Otters, Muppets, tales of poverty, jug-band music--what more could I possibly need in a children's Christmas special?! Well, a bear who bears a striking resemblance to Bootsy Collins would be awesome, and a somber frog restaurateur who fancies himself a music critic or a total bitch of a thread-spinning lady badger would really just kick things up like five levels. And while I'm thinking of demands, how about some truly bizarre harmony for the first couple of mother-son musical numbers and a creepy frozen lake play scene? Dolls, after finding an online search fruitless, I finally broke down and ordered Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, because it has well, everything you never really needed in a Christmas special...and, as of it's DVD release, more.
Originally released in 1977, this classic Christmas special was seasonally rebroadcasted through the early 1980s. As a child, I learned "Brothers," "Barbeque," "River Bottom Nightmare Band" and "When the River Meets the Sea" (the latter is also featured on a coveted John Denver & the Muppets holiday cassette tape under my bed) by heart. I remember it being on as often as A Charlie Brown Christmas, but no one else seemed to for many years. I would ask each holiday season only to be answered with blank stares and "Huh?"s.
We will begin by saying that we are more than a little bit troubled by this sexy-bear Halloween costume, which we found while we were searching for some classic Care Bear ephemera. Our Care Bear of choice was Funshine Bear, but we always imagined there was some incredibly fortunate '80s girl out there who also owned Bedtime, Birthday,
Cheer Bear, Friend, Good Luck, Grumpy,
Love-A-Lot, Tenderheart and Wish. Plus all the Care Bear cousins. She probably had them all propped up in her bed, like some kind of glorified Care Bear kingdom -- which would have been appropriate, given the inspiration behind the Care Bears story was rooted in the legend of King Arthur (Care-a-lot = Camelot; Love-A-Lot = Sir Lancelot; the heart-shaped table = the Round Table), according to the Internet Way Back Machine.
If someone could just gift us the Atari Care Bear video game, we would probably go into a comatose state of Regression Obsession in total and ultimate contentment.
In 1986, the same year Pleasant Rowland began selling American Girl dolls by mail-order catalogs, Mattel set their sights on a more glamorous line of girly toys. Their Hot Looks Dolls were glamazonian stockinette figures with heads made of vinyl and long, long hair. Unlike the American Girls, who represented modest pre-teens from various periods in U.S. history, the Hot Looks favored a glitzier path toward success, having come from all over the world to sign on as models at the Hot Looks Agency. Stacey was from the U.S., Elkie from Sweden, Chelsea hailed from London, Mimi from France, and Zizi from Africa. Check out the rad commercial, featuring The Fresh Prince of Bel Air's Tatyana Ali.
Every time we look at Elkie, we think of Stacy from The Baby-sitter's Club. The perfect doll ringer if there ever was one.
We were considerably disturbed by last week's news that Warner Bros. is in the
early stages of revamping The Neverending Story, a 25-year-old sci-fi franchise chronicling the adventures of a lonely boy who happens upon a book about a parallel world. As he reads, Bastian's life is intertwined in the lives of the novel's protagonists. A young Empress explains how he must save the universe from an evil force called The Nothing, and assigns a flying luckdragon to help him along on his hero quest. TEAM FALCOR.
If you haven't seen it in years, get thee to the Netflix, because it ages like a fine, fine wine. We'd venture to state that this classic 1984 fantasy doesn't require a "modern spin" -- we like it very much just as it is, thank you. Enough of the Hollywood remakes, already! To our relief, as of now, the studio has only managed to secure the puppet rights, and hopefully it will end there. The interweb fuss, however, did give us an excuse to hunt down the above Kid's Incorporated cover of The Neverending Story's theme song. Classic. Stick around for a performance of "The Goonies R Good Enough."
As we watched all the '80s influences weave their way through this past New York Fashion Week, couldn't stop thinking about how, even if the clothes were regressing, in a modern way, at least the hair still looked good. But perhaps we presumed too much. Behold: the dubiously transformative powers of the crimper. Ionic hair straightening irons knocked this tool off its hair pedestal after '80s girls decided they preferred to channel the sleek locks of a Friends-era Jen Aniston instead of the pop-star bed-head of Cyndi Lauper. We're bored of super-straight-all-time-time, but we're not so sure how we feel about the possibility of a crimping renaissance.
Gregg Gillis chose his moniker wisely. Who wouldn't want to name their mash-up/sampling act after a fancy form of truth-or-dare game that adolescents in 1988 stayed up all night playing at sleepovers? Especially one that requires you to wear fake zit stickers if you screwed up.
During a round of Girl Talk, pre-pubescent girls take turns acting out stunts (call a radio station and dedicate a song to a boy you like!) or sharing secrets (I totally have a crush on James Franco, zomg!). Whoever collects a fortune card from "Career," "Children," "Marriage," and "Special Moments" wins. The game and at life. Gosh. You really can have it all!
Joey Potter: Dawson's BFF turned lovah. Girl next door. Pre-Tom Cruise. The Pacey/Josh Jackson Years. Those odd yet wonderfully charming strands of hair she always hand hanging around her face. The way she would use SAT words in common conversation like they meant something. And a few other things, most notably about her turn as Eponine in a season one beauty pageant that almost sent her packing to Paris! (She didn't go. Because Dawson finally kissed her. Of course.)
1. I still do NOT understand why she sang this in a
baby-voice. Who are you, Paris Hilton? NO. NO. You are Joey Effing Potter.
Act like it. Get down with your Creek self.
2. "All my life, I've only been
pretending." This belt was butchered in a way that would make Simon
Cowell throw a shiv made from a Pepsi can straight into her face. Don't
tell me you signed off on this, Kevin Williamson. Where were you?!
3. The brown cowl-neck sack dress looks like poo, and she's wearing the make-up of a 40-year-old woman who lost everything
to Bernie Madoff and is living in some Great Expectations crazytown
fantasy. I blame it on Jen.
I've covered '80s hair accessories here before. But not the scrunchie. Something told me it wasn't yet time to regress, and I can see I was, in some sense, correct. Now is the time, because the scrunchie is seeing its renaissance. At least, American Apparel has deemed it so with their Nylon Tricot version, in florescent green, and purple, too.
It's not just Dov Charney who's bringing scrunchie back. Refinery 29 notes that they "should have seen this coming after a giant scrunchie attacked Sarah Jessica Parker last year." Ah, yes, I recall being horrified at that, especially in light of Carrie's shrill, annoying "no self-respecting New York Woman would ever wear a SCRUNCHIE" to her equally annoying ex-boyfriend Berger in previous seasons. (It's okay, you can admit having seen this episode upwards of ten thousand times, in reruns.) Well, now, in about a month's time, if Carrie were clip-clopping around the Lower East Side, she'd probably be eating her words, and buying the new Prada scrunchie in four juicy colors.
But back to the hair matter at hand.
The thing that strikes me most about AA's update isn't the scrunchie itself, but rather how it's worn: by a model wearing no makeup (no blue shadow!), in an austere Oxford top (sanspuff-paint T-shirt!), which gives it more of a modern geek-chic, Stephanie Tanner cache.
Plus, you have to admit: they're way easier to style than these.
When we think of Flight of the Navigator, three things come to mind: Max (Paul Reubens aka Pee-Wee Herman) calling everyone a geek in his surfer-dude voice-over approximation, David (Joey Cramer) betraying his unabashed love for Carolyn (Sarah Jessica Parker), and the far out digital music soundtrack.
On The Cosby Show, Vanessa Huxtable went through a prolonged (read: a few episodes) phase where she was obsessed with having a dog. Cliff and Claire always promptly quashed her pet-owning ambitions. But perhaps they -- like most of the parents of '80s kids who weren't allowed to have a puppy but never quite reconciled to that fact -- should have bought her a Pound Puppy. It would have stopped the begging, at least until the novelty of a stuffed replacement for the real thing wore off.
By Sharon Steel Before teen stars were quietly shuttled to private rehabilitation facilities and "It" girls figured out how to pay paparazzi agencies to shoot self-styled, faux-candid spreads, Teen Beat and Tiger Beatruled the adolescent subscription niche with cut & paste photo-collages and "exclusive" Q&As.
Before Zac Efron, Hilary Duff, and the Jonas Brothers, these junior high publications fed the adolescent histrionic machine by featuring cover girls and boys like David Cassidy, Michael J. Fox, Molly Ringwald, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and Jonathan Brandis (RIP).
Before gossip blogs made the fall from celebrity pedestal to skanky rock-bottom a neck-breaker instead of a twisted ankle, before Britney invented her own prison-house fame disease, before Miley Cyrus and Selina Gomez attacked each other's good-girl images via YouTube video cat fights, it was enough to carefully rip out a fold-out portrait poster of your sixteen-year-old idol of choice (free with every magazine!), and lovingly Sticky-Tak it to your door. There were no semi-scripted reality TV shows to tell you what they were really like, so you were free to imagine a ridiculous fantasy of your own while you chewed a stale piece of bubble gum, listened to your cassette tape collection, and wondered if so-and-so would ever answer your perfume-scented fan-mail.
Teddy Ruxpin, an animatronic talking bear, actually sold for $69.99 when he was first released in 1985. That's a lot of dollars -- pre-Greatest Depression dollars -- for a stuffed animal that told stories and gave you a wonky-eyed death glare. Given that our image is tainted due to the Mary Shelly's Frankenstein tone of the commercial above, we suppose, at the time, it made sense that everyone thought he was "cute."
The original Teddy used two sets of analog cassette tapes to control his storytelling and body movements. He became a collector's item in 1987 after World of Wonders halted production, which may have something to do with the fantasy back story created for his character. Gutangs vs. Illops? A digital cartridge upgrade arrived in 2005. Teddy Ruxpin still looks like he's tripping. But now, he's marked down!
Jennifer Aniston is fracking everywhere these days, blah-blahing about her films and her 30 Rock guest appearance and how very uncool that Jolie woman is.
The New York Times Magazineseems to be on Team Aniston, at any rate. I didn't have too many expectations from the requisite Q&A, though there was one very intriguing tidbit! Chatting away about her "sitcom graveyard," Jen referenced her role on Ferris Bueller, the television series based on John Hughes' seminal high school ditch-day film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Jen played Jeanie Bueller, Ferris's uptight sister and Jennifer Grey's pre-nose job role.
So we turned to YouTube for further evidence. And above, Jen makes her star turn in the pilot episode clip at minute 1:10 with a face FULL of eyelash curler. (Don't say we didn't warn you.) A few other things: Charlie Schlatter, who takes over for Matthew Broderick as Ferris, does eerily resemble a skimpier version of Zach Morris. But. One has to own his deadpan is pretty amazing. And speaking of Mr. Sarah Jessica Parker, right away, Schlatter takes a chainsaw to a Matthew Brodrick-as-him cardboard cutout that just so happens to be in his closet as if to say... screw you, it shoulda been me? Those writers had their meta down in 1986. Josh Schwartz must have been paying attention when he wrote the second season of The O.C.
Feather fascinators are the current mark of a sartorialist who wants fashion to bleed into her hair accessories. But there was a time when shoelace hair clips were the raddest alternative to scrunchies ever invented. Royal-hued, neon-colored, or metallic. Crazy-glued to a cheap silver clip. Purchased for $1 at a drugstore with your allowance.
Instead of a fairy wood nymph, one usually resembled... um, a girl with bouncy shoelaces in her hair. And gosh, did they ever go great with Swatch watches and mis-matched leggings from the GAP.
The Heartless Dolls are Andrea, Kathleen, Kiala, Merritt, Nicki and a hifalutin array of notable guest contributors from around the web. We dig pop culture and ladythings.
