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Show Wednesday, February 21, 2001 THE SIGNPOST Page 7 YOU KNOW YOU WERE A CHILD OF THE 80 S IF. Original Author Unknown You know what "Sike" means. You know the profound meaning of "Wax on Wax off." You know that another name for a keyboard is a "Synthesizer" You can name at least half of the members of the BRAT pack. You know who Tina Yothers is. You know who Max Headroom is. You ever wore fluorescent, neon clothing. You could breakdance or wish you could.. You wanted to dress like the Hulk (Incredible or Hogan) at Halloween.Partying "like it was 1999" seemed sooo far away. You wanted to be on Star Search. You remember what Michael Jackson looked like before his nose fell off. You knew what Willis was "talkin' 'bout". You HAD to have your MTV. You hold a special place in your heart for "Back to the future." You actually thought "Dirty Dancing" was a REALLY good movie. Punks actually "shocked" people. You knew "The Artist", when he was humbly called "Prince". You remember when ATARI was a state-of-the-art video game. You own any cassettes or records. Poltergeist freaked you out. You ever had a Swatch Watch, or three. You had a crush on Bo Derek or Heather Locklear. You remember when Saturday Night Live was funny. You had WonderWoman or Superman underoos. You thought eating Reeses Pieces would attract your own Alien. Your name is Jennifer or Jason. You have ever called 867-5309. You held the top score on PacMan. You had MALL Hair. You owned a T-Shirt that said, "I shot j.R." or know someone who did. If you ever said "I pity the fool." Your dream car was either: the A-team van, Kitt, The General Lee, a Delorean, or Daisy Duke's Jeep. You were sad when the "Where's the Beef?" lady died. You remember when cellular phones weighed 1 5 lbs. and had to be carried over your shoulder. You wanted to be Blair or Jo, and live with Mrs. Garrett. You could watch all of your favorite shows without having to watch Nick at Nite. If you were profoundly afraid of "The Cold War".even though you had no idea what a Russian was. You own all of the RoboiechTransformers (1st Gen)GI Joe Thundercats episodes. You have ever exclaimed "Achtung, babyl" in a crowded room. You remember snap bracelets getting you in trouble at school. You ever played with "My Little Ponies." You remember friendship bracelets - ties that couldn't be broken. You ever read Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, The Babysitters Club, or sweet Valley High. You know all the words to "Ice Ice Baby". You had a crush on one of the New Kids on the Block members. You remember the New Kids On The Block. You had Garbage Pail trading cards. You wore one of those t-shirt rings or a scrunchi on one side of your shirt during your youth. You wore french rolled pants, or the ones w the zippers on the back of the legs. You wore multiple pairs of socks in the middle of the summer just so you could be "hip" (purple and hot pink looked so goodtogether!). You have puff painted your own shirt at least once. You owned a doll with 'Xavier Roberts' signed on its butt. You were upset when She-ra, Princess of Power, and He-Man were canceled. You can remember watching Full House and Saved by the Bell for hours back when there were new episodes. You have seen at least 10 episodes of Fraggle Rock. You wanted to be a Goonie. ("Goonies never say die.") You remember Madonna in her cone stage. You remember M.C. Hammer (and owned a pair of "hammer pants"!). You can still sing the rap to "Fresh Prince of Bel Air". How many of you can recite the theme to Duck Tales? You owned a pair of L.A. Gear, Keds, or Converse tennis shoes. You carried your lunch to school in a Gremlins or an ET lunchbox. You have ever pondered why Smurfette was the ONLY female smurf (and how come Baby Smurf never grew up...). Gummy Bears, Transformers, You can't do that on Television, Double Dare,and Ridgy Didge are familiar to you. You actually spent countless hours trying to perfect the "Care Bear stare." You thought that Transformers were more than meets the eye. You spent hours in the basement building and re-building Lego cities. Big wheels and bicycles with streamers were the way to go. You stayed up all night listening to Teddy Ruxpin. You know how to do the "truffle shuffle." If you still have a crimper in your bathroom drawer! If you remember singing Amy Grants "Baby, Baby". You had more than one Star Wars action figure. You loved your acid-wash jeans and black stretch pants, and big loop earrings. Lookin' back at the 80s By Timothy Weber Harlan features writer The Signpost "From Big Hair and Great Music to Atari and the Rubik's Cube. You have entered a site that will take you back to the best decade ever," flaunts the front page of the i80s.com Web site. "Big hair is what I remember most about the 80s," said Stacie Hunt, a freshman at Weber State University this year. Whether it's music, hairstyles, video game systems and technology, or politics, the 80s seem to have been defined by a variety of things. Big hair was made popular in a variety of styles by a variety of pop music stars. Girls weren't the only ones with big or different looking hair either. The preppy "hair helmet", flat top, mohawk, and you name it hair styles were called cool and donned by boys everywhere. Video game systems made their debut in the 80s. Atari, Coleco, Intellivision, TelStar and Nintendo were the forerunners of today's systems. Kids everywhere couldn't wait to get home from school so they could conquer their new video game. While children with good minds were wasting away in front of a television screen, baseball mitts, basketballs, and other useful sporting equipment went unused so their owners could become expert video game players and get really lazy and out of shape while they're at it. Pear-shaped children popped up everywhere creating the physical education crisis of the 80s. Music in the 80s as in other eras, was a huge part of popular American culture. While 80s music became more and more unique, Bach, Mozart, Handel, Beethoven and the rest of the musical geniuses rolled over in their graves. Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, The Cars, Duran Duran, Madonna, Bananarama, Heart, Phil Collins, Chicago, ACDC. Def Leppard, Huey Lewis, Boy George, Belinda Carlisle, The Pet Shop Boys, REO Speedwagon, Air Supply, Depeche Mode, Elton John, Billy Idol, among . literally thousands of others all performed and released music recordings designed to upset parents everywhere. Clothing fashions in the 80s included such classics like Jordache jeans. The cool kids had a flat-handled comb in the back pocket. Day-glo clothes, jelly bracelets and shoes were big too. The Rubik's Cube was one of many toy fads that made their inventors very rich and kids very frustrated. Solving Mr. Rubik's puzzling cube usually meant peeling off the slickers and arranging them in their proper order. Electronics made a big push with consumers. Revolutionary new products included the fax machine, the microwave oven, and user-friendly Macintosh computers. Personal Computers were there but were very difficult for simple-minded people to operate. Their usefulness would come later. A memorable 80s fad that will live on in infamy is the peggcd-leg pants. By folding your pants over as tight as possible at Lhe ankle, you then fold them up two or three times. Then comes the doubled-up socks. This helps when the socks are two different flourescent colors alternating on each leg. Tapered pants with pleats were all the rage. The fashionable people of today with their flared and bootcut pants probably cringe at the idea of accentuating tine woman's thighs and hips without evening it out at the bottom. A good dare would be to have a girl dress up with a t-shirt ring hanging on the side of her hot pink blouse with one shoulder showing with the leg warmers and side pony tail. If that's daring, imagine a guy with a mullet haircut, a suit with the sleeves rolled up, wearing a loose tie around an unbuttoned collar sporting pegged-leg pants. The amazing thing is. we did it and we thought we looked great. The inventions, fads, music, and fashions of the 80s may encompass just a few of the areas of interest among nostalgic 80s-lovers. but to write about it all would take years just as the 80s did. t .i t-fi so Everyone seemed to have a Rubik's Cube in the 80s. Remembering the 80s By Stephanie Taylor features writer The Signpost The 80s: setting the stage for the 21st century agenda of computers, the AIDS scare, terrorism, and the end of the Cold War. Jason Christman, a junior at Weber State University remembers, "I had all the He-man toys and a 12-inch ponytail(ducktail)." Whe'n remembering the 80s, Katie Kirch, a sophomore at WSU, laughed as she said, "I had huge hair, florescent clothes, and tapered, tight rolled jeans." "I remember the Challenger crash, Transformers, and Rod Stewart," said Mike Sager, a senior at WSU. In 1980: Mount Saint Helen erupts, killing 60 people. Alsov John Lennon is assassinated by Mark David Chapmam. Bill Gates licenses MS-DOS to IBM, he makes next to nothing on the deal. In 1981: Pac-Man is introduced to the United States and sparks a huge craze. Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first female Supreme Court Justice. Aug. 1 is the birth of MTV, the first 24 hour-a-day music television station. In December, the first test tube baby is born. The first reports of homosexual men dying due to a mysterious breakdown of the bodies' immunization system. In 1982: Michael Jackson's 'Thriller" sells 20 million albums to become the largest selling record ever and Ozzy Osbom bites off the head of a live bat thrown at him at a Jan. 20 performance. John Belushi dies on March 5 of a cocaine and heroin overdose. The Mexican economy collapses. The first artificial heart transplant is performed, the recipient lives 112 days. (This surgery was performed at Uie University of Utah Hospital.) American Telephone and Tele graph (AT&T) breaks into 22 distinct regional phone companies. In 1983: Cabbage Patch kids, Camcorder, and Compact Discs are introduced. The final episode of MASH airs, advertising cost more at the Super Bowl that year, and surpassing the record Dallas set for most viewers. Vanessa Williams becomes the first African American Miss America and Sally Ride goes into space on the Challenger, which makes her becomes the first American woman in space. In 1984: The Cosby show premiers. The first megabyte chip is made at Bell Labs. The AIDS virus is discovered. The first infomercial appears on TV due to de-regulation by the FCC and RUN-D.M.C. is the first rap group to have an album certified gold. Stonewashed jeans are introduced. Reagen re-elected in landslide election, Walter Mondale is never heard from again. In 1985: Billy Joel marries Christie Brinkley, millions of men suddenly feel they stand chance with an attractive woman. Madonna begins her first tour. Nintendo home en tertainment system is introduced. Titanic wreckage found and filmed by robotic camera in July. In Brussels, Belgium 39 people are killed and 250 wounded during a soccer match between Liverpool and Juventus. In 1986: January 28. the Challenger explodes. In Nyos, Cameroon, a cloud of carbon dioxide rumbled out of the nearby Lake Nyos on Aug. 2 1 and killed approximately 1,700 people. Last, it was the return of Haley's Comet. In 1987: "Baby Jessica," Jessica McClure falls down the well and is later rescued after 59 hours. October 19 is Black Monday, the stock market drops 22 percent. The US budget reaches the trillion dollar mark and world population reaches five billion. In 1988: Compact Discs outsell records for the first time ever. The Summer Olympics are in Seoul, South Korea; Ben Johnson caught for steroids after setting a World Record in the 100-meter dash. Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland and Lybian terrorists are suspected of planting a bomb in the plane. In 1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall Nov. 9. The "beginning of the end" for the communist rulers in Eastern Europe; furthermore, the Cold War comes to an end. The stealth bomber in finished. There is a worldwide ban of ivory. June 3, students protest on Tienanmen Square in Beijing, China; so, the army intervenes and 3,000-7,000 people are killed. Arsenio Hall becomes the first African American to host a nightly talk show. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles become an overnight sensation. "G.I. joe" along with "The Smurfs" were two of the popular cartoons during the 80s. FEEOTS IBUELCLEIRL'S mm lm DAVC f . U X. "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" was the movie thzt mrirlc Mntfhow Rrnrlnrirk hmnn: |