Without knowing how bad it would be, Mrs. Curmudgeon and I watched the following video:
Mrs. Curmudgeon clicked the link on her iPad. It was some sort of 1980’s BBC dance show with “live” “music”. I put “live” in quotes because it may or may not have been taped. I put “music” in quotes because, while it technically qualified as “music”, I consider it a form of torture.
Five women with the kind of hair that put holes in the ozone layer were “dancing”. We all know 1980’s women’s hair styles did not stand the test of time, but these were exceptional. If you strapped Marge Simpson and Peg Bundy to an exploding can of Aqua Net you’d get this look.
The choreography, meant to be sexy, misfired badly. It was less burlesque and more an implication that all five women were in heat.
The costumes were beyond terrible. I can only assume a stage hand sprayed the ladies with glue and dropped them off the roof into a dumpster filled with randomly cut polygons of thick vinyl scraps. All in garish neon colors. If a seamstress actually sewed the visual cacophony they were wearing then there’s a seamstress that created a sin against nature.
Perhaps the scraps were artfully arranged to look bad. Sort of a caveman motif. If Pebbles Flintstone took up meth and became a hooker… Nah! That still doesn’t explain neon vinyl.
Then they began singing… this made it worse.
I think the phrase “I eat cannibals” is clever. Similar to “I rob pirates”. Alas the underlying lyrics were a complete waste of a good hook. They sought to commingle cannibalistic consumption with sexual domination. This might have been interesting the first time a teenager screamed “bite me” to a rival in a street fight but since then it’s been pathetic.
They kept singing. It kept getting worse. Clever, it was not.
I glanced at Mrs. Curmudgeon and was suddenly afraid. She (like most of humanity) has better taste than me. This abomination, which was annoying me, was drilling into her cerebral cortex and taking a dump there.
Her brow furrowed. She began to frown. Like most men, I don’t want my wife annoyed; if only in the interest if domestic tranquility.
I tried to break the tension.
“They’re like some sort of proto-Spice Girls?” I hinted.
Honestly, I know nothing about the Spice Girls except they were a cluster (five?) of women who strutted around stage reciting lyrics. For whatever reason, people didn’t hate the Spice Girls. Perhaps I was watching the wrecked heap of bicycle parts tossed behind the Wright Brother’s garage? Was this the primordial goo from which emerged the flying jalopy that became the Spice Girls?
I needn’t mention that among the women strutting around the stage, the number playing instruments was… zero. Because, of course they couldn’t play instruments. Unless you’re Pavarotti (or his equivalent) you ought have an instrument in hand before they let you on stage. I don’t care if it’s a kazoo, you ought to play an instrument or you’re just doing karaoke!
Mrs. Curmudgeon continued to glare at the screen. She has an impressive glare. I expected her iPad to burst into flames. I had to break the tension somehow:
“The 1980’s… Jesus what went wrong?” I mumbled.
Nope. Concentrated waves of distaste were radiating from Mrs. Curmudgeon. And I’d done nothing to dispel it. She was watching the music video equivalent of my 1980’s nemesis (the craptacular AMC Gremlin) and I could sense her blood pressure rising.
It kept going and going. The three and a half minute song was taking an eternity. Mrs. Curmudgeon was gritting her teeth. Can music be so bad that it gives you a stroke?
I tried one last time to break the tension. “At least they aren’t using an auto-tuner?”
The show started to wind up and Mrs. Curmudgeon shouted at the screen.
“THIS. IS. A. MESS!”
I couldn’t disagree.
Then it was over. She gently set the iPad down, as if resisting the urge to hurl it at the wall.
When she turned to me the glare was still there. “You… you suggested this.” She gesticulated vaguely at the iPad; as if a single wave could encompass the enormity of bad taste that I’d unleashed on the household.
“It did indeed suck.” I agreed, lamely.
“Your punishment, for suggesting the worst music video in history, is to bring me another drink.” She held out a glass. (We’d been bingewatching Venture Bros and drinking. She’d fetched the last round of mixed drinks. After what we’d seen, a stiff belt was definitely in order.)
“Absolutely!” Glad to get off so lightly, I scampered to the liquor cabinet.
How could three and a half minutes of “entertainment” turn out so tasteless? There had to be cameramen, choreographers, sound mixers, stage hands, etc… Couldn’t one of them have stopped it? Surely they knew it was a trainwreck. One of them should have said “This is not going well. We should stop this disaster before it hits the airwaves. Better to burn down the studio, fake our own deaths, and move to Antigua than commit this to electronic memory.” But no. The miracle of the internet had preserved an abomination of the 1980’s and heartlessly deposited a steaming heap of it in our living room.
“Make it a double!” Mrs. Curmudgeon was shouting from the other room.
Reflecting on the video we’d just watched, I filled her glass (and mine) to the rim. I returned with three bottles of liquor in hand. We needed it.
The 1980’s… what went wrong? Beware. There was a group called Toto Coleo and the internet preserves what they have wrought. Let’s never speak never of this again.