Only the 80s

Iconic band (weren’t they all?) Spandau Ballet have reformed and will be touring Australia in April this year – their first visit to Oz since 1985.

The original line up will be there with Tony Hadley and Gary Kemp sharing the stage again so it will be a real blast from the past. Last October they played to over 100 000 people in the UK and from what I read, that was more tickets sold to a single concert than back in the 80s when they were so popular.

What makes the tour even better is that they are being supported by Tears For Fears.

Tour Dates and Venues (and for some reason Sydney misses out!) are:

Sat 17 April – Sandalford Winery, Caversham Perth
Mon 19 April – Adelaide Entertainment Centre
Wed 21 April – Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Tue 27 April – Brisbane Entertainment Centre

Found the following pics on a website where the blogger’s mother knitted some sweaters based on arcade games of the 80s.

I’m not sure if I’d wear them today, but they are a great time warp back to the decade that mattered

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Mattel have recently announced their latest line of the dolls, title ‘Ladies Of The ’80s’.

Released just in time for Christmas, the range includes Debbie Harry and Joan Jett who go on sale in December, and Cyndi Lauper who goes out in January. Not sure why Cyndi is release after Christmas.

Here’s a couple of pics on what the dolls look like:

Mattel will also have a Barbara Streisand doll out this month, athough from what I read she’s not officially part of the 80s range.

Spandau Ballet played a reunion gig this week – their first in about 20 years in Dublin, Ireland.

Playing in front of around 9000 fans, all reports indicated that they put together a pretty good show in the 2 hours that they were up on stage for.

All the original guys were there, and the opening song was the classic ‘to cut a long story short’. The final song of the night was ‘true’, a song that Tony Hadley dedicated to the late Boyzone star, Stephen Gately. Stephen was a close friend of Tony’s.

Read more on the concert and check out the photos here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1220246/Spandau-Ballet-turn-clock-20-years-comeback-concert.html

I’m sure there isn’t a person that hasn’t played the classic game battleship. How can something so simple be so fun and addictive to play?

I particularly loved blowing my brother’s ships ‘out of the water’ – well it was hard to do with only a board game. The imagination took over there, but the feeling of satisfaction was real enough.

In the mid 80’s, Electronic battleship was released. There we had depth charge noises and the sound of a battleship being blown up. This was the real McCoy – or as close as it could get for 1985.

I recall it wasn’t cheap at the time. My parents couldn’t afford one (or just wouldn’t buy it), so I had to play it at friends’ places.

Found this Gem on youtube. It is the commercial that was played on TV for the battleship game. Certainly brings back some memories….

Talk about an iconic movie of the 80s! Put together a few nerdy characters, college girls and buys, some catchy music and you have a great movie that you can watch over and over again without losing interest.

Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) and Gilbert Lowe (Anthony Edwards) are nerds and best friends, both heading to Adams College to study computer science. Even the music and ‘nerdy’ jokes are great at the beginning, setting the theme for a typical callege loser-to-hero story – but in it’s own special way.

Lewis and Gilbert move into a freshmen dorm with other first-year students, and are immediately set upong by the Alpha Betas, a fraternity to which many members of the school’s football team belong. The leader of the Alphas is Stan Gable, played by Ted McGinley of Happy Days fame.

The team’s coach (John Goodman) uses his intimidation to overrule the school’s Administrative Dean Ulich (David Wohl) and has the Alpha Betas evict the freshmen from the dorm for their own purposes. lewis and Gilbert work with the other outcasts whose characters are revealed in more details, and finally renovate a run down house for their own.

The Alpha Betas and their associated sorority, the Pi Delta Pis, harrass the nerds, and the story evolves further with the boys being continually tormented when they are trying to get in good with the Lambda Lambda Lambdas (Tri-Lambs). Come along the female nerd sorority, the Omega Mu.

I must bring up the outstanding (?) character of Booger (Curtis Armstrong), someone that you would not associate in real life, but in the movie was a real hero and funny guy with his unique and careless attitude towards life.

The movie comes to a head, where one night Gilbert has enough of the bullying and storms in the homecoming pep rally that the Alpha Betas are involved with. With a bit of asisstance from other chapters of the Tri-Lambs, the nerds get their way, and Lewis gets his girl, who just happens to be a member of the Delta Pis.

Here is one of the main songs from the movie. Looking at it now makes me laugh as it seems so corny, but don’t forget it was 1984!

A great movie, and as I said before, one that you can watch over and over & still enjoy.

I’m currently looking for a new theme for the site. When I initially created it, it was on the list of ‘to do’ things, but I never got around to it (sound familiar?).

In the meantime, if anyone would like to design me a new theme for the site, please leave a comment at the bottom of the post.

My only requirements are for a three column layout, and some space to put advertising and adsense (I need to pay for my webhosting :- ). Oh and of course, I need a 80’s feel to the layout ……

If I like it and end up using it, I will let the lucky person have some (permanent) aknowledgement and advertising space on my site.

The 80s were remembered for a lot of good reasons, but the decade also contained some unfortunate events. Arguably one of those was the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

On April 26, 1986, the operating crew planned to test whether the Reactor 4’s turbines could produce enough energy to keep the coolant pumps running until the emergency diesel generator was activated in case of an external power loss.

During this test, power surged unexpectedly, causing an explosion and driving temperatures in the reactor to more than 2000 degrees Celsius melting the fuel rods, igniting the reactor’s graphite covering, and releasing a cloud of radiation into the atmosphere. Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Seventy percent of the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl landed in Belarus, affecting more than 3600 towns and villages, and 2.5 million people. The radiation contaminated soil which contaminates crops that people rely on for food. Many regions in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are likely to be contaminated for hundreds of years.

From what I have read, only a handful of people were killed in the initial explosion. The majority of deaths were from the radiation afterwards. The reports on just how many deaths are quite varied – official counts are much lower than what people say actually are.

There is a lot of good reading on the internet, as well as many documentaries on TV. One source I find very interesting is this site. There has been much discussion as to whether it is a hoax or not. I do not know 100% either way, but it does open your eyes to the after effects of a such a catastrophic event.

The are plenty of 80s radio stations online, but I was surprised to find one here in Australia. It’s 77.4 FM on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Tried it out today and I love it. I enjoyed listening to the 80s music whilst playing the 80s flash games that can be found on the website too.