With so much going wrong for this country as we head into 2009, we’ve decided we’d rather do a previous year over again … specifically, 1984.
We figure since we’ll be celebrating the 25th anniversary of all the cool stuff that happened that year … assuming our math is correct, anyway … it makes sense.
In addition to future veep pick Sarah Heath strutting her stuff on the Miss Alaska cat walk (above), a lot of other good things happened that year … like the L.A. Olympics, Detroit winning the World Series, the premiere of Punky Brewster and Miami Vice, the debut of the Macintosh (and the founding of Dell computers) as well as the debut of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and the first untethered space walk.
While Van Halen was rocking out, Tipper Gore got pissed off at Prince’s Purple Rain and decided to put labels on everything. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan ran TV ads like this one and went on to capture the largest electoral landslide ever.
Also, who can forget the introduction of the mother of all vehicles, the Dodge Caravan, or for those of you whose parents were cool the Jeep Cherokee and Toyota 4Runner.
What else was going on?
Well, Ricky Martin was in Menudo, Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire, Vanessa Williams won (and lost) the Miss America crown, Vanessa Williams got naked, Pillsbury came out with Toaster Strudels (although their classic slogan “something better just popped up” was still a decade away), Caffeine-free Coke was born, along with Optimus Prime, Lifetime, A&E and the lovely Scarlett Johannson.
The year’s top five grossing movies were – check this lineup out – Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins and The Karate Kid, and while it didn’t make a huge box office splash, the first Terminator flic came out.
Oh, and in the midst of rearmament, the federal government spent just $851 billion in 1984, with our national debt totaling just $1.5 trillion.
Other than the breakup of Styx (and The Police), it’s really hard to find much that went wrong in 1984 … which may be one reason we’d like to go back.
