It's Already Been A Long, Hot Summer (And The Thrill Of The Season Is Over)

It’s hot today.

It was hot yesterday.

And the forecast calls for this heat wave to persist for the next week.

Though Paloma and I have central air in our tree house suite, a glimpse at the unit’s guts when it was being repaired last summer leads me to believe that it has been built from surplus bi-plane parts manufactured in the ‘30s.

The fact that I am marinating on the couch leads me to question its structural integrity and cooling prowess.

The stifling heat makes thinking an effort. Each time I begin to follow a tangent to write about, it becomes a mirage and, if it doesn’t become a mirage, it’s an oasis far enough in the cranial distance that it doesn’t seem to be worth it.

And, given the events of the past week in Iran, time that would have been spent pondering nonsense has been devoted to following the history in the making.

Summer definitely had a lot more cachet as a kid.

So, I thought I’d pull up a Billboard chart from this week in 1982. Music was a relatively new obsession for me, Clear Channel was years away from homogenizing Top 40 radio and a heatwave simply meant more time at the pool.

Some of the songs I was hearing at the pool and in other places as summer arrived in 1982…

Human League – Don’t You Want Me
from Dare

Had I had interest in music a few years earlier, either disco or punk might have been the “new” sound that my friends and I would have adopted as our own. I’m grateful that, instead, New Wave and synthesizer bands from the UK turned out to be our find.

Human League’s Don’t You Want Me had to have been one of the first songs by a synth band I heard and I was hooked. My friend Chris spent the next year or so focused on collecting every single, 12″ inch single, EP, remix, and whatever else he could acquire by the Sheffield band. Personally, aside from a few tracks, my devotion to the band was uncommited.

Toto – Rosanna
from Toto IV

I have no qualms in acknowledging that I own most of Toto’s albums up through the mid-’80s and I rarely hit skip when one of their songs pops up on shuffle.

Rosanna was a constant on the radio during the summer of ’82 – all summer long – and I don’t think I ever tired of it. It’s still as joyously infectious more than twenty five years later.

J. Geils Band – Angel In Blue
from Freeze Frame

Although I was fairly lukewarm about the song Centerfold, I’d gotten a copy of J. Geils Band’s Freeze Frame as a gift and most of the rest of the album I loved. I don’t think any of us knew that the band had actually been around for more than a decade and was known to music fans as America’s answer to The Rolling Stones (I, at that time, certainly didn’t).

Although it wasn’t nearly as big as Centerfold or Freeze Frame‘s title track, Angel In Blue – a wistful ode to a girl from the wrong side of the tracks with the obligatory heart of gold – was a favorite then and, like that waitress, it hasn’t aged a bit.

Kim Wilde – Kids In America
from Kim Wilde

We didn’t know much about Kim Wilde when she arrived with the New Wave bubblegum of her song Kids In America. She was a comely blonde and I imagine that’s all we needed to know.

But we did love the song. It bounded along. It had a chanted chorus. It was about kids in America and we happened to be kids in America.

It had it all.

An Underrated Movie With A (Once) Much Sought After Soundtrack

Recently, I referenced an iconic scene from the movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High. And while that movie was a staple for me and my friends, the lesser-known film Valley Girl was on equal footing for us during that period.

I’m not sure how my friends and I were turned on to the movie. It certainly didn’t play in our hometown theater.

I do know that it was a movie that, once discovered, was one which we constantly rented on videocassette. Surprisingly enough for a town our size (three thousand people or so when everyone was home), we had a video rental joint even before most of our families had a VCR.

When we all saw Fast Times in the theater during the summer of ’82, it resonated with us, but it wasn’t a world in which we lived – not as we were two-thousand miles from its Hollywood setting in a town with one red light.

Valley Girl arrived a year later. It, too, was set in Hollywood, but its characters and vibe struck closer to our hearts. Most likely it was because a year in high school is a lifetime.

During the time between the two movies, we had completed our sophomore year of high school. We had gone from pedestrians and passengers to drivers and, therefore, masters of our own destinies.

And we personally knew some of these characters.

(not that we hadn’t wished we had known Fast Times‘ Spicoli)

I doubt if we really considered that Valley Girl was simply a modern-day telling of Romeo And Juliet with new wave music and Nicholas Cage in his first starring role.

(and now that I think about it, in a year Cage had gone from a bit role in Fast Times to the lead in Valley Girl)

That said, I would have a hard time choosing between the two movies, but there’s no hesitation choosing between their respective soundtracks.

Though The Cars, Tom Petty, and The Go-Gos have songs in the movie, and Cheap Trick, Blondie, and Van Halen are referenced (and were all favorites of ours), Fast Times’ soundtrack was loaded – after some purported label pressure – with the likes of solo Eagles (four of them) and Jimmy Buffett.

Valley Girl used music by The Plimsouls, Sparks, Men At Work, and Modern English – some of the artists we did know, but there were a lot who were unfamiliar and exotic.

(as opposed to, say, Poco, who appeared on Fast Times’ soundtrack)

Alas, Valley Girl‘s soundtrack was in print for about as long as the movie was in theaters. And during my years working in record stores, there was no title for which more listeners clamored for a CD re-issue.

Fortunately, the good people at Rhino Records rectified that oversight, releasing two volumes of music from the film in the mid-’90s.

And all was right with the world…

Sparks – Eaten By The Monster Of Love
from Valley Girl soundtrack

Sparks was an act for whom I needed no introduction. Though they never got radio airplay where I lived, I had seen them duet with The Go-Go’s Jane Weidlin on Cool Places in ’82 on Solid Gold. And, my friend Chris owned several of their cassettes like In Space, Whomp That Sucker, and Angst In My Pants.

Quirky and amusing, Sparks often had an uncanny knack for getting to the heart of life’s truths amidst all of the melodic musical insanity.

Psychedelic Furs – Love My Way
from Valley Girl soundtrack

It seems to me that my friends and I discovered Valley Girl on cable during the summer of ’84. My friend Brad had discovered Psychedelic Furs on Night Flight, the USA Network show which aired music videos over night on weekends. As MTV had just become available in our town, Night Flight was the only chance to see the new medium for music.

During the summer of ’84, we wore out Psychedelic Furs’ new album, Mirror Moves, but it was the dreamy Love My Way (which kind of reminded me of Thompson Twins’ Hold Me Now) that was my first exposure to the Furs.

The Plimsouls – Oldest Story In The World
from Valley Girl soundtrack

The Plimsouls actually appeared in Valley Girl as a band in the club where Cage hangs out. One of the songs, A Million Miles Away, was a minor hit and is a staple on a lot of ’80s compilations.

Here’s the lesser known Oldest Story In The World. It’s far more downbeat than most of The Plimsouls’ stuff I’ve owned which is driving, guitar-driven rock. Like Valley Girl, The Plimsouls were under appreciated.

Modern English – I Melt With You
from Valley Girl soundtrack

Of course, I Melt With You is better known now than it was in the early ’80s. My mother would probably recognize the song from its use in several commercials.

Modern English’s album After The Snow, on which I Melt With You appeared, inspired the term Modern English Syndrome for me and a college roommate. It was our shorthand for an album which, while quite good, had one song which so dwarfed everything else that it made the rest of tracks seem almost mediocre.

The music of the ’80s has been much maligned (and, at times, I would argue unfairly). I Melt With You is as perfect a pop song as any that came before or after it.

Heartbeat City

A lot of blogs I follow have noted that, even if it’s not official, it is now undeniably summer.

And as Paloma recently noted as the song Moving In Stereo played, The Cars are a perfect summer band. That song reinforces the band’s warm weather credentials because, thanks to its famous use in the movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High, I can’t help but picture Phoebe Cates climbing out of a pool.

If I think about it, though, it is a bit odd to associate The Cars with the most carefree of seasons. Sure, they did have some playful moments and songs with a shimmering sheen, but The Cars were also cold, somewhat robotic, and prone to dark, melancholic subject matter.

Phoebe Cates in a bikini aside, it was really 1984 that hardwired my brain to think summer when I hear a song by The Cars. Three albums dominated the airwaves and MTV that summer – Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA, Prince’s Purple Rain, and The Cars’ Heartbeat City.

Heartbeat City actually was released on the cusp of spring and by the time school was out that year Magic was the second hit accompanied by a video that screamed summer

(how could it not with lead singer Ric Ocasek walking on the water of a swimming pool?)

It was the first summer that my friends and I had our drivers’ licenses, but that freedom was tempered by the fact that it was my first summer with the responsibility of a job.

The upside of the gig was that it was as a scorekeeper for a women’s softball league – a mere two nights a week, hanging with some classmates who were players, and done by ten.

The rest of the weeknights and the weekends were mine. Some nights, a carload of us would head into The City, but, remaining local had its merits. The kids from the neighboring towns – even smaller than ours – made our hometown their destination.

There was a lot of pizza, plenty of time brilliantly wasted doing nothing, far too few girls who gave us their attention and Heartbeat City as one of the constant soundtracks to much of it.

The Cars – Magic
from Heartbeat City

Yeah, Magic got played into the ground. If it wasn’t on the radio, the video was on MTV.

But it still charms me.

The Cars – Stranger Eyes
from Heartbeat City (vinyl)

I recounted a recent encounter with the film Top Gun, a mind-numbingly sorry excuse for a movie. I had also been underwhelmed seeing it in the theater.

It was the trailer that had snookered me. I blame Stranger Eyes which sounded so cool blasted at stadium decibel levels in that trailer.

The Cars – Heartbeat City
from Heartbeat City

I confess that I never really understood what the title track was all about or who Jackie was. I think that I got sidetracked by a couple reviews I had read that purported the song to be about drug use. Who knows.

Anyhow, as good as The Cars were at injecting power pop with an ’80s twist, the band also had a way with more dreamy and subdued songs, too.

The Cars – Drive
from Heartbeat City

As obvious a pick as it is, I’d have to go with Drive as my favorite Cars’ song. I still vividly remember the first time I heard it on the radio. It was a typical summer night except that a friend and I ended up hanging with two girls from out of town. My friend went off with one and she flipped me the keys to her Chevette.

I ended up with the other girl in the middle of nowhere (which wasn’t far from the middle of town), parked out at an airfield belonging to a local corporation. We were sitting there, talking, on a cloudless night, and Drive was playing on the radio.

Of course, as pretty as Drive is, it has a desperate, dark undercurrent to it which was reinforced by the video – scenes of lead singer Ocasek arguing with supermodel (and his future wife) Paulina Porizkova and others in which she seems to be a patient in a psychiatric hospital.

The Hills Have Eyes (And They're Sensitive To Obscene Finger Gestures)

The other night, the cable offerings were rather uninspiring, but, as it was after dark, I stopped on the remake of The Hills Have Eyes.

The flick wasted little time getting to the carnage, opening with a group of scientists clad in protective gear being torn apart by some savage creature. It was gruesome but hardly shocking.

What has stuck in my head is a scene that came later, after the vacationing family had broken down taking a shortcut through the same remote stretch of desert.

It wasn’t the family dog getting gutted or the patriarch being beaten to a pulp then set aflame. No, it was a scene in which one daughter in the family gave the finger to her sister.

The defiant digit was blurred out.

Pondering the interesting choices in censorship aside, the movie made me miss the horror flicks on which I had grown up in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

I’m not referring to the movies of that time but rather the late-night television fare in a world without cable on our local independent station (usually the only one still on air after midnight).

These were mostly B-movies from the ‘50s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s and often in black and white. Sometimes they were surprisingly eerie, rising above their budgetary limitations, but, often, they were laughably shoddy or dated – bobble-headed alien invaders, puppet creatures and hippie vampires.

It was the latter which held the most entertainment value for me and several friends from the neighborhood when we’d hang out on Saturday nights in the early ‘80s. Not yet old enough for cars, girls, or guns, we’d be sprawled out on bean bag chairs in the dark basement of our friend Willie.

(as it was his basement, he had right of first refusal on the ancient couch)

Saturday night was the night for Nightmare Theater, hosted by the ghoul/zombie Sammy Terry (pictured above), who would add his commentary during commercial breaks or banter with a fake spider named George who “spoke” in squeaks.

For a couple years, ours was a ritual gathering most summer nights on Saturdays – Chris would be wired on Mountain Dew, Kurt would be obsessing over the dollar he’d loaned to Chris for the drink. Sometimes there would be a half dozen of us hanging out in that panel-walled womb.

We’d howl in amusement with every bad pun Sammy would deliver and yell, “George!” in unison the first time that rubber spider would descend into the scene.

By ’83, we had access to cars and had begun the pursuit of girls. There weren’t as many viewings of Sammy, but it was always fun to catch the show on occasion.

Years later, crashing out and watching Nightmare Theater was an incentive to make the trek home from college.

I hadn’t seen the show for twenty years until discovering a trove of clips here.

In 1982, the last year my friends and I regularly tuned into Nightmare Theater, I was still coming to the realization that I quite liked music – to an almost obsessive degree. It was still mostly Top 40, but I was venturing to some album rock, too. Some of the songs I remember from that spring…

Hall & Oates – Did It In A Minute
from Private Eyes

Hall & Oates were such a constant presence on radio and MTV in the ’80s, there are songs of theirs which I really wouldn’t miss if I never heard them again (I Can’t Go For That and Out Of Touch come to mind).

Then, there some of their lesser hits from that time – songs like How Does It Feel To Be Back, Wait For Me, Family Man – which are pleasant surprises when they pop up. The breezy Did It In A Minute is in the under appreciated category.

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts – Crimson And Clover
from I Love Rock N’ Roll

Joan Jett’s I Love Rock N’ Roll was a monster in early 1982 and I imagine she could have belched the alphabet and had a follow-up hit. Instead, she opted for a cover of Tommy James’ Crimson And Clover.

Of course, my schoolmates and I had no idea who Tommy James was. It was one of our “hip” teachers who played the original for us in homeroom one afternoon.

We much preferred Joan.

Van Halen – (Oh) Pretty Woman
from Diver Down

Diver Down might have been Van Halen’s fifth album, but as the first four were released when I had little interest in music, it was my first exposure to Eddie and Diamond Dave.

Their take on the Roy Orbison classic isn’t bad, but I wouldn’t even offer it up as the best cover song on Diver Down (and there are several). Instead, I’d go with their version of Dancing In The Street.

John Cougar – Hurts So Good
from American Fool

American Fool was the album that would make Johnny Hoosier (as my friend Bosco called him) a household name. Growing up in Indiana, Hurts So Good was on every radio station from the moment it was released and the rest of the country soon joined us.

I was fairly ambivalent about Hurts So Good at the time. I had no idea that its success would, by the time Johnny Hoosier had become John Mellencamp, literally change the course of my life in ways I could have never imagined as a kid in junior high.

And Then There Was Maude

So Bea Arthur has moved on. She was 86 and she had a good run – as good as a human could hope (I would think).

I wasn’t even yet in grade school when she showed up as the title character in the television show Maude. As JB astutely notes, the show did have one of the funkiest themes of all time. Even at four or five, I knew there was something about it.

The show was incredibly topical, or so I’ve read. The subjects that the show addressed – abortion, racism, alcoholism – were not on my radar. I remember watching the show as a kid, but I had little idea what most of it was about.

I’m sure that I was amused by Maude’s brassy persona and sarcasm.

And I do most definitely remember Adrienne Barbeau.

Like Donny Hathaway’s theme and Maude herself, there was something that I found compelling about Adrienne Barbeau (even if I didn’t quite understand it).

So, bon voyage, Bea. You seemed like swell dame.

Some of the songs that were hits when Maude debuted in September, 1971…

Paul McCartney – Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
I don’t recall hearing this song in 1971. If I did hear it, it didn’t register.

It is a wonderfully jaunty little tune. I mean, would it be considered a shanty?

What makes a song a shanty – a certain musical style or lots of nautical references? And with the Somalian pirates making headlines (or are they losing their audience?), could shanties be the grunge of this decade?

John Denver – Take Me Home, Country Roads
I do remember John Denver on the radio and he was one of the first acts to catch my ear. Of course, those television specials were some of the first music performances I probably viewed. At the age of five, this long-haired fellow in the floppy hat, traipsing around the Rockies with bear cubs and denim-clad hippie chicks was, in my mind, The Man.

I still love Take Me Home, Country Roads. Every time it pops up on shuffle Paloma and I wonder if Emmylou Harris sings on the song (and, each time I make a mental note to research that and, each time, I forget).

The Carpenters – Superstar
Like John Denver, The Carpenters hits in the early ’70s are some of the first songs I vividly remember hearing on the radio. If I had to make a short list of favorites by the duo, Superstar would most definitely be on there.

As someone who listens to a lot of music, I probably should receive demerits for not knowing songwriter Leon Russell’s version (actually, I confess to not really being familiar with Russell at all (although I’m sure I’ve read about him at Whiteray’s blog).

All of that aside, Superstar is pretty glorious.

The Doors – Riders On The Storm
Even though Jim Morrison had been dead for well over a decade, The Doors were one of the bands among most of the students in my high school. The band’s hold was taken to an extreme by two sisters who were rather adamant that they were illegitimate hatchlings of The Lizard King.

Apparently, it was the last song that The Doors recorded as a band, from sessions in December of 1970. Three months later, Morrison would move to Paris.

Riders On The Storm would have to be considered one of The Doors’ signature songs and it is one cinematic trip.

Fridays On My Mind

Out of nowhere the other night, the show Fridays popped into my head and I was rather surprised to find it there. Fridays was a late-night, sketch comedy show that aired in the early ‘80s as a rival to the similar Saturday Night Live.

I’m not sure why, but I didn’t really watch SNL until high school and haven’t watched it since the mid-’90s. The first show of its type which I was watching was Fridays (and, on occasion, Second City Television).

Of course, really the only thing that I could remember about Fridays was that Michael Richards had been a member of the cast and they had a lot of musical guests whom I was – at that time – mostly unfamiliar.

I did a bit of research and found that it aired for two seasons beginning in April of 1980. It had an interesting mix of guest hosts including George Carlin, Marty Feldman, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Madeline Kahn.

(if you had been in a relationship with Madeline, wouldn’t it have been impossible to not indiscriminately bellow “Kahn!!!” ala Shatner?)

Richards was, indeed, a cast member, notably involved in a strange prank with Andy Kaufman. and known for his recurring character Battle Boy, a hyperkinetic boy who finds new and creative ways to destroy his toy soldiers (fire was usually involved). Larry David, also instrumental to the success of Seinfeld, was in the cast, too (which I hadn’t remembered).

As for the musical guests…it’s a pretty compelling list of acts that wouldn’t have been getting much exposure on radio at the time in my part of the Midwest.

The Boomtown Rats, The Tubes, Devo, The Jam, The Plasmatics, Split Enz, Jim Carroll, Ian Hunter – all performed on the show.

There were also guests who were more mainstream and who, even though I was only beginning to care about music, I knew like Kenny Loggins, Journey, Tom Petty, The Cars, Pat Benatar, Eddie Money, Scandal and Quarterflash.

As I was transitioning from junior high to high school during Fridays ‘s run, I didn’t always get the humor, but I remember my friends and I being entertained by the show. Each episode was a source of banter for the next several days.

And it gave me the chance to hear some music and artists for the first time.

AC/DC – You Shook Me All Night Long
According to the Wikipedia entry on Fridays, AC/DC’s appearance on the show was the band’s American television debut with lead singer Brian Johnson following the death of Bon Scott. The mighty You Shook Me All Night Long was one of a number of classic AC/DC songs on Back In Black, their first album recorded with Johnson.

The Clash – Train In Vain (Stand By Me)
When The Clash were on Fridays in April, 1980, “the only band that matters” had recently released their album London Calling and the group had broken through on radio in the States with Train In Vain. It was one of the songs they performed on their first appearance on American TV.

Stray Cats – Rock This Town
Although Stray Cats’ Rock This Town wouldn’t be a hit on American radio until the autumn of 1982, the song had already been released in the UK a year earlier when the trio from Long Island performed it on Fridays. Like The Clash, their appearance served as Stray Cats’ introduction to television audiences in the US.

The Cars – Touch And Go
TV.com credits The Cars with two appearances on Fridays. I do remember seeing them perform Touch And Go from their album Panorama. Moody and menacing, Touch And Go wasn’t one of The Cars’ biggest hits, but it’s always been a favorite of mine.

Accidentally Poking The Nun With A Stick (Or, Maybe She Simply Wasn’t A Lakers Fan)

Unlike last Easter, Paloma and I opted for a more traditional take on the holiday this year – I’d promised we could go shopping for some plants and flowers.

As the late morning sky resembled that from the opening credits of The Simpsons, we decided to head out into the countryside and, forty-five minutes later, she was loading up a cart at a lawn and garden store.

Checking out, Paloma made polite conversation with the clerk. As it was roughly noon on Easter, she asked if things had been slow.

The clerk replied that, actually, quite the opposite was true. “Guess people ‘round here don’t go to church on Easter Sunday.”

His eye contact conveyed disapproval and his tone had enough accusation in it for me to, momentarily, consider telling him that we were Muslim were late for the call to prayer.

However, as “’round here” was Sticksville, I suspected such a comment might have brought Homeland Security into the mix. Paloma had promised me KFC for lunch, so, obviously, that would have been an inconvenience.

When I was in third grade, basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was only about half a dozen years removed from being known as Lew Alcindor. As Larry Bird and Magic Johnson wouldn’t really bring the NBA onto my radar for several years, I doubt that I knew Abdul-Jabbar by any name.

(I was surprised that both Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lew Alcindor passed spell check – what a glorious time to be alive)

As a nine-year old who was being raised Catholic in a small Midwestern town, I doubt I’d heard of Islam, either, until reading an article on Abdul-Jabbar in some magazine (probably Sports Illustrated).

The piece made me aware of the greatness of Abdul-Jabbar and it served as a foreshadowing of the future.

After several days of letting the subject slosh around in my nine-year old brain, I decided to take up the matter in religion class with Sister Jonette.

“Sister Jonette, we’re Catholic and believe in God, yes?”

So far, so good.

“And some people are Muslim and they believe in Allah, right?”

I was suddenly sailing into unfavorable waters.

“So, how do we know that we’re not praying to the same god? Or, what if we’ve got the wrong one?”

Sister Jonette had to be eighty-years old. She was of the ruler-wielding generation of nuns. She was not really of the demographic to take into account that I was quite honestly curious about a topic that would prove to be vexing to a lot of folks down the road.

I tried to throw Kareem under the bus as the source of my curiosity.

As I shuffled off to the principal’s office, I was no closer to having a grasp on spirituality, but I had learned a valuable lesson regarding religion.

Queens Of The Stone Age – God Is In The Radio

Beth Orton (with Emmylou Harris and Ryan Adams) – God Song

Faithless – God Is A DJ

Manic Street Preachers – The Girl Who Wanted To Be God

A Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

(reposted from Saturday, March 21 sans music)

There are no two better days in the sports year – at least here in the States – than the first two days of the NCAA college basketball tournament. There are usually at least a half dozen jaw-dropping moments in the first forty-eight hours.

Most of those moments prove to be quite fleeting and often the key players are soon relegated to fuzzy details – who was that kid that hit that shot when so-and-so upset so-and-so?

As much as the calendar, it is a harbinger of spring.

The tournament has become a bit bittersweet the last several years. It might be a longing for once having the luxury to skip classes and leave the couch only for snacks, glued zombie-eyed to the television for five or six games straight.

It rained a lot during the first two days of the tournament in ’90. It was a cold rain which provided a meteorological argument for not trekking to classes.

I don’t even think I had a shift at the record store.

My school, three years removed from winning the tournament, went out in the first round.

So, I lived vicariously through my brother’s school, Ball State, which was one of that year’s Cinderella teams – a #12 seed which upset two lower-seeded teams and came within minutes of beating a loaded UNLV team to reach the Elite Eight.

I remember speaking with my brother on the phone, not long after Ball State had won their first round game in Salt Lake City. It must have been closing in on midnight which meant we’d both been watching hoops for almost twelve hours.

And, of course, the most memorable run of that tournament was Loyola Marymount, the small school from Los Angeles which was a #11 seed. I’d read a lot about the Lions as they were the highest-scoring team in college basketball history. I don’t think that I’d seen them play.

The team had Bo Kimble who was the leading scorer in the country. His teammate, Hank Gathers, had done the same. The two had been teammates and friends in Philly who had headed west for college.

A week before the tournament, Gathers collapsed and died during a game (he’d had a heart condition).

In an event that has no shortage of sentimental pull, Loyola Marymount was the must-see team for most hoops fans that year. They were like watching a pinball machine and the mastermind behind it all was a coach who quoted Shakespeare to his team.

And in each of their games, basketball fans across the nation knew to expect the right-handed Kimble to shoot his first free throw of the game left-handed as a tribute to Gathers.

It came to an end one game short of the Final Four with Loyola Marymount going out against the eventual champions, UNLV.

And probably most of all, the reason that tournament was so memorable for me is that it was my last as a college student. I’d graduate in December.

I still hadn’t left town when the following season’s tournament was played. I likely watched as much or more of it in ’91, but things had changed.

Unlike twelve months earlier, my life was now on the clock.

Godzilla, I Can't Stay Mad At You

The first movie that I can recall seeing in a theater was Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster.

(simply typing the title makes me as giddy as when I was four)

Yes, perhaps you’ve seen a Godzilla flick or two, but there’s none of them like his match with the Smog Monster.

It has an early ‘70s environmental bent to it, blending psychedelic rock music, cartoons, Japanese hippies, and a Godzilla that could fly.

It truly was everything that a child’s first big-screen experience should be.

Some of it did, admittedly, frighten me (I was four).

Through the years, it was always like Christmas to stumble upon a Godzilla movie on late, late night TV. I must doff my chapeau to the Japanese for enriching my life through a man in a giant lizard suit.

Godzilla, sushi, and providing inspiration for Styx’ Mr. Roboto – the Japanese have greatly contributed to who I am today.

I thank you all (seriously).

So, I bought into the hype for the Godzilla remake in ’98. I remember checking out some trailer for the movie which arrived on the internet a year ahead of the flick.

The movie eventually did come out and did so while I was traveling in the UK with a couple friends. So, it had been in theaters for a week or so before I managed to see it. If I recall correctly, I went with some friends the evening of my first day back in the States.

Undone by jet-lag and crushed by the weight of expectations, Godzilla left me angry, disappointed, and hurt. You can’t CGI the inestimatable charm of a man in a fake suit (and the Puff Daddy song that came out the week before I left for the UK should have been taken as a very bad omen).

I’ve caught it on cable a few times in the last year, though, and I’ve learned to love it for what it is and not lament what it isn’t. I do think that the opening credits work well.

And the first twenty minutes or so do a good job of building suspense. His arrival in Manhattan, though, is where Godzilla and I part company, but it’s with much more mutual respect now than there was a decade ago (we both are older and more mature I suppose).

But it sure would be cool to stumble upon his predecessor – hanging with the hippies and saving the world from pollution – while channel-surfing.

There simply aren’t enough songs about Godzilla and I’ve already posted the Blue Oyster Cult classic, so here are a handful of songs that were popular in the spring of 1971 (when Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster was released)…

Keiko Mari – Save The Earth
OK, this wasn’t a hit, but, by God, it should have been. Save The Earth plays over a montage which opens Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster and truly sets the tone. It was actually kind of creepy – lava lamp graphics, images of pollution-choked harbors filled with manikins and such.

Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
To state the obvious, What’s Going On needs no comment from me.

The Doors – Love Her Madly
In high school, The Doors were arguably the most popular band amongst the general population (despite the fact that Jim Morrison had been dead for more than a decade). So popular were they that two sisters were adamant that they were the illegitimate daughters of The Lizard King (Morrison, not Godzilla – although going with the Godzilla angle would have been equally as believable).

Lobo – Me And You And A Dog Named Boo
This is the one song in the bunch which I actually remember hearing on the radio at the time. I imagine the fact that the singer had a dog appealed to me (my brother and I had to make do with a hamster and hamsters, if no one has ever told you, don’t fetch).

God Bless Men Without Hats

The legendary band Men Without Hats was long a joke to Paloma. She’d shake her head recalling her younger brother’s fondness for The Safety Dance when they were kids.

Things changed when I bought a copy of The Rhythm Of Youth on LP last summer. She claims to have never heard the album, but she quickly warmed to the madcap musical antics.

I’d never owned the album, but I was quite familiar with it. In high school, my friend Chris had a cassette with Men Without Hats on one side and Iron Maiden’s The Number Of The Beast on the other.

Amazingly, he’s quite successful and well-adjusted.

But twenty-five years ago, thanks to winter nights when a half dozen of us would be piled into Chris’ Volvo (actually, his dad’s car), I was well acquainted with the elastic melodies of Men Without Hats.

Like a lot of the ‘80s, their songs were like musical cartoons.

Why they had no hats – had they been stolen? Lost? – I have no idea. Maybe it was some religious thing. It does seem like a lot of religions are preoccupied with headware.

And there does seem to be a lot of focus among the pious on what foods may be eaten.

It’s as though most of the people of the world have chosen to believe in a deity who they choose to present as a disgruntled foodie or a fervent fashionista.

And suddenly the music of Men Without Hats isn’t quite so non-sensical.

Men Without Hats – I Like
The first song on side two of Rhythm Of Youth, I Like was the track that broke Paloma. Try listening to this one and not having it lodge in your brain.

I’m not completely certain what the hell they’re going on about in this song – some kind of middle finger to shallow people – but it’s fun to sing along to lines like “I. Like. When they talk real loud, try to tell you what they know.”

Men Without Hats – Things In My Life
“Things like polyester pants and shoes don’t make it easy to remember.”

You know, I’m bumfoozled by a chunk of Bob Dylan’s lyrics and Men Without Hats often leave me similarly confused.

Of course, other than that, the two acts aren’t very much alike.

Things In My Life is, surprisingly, kind of pretty, though.

Men Without Hats- I Got The Message
Remember years ago when those Pokémon cartoons caused seizures in a large number of the viewers in Japan? Had I Got The Message been a hit, I’d imagine it would have provoked a similar problem.

Men Without Hats – Pop Goes The World
Like most of the known world, I lost track of Men Without Hats after their initial fifteen minutes were up. Chris soon replaced that cassette with ones by Talking Heads, Devo, and The Cure

But then, they returned several years later with Pop Goes The World. Chris and I were in college and I think he was in a Byrds phase (it involved a girl).