Here's a goofy website (When Things Were So Bad They Were Good) I created (and need to tweak) as an assignment in my web design class. If you click on it and the Kodachrome navigation buttons don't light up, can you please tell me? Thanks! Sometimes they don't work in Internet Explorer.
As I said, I'm still working on it; it needs more text and meta tags, etc. And the theme is completely useless other than to humor myself. But, these days, humor is one thing I can still afford.
*Update: I was zoning out on reality TV last night, watching the Rachel Zoe Project, when I saw the Glamour Magazine editor, Susan Cernek, who wrote to me asking to post my photo in Glamour's online mag... I know, my brush with fame is such a tenuous stretch most people wouldn't even mention it. But most people aren't as pathetic as I am. And most people wouldn't have yelled at the TV, when seeing Susan, "Ohhh... she emailed me!"
No, I didn't contribute an article... but check it out. Yep, that's me!
In the '80s I lived my life according to Glamour Magazine, following every home-made facial religiously, taking every personality quiz, i.e. "How Date-able Are you?", and trying out every hairstyle and smokey-eyed make-up technique. Finally, it all paid off!!
OK, so it's a few decades later than I hoped. I never imagined my fashion faux pas would catch up to me so many years later. Oh well, the editor Susan did mention I have a killer guacamole recipe. That's something, right?
Lesson to be learned? If you're going to be a slave to fashion, you, too, may end up in a "Real Person or American Apparel Ad" under the category "Believe it or Not" years later.
For more of my questionable '80s fashion moments visit my Flickr page.
I totally can't believe it's been, like, 25 years since the movie "Valley Girl" came out. It seems like just yesterday I was working the big hair - and that took work, too! I went through a canister of hair mousse a week - lace stockings, shoulder pads, Flash Dance shirts and bangles .
I moved to the Valley right after the movies Valley Girl and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Moon Unit Zappa's Valley Girl song came out. So, naturally, I had to spend time at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. Even though I was from Northern California, I fit right in. You see, being a Valley Girl was all about attitude.
That and the annoying over usage of "like" - as in "I am, like, so in love with him! Oh my Gawd!" And of course everything to a Valley Girl was "Awesome!"
I had Valley girl slang-itis bad enough that while on a trip to Hawaii, someone heard me speaking and asked, "Are you from California? You have a California accent." I had no idea what they were talking about. Clueless.
Here's a photo, circa 1983. Are we totally tubular, or what?!! Okay, so how about or What? As in what was I thinking?!
I'm the one on the left. If you look closely under my bangs you will see proof that I lost whatever brain tissue I'd managed to accumulate during my lifetime. Yes, under my bangs you are actually witnessing a head band, a HEAD BAND that matches my dress...a head band worn by someone other than Mike Reno from the band Lover Boy.
My only explanation for going out in public in this belted shirt I'm trying to pull of as a dress is that my headband is so tight it must have cut off the blood flow to my brain.
But, hey, it was the '80s. So that's my excuse.
Yet I'm still a Valley Girl. Like Moon Unit sang "She's a Valley girl and there is no cure..." That's totally fer sure!
The Newsweek article below is written by a former Valley kid from the Class of '82, the same year I graduated from high school. Initally, I was simply going link to it. But after reading some of the article's comments, I thought I'd say more.
My parents didn't officially get divorced until I was about seventeen, but I did know a lot of kids who grew up in split homes. My parents were much younger than this writer's parents who were of the WWII generation. And I didn't move to the Valley until '85. But I can still relate a bit. We grew up with the same social changes that were occuring during the '70s and '80s.
Many of the articles commentors refer to the writer and our generation as being navel-gazers, whiners and only thinking about "me, me, me". Yet, in my opinion, we as a group (kids born in the '60s) are rarely heard to comment on our growing up in that era. Sure, we hear from the Boomers (former Flower Children) all the time. And, yeah, I blather about my childhood beause I write and that's part of my life. Childhoods are significant to people; that's when people become cognizant of the world, form first impressions. So why is it wrong for my group to talk about how they responded to growing up in an era of turbulent social changes? I think it's sociologically significant to hear how former-children responded to divorce, being raised by single parents, being latchkey kids and other side-effects of the times. If you ask me, my group doesn't get heard from enough about how we have turned-out, or about what we thought of our experiences.
Most kids I grew up with, and still keep in touch with, have definite opinions about those unique years. But, if we do look back, it usually involves lots of laughing about how we dealt with certain things. One friend has the driest wit, she makes my stomach hurt. My sister, too, always has me howling about everything from the progressive schools she went to, where she could rollerskate in class, to the adults' farout lingo and groovy parties we used to spy on. Far from whining, my friends are people who, maybe because of their pasts, put extra time and effort into their families and relationships. I guess after growing up watching some of the goofy stuff the adults were doing around us, it was natural to have formed a great sense of humor.
With that said, this article isn't funny. But I can relate to it... just a bit.
The Divorce Generation Grows Up
Grant High School's class of '82 were raised on 'The Brady Bunch'—while their own families were falling apart. These are their stories—in their words.
...Such are the scars of growing up too fast—something many of my classmates were doing in the '70s. As newly single mothers went to work to support their families, children were being left to fend for themselves. "We were latchkey kids," says Elyse Oliver, whose mom took a job at Hanna-Barbera studios, painting animated characters for shows like "The Flintstones" to provide for Elyse and her sister. "We had the little necklace with the key on it and we'd walk home from school, let ourselves in and take care of ourselves until she came home about 6 or 7...
...In many ways, the urge to stay married is stronger in my classmates' generation than the urge to get divorced was in my parents'. Perhaps this was a backlash to divorce...
