Who Else Is Thinking About the 80s Lately?

If I win an Academy Award for best screenplay I’m going to wear a Jessica McClintock for Gunne Sax dress, I have decided. I'm going to stand in front of a harp to have my photo taken. I’ll be uncomfortable with all the attention at the Vanity Fair after party so I’ll wear a fake moustache and refer to it as my emotional support moustache and it will keep me grounded. It’s important to think about these things so you are prepared when the time comes.

Seventeen magazine March 1989. I’ll also consider any of the dresses the mean girls were trying on in Pretty in Pink (I’m partial to pink sateen) as well as the debutante ball dresses in the movie Two Moon Junction.

I’ve been feeling a great deal of nostalgia for the 80s lately. Specifically for the years 1985 through 1988. These were not particularly happy years for me due my home life being a dysfunctional disaster, but I am finding myself returning to these years in my mind of late, spending time on TikTok looking at magazines and catalogs from that era and also listening to the music and watching the movies. I re-watched Valley Girl and immediately was like oh yeah, 80s boobs, and then I read a bit of trivia on IMDB that said Director Martha Coolidge was required by the film's producers to show female breasts at least four times, feeling it would make the movie more appealing to younger men. Coolidge agreed in order to get the directing job and quickly found a loophole: "They didn't say how long the shots had to be. Not smart of them." Each instance of nudity appears for mere seconds. 

We need more women directors. 

I think my sudden nostalgia for the 80s is precipitated by the fact that my kid is 18 and leaving for college next fall and I’m in the final stages of perimenopause and it’s making me take stock of life in your typical mid-life crisis kind of way, but I don’t particularly like the term mid-life crisis as it’s reductive and accusatory. I happen to think taking stock of one’s life in a reflective and thoughtful manner is a good thing. 

I’ve been writing about those years.

 I wrote a piece about working at Hallmark with my best friend Megan where we spent all our time inhaling helium from the birthday balloon tank and prank calling people, paying absolutely zero attention to the customers. I wrote about the time we dressed up as Michael Myers from Halloween and stood in a clearing in the woods across the street from a stop sign and scared the living shit out of everyone driving by until an army of cops came and we nearly got arrested. I wrote about driving to Beach Week in Ocean City, Maryland when we were sixteen and nearly losing my virginity but instead I spent the night in the parking lot with my friends making an obstacle course for a guy we met named Wooky who was in a wheelchair. We spent all night drinking Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers in that parking lot, cheering Wooky on, making the obstacle course increasingly more challenging for him, and each time he finished he’d say how glad he was we’d stopped by because he’d been getting pretty bored. I love all these stories and I think they are fucking entertaining as hell, but it’s possible they are only entertaining to me. I have always been my own best audience. Still, I’m considering publishing them here on Substack because they are weird and funny and not substantial enough for a book but they are stories that I like to tell and where else can I tell them and what have I got to lose? I mean if I’m going to make a fool of myself I’ve got good company, amirite J-lo? In the words of Neil Diamond, “I am, I said to no one there, and no one heard at all, not even the chair.” 

So stay tuned, folks. “Summer of 1988” is heading your way. If it wins me an Academy Award you know exactly what I’ll be wearing. 

Check out my new bike! I was Pee-wee-Herman-level distraught when my old bike got stolen two weeks ago but we found this one on Marktplaats and drove to Maastricht to pick it up and I got it all fixed up with a new basket and flowers and it is THE BEST.