Call Me When You Have No Class

Been watching my share of TV lately. The TV is on more than it is off these days. I've been on a "movie I've seen a bajillion times" kick. I watched Moonstruck, Silence of the Lambs, That Darn Cat, Demolition Man, About a Boy, to name a few, some more embarrassing than the others. 

Anywhoozle, today I watched Back To School. I made my 12yo son watch it with me. It was fun to point out Johnny from Cobra Kai, Dax from DS9, and the best one, Iron Man. "That's not Tony Stark," he insisted. 

When we got to the part were Thornton throws a party and Oingo Boingo is playing, I remembered the following three things:

#1 - When I was 18, the keyboard player (Mike Bacich) used to play in the house-band at The Reef, a restaurant I worked at in Long Beach. They played songs like "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay," "You Send Me," "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll."

# 2 - In the 11th grade I spent a few months in Junior Achievement and the product we made was 45rpm records turned into a clock. I had to make clocks using the 45s of the Dead Man's Party single.

#3 - When I was in 10th grade, I (along with all the other students at my high school, and all the surrounding high schools) spent a good month filling out and sending postcards to local radio station KIIS FM so Oingo Boingo would play a live show at our school. Whichever school sent in the most postcards got a free show. We spent entire class periods filling addressing post cards.  We lost. A school in Fountain Valley won. They sent 1/2 a million post cards to the radio station and they won.  And if I'm doing my math half right, they kicked ass. 4 million cards were sent in, and Fountain Valley High School sent in 500,000 cards. That's 12%. 12% of the cards sent in were from one school. When I was 20 and doing school stuff in Cambridge England, I met a girl who told me it was her high school who won. "Oh, you're from Southern California?" she said.  "Me too. My high school won the Oingo Boingo contest." Through today's lens, I think what a weird thing it was for her to say in the first minute of us meeting, but it must not have been because I distinctly remember being a little bit jealous of her. Still am.