Nov 4: Adam Sandler, Kokomo, Tiffany
Nov 4: Adam Sandler, Kokomo, Tiffany
Plus a long lost song from a Muppets movie has finally resurfaced
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
November 4th, 2022 • Issue 124
This week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
November 4th
1979 - Jaws aired on TV for the first time, on ABC.
1980 - Sadaharu Oh retired from baseball with 868 home runs (all in Japan).
1981 - The Fall Guy premiered on ABC.
1987 - The NBA announced four new expansion teams coming in the next two years in Charlotte, Miami, Minneapolis, and Orlando.
1988 - They Live hit theaters.
1989 - The Orlando Magic played their first game.
1989 - Roxette’s single Listen to Your Heart hit number one.
1995 - Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.
1996 - The Spice Girls’ debut album Spice was released.
1997 - Shania Twain’s album Come On Over was released.
1997 - Marcy Playground’s single Sex and Candy was released.
2001 - The Arizona Diamondbacks defeated the New York Yankees to win the World Series.
November 5th
34 years ago, on November 5th, 1988, The Beach Boys’ single Kokomo hit number one.
Kokomo was a commercial success and critical trainwreck that came at the end of the Beach Boys’ run.
But beyond the commercial success, it was also a major success at my elementary school.
Which is wild, in retrospect, as it was highly suggestive. Almost Afternoon Delight-esque.
Still, it was such a big hit we performed it in choir. And the teachers, in a burst of catcher in the rye vigilance, changed the line, “Tropical drink melting in your hand” to “Ice cream cone melting in your hand.”
That was accidentally brilliant.
We all knew the original line. The censorship made us all so obsessed with the evident tabooness of “tropical drinks” that we never even thought to unpack the far less milquetoast innuendo throughout the rest of the song. We were so busy trying to learn about tequila sunrises and strawberry daquiris that we missed…
“We’ll get there faster if we take it slow.” We took that completely on face value. It doesn’t make sense as a literal statement but we took it as one anyway.
“Tropical contact high.” Nah. No curiosity in finding out what a “contact high” might be.
“We’ll perfect our chemistry.” “Bodies in the sand.” Again, nothing.
And back to my comp between Kokomo and Afternoon Delight, the Beach Boys even literally say in Kokomo: “We’ll defy a little bit of gravity, afternoon delight.” But that went right over our elementary-age heads.
Instead we fixated on tropical drinks. Savvy censorship, teachers. Savvy censorship.
Normally here’s where I’d tie the retro concept to modern times, but even as a joke I don’t want to give all the horrible people who are about to win school board elections next week any strategy ideas.
1985 - Stone Pillow, a CBS TV movie starring Lucille Ball as a homeless woman, premiered.
1992 - Bobby Fischer defeated Boris Spassky in a revenge chess match.
1993 - Corona’s single Rhythm of the Night was released.
1994 - George Foreman won boxing’s heavyweight title at age 45.
1995 - The “King Size Homer” episode of The Simpsons aired.
1995 - The Wizard of Oz in Concert event took place.
1996 - Bill Clinton was re-elected president of the United States.
1996 - Derek Jeter was unanimously voted AL Rookie of the Year.
1998 - ODB was arrested for threatening to kill his ex.
1998 - Liam Gallagher of Oasis was arrested for attacking a photographer.
1999 - Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra were arrested after a fight in a hotel.
November 6th
1982 - Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes’s Up Where We Belong hit number one.
1984 - Ronald Reagan was re-elected in a landslide.
1986 - Freddie Jackson’s album Just Like the First Time was released.
1990 - Whitney Houston’s album I’m Your Baby Tonight was released.
1993 - Meat Loaf’s single I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That) hit number one.
1993 - The Fan Man flew into the Evander Holyfield vs. Riddick Bowe boxing match.
1995 - The Cleveland Browns announced they were relocating.
1998 - The Waterboy hit theaters.
1999 - Pokemon: The First Movie hit theaters.
2001 - 24 premiered on FOX.
2001 - Britney Spears’s album Britney was released.
2002 - Winona Ryder was found guilty of shoplifting.
November 7th
35 years ago, on November 7th, 1987, Tiffany’s single I Think We’re Alone Now hit number one.
I Think We’re Alone Now has an underlying, perhaps unintentional, sadness despite its upbeat ‘80s teen pop packaging.
Tiffany was 16 at the time the song came out. She was wrapping up the world’s first-ever concert “mall tour” — a genius marketing concept her manager dreamed up in order to have her perform where her fans and potential fans were most likely to be.
I Think We’re Alone Now was Tiffany’s cover of a 1967 top five hit for Tommy James and the Shondells.
The intended subtext of the Shondells’ version: Two teenagers in love, prohibited from intimate contact by all the adults in their orbit, desperate to get away to find a place where they could defy a little gravity.
The Shondells’ version was a bubblegum pop song; the Tiffany version was somehow even more bubblegummy and poppy. It was rightfully not supposed to have any hint of sexual subtext; the dream of being “alone now” was intended to refer to innocent one-on-one time.
But the music video, which showed Tiffany performing identical concert after identical concert in front of generic stores at the mall, then avoiding the peering eyes of fame as she and a faceless teenage boy run hand-in-hand through beaches and crowded cities, elicited its own interpretation.
Tiffany’s “alone” was a desire to do normal teenage things — ones she’d missed out on after spending her formative years focused on her singing career. And normal teenage things now seemed permanently elusive with her exploding fame.
I can contextualize the song in retrospect because we now know her career wasn’t exactly her wish and her wish alone. We now know her career was controlled by a ruthless manager. We now know her parents, seeing her singing skills, pushed her through the music world from age nine.
She was incredibly successful as 1987 wrapped up with this song and 1988 began — all while her parents were suing her manager over control of her career and earnings. In 1988 she tried to become an emancipated minor but the court rejected it.
I Think We’re Alone Now would be her biggest hit — and also her most prophetic.
1981 - Hall and Oates’s single Private Eyes hit number one.
1986 - Sid and Nancy hit theaters.
1989 - Douglas Wilder was elected governor of Virginia, the first Black governor elected in the U.S., and David Dinkins was elected mayor of New York City, the first Black mayor of NYC.
1991 - Silk Stalkings premiered on USA.
1991 - The infamous “Lisa’s Pony” episode of The Simpsons aired.
1991 - Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive and retiring immediately from the NBA.
1991 - Paul Reubens pleaded no contest to indecent exposure charges.
1995 - The Tony Rich Project’s single Nobody Knows and Whitney Houston’s single Exhale (Shoop Shoop) were released.
1995 - Queen released their first album after Freddie Mercury’s death.
1995 - Howard Stern’s book Miss America was released.
1995 - Madonna’s album Something to Remember was released.
1997 - The Mr. Bean film called Bean hit theaters.
1997 - Starship Troopers hit theaters.
1999 - Destiny’s Child’s single Say My Name was released.
2000 - Dot com-era sensation Pets.com shut down.
2000 - The U.S. presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore was too close to call and Hillary Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate in New York.
2003 - Elf hit theaters.
November 8th
1986 - Boston’s single Amanda hit number one.
1988 - George H.W. Bush was elected president of the United States.
1990 - The “Dancin’ Homer” episode of The Simpsons aired.
1996 - Ransom hit theaters.
1999 - The world’s first “internet murder” occurred when a woman in Michigan convinced her online boyfriend to kill her husband.
1999 - Andrea Bocelli’s Sacred Arias album was released, and would become the top-selling solo classical album ever.
2000 - Al Gore prematurely conceded the U.S. presidential election, giving the presidency to George W. Bush.
2001 - The Tick premiered on FOX.
2002 - 8 Mile hit theaters.
November 9th
1982 - Sugar Ray Leonard retired from boxing for the first time.
1984 - Larry Bird and Dr. J got into a mid-game fight.
1985 - Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice theme hit number one.
1988 - Child’s Play hit theaters.
1989 - The Berlin Wall came down.
1990 - Dances with Wolves and Child’s Play 2 hit theaters.
1990 - Madonna’s album The Immaculate Collection was released.
1991 - Prince’s single Cream hit number one.
1993 - Queen Latifah’s single UNITY was released.
1993 - R. Kelly’s album 12 Play was released.
1996 - Evander Holyfield defeated Mike Tyson.
1996 - Blackstreet’s single No Diggity hit number one.
1996 - The Montreal Screwjob occurred at WWF Survivor Series, changing pro wrestling forever.
November 10th
22 years ago, on November 10th, 2000, Little Nicky hit theaters, ending Adam Sandler’s hot streak.
Little Nicky, premiering on this day in 2000, was highly symbolic.
The ‘90s were Adam Sandler’s decade. But the 2000s were here now. Sandler’s decade-long hot streak was done.
Little Nicky took Adam Sandler into the fantasy realm for the first time. His signature goo goo talk voice arrived at its endgame, as he made the choice to give his character a significant speech impediment. He also spent the movie hunched over and talking out of the side of his mouth. That combo could work for an eight-minute SNL sketch, but it was too much for a movie.
The problems with Little Nicky were deeper than Sandler’s physical choices, though. The biggest issue: People were ready for Adam Sandler to go the opposite direction.
The Wedding Singer and Big Daddy were more grounded films, ones with surprising emotional resonance (but still plenty of Sandler’s signature comedy from wacky side characters). Sandler’s career seemed poise to evolve in that direction for good — with his early, more over-the-top films with him as the wacky main character (Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, and The Waterboy) in the rear view.
Instead, Adam Sandler devolved in the opposite direction, making something wackier and less grounded than ever. Little Nicky is fantasy high concept, stuffed with endless surreal-for-the-sake-of-surreal bits.
And perhaps its most unforgivable crime: It wasn’t funny enough.
The film was a critical bomb, but that wouldn’t have mattered if it resonated with Adam Sandler’s massive fanbase. It did not. Little Nicky drastically underperformed and sent Sandler running back to more comfortable, more grounded territory. His next two movies were Punch-Drunk Love, his first shot at real acting; and Mr. Deeds, which was cut from the Big Daddy cloth.
Of course, we now know Little Nicky wasn’t a career killer for him, one that would forever take him out of movie headlining consideration. It wasn’t Better Luck Chuck for Dane Cook, John Carter for Taylor Kitsch, or Freddy Got Fingered for Tom Green.
But it’s clear Sandler never forgot Little Nicky. Because even after he received his blank check from Netflix to make as many movies as he wanted about whatever the hell he wanted, he never got as surreal and never created a character like Little Nicky again.
1969 - Sesame Street premiered.
1983 - Microsoft formally announced Windows.
1984 - The famous He-Man episode “The Problem with Power” aired.
1990 - The series finales of Charles in Charge and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse both aired.
1990 - Mariah Carey’s single Love Takes Time hit number one.
1990 - Candyman’s one hit, Knockin’ Boots, peaked at number nine.
1992 - The single Rebirth of Slick by Digable Planets was released.
1992 - The episode of Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper where Mr. Cooper joined the Golden State Warriors (featuring footage of Mark Curry actually playing for the team in a preseason game) aired.
1993 - John Wayne Bobbit was acquitted of marital sexual assault.
1997 - WorldCom and MCI announced their merger, the largest in history at the time at $37 billion.
2001 - The first iPods were shipped.
5 ‘80s and ‘90s trivia facts
Pumbaa was the first character ever to pass gas on screen in a Disney movie.
It took until 1994 for Disney to cross the scatological line.
Four of the (now) 17 EGOT winners completed that grand slam in the ‘90s.
The EGOT — winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony — saw four winners in the ‘90s. Actor/director John Gielgud won his final award, the Emmy, in 1991… actor Audrey Hepburn won her final two, the Emmy in 1993 and Grammy in 1994… composer Marvin Hamlisch won his final award, the Emmy, in 1995… and composer Jonathan Tunick won his final award, the Tony, in 1997.
There was one day in history when every adult alive was born in the 20th century and every minor was born in the 21st century.
On was December 31st, 2017, everyone over 18 was born in the 1990s or earlier. Everyone under 18 was born in the 2000s.
Beck didn’t like the song Loser and didn’t want to release it.
The song’s producer talked him into it… and it went on to be his only top 40 hit. (It went to number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1994.)
Before David Letterman had a late night show, NBC tried him out with a morning show.
The David Letterman Show aired on NBC from June 23rd to October 24th, 1980. Critics were into it, but edgy, acerbic humor didn’t really play with the morning TV crowd.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
The official trailer is out for A Christmas Story Christmas, the very long awaited sequel to A Christmas Story. The movie comes out on HBO Max on November 17th, assuming HBO Max doesn’t pull a HBO Max between now and then and murder it in cold blood.
A Friday the 13th prequel series is in the works at Peacock.
HBO Max has decided to kill the Degrassi revival series it ordered back in January.
Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, says it’s “a little unfair” Tim Burton gets pretty much all the credit for the film.
Weird Al says he met Kurt Cobain a few months after the parody Smells Like Nirvana. Al says he “thanked [Kurt] profusely” for letting him make the parody and offered to do any favor he wanted. Kurt said, “Polish my nails.”
Also, Weird Al’s parody biopic comes out today on the Roku Channel… but Al’s new song in the film won’t be eligible for an Oscar. Al says he’s “been begging Roku for months” but they consider themselves in the TV business, not the movie business, so they’re putting it up for an Emmy instead. Al says “It breaks my heart… I figured this is my one chance at an Oscar nomination.”
Matthew Perry says that by the second half of the Friends run he “had to beg the producers” to ditch the “Chandler speak… could it be more annoying?”
Here are the Backstreet Boys ranked from highest net worth to lowest.
Al B. Sure is recovering after a two-month coma.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
An article in defense of Weekend At Bernie’s and why it’s “a lot better than you may remember.” The writer even says the premise “kind of/sort of makes sense why two morons are hanging out with a dead body.”
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
A TikTok video went viral this week “revealing” a Super Mario Bros. trick for restarting at the level where you left off by holding A + Start.
There are lots of people in the comments with their minds blown. I guess none of them read Nintendo Power like my friends and I did… since everyone in the greater Cleveland suburban area knew this trick backwards and forwards.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
A long lost musical number from 1992’s The Muppet Christmas Carol has finally made it back into the movie. A song by Michael Caine’s Scrooge called When Love Is Gone was cut from the theatrical version, made it into the first VHS run, but was cut from the DVD and Disney+ versions.
Disney recently unearthed the original film’s negatives, featuring the song, so they’re releasing the uncut film on Disney+ as of December 9th. If you can’t wait that long for something this obscure, here’s a YouTube video of the song.
Have a great week!
-Sam