My Old Lunch Boxes

These were the lunch boxes I had in school (although these are not my pictures) Dude, the plastic ones made everything so sweaty and disgusting! My sandwich was always wet (from my frozen Capri Sun) and smashed (by an apple or an orange) and everything always smelled like a mildewed trash can, but I didn't care! I had this little colorful briefcase!

Jordache and Sergio Valente Jeans

Jordache was like, the height of cool! I wanted some Jordache jeans SO BAD.

I was only in second grade, so I wasn't allowed to wear skin-tight, camel toe inducing jeans. My dream was to wear these jeans and have feathered hair and a red/white striped shirt with puffy sleeves.

Here was the all important Jordache logo, the horse. Very 80s. These designer jeans were totally expensive and were meant to be a status symbol.

Sergio Valente jeans were my next runner up, and then Sassoon and then Gloria Vanderbilt. Wait..Vanderbilt? Vanderbilt Vanderbilt? (shakes head). Okay, that is funny. Moving on. I wished and wished for designer jeans and ended up with some knock-offs from Gemco called "Graffiti" that had shitty stitching like Toughskins and were not dark enough to be cool. Not only that, but I peed my pants in fourth grade enough to where I was the pee smell girl, so I kept a lavender Member's Only jacket tied around my waist most of the day. That really screwed up my kickball games.

Sergio Valente logo

Where you guys aware there were Barbie-likedolls made wearing these jeans? I didn't know either, but check it out:

The commercials for these jeans were the best!

And here are Sergio Valente Jeans at the Roller Rink from 1981


This was SURELY when Jordache lost it's luster:



And don't forget the girls at the ice cream parlor!


annnnnnd kids jumping in a bounce house to disco music...they just keep getting younger and younger...



 

The Joy of Stickers

Stickers were another great joy in my childhood. When I see a scratch n' sniff sticker, particularly the round ones, I still feel happy inside. I first got stickers in second grade or third grade if I did really well on a paper. I would try and peel them off and put them in my sticker book at home. These puffy ones with the googly eyes were cool to pull apart. There was padding in the middle.

This is what scratch n sniff stickers looked like. They were normally food smells, but there were also funny ones like a dirty shoe or a skunk. These were very special to every girl I knew!

As a kid, you always wanted the ones that smelled like bubble gum.

It was the best smell in the world for some reason. You would then compare with your friends which stickers smelled best.

Chocolate was another good smell, hence these baked goods stickers in green.

I remember when these brown teddy bears came out. There were sheets of stickers that were clothes for the bear. They also had ducks and other animals.

Critter Sitters always got me confused with Shirt Tales, which were cute but not as cute as these guys.

Of course, Sanrio has several brands of stickers, all tiny and perfectly detailed.

I had a red hello kitty sticker book, that was not full enough!

And finally, along with unicorns and rainbows, there were heart stickers. The perfect heart shape brought joy to many little girls, especially the shiny iridescent ones!

My TV Heroes

Okay, most of these shows are from the 1960's, but they are what I watched in the 80's. THe 80's were allll about re-runs, because cable was very new and no one had it yet.

I know I should have idolized poets or women's rights activists, but I looked up to television characters as a kid. The reasons were, well, downright ridiculous, but we are all friends here. Let's start with Barbara Eden. She played Jeannie on I Dream Of Jeannie. I liked her flowy, pink and red clothes.
But more than her clothes, I loved her bottle! The inside was decorated to perfection. Purple, lavender, hot pink and gold?! Hell yes!!! Where do I sign up? I would have been a slave to an uptight NASA astronaut too, if I could have lived inside that bottle with all those throw pillows! The bottle they originally used for the first black and white episodes was a promotional bottle for Jim Beam bourbon whiskey. When the show went color, they painted up a better one.

I Dream of Jeannie was created for NBC because of the success of it's rival, Bewitched, on ABC. The beginning of the show was a cute cartoon- I was sold from that point on.

Jeannie even had a sultry brunette sister in green, who caused much trouble.
She needed someone like that in her life because she was so sweet and simple.

Dude..This has nothing to do with anything, but I found it by accident.
What the eff? Moving on..


Wonder Woman was a pretty amazon princess who had super human strength. She could fuck someone up. Not only that, but she had James Bond-like tools, like the lasso of truth, an invisible jet and cuff bracelets that blocked bullets. She was originally a comic book character from the 40s, but they made a tv series around her in 1975 because of the success of Batman.


My next hero was Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island. Her name was taken from two big stars: Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant. There were two reasons why I wanted to be her: 1) She was always in evening gowns with perfect hair, no matter the climate or situation and 2) all the guys were mesmerized by her charm and beauty and became total idiots around her, as if under a spell.


Glamorous!


Daisy Duke on Dukes of Hazzard was the exact same character, only in hillbilly clothes. They made her wear flesh colored tights on the show because her shorts were so short. They didnt want her cooter hanging out. She was a waitress at Boss Hogg's Bar, so she was always eavesdropping on Boss and his crew, and passing the gossip on to her cousins, Bo and Luke Duke. Daisy would stop men in their tracks with her sexiness and make them into blubbering idiots, who would do whatever she said. Sign me up!


I liked villainesses better than the good girls, so I liked Catwoman on Batman.
She was sneaky and smart and wore a cool outfit! She was not easily ruffled, which always impressed me. I preferred the actress Julie Newmar in the role (there were two others.)

Disneyland

I need to live in this castle. I wouldn't even redecorate! Well, maybe a little bit of pink damask wallpaper in the bedroom with a cushioned headboard

and some pink toile in the bathroom

Okay, okay, way too much pink, even for me.
But seriously folks, look how pretty the detail is on Cinderella's castle!
This is the back of it, which I think I like best! This castle was modeled after a real castle in Southwest Bavaria, Germany called Neuschwanstein.

Imagine living there and looking out the front and seeing Main Street USA! I adore the beautiful craftsmanship on the store fronts. And it smells like waffle cones outside! I would be 300 pounds.

It's a Small World is one of the neatest things at Disneyland. I mean, look at this thing!

I have never been there for Christmas, but this is what they do to it!

Wow!

A hot pink camel? I bow to this color scheme!

You can't help but feel happy when you see all of the nations singing together !

Fantasyland is like a little Bavarian village with thatched roofs and cobblestone

roads! Wait...there are no cobblestones...but it seems like there would be!
Nevertheless, the architecture is fantastic and I always appreciate it wholeheartedly. I mean, even the entrances to the bathrooms look like they were built by forty elves and carefully hand painted with a blade of grass.

The Matterhorn is another Bavarian theme. You expect to see friggin Heidi with her lamb or The Von Trapps yodeling somewhere on a hill top. It makes me want to bust out some lederhosen and say RIIIICOLAAAA!

The tea cups are so pretty and colorful. I love the paper lanterns above them. I want them in my backyard.

Peter Pan is the best Disney movie, so I love the ride.

Mermaids!

And what could be more joyous than a Carousel with pipe organ music!

And you just know it smells like buttered popcorn around this thing!

All that happiness needs to be balanced with a good scare from the Haunted Mansion, But at least they gave us a beautiful, antebellum Southern mansion with wrought iron lattice work and shit! I want to dust the thing out and make it my headquarters! I would smash that Madame Leota crystal ball, because that chanting scares me, and I would burn those pictures that morph into old/evil people. The whole graveyard thing might put me into a depression as well...but I would just go out and get a waffle cone!