is mentally retarded in general but who displays remarkable aptitude in some limited field (usually involving memory).
There are probably a couple of extenuating circumstances that make it slightly better, a little more OK that I know these things...
1. In 1992, MTV was still a big part of my life. Sir Mixalot's life too.
2. I have a low entertainment threshold. I'm not to the point where I actually spend my Sunday afternoons surfing YouTube looking for dancing cats or anything like that. Cute Overload is my cute animal site of choice. But all it takes to entertain me is to turn on the 100 Greatest Songs of the 80s. And I know that if I work "Living On A Prayer" into conversation that I'm likely to get only a slightly better response than "Baby Got Back." Although when we illustrated Sir Mixalot's song, my more high-brow friends told me that if "Baby Got Back" had started playing in their house, they would have turned it off. I can still sing it 15 years later (as well as nearly 100% of the remaining 99 songs). So instead of risking the offense of others, I'm posting this Bon Jovi classic, ranked the #1 song of the 80s.