Top Ten 80s Mistakes

Posted at 5:00 AM Oct 13, 2008

By Jennifer Mathieu

Mistakes come in all shapes and sizes, and the '80s had a lot of them. Fashion mistakes. Relationship mistakes. Business mistakes. Now, for your viewing pleasure, the top '80s mistakes of all time.

10. Acid-washed denim

Made your jeans look like they had a fever. Hideous, trashy, gross, and I wore them. Why? I don’t know. Why did I feather my bangs two inches above my head? I can’t tell you why I did that either.

9. New Coke

We may not have cared about nuclear disarmament or apartheid, but by God, don’t mess with our Coca-Cola. Americans have their values in the right place, you know? When Coca-Cola decided to futz with the formula of Coke and create a “new” Coke (which didn’t taste all that new), sales fell and the demand for the “classic” Coke reached a frenzy second only to that surrounding Hands Across America. Coca-Cola quickly realized their enormous error and brought back the original formula. (By the way, am I the only conspiracy theorist who thinks the whole thing was a publicity stunt?)

8. Monkey Business

Gary Hart was the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president back in `88. So confident was he that he actually (and mistakenly) invited the media to follow him day or night for evidence of any monkey business. Flash forward a few weeks and the world is staring at a photograph of Mr. Hart sitting on a boat with a pretty young lady (not his wife) named Donna Rice perched on his knee. Remember the name of the boat? Say it with me now…yes, that’s right. The Monkey Business. You can’t make this up.

7. Heaven's Gate

Some movie about America, and horses (I think), and Kris Kristofferson was in it and it took a hundred years to make and forced the eventual collapse of United Artists. And it was horrible. The only good thing about Heaven’s Gate was it produced the most scathing line in film criticism to date with Vincent Canby of The New York Times comparing it to “a forced four-hour walking tour of one's own living room." Ouch.

6. Bobby Ewing in the shower

I remember watching the end of Dallas’s 1985 season when Pam woke up and found the supposedly dead Bobby Ewing in the shower. My mother, who was watching with me, proceeded to shriek and fall off the couch, exclaiming, “I knew they wouldn’t kill Bobby, I knew it!” The problem is the “it was all Pam’s bad dream” solution essentially negated the entire season and created the exact moment when Dallas began its downward spiral from best soap opera on television to the ER of its day (on too long, not very good anymore). This “it was all a fantasy” lame plot point would rear its ugly head once again during the final episode of St. Elsewhere. If Lost ends like this I’m gonna be pissed.

5. The Flock of Seagulls haircut

This was clearly a mistake. I think intuitively this was realized even back in the '80s, but some New Wave force compelled us to like it or pretend to. There is no way you can judge this haircut as anything but a tragic, tragic example of what happens when hair goes very, very bad.

4. Lawrence Taylor busts up Joe Theismann’s leg

Who can forget watching Joe Theismann’s bone literally pop out of his leg over and over and over again on the instant replay? As a native of the D.C. area, the moment Lawrence Taylor of the Giants sacked the Redskins’ own Joe Theismann and fractured his leg is a moment that is burned into my mind. Theismann had to quit football, and to this day, Lawrence Taylor refuses to watch footage of the accident because he feels so bad about this intensely gross sports mistake. (Warning: The clip below is not for the squeamish.)

3. Al Capone’s vault

Dead bodies? Money? Gold doubloons? No. Just an empty bottle of gin, and egg all over the face of Geraldo Rivera. Of course, that didn’t stop Geraldo from creating quite a career for himself, including the moment on his talk show when he had his nose broken by a member of some white supremacist group. God, I miss the '80s.

2. Cosmo Girl, You Can’t Get AIDS!

In January of 1988, Cosmopolitan ran an article that quoted Dr. Robert Gould as saying, “Assuming that the genitals of both partners are healthy and intact the virus, I contend, will not be transmitted during vaginal sex from an infected person to his or her partner." Gould also suggested 20 tips in the bedroom that Drive! Men! Wild!

1. Black Monday

After the stock market crash of 1987, investors and bankers and politicians all realized their mistakes and understood that their greediness was to blame, and they took steps to ensure that our economy would never again find itself in the clutches of another crisis. And I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.