It's no secret that I'm obsessed with 80's pop culture. After all, I'm a 33 year old man that still loves watching old He-Man cartoons. But even a decade as cool as the 80's wasn't completely infallible, as witnessed by the three dumb things I'm about to discuss...

PARACHUTE PANTS
Every decade has its own fashion missteps, and as a fashion-challenged individual I usually don't even notice them. Example? In the early 80's, the feathered hair/Alligator shirt combo was all the rage; and while I didn't even know what "feathered" meant at the time, I used to always hear people in the chair next to me at Bo-Rics requesting to have their hair "feathered back." I used to request the exact same thing, because I was a dumb kid who figured the strangers at Bo-Rics probably knew better than me. This practice resulted in some unintentionally funny haircuts. I mean, I looked like a young kid with "80's porn star" hair.

But you know what they say; "monkey see, monkey do." So when parachute pants became all the rage in 1984 or so, I jumped right on the bandwagon. Parachute pants, for those of you fortunate enough not to remember them, were baggy, gaudy-colored pants made of nylon and usually covered with too many zippers and pockets. When you walked in them, you made a "swishing" noise. You also made a fairly bold fashion statement--but I guess in 1984, people actually WANTED to look as if they'd just leaped from a goddamn plane.

It started off as an inner city thing, and parachute pants were really big with break dancers. I wasn't doing too much break dancing in the 80's, although I did have the dance routine from the Thriller video memorized. My dad busted out laughing and nearly choked to death on a mouthful of beer when he saw me "dancing" along with the video, so my dancing days were short lived. But I apparently still wanted to look like an extra from a Run DMC video, so I began pestering my mom to buy me some parachute pants--maybe just so I'd have something to match my Jacko "Beat It" jacket, which, by the way, was also gaudy and covered in way too many zippers.

We were only able to find one pair of parachute pants that fit me at the local JC Penney store. They were burgundy and they looked absolutely ridiculous on me, but I proudly wore them to school just the same. Back then, I didn't realize how pointless it was for a misfit such as myself to try and fit in.

I have to tell you--even close to 24 years later, I still cringe with embarrassment when I think of my one and only pair of parachute pants. Only one single photograph of me wearing the pants exists. It was taken at the dentist's office after a cleaning, in which I showed off my annoying, "cavity free" grin. I thought about scanning it and putting it here in thecolumn, but hell, even I have some pride. In fact, it's pictures like this that make me wish I could travel back in time and punch my own self in the face.

I don't believe I've ever worn anything made of nylon since. At least not pants.

U.S.A. For Africa's We Are The World
Maybe it was guilt that made so many of us buy a terrible album and a terrible single. Apparently, thousands of people were starving to death in Africa each and every day, so Lionel Richie and Jacko thought a horrifically shitty song might be just the thing to help out. Me, I didn't know what the fuck was going on in Africa, and I didn't care either. The only
thing I knew about Africa was how the guy from Toto wanted to "bless the rains" there for some reason.

I remember watching the WORLD PREMIERE of the video in 1985, which was a really big deal at the time. It featured a veritable "who's who" of big music stars of the decade, many of them still hitting big on the charts today. You know, powerhouses such as Kenny Loggins, Kim Carnes, Al Jarreau and James Ingram. And just in case you're under the age of 25 and wondering who the fuck I'm talking about, yes, that last sentence was meant to be sarcastic.

Well-intentioned as it was, who could have possibly thought this song was a good idea?? Who thought that having Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper and Kim Carnes attempt to sing in three part harmony might actually work out? And for the love of God, where did Jacko get the stupid-looking military outfit covered in sequins that he wore in the video???

Maybe I'd be inclined to be less harsh if this was actually a decent song. But it isn't. The song is blandly produced, poorly sang and flat out stupid. Even the lyrics suck, like in Willie Nelson's solo when he sings;

"As God has shown us, By turning stones to bread..."

God never turned stones into bread. And neither did Jesus, although he was tempted to do so in the New Testament to prove his divinity. You'd think that Jacko of all people, co-writer of the song and a practicing Jehovah's Witness at the time, would know that. But I guess not. Maybe he was too busy sewing rhinestones onto his glove to pick up his bible. Who
knows?

Believe it or not, the rest of the album is even worse. It plays like a hodge-podge of rejected album songs by people like the Pointer Sisters, Steve Perry and Kenny Rogers. Even the Prince track, 4 the Tears in Your Eyes, turned out to be a major disappointment. Aside from having a weak hook, it's also a song about Jesus--and every Prince fan knows that he was MUCH better when he wrote about sex.

Shitty or not, however, a lot of people bought the record. I did. I shelled out my birthday money to buy it, played it through one time and never listened to it again. The album sits with my collection of vinyl to this day, still collecting dust. But at least I can say I never got fooled into buying a "charity" record ever again; not even the Band Aid project, who recorded a much, much better song in Do They Know It's Christmas?

Meanwhile, all these years later, people are still starving in Africa. And We Are The World still sucks.

KANGAROOS
As you may have noticed, zippers were a big thing in the 80's. Yes indeed, zippers were plentiful; and the more zippers you had, the cooler you were. I suppose it was only a matter of time before somebody thought to include zippers on tennis shoes, and that's where KangaROOS come in.

Here's the concept in a nutshell--KangaROOS looked like any other pair of athletic shoes, save for two differences. First off was the cool silhouette of a kangaroo on the shoe itself, because in the 80's we liked to have images of miniature animals on our clothing... everything from the aforementioned Alligator shirts to the poor man's version of it, Le Tigre, which boasted an image of a small tiger. The second difference was a zipper on the side of each shoe which was actually a SMALL POCKET! How cool was that?? Many is the time I've laced up my plain ol' Reeboks and lamented the fact they are, alas, pocket-less.

Now I already had approximately 1076 zippers on me at any given time, so you know I just had to get me some KangaROOS. But my pair was a little different than most; see, MY pair didn't have pockets on the side of the shoes. Instead, the pockets were found on the inside of each tongue... and let me tell you, the tongues on my 'Roos were pretty damn big. They were practically as big as catcher's mitts, which meant that in shoe terms I had some big ass pockets. And bigger was better.

My mind reeled as I considered what I could put in my shoe pockets... why, maybe I could store some loose change in my shoes! Or even my house key! Or maybe... maybe... well, I couldn't think of anything else to put in there. But what difference did it make? My shoes had pockets in them, man! Fuckin' POCKETS!!!

Now, I had previously used the pockets in my pants to store my house key and change, but that concept had clearly become obsolete. And I can't tell you how proud I was to walk around in my KangaROOS, change jingling and those over-sized tongues flopping up and down. I looked idiotic of course, but that's one of the great things about being a kid.

KangaROOS went out of style in a flash, but wouldn't you know it? They made a comeback a few years back, and now you too can have pockets in your shoes. But I hope you do cooler things with them than I did... you know, like storing condoms or something.

-JTL

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