And Nobody Died from Pop Rocks and Coke

(October 28, 2001)

"Who're you? You're the Mystery Lady!" he burbled. Actually it was more like "mijjjtery lady," accentuated by a hoist of a cup sloshing with a surefire coma-inducing beverage.

"I'm Boy GEORGE!" I said for what must have been the eleventy-eighth time. My co-conversationalist, a friend of a friend whose name was either Don or...I don't know..., had come to my '80s party dressed in a kind of pirate-cum-hippie getup. He explained that he had taken liberty with the "eighties" theme and did the 1780s instead. I kept threatening to go get makeup and turn him into Adam Ant with a few well-placed stripes upon each cheek. He agreed by nodding happily and then said, "Adam who?"

DAMN, people! The EIGHTIES. Granted, the almost-Adam-Ant guy was like, fifty years old, but how many Quaaludes did you have to pop during the Reagan/Bush years to not recognize Boy frikkin' George?

So I had to console myself with Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers ("Are they still ALIVE?" yells Westbye between rounds of Space Invaders) and the knowledge that at least SOME of my friends were into it. Lisa was dead-on perfect down to the polka-dotted nails, Michael Jackson purse (I'd HAD one just like it, in black) and flouncy-skirted dress, and I went scentless in anticipation of her Love's Baby Soft spritzes throughout the night. Dan was a guy from Devo, Westbye was a terrific Smith, and Benjy went to all the trouble to heft an enormous boom box and wear an actual clock around his neck a la Run DMC. We got a Punky Brewster, a couple of Flashdancers, a Debbie Harry, a coke dealer, a metal head or two. Alan did a kind of caped Reagan crusader thing.

Like, totally.

Anybody who didn't wear something totally different, like the gold-spray painted Cupid, Sherlock Holmes, kitty cats (etc) came dressed as they themselves were in the eighties, which put Wolf in a Clash 1981 tour T-shirt, Al in a Replacements T-shirt, and Kenne in a sixties getup.

Kenne is actually always in a sixties getup. I think that's the last time he bought any clothes. I saw him today at Gary Cook's memorial service at the Abbey , and he was wearing almost the exact same thing except for the peace pendant.

Turns out you actually CAN save time in a bottle.