One of the great movies from our teen years (before we became too cool) had to be Spielberg's "The Goonies." LOTR's Sean Austin, Corey Feldman and Docka Jones' Asian sidekick were all a part of this cult classic.
Recently a guy I work with told me about a documentary that a couple of his friends were doing that was really gaining some popularity - even from the original cast. Visit www.thegoonies.org to check it out, including this exclusive interview with Chunk recalling some of the perks of being a Goonie, even one-upping Rick Shroeder at an MJ concert.
Here's another set of pics from our 1985 (9th grade) yearbook. Below are the Les Chanteurs, I think that's French for, um... "9th grade choir girls."
Bottom: Carol Reeves (love the Lionel Richie shirt!) and Jan Powell, Music Librarians; Top: Kim Derrick, President; Teresa Webb, Vice Pres and Melissa Benefield, Secretary.
Jr. All Regions winners: Bottom: Carol Reeves and Kim Derrick; Top: Lisa Bradford, Kaye Harris and Tamala Ingle
Front Row: Unknown?, Christy Givins, Melissa Nesbitt, Marsha Haymes, Jan Powell, Lisa Thomas, Charla Bryant, Robin Walters, Tamala Ingle Middle Row: Teresa Webb, Kim Derrick, Carol Reeves, Debra Howard, Jaime Dougan?, Kristy Scribner, Marlena Ukno, Lisa Bradford, Tammy Carrol Back Row: Unknown, Kaye Harris, Corinna Hartman, Melissa Benefield, Melissa Williams, Christy Romine, Jody Wiggins
Members of the 1986 SHS Golf team are: (from left to right) front row, Shawn Rash, Trent Allen, Courtney Robinson, Michael Ross. Back row, Steve Coleman, Jamey Black, Chuck McCurdy, Brent Caple, Jason Jordan, Mark Mayfield, and Coach David Robinson. Not pictured is Bryan Tygart who is on the injured reserve list.
Golf team will 'put experience' to work
The 1986 Golf team has experience in its favor this year, according to Coach David Robinson. After finishing second in the district and 10th in the state last year, Coach Robinson says the returning players make for "the most experienced team we've had in a while." "And," he continued, "we'd really be tough if we hadn't lost a key player to injury." Top players returning include seniors Brent Caple, Jason Jordan and Chuck McCurdy, the coach says. Bryan Tygart, last year's number two player, is out with an injury. Robinson says he expects other team members to step in and "pick up the slack" in the place of Tygart. Other team members are Steve Coleman, Jamey Black, Mark Mayfield, Trent Allen, Shawn Rash, Michael Ross, Brad LaRue, and the first femal team member, freshman Courtney Robinson. The coach sees Miss Robinson as a welcome addition to the team and says he believes "she will work out well." The team begins its season this week. A summary of the games will be in next weeks Sheridan Headlight.
This little musical artifact won't fetch much on Ebay even after MJ's sudden death, but I'm still glad my wife held on to her cassette copy of USA for Africa's "We Are the World".
Unfold the insert and you're tempted with several opportunities to feed the hungry in Africa while sporting the current 80's fashions.
click to enlarge
Now, don't try to read the small print above, because I found a fun way to find out who all participated in this historic event... I'll show you at the end of this post. For now, below is the article I teased some time ago from the March 14, 1983 edition of Rolling Stone. This is a brief yet insightful write up about how "We Are the World" came to be. Click either image to enlarge & read. Interesting, huh? Prince - hmphh! Who needs him anyway?! So, back to the album art. Take a look at the group shot below and try to identify some of the artists at this interactive guessing game.
Now, sit back, pretend like you've just tuned in to Friday Night Videos and enjoy the song.
As I'm slowly but surely scanning in all of our yearbooks (I've posted all of them through 5th grade here), I'll occasionally pick some pics to post here on the 88 blog. Now that I've uploaded one of our 4 junior high yearbooks, I'm jumping ahead to work on our first senior high yearbook and I'll alternate from here on out (5th, 9th, 6th, 10th, 7th, 11th...).
Below are photos from the two-page spread featuring our 9th grade Stinger Cheerleaders.
(L to R, Top to Bottom): Michelle Stoops, Pam Drake, Vicki Thompson, Shelli Smith, Kim Sites, Dana Oates, Cindy Grace, Kristy Evans.
The Stinger cheerleaders attended the NCA cheerleader camp at ASU. They were taught new cheers, chants, pyramids, pom pom routines, and spirit ideas. At the camp the Stinger cheerleaders won two excellent and three superior ribbons. Over 500 cheerleaders attended the camp and out of these, nine were selected as All American cheerleaders. Michelle Stoops was selected as one of the nine. The Stinger cheerleaders showed outstanding spirit and support for their team through pep rallies, banners, signs, parties, and selling spirit ribbons.
The Stinger cheerleaders raise the spirit even at away games.
Today we sit in front of the computer screen about as much as we sat in front of the TV growing up. I don't know if one is to be preferred over the other - both have much to offer and also plenty that's undesirable.
The following links pay homage to our time growing up with the tube:
If you live in central Arkansas, you might be interested to know that "Movies in the Park" at Riverfront (downtown Little Rock) is showing the 80's movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The movie is scheduled to show on Wednesday night, July 29. And it's FREE!
Over the past year or so, it seems that this great song from the 80's group, Toto, has resurfaced several times in some form or another. Perhaps many of you heard a re-work of this song back during Christmas with the viral YouTube video, "12 Days of Christmas". If you're not really in the holiday spirit, you can advance this first video to 1:45 just to hear Toto's tune set to the lyrics of drummer's drumming, pipers piping and maids-a-milking.
This next acapella choir was introduced to me just a few days ago. This group is amazing. From the unsuspecting beat boxer doing drum fills, to the lead melody line, to the phenomal SFX of rain and thunder at the beginning, you'll really enjoy this.
Andy McKee is an incredible guitarist who does things with his guitar that I didn't even know were possible! Here's his instrumental version of "Africa":
And this guitarist, Jimmie Inch, is equally talented - able to lay down 3 separate tracks with three separate guitar parts and three separate vocals. Amazing!
I also found a few cultural shout-outs to this great song. Here's one from Scrubs and one from Chuck (2 shows of which I've never even watched, btw).
Then you have the Africa re-mix (and there are many)...this one's gotta good beat & you can dance to it. Unfortunately, once you've heard the first 25 second loop, there's nothing new.
So what about the original? Before we get to THE original, here's SOME of the original band performing in 2003 in Amsterdam. Believe it or not (I didn't) the lead singer here is the same guy from the 80's.
And now - the #1 version (Billboard, February 1983) we all know & love. You know a song is great when a cheesy video like this can't even mess it up.
Ok, confession time. Here's my misunderstood lyric: "There's nothing that a hundred men on Mars could ever do."
The real lyric: "There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do..."
As promised, "Kate and the Big Cat" from "Air Pudding and Wind Sauce." You may click on any image to enlarge.
"Kate and the Big Cat" adapted from "Tiger in the Lake" by Edward Kurkul. Adapted by permission from Jack and Jill Magazine. (c) 1964 The Curtis Publishing Company.
Continuing our perusal from last post through one of our elementary readers, "Air Pudding and Wind Sauce" (APWS). Today's post will feature images from several of the stories as well as these first six images that serve as divider pages between the story sections in the book. The bright colors continue and more hand-drawn, simple, fun fonts are used to give this a nice touch.
Any Old Junk Today?
The image above and those following are opening pages from several stories from APWS. Two decades of influence are noticed here. The bright, vibrant colors reflect the newly liberated 70's generation (Lisa's Song, Trouble with Susie, Emperor), while there are still some talented water color images remaining from the 50's & 60's (Snowshoe Thompson, Danny and the Rangers).
From the size & difficulty of the vocabulary lists, I'd guess this to be at least a 3rd or 4th grade level reader.
Why Don't You Invent It?
For Mary Ellis
Lisa's Song
Trouble with Susie
Snowshoe Thompson
Danny and the Rangers
The Emperor's New Clothes
Be sure to gather around for the next post kids!
We'll be reading together, "Kate and the Big Cat!"
One of the great movies from our teen years (before we became too cool) had to be Spielberg's "The Goonies
." LOTR's Sean Austin, Corey Feldman and Docka Jones' Asian sidekick were all a part of this cult classic.
