WNUF Halloween Special

This is a really pleasant found footage style movie that purports to be a 1980s local news broadcast that spirals into ghosts, murder, demons, haunted house, carpet warehouse commercials, etc. It replicates the style of 80s news and local commercials really well, but of course it kinda falls apart once things have to start being scary or whatever. I personally have a lot of mental strands connecting 80s low budge VHS situations to the proto horror neurons that exist in my brain, so you might enjoy it if you’re in your 30s, otherwise, IDK?

RATING: 68%

The Commodore 1541

Hey, remember floppy disks? No, not the 3.5" ones that you used to trade copies of Wolfenstein 3D back in the day. I'm talking about the old 5.25" bad boys. I recently came across an old Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive, which at one time was quite the piece of gear, capable of handling single sided 5.25" floppy disks with a storage capacity of 170 kilobytes. According to the faded price tag on the box (it was bought at Zellers), the unit originally cost $341.99. Just think about that next time you're shopping for an external terabyte hard drive.

Rating: Obsolete%

(Image from nielsthooft.com)

Batteries

Is your friend online somehow even though the power's out in his apartment? No, it's not the magic of Satan, he's using a battery--a thingie made of chemicals and other stuff that mixes all together to make electricity that you can use to torture your political enemies into signing false confessions or power a dildo shaped like a gun. You can put batteries in stuff that's really cool, like a sweet Ghostbusters ghostzapper, or you can use one in a Christmas-themed dog sweater with LED lights and undo in a single gesture everything our brave grandfathers fought and died to protect. In conclusion, *batteries not included was a dumb movie and also racist, so there you go.

RATING: 84%

(Image from www.hilaroad.com.)

Old School-Ass Dodge Caravan

Back in the roaring 80's, when I was but a wee bairn, Glenn's folks had one of these. Then they sold it to mine, and we rode it hard and put it away wet for the first half of the 90's. This whole review was basically an excuse for me to use that expression.

RATING: Sexy%

(Image from some fucking car page that I had to look for for like 9 minutes. Also, ours wasn't that colour and it probably wasn't that year either.)

Watchmen

To prep myself for the upcoming movie version I decided to reread this book to see if it was as good as I remember, and of course it was. The art is amazing, misogynist Alan Moore's writing is at it's most psychologically complex, and the social relevance to 1980s American jingoism and the reworking of the superhero genre as a whole is as intricate and emotionally powerful as any regular novel could hope to be (disclaimer: I don't read regular novels). One downfall is I'm reassured that it is unfilmable, and looking at Alan Moore's graphic novel-to-movie history, in addition to "visionary" Zack Snyder's resume, I'm doubtful this movie will be anything but a three hour mess. Oh well, the movie's existence doesn't negate the graphic novel's existence, and at least it will bring a whole new audience to what is the third best graphic novel of all time.

RATING: 98%

(As Bryan would say, alternate ending here.)

Old Friends

Old friends do things like post hilarious photos of you from the 80's on your blog. They don't care about your political orientation or if you hate every single movie they like--they knew you back when you wore jogging pants every day and listened to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Sometimes they're sure you owned the complete set of seacons and think you must be retarded or something for not remembering, but then again maybe it was them having seizures on the freeway.

RATING: a self-congratulatory 95%

Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails

Released in 1989, Nine Inch Nails' first album sounds extremely 80s, and extremely different from everything else they ever did. Imagine if New Order had kept Joy Division's anger and depression, but still wrote dancy tunes, and that's what this album is. While it is very dated, it is also Nine Inch Nail's most entirely listenable album. That is, there's no pretentious instrumentals yet, or long moments of ambient wind sound effects to act "deep," but just a lot of songs with a good beat behind them. I mean, it's nowhere near as good as The Fragile, but it's still kind of fun in a retro sort of way, right Jeff?

RATING: 68%

80's Slang

Life in the 80's was pretty much way better than life today. Reagan was President, the Cold War raged on, and Dynasty ruled television. Psyche! That stuff was totally bogus.

Ace, "That Back to the Future movie was ace."

Bangin', "Did you see that chick? She was totally bangin'!"

Crucial, "I got tickets for Van Halen on Saturday. Crucial!"

Heinous, "That wipeout was heinous dude."

Yello, "Yello!"

Share your (un)favorite 80's slang.

RATING: 10%