HUMOR: Over-Under
Oh to be 1982. Donald Trump wasn't president -- give us Ronald Reagan any day -- and 67 conjured memories of free love and protest music, not an inane yuck-fest triggered by a bad song. Preach, Drew.
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
During the recent press tour in support of their forthcoming movie “Spinal Tap: The End Continues,” the members of the band Spinal Tap played a game with one interviewer called Over-Under. The interviewer would suggest a random item, song, band, movie etc. and the trio (they were between drummers) would opine on if the topic was overrated or underrated. I will never claim to be as talented or clever as Spinal Tap nor do I have an armadillo in my trousers, but this exercise afforded me an opportunity to address cultural touchstones that are long past their “best by” date or in need of resurrection, so they can at long last be vaunted. Spinal Tap’s amps go to 11, but ours go to 6-7.
“Mr. Do!”—Underrated. I recently mentioned the arcade game Mr. Do! in a column about an essay contest to win a downtown house that crashed and burned. (The essay contest crashed and burned, not necessarily the column.) The amount of ignorance surrounding Mr. Do! as a vital and important arcade game was stunning. Most readers had never heard of it and those who had a passing familiarity with it felt it was simply a lesser and derivative version of Dig Dug. This is not true. Yes, Dig Dug preceded Mr. Do! by a few months in 1982, but the untold truth, as I choose to believe it, is that the engineers and graphic designers of Mr. Do! did not want to rush perfection. Dig Dug’s premise of bloating monsters to the point they explode is nothing more than the bucket scene in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.” Mr. Do! has nuance. Mr. Do! has spelling. No less a musical icon than Men Without Hats, the Canadian rock band that gifted the world ambrosia with the song “The Safety Dance” in 1982, understood the importance of spelling. If you want to win an E-X-T-R-A man in Mr. Do! you have to shoot the letters with your power pill to spell E-X-T-R-A. Quarters weren’t exactly falling out of my sky in 1982 so spelling counted. (I would have been sunk had I needed to spell OBITUARY which was the word that knocked me out of the school spelling bee that year. How is that a first-round word?) Plus, the first screen of Mr. Do! shows a big D which I always assumed stood for Drew.
“Liquid Paper/Wite Out”—Overrated. Once upon a time, the invention of a liquid to make typing mistakes easier to correct was groundbreaking. The first “Mistake Out” was invented by Bette Nesmith Graham when she was working as a secretary in Texas. Though “Mistake Out” is now advertised as “Wite Out,” it’s rarely used for typing mistakes and is usually employed to polish small scuff marks on sneakers or shoes. The irrelevancy of “Wite Out” finally unhitches the Mike Nesmith express train to stardom from his mother’s legacy. Nesmith was famously the guitarist for the band The Monkees in the 1960s and 1970s, but his talents were often overshadowed by his mother’s invention and his inability to play an instrument as well as his insufferable song “Listen to the Band.” Now when the Monkees and their classic hits like “Daydream Believer” and “I’m a Believer” (they certainly liked to believe) are introduced to a new generation of fans, the music will no longer be burdened by the shadow of his mother’s invention. (Nesmith, of course, ultimately learned to play guitar, but can never Wite Out “Listen to the Band.”)
“The Year 1982”—Underrated. I did not appreciate how underrated the year 1982 was until I reflected upon the fact that both Mr. Do! and “The Safety Dance” were released into a world that needed a reminder that spelling does matter. (You can dance if you want to. You can leave your friends behind. But only if you can spell S-A-F-E-T-Y.) And ‘Safety’ was something we all worried about in 1982 as Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands which led to a war with Great Britain that proved to be six months shorter than the typical NHL season. ‘Safety’ was also a concern when it was discovered that Tylenol did not lead to autism but rather death because some of the pills were laced with cyanide. One can assume that Manhattan Assistant District Attorney, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his newly-minted UVA law degree, immediately put Tylenol in his crosshairs and intended to investigate the pain pill further but had to vacate his post when he failed to pass the New York bar exam. Freed from the restraints of being a District Attorney, Kennedy Jr. danced to South Dakota and left his friends behind when everyone looked at their hands and wondered why Bob’s were stained with heroin residue.
“White Men”—Overrated (excepting c. 1982). We learned a few years later that white men cannot jump. Although I did once dunk a tennis ball on a rim that had been bent down at the Antietam rec center courts on or about 1987. Second, we, as white men, have a lot to answer for historically but for one brief shining moment—c. 1982—men were the bomb. Think about it. We had the cooking song that was Men at Work teaching us all what vegemite was. We had Men Without Hats teaching us how to spell…while dancing! And we had the lead single “Real Men” from Joe Jackson’s “Night and Day” album which confirmed our places in the world. Boys wore blue and girls wore pink. Men were handsome and strong (no fatties) and they wore the uniforms. Just as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth intended. I’m still surprised that the Trump team has not rolled this song out at pep rallies as an anthem. Some might argue that they would never use Joe Jackson’s song because if you listen to the lyrics, you quickly realize it is satirical and intended as a song to underscore that gay men and minorities were living amongst us as early as 1982. I would counter that argument by simply suggesting that you really think anyone on Team Trump goes beyond: “Alexa, play songs about how much white dudes rock.”
“Six Sevvven”—Overrated. No offense to the rapper Skrilla who may or may not have started this culturally unmoored phenomenon of hysterical laughter and screams at any point a person utters 6 and 7 in progression. His song “Doot Doot (6 7)” was an homage to 67th Street in Philadelphia but now it is the bane of math teachers everywhere. Teachers are literally removing equations that feature “6 7” from their lesson plans because they know if it sees the light of the classroom, there will be no learning done for the next 10 minutes as kids go into hysterics saying “Six Sevvven” while juggling imaginary grapefruit. Textbooks are soon to be published without page 67 just like hotel elevators do not show the 13th floor. As the comedian Mitch Hedberg once noted, if you jump from the balcony of a hotel room on the 14th floor after hearing “Six Sevvven” one too many times you are going to hit the ground one floor sooner than you expected.
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