I’m so excited! And I just can’t hide it! I’m about to lose control and I think I like it!

I’m a whirling dervish of excitedness today because it’s my husband’s work party tonight!  Squee!  I have a new dress and everything.  I know a lot of people hate going to their spouse’s – or their own – work parties because, yawn, boring.  And don’t get me wrong, I’m sure this party will also be a bore – they are foregoing a DJ in favour of a jazz band.  How will things get started in here if they don’t play the Black Eyed Peas? – but I get to wear a new dress!  And have cocktails!  And eat food that was not prepared by me!  That’s pretty much the top of the top, you know?  I am not cooking dinner.  And I’m going to be wearing not-jeans.

So now we are in December, and all the confusion around moustaches – who is a Movember participant and who is just a misguided moustachioed man – is gone, which is nice.  In my last post I said that moustaches were the mom jeans of facial hair, but upon deeper consideration, I have decided that they are more like the camel-toe pants of facial hair.  Much skeevier. 

In my university years, I was a terrible flirt (actually, I have always been somewhat of a flirt…but let’s just say university years for illustrative purposes).  I was in the bar with some girlfriends when I noticed a guy from one of my economics classes, who had a moustache.  This was in the early 90’s, so it was NOT the style of the time – at the time all the guys were shaving their heads and growing goatees.  Anyway, I had been enjoying a few drinks with girlfriends when I decided to ask that guy why he would possibly think a moustache was a good idea.  This was my thinking, but the actual words that came out of my mouth were the following: “Why do you have that moustache?  Do you use it to tickle the ladies?”  Suffice it to say that this moustachioed fellow found my sauciness intriguing in a way that I had not bargained for.  I had to spend the remainder of the semester giving the poor guy the cold shoulder, which brings me to an important life lesson: never ask someone if their moustache tickles the ladies.  Another lesson learned during my university years: in the deeply intelligent and insightful words of Harry in my very favourite movie of all time, When Harry Met Sally, “Men and women can never be friends, because the sex part always gets in the way.”  Truer words were never spoken.  Ladies, if you have any male friends, remember those words of wisdom and it will save you much awkwardness in the future when your “pal” wants to “take things to the next level.” 

Harry: No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive.  He always wants to sleep with her.

Sally: So what you’re saying is that they could be friends with a woman they find unattractive?

Harry: No, we pretty much want to nail them too.

Speaking of entertainment from the 80’s, I wanted an addendum to my thoughts on Magnum P.I.  I have only ever seen one episode of Magnum, and it involved Magnum being stranded in the ocean somewhere and having to tread water for a very extended period of time.  My husband, being significantly older than me, was a Magnum watcher in the 80’s; any time he hears “In The Air Tonight” he says, in a very serious and emphatic way, “Best. Magnum. Ever.”  He also does the air drums – but who doesn’t?  Really, you have to be dead and/or armless to not perform the air drums when listening to that song. 

There was a point to this, but I seem to have forgotten it.  I may have had a little too much coffee today.  But I’m going to a party tonight!  I have to NOT fall asleep at 9:00.

Oh yes, I remember now.  Apparently “In The Air Tonight” was playing while Magnum showed his badass side by shooting a guy.  Shooting him dead!  You go, Magnum!

Remember when Hawaiian shirts were popular, and not just worn by the same guys who wear “Bikini Inspector” t-shirts and/or those t-shirts that depict an outline of a very fit male specimen, in sharp and ironic contrast to the actual body type of the wearer? 

The 80’s were really responsible for many poor fashion styles.  I could just say the mullet and the Hawaiian shirt and leave it at that, but really, there are so many other terrible examples.  I am going to take a deep breath and show you how brave I am by posting my eighth-grade yearbook photo:

Ack.  Ack ack ack.  I have no idea why I am actually wearing my glasses in this photo, because I normally only wore them for board work at school and then wandered around in a myopic fog for the rest of the time.  Even then, I thought those glasses were ugly.  Until I got contacts at age 15, I stumbled around in the blurry, blurry world, squinting when necessary.  But this photo is proof that things were bad in the 80’s – those glasses were ubiquitous, as was the spiral permed, teased hair that required a bottle of Salon Selectives hairspray a week just to maintain.  But how about this:

You can say that you didn’t have that couch in the 80’s, but you would be lying.  What I love about this photo is that I am wearing a Daisy Duke styled shirt over a tank top with a long denim skirt AND I am wearing lace-up white Keds.  There are so just many fashion faux pas in this picture, and yet – AND YET – this was not unstylish in 1987. 
One last photo:
This photo is less to illustrate how Garfield horoscope sweatshirts go with Levi’s jeans, and more to illustrate the decor of the 80’s – which was probably held over from the 70’s, really.  Panelboard!  Spider plants hanging from macrame plant holders!  Lamps that had built in side tables! 
This is a very long and rambling post, and so I shall conclude.  In conclusion:
1) Moustaches are skeevy. 
2) Men and women cannot truly be friends.
3) Magnum P.I. was a badass.
4) Clothing, hair, and home decor in the 80’s was extremely misguided and should never be replicated.
If we remember these things, the world will be a greater place.

Comments

  1. Ah, the 80s. Love your pics! LOL

    Have fun at your husband’s party. My husband’s is next weekend and I can’t wait. I love getting to get dressed up!

  2. Are you kidding? You were adorable.
    We had that couch in the late 90s. Bill’s grandma passed hers onto us. WHen we moved, we tried to donate it to the Salvation Army and THEY TURNED IT DOWN.
    I watched MAgnum PI from a very, very young easily influenced age because it apparently didn’t occur to parents in the 80s to supervise tv.

  3. I think there’s no era that won’t look horrible in hindsight.

  4. Oh fuck off. You look perfectly darling in that school picture – if you took the glasses off you could have gotten pregnant at 14 too (sorry, now I’m referencing what someone just told you on Twitter which is probably not cool). Also, my hair looks not unlike that right now so fuck off again. Also, I ugly-laughed at the scene with the moustached guy in the bar. Also, my Dad’s moustache still rocks so fuck off AGAIN again. Also, sorry I keep telling you to fuck off but you’re unreasonably moustache-discriminatory and my head has been hurting like a motherfucker SINCE MONDAY. Have fun at the party, you in your slinky dress with your perfect little yoga ass. And now I must tell you, lovingly, to fuck off again. Moderate this, baby!

  5. And you know what’s nuts, is it WILL come around again. It WILL. Glasses got small and round and invisible, and now they’re dressy and obvious and rectangular, and soon they will start getting larger. And I will wish I hadn’t gotten rid of my ankle-length denim skirt (which I wore with hi-tops).

  6. Then I read Bibliomama’s comment. OMG FUNNY. On a roll, Bibliomama!

  7. Um, yes. Too much coffee. 🙂

    Right this minute, I am listening to the Muppets/John Denver Christmas album. Speaking of the late 70s early 80s. Good times.

  8. Bibliomama’s comment is awesome! Fuck off, indeed. You are such a cutie. 80s decor was/is as ugly as fuck.

    (my iPod just autocorrected fuck as ‘fick’ — WTF?)

    Awesome use of camel toe, btw! I loved Magnum, but why the hell did he continue to commemorate his father’s death by going off alone. Every fucking to time something bad happened!

    Enjoy the party.

  9. My husband’s Christmas party is next weekend. It involves a hotel room. RAWR. Even though I am now 40,000 weeks pregnant and thus will probably just spend the night grumbling because the bed won’t be *my* bed and thus, inferior.

    This post cracked my shit up all over the place. In my grade eight yearbook picture I had enormous, dark-rimmed glasses – and they were bent, so crooked on my face! how fucking awesome and hawt is that!! – and a dark pink oversized Wind River sweatshirt. With the big logo. No wonder I was anorexic, wearing everything five sizes too big will ACTUALLY MAKE YOU LOOK FAT EVEN WHEN YOU’RE NOT.

  10. How much coffee have you had today? We didn’t have that couch (we had one equally as horrible) but we did have a knit blanket like the one on the couch! My Mom used to knit them the one we had was beige, brown and peach. When I moved out my Mom knit me a purple one.

  11. My grandma still wears glasses like those. How bad is that?

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