About That

Yeah, no. That's not going to be how I go out tonight. (Oh, hey, folks. If you missed the couple of hour gap between the last post and this one, maybe read that one first? Maybe don't- it's not that great. Mostly read the last lines about how I'm probably just going to go to sleep? I sure proved 10 PM Rob wrong, didn't I?) I might not have hit my quota for the day (or any day since last Thursday), but that's not going to stop me from making one hell of an attempt tonight.

And you know what? We're going to go old school all up in this business.

Gonna learn how to be a Senate Page so hard. Lesson 1: Lie to the spouse. The Senator is out with visiting dignitaries, not the babysitter/pool boy. Lesson 2: Learn their coffee order. Make sure they get it. If they don't, fall on your sword. Well, you can't afford a sword, because you're getting paid in experience, so fall on your credenza.

And what do we need if we're going to go old school all over this Fortune 500 company?

Bourbon.

Nope. There will be no restoration here. Va-t-en, Orléans.

Anyway, bourbon has been duly obtained and is neat this time due to the new acquisition of winter by the southern states. Those are some warming spirits. Yes, I know that it doesn't actually warm you. Yes, I learned that in Boy Scouts, because they tried to teach us a lot of things that we probably didn't need to know at age 12. I say "tried" because there are plenty of skills that I never really picked up (namely, anything involving the identification of trees or tracks. Seriously, I still can't identify poison ivy. "But, Rob," you say, "it has three leaves!" Yes. Yes, I'm sure it does. Do you know what else has three leaves? A FUCKING SHITTON OF OTHER PLANTS. I can identify sycamore (sometimes), grapevine, and poison ivy vine. Beyond that, you're on your own. I can be a medic, but I sure as shit won't be finding any botanicals in the zombie apocalypse. Get a botanist and a natural products chemist on that.), even after 7ish years in scouts.

I did, however, learn how to look good in uniform. Of note, this picture caused a young lady who is currently a staunch (and I mean STAUNCH) Catholic missionary to drop an f-bomb.

But, hey, that's how it goes. I never finished my fly fishing merit badge because I could never catch a fish (a requirement that they did NOT have for the fishing merit badge, strangely enough).

I think that we can all agree that, as an era, the eighties were the best time to have a one-hit wonder. Technologically, we were at a point where it was still lucrative to sell hard copies of music, but we couldn't store a lot of songs on a medium. Synthesizers and drum machines were all the rage, which made it easy to come up with a decent song. Tape decks had made it into cars, and musical styles seemed to be at a sufficient confluence to allow for some pretty impressive songs to work their way out of the woodwork.

And the mountains of cocaine didn't hurt, either.

I mean, obviously you still had some of the giants out there (Billy Joel, Queen, David Bowie, Black Michael Jackson), but look at some of the smaller players. Dex's Midnight Runners, Lena, Simple Minds- oh. Those don't sound familiar. How about this: "Come on Eileen," "99 Luftballons," and "Don't You (Forget About Me)."

Too rye aye, indeed.

Yes, the 70's gave us some pretty great bands and some pretty great songs, but it also gave us disco and Gerald Ford.

Rumor has it he still roams the Canadian hills ready to take on any wolves that think he's delicious enough to tangle with.

I mean, the 80's had a song to deal with anything (except possibly the need for more bourbon, which is what I'm experiencing right now, so if you'll just pardon me a moment. Won't be a minute. And I'm back, with my previous bourbon consumption beginning to catch up just enough to get me all warm and happy. And on with the show!). Well, anything that involved getting cheered up by an upbeat riff.

And the videos wove such beautiful tapestries. No arrows in Harold's eye, though. Pity, that.

Hell, even their breakup songs are catchy. Or, okay, fine, I would say that, but I found out that my breakup song of choice (which has the most 80s video I've ever seen) came out in 1998. It is, beyond any doubt, the greatest breakup song ever.

Yeah, ignore all of the Ethan Hawke/Gwyneth Paltrow business going on. We all know that Mrs. Havisham just needs the broken hearts of men to power her Genesis Device. The song has everything you need in a breakup song. It has the early self-pitying emo bit before breaking into a nice upbeat, "Hey, you're a pretty shitty person! Fuck you for trying to patronize me and toy with my emotions. I'm better than that, and I deserve better," before ending with the, "Well, I mean, if you're here, you might as well come inside, because WHY WON'T YOU LOVE ME ANYMORE." It's the kind of breakup song that would make you get out of your poorly lit room where you're staring at old pictures on Facebook if you didn't just keep watching the video on Youtube.

"Remember to swallow your sadness so nobody else comes to help you but me!"

But, hey, back to the 80's. We don't need another post about breakups. We just had that shit, and it was pretty miserable. Let's get back to the good part.

Thanks, Michael Bolton, you no talent ass clown who was amazing in that one music video. You go, Michael Bolton.

1981. Ringing any bells? Okay, fine, it's probably ringing a lot of bells. Iran released the hostages, Reagan got shot, the TGV started service between Paris and Lyon, and the first test-tube baby is born. But we all know what's more important than that.

Now, say it with Stephen Colbert's voice.

That's right. Okay, fine, you may not have watched the whole clip to get the reference I'm going for there. It's really more of an episode, and it's not even fifteen minutes. Trust me. You're reading this. You've got time to give it a listen. Well, a watch, I suppose.

Okay, fine. I'm talking about Moving Pictures. Yes, I like Rush. No, I haven't heard the super-Objectivist album, and I don't much care to. I had plenty of that in tenth grade when I had to read The Fountainhead (wow, Rob is really going all out with proper italicization of titles tonight. Must be the bourbon), and I found it a bit... non-consensual. (Seriously, Howard and Dominique. There's literature out there. Pick a safe word and use it.) But back to Moving Pictures. "Tom Sawyer," anyone? "YYZ?" "Limelight?" Hell, even "Red Barchetta" is an amazing song. Yes, Geddy Lee has that waily thing going on, and it can get a bit annoying after a while, but there's nothing like Rush for most any situation. Driving home after taking the MCAT? RUSH. Wandering around campus because someone won't return your calls? RUSH. Need a Canadian prog-rock band to listen to? RUSH. (Because who else are you going to listen to? Klaatu? Do we look like we have Barada and Nikto on standby?) Of course, somewhat ironically (there I go again, using that word), I'm currently listening to choral music from 1936. Well, fine, the recording probably isn't from 1936.

No, it's not subtitled. You can figure it out. I believe in you, faithful readers.

Then you've got the freaking Rocky soundtracks. Yes, I know that Rocky came out in the 70's. I'm talking about the Rocky movies that had good soundtracks. This doesn't mean that they had good plots, but they were coincidentally both AMAZING movies. Hell, let's expand this to other AMAZING movies (or so I'm told) with good soundtracks. Rocky III, Rocky IV, Highlander,  The Karate Kid, Top Gun, and probably several others. I mean, that's a road trip mix right there. You'll probably go crazy because you'll be JUST THAT AMPED UP.

See how he's staying loose and tight at the same time? Do that, but do less.

No, seriously. Look at the iconic tracks from each of those movies. "Eye of the Tiger," "The Final Countdown," "You're the Best," "Danger Zone," all of the Highlander soundtrack (because Queen didn't do things in half measures)- they're not only songs that get you ready to take on the world, one training montage at a time, but they're also songs that encompass the optimism that I'm told the 80's were supposed to be all about. These are songs you do in a group at karoke before extolling and convincing the married bartender of your friend's sexual prowess and getting her a little curious (but only a little- we're not ones to cuckold here, because this is now 80's night, where we're only the most honorable of Pucks). 

As opposed to the terrifying one that Neil "Angry Trousers" Gaiman writes. Alas, I couldn't find the downright chilling "Give me your hands, if we be friends/And. Robin. Shall. Restore. Amends" panel.

These are songs that normal people play before their important tests and other life events. (I'm not normal people, partly because I'm not sure that I heard these songs until I saw some of these movies on TV. I still haven't seen The Karate Kid, and I only saw Top Gun in 2011 (despite having a Naval aviator as a father). But don't worry- I've seen Jeremiah Johnson and The Music Man.)

"WITH A CAPITAL 'T' WHICH RHYMES WITH 'P' WHICH STANDS FOR 'POOL!'" Oh, Professor. How we've missed you.

So, I guess that last paragraph or two probably disqualifies my as any sort of expert, authority, or even amateur scholar of 80's music. I only came in at the end, and at that point, I was mostly listening to Raffi and The Beatles (hey, despite the grief that I give them, my parents DID hit my musical education pretty strongly in some areas). But goddamn if I won't listen to some "Come on Eileen" in the lab whenever my fellow lab members are foolish enough to let me get to the Pandora station. We will 80's it up all night long (which, coincidentally, is how long she shook me).

Speaking of the lab, I should probably pack it in shortly, I've got a solid swallow of bourbon (which I should probably chase with some water, because I can already feel the nagging headache of a bourbon hangover upon me (why did I have to inherit my father's taste for alcohol with my mother's tolerance? Oh, wait, it's because I'm a frugal son of a bitch. Ha ha ha ha, I had forgotten.), and it will only be worse by morning). If there's one thing Joseph doesn't want to deal with tomorrow, it's Rob with a hangover. Yeah, even though I already walked him through data analysis, he wants it again (which is reasonable, because it's not SUPER straightforward, but really? I showed you already. You plug raw data into Excel, and it spits out the values you need in all the successive columns. It's not an ideally designed spreadsheet, but it will get there), so I'm helping him out tomorrow at 10 in the morning, followed by a meeting with the boss at 1, which means I need to analyze data in the meantime. Wenh wanh. Have I closed all my parentheticals? Looks like.

Anyway, closing thoughts: Happy music is nice sometimes.