Remember when I posted the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism videos a while back? I’ll bet that dude’s feature on ODNT has made him a fortune by now. (sarcasm) Every now and then, I’m exposed to someone’s creative greatness. And, when I actually expel Diet Coke (not always from my mouth), I feel it’s my duty to share it here with you guys.
Enter the “literal video” phenomenon.
I took a mental health day yesterday. By that, I mean I did very little. My girl had a morning volleyball game so we got an early start. Since Dave’s out of town again, my brother met us there and took my boy out for a while to do some guy things while Viv & I got together with a few moms and daughters for lunch and general lazing.
It. Was. Marvelous.
And so you have my friend, Vanessa, to thank for these videos today. I have no idea who first came up with the idea.There’s a ton of them out there and some are WAY better than others. So, I’m just sharing a few of my favorites. If you know these original videos, you’ll laugh even harder. Enjoy!
Wouldn’t this have been a horrible way to come into the world?
Gender identity. Something that my generation is probably a little more liberated about than all others before it … and possibly since. We were introduced to Ziggy Stardust as very young children and spent our teens years rocking to one set of dudes in eyeliner and lipstick after another on 80s MTV. Seriously, I think Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes wore more make-up daily than I wore at my own wedding. And it was considered totally hot back then. Except I’m pretty sure we said “fine.”
She knew what she wanted to name her pet before we even went to the store. So, it’s not like he looked like a Herve or anything. Don’t most kids go with names like Peanut or Nibbles? Not mine. I remember her saying, “I cleared out a spot in my room. I’m ready to go pick up Herve now.” I tried explaining that Herve might not actually be a HE but she contended that the name would still work as HER– ve. “Fine,” I answered, worrying quietly about how much money I’d be shelling out over the years for a hamster with a confused sense of self.
We brought him home, always certain he was a him, until one day he fell asleep belly up in my hand. And his tiny “features” indicated to me that we should be making more of an effort to accent the first syllable of his/her name. From that point on, I decided to embrace the pink cage and buy our hamster some diet food, fancy chocolate and maybe a subscription to Cosmo.
So Her-VE became HER-ve. (Ask Chaz Bono. It’s a difficult adjustment to make. For any species.)
Weeks passed and things were rolling along just fine. While the kids were in school, HER-ve and I enjoyed long lunches together at a little bistro in town. We got mani/pedis at a cheap nail joint around the corner. We even formed a book group and started talking about 50 Shades.
Until one day last week when I saw HER-ve dragging a “bag of gym balls” behind her/him. And my girl kept asking why her hamster’s butt was getting so big. (If you’ve never noticed how gifted rodents are in this department, google it. Or just click here. I could not bring myself to post a picture of hamster testicles. You’re in the driver’s seat now. YOU get to decide if you need to see this image.)
Anyway, now we’re back to Her-VE. Our lunch dates have ceased and I switched his magazine subscription to Sports Illustrated. And I don’t clean his cage as frequently. He’s got hands. If he wants it clean, he can help out once in a while.
And my girl? Well, she doesn’t give a hamster’s ass what he is. As long as she has a rodent threatening to break free from his cage and scare the crap out of me in the middle of the night somewhere in this house, she’s happy.
She even drew this picture for today’s post.
Let’s just hope we can finally commit to the blue rodent bedding from Petco.
I’m linking this post up with Mama Kat’s weekly writer’s workshop. She offers five different prompts. And I chose this one: How has music changed since you were a child? When I scanned the entries, I didn’t see too many responses to this question. Which surprised me. And I was immediately reminded of this little homage I wrote almost a year ago on the 31st anniversary of my old friend, MTV. When that channel first came out and I was a kid … well, let’s just call it Camelot. Weird, gender-bending, do-I-like-him-or-do-I-just-admire-his-eye-makeup Camelot. Enjoy.
I’m hurrying to pack for my trip to NYC so today’s post is a short one. Short only on words, but long on undying love and eternal gratitude. I just wanted to wish a very special happy birthday to one of my oldest and dearest friends, MTV. You’re 31 today so it’s probably time to start thinking about settling down and maybe adding a few little MTV Jrs. to your household. Oh, and you might want to join a gym for that spare tire, old friend.
Anyway, thanks for helping me cultivate the “good” fashion sense I have today, distracting me from my homework and just generally rocking my youth. Here on this blog I’d like to share a few (dozen) of my favorite MTV videos from my tween/teen years. I’m guessing some of them haven’t been shown in decades.
In no particular order, here are my Top 25. Or at least the top 25 I could actually find online. Let’s begin with this one … since it’s where it all started for you guys. It’s still on my iPod, by the way.
Yep. This stuff passed for cool, it passed for fashion and, most of all, it passed for entertainment back in my day. And, since I actually heard my (poor, corrupted by his parents) boy singing Sixty-Eight Guns in his room yesterday, I’m going to label it all … timeless. I feel less old that way. Thanks for the memories!
Oh, and I’m just curious to all reading … which one’s your favorite?
Here’s my goofy, little entry for this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge. I often go with the first idea that pops into my head. This was one of those times.
RULES: All entries must be between 33 and 333 words and need to include the following word using its third definition:
12/11/14 … I wrote this post almost tHREE years ago but it seems like a great fit for MamaKat’s writing prompt today: “Take a line from a song you love and turn it into the title of your next blog post. Let the content follow.” Easy.
I saw Rock of Ages a few weeks ago with Ashley and Vanessa, both of whom are a few years younger than me. Enough younger than me that I felt that the show offered more in the way of their coming of age music than mine. Not that the show wasn’t good. But its music all surfaced for me at the end of high school. And when I think of ‘coming of age’ … at least musically … I think of the stuff that brought me from grade school into high school. I was there on August 1, 1981 ‘wanting my MTV’ when the station was first launched with the airing of The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star. Truth be told, I still have that song and even another by The Buggles on my iPod. (I’d be surprised if anyone reading could even name another song by that band.)
So, a few years later, when all of those early 80s (British) bands came together in the interest of aiding world hunger to produce a single called Do They Know it’s Christmas?, I was ALL in. I remember excitedly talking about it right after it was released with a bunch of kids in my Biology class. I bought the album that week. And thanks to the fact that it remained at my parents’ house, I still own it (as it wasn’t among the many casualties of my home lost to Katrina).
I found it the other day and snapped a few pictures.
The front cover art was interesting enough but the back cover design was what really caught my attention … because it featured a picture of all the performers who sang on the album. And there was even a crude key for determining who was who in the picture. I stared at that album so much I could have named every face on the blank outline drawing without missing even one. Yet, I probably hadn’t read a page of whatever I was supposed to be reading in my English class at the time.
Yeah, that’s right. How many of you knew that Kool & the Gang sang on the album? Don’t worry. I’d actually forgotten, too.
There were three songs on the album:
The version played every holiday season
Spoken holiday greetings of the performers (dripping with English accents and Irish brogues) set to the song’s drum beat. I can only assume this cut was included as filler.
A combination of #1 and #2. The extended version that I played incessantly in my room. I loved listening to the foreign pronunciations and the ‘Happy Christmas’es. (I need to get my hands on one of those transfer-your-records-to-CD contraptions so I can hear it again.)
As weird as it sounds … and I know that it will … I listened to it so many times that I still have most of the spoken parts committed to memory, like David Bowie’s closing speech.
‘It’s Christmas 1984. And there are more starving folk on our planet than ever before. Please give a thought for them this season and do whatever you can, however small, to help them live. Have a peaceful New Year.”
Actually, Bowie went second to last among the spoken well-wishers. Bob Geldof, front man for The Boomtown Rats and more importantly the force behind the BAND-AID project, did the honors.
And, whether they like it or not, my kids know the song very well. My daughter even does the harmony. But they had not seen the video until I played it for them on YouTube this year. My son was mostly concerned about determining the genders of many of the singers. (In his defense, he was grappling with Boy George, George Michael and so many other long-haired, made-up dudes). My daughter took one look at all the ratted hair and tattered clothing and asked if the singers themselves were the ‘poor people’ for whom the song was written. And I … well, I just couldn’t get over how much Bob Geldof looked like Jerry Seinfeld.
So anyway, take a look if you’re interested. It’s been 27 years since this song was released and, for me, it will always remind me of my sometimes awkward, sometimes exciting, and always memorable early teen years and all the wild and wonderful, gender-bending music we listened to back then.
For more information about the album’s production, click here. They give all kinds of interesting details … like how Boy George had to be dragged out of bed to participate and, once there, wanted nothing more than to bitch slap George Michael. Merry Christmas, girlfriend!
Just writing about the daily dumbassery of life. The good, the bad and the so-utterly-mundane-that-you'd-think-I-wouldn't-even-bother-to-write-about-it.
OldDogNewTits 