Oct 14: Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, the Time Warren G Sued Garth Brooks
Plus George Brett's history of woes and more
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
October 14th, 2022 • Issue 121
This week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
October 14th
1977 - Atari released the first home video game console.
1979 - Wayne Gretzky scored his first NHL goal.
1982 - Ronald Reagan declared a war on drugs.
1986 - The International Olympic Committee decided to start staggering the winter and summer Olympics instead of holding both in the same year.
1987 - Baby Jessica fell down a well.
1988 - The Accused debuted in theaters.
1989 - Michael Bolton’s single How Am I Supposed to Live Without You? was released.
1994 - Pulp Fiction hit theaters, as did Little Giants, Exit to Eden, and Hoop Dreams.
1996 - Spice Girls’ single Say You’ll Be There was released.
1997 - Paula Cole’s single I Don’t Want to Wait, Ma$e’s single Feel So Good, and Lisa Loeb’s single I Do were released.
2003 - Steve Bartman tried to catch a foul ball at a Cubs playoff game and became public enemy number one in Chicago.
October 15th
42 years ago, on October 15th, 1980, George Brett had to leave a World Series game due to hemorrhoids.
George Brett is a baseball legend, voted into the Hall of Fame after his career ended in a near unanimous vote. Today I live in a baseball loving town, the town where George Brett grew up; his name is on the big Little League field.
But it’s possible — not guaranteed, but possible — over time he’ll grow to be more known for some one-of-a-kind comedic incidents than his play.
On this day in 1980 he had the first unique and memorable incident. As his Kansas City Royals were in the middle of game two of the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, Brett had to leave the game — because of painful hemorrhoids. The next day, he had minor surgery, returned for game three, and hit a home run. (The Royals, however, would lose the World Series.)
His next incident was in 1983, when he hit a ninth-inning home run to give Kansas City a lead over the New York Yankees. But the umpires took his home run off the board — because of the amount of pine tar on his bat. Brett went ballistic in one of the great on-field meltdowns. In a rare, rare event, MLB actually admitted the decision was wrong and the teams replayed the ninth inning a month later, with the Royals winning that game.
And even after his playing days, Brett still managed to get weird with it. Several years back, he was wandering through a Royals rookie training camp session and regaled the rookies with a tale of befouling his pants due to some questionable crab legs. The entire thing was caught on camera and became a viral hit.
So… George Brett for 3,000 hits and a career .305 batting average, and a World Series win? Or George Brett leaving a game with hemorrhoids, hitting a pine tar home run, and messing his pants?
The legacy is still up for grabs.
1981 - The first crowd wave was done inside of a sports stadium.
1981 - Metallica was formed.
1981 - Evil Dead hit theaters.
1987 - Bob Barker stopped dying his hair.
1988 - UB40’s single Red Red Wine hit number one.
1988 - Kirk Gibson hit his famous World Series game-winning home run.
1989 - Wayne Gretzky set the NHL scoring record.
1991 - Ugly Kid Joe’s album Ugly As They Wanna Be was released.
1991 - Clarence Thomas was regrettably confirmed for the Supreme Court.
1993 - Nelson Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize.
1993 - Rudy hit theaters.
1993 - Bryan Adams’s single Please Forgive Me was released.
1999 - Fight Club hit theaters.
2000 - Curb Your Enthusiasm premiered on HBO.
2001 - Smallville premiered on the WB.
October 16th
1983 - The Baltimore Orioles won the World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies.
1987 - Baby Jessica was rescued from the well.
1992 - The never-before-aired and quite different Gilligan’s Island pilot episode aired on TBS.
1992 - Candyman hit theaters.
1995 - The Million Man March was held in Washington, D.C.
1998 - Practical Magic and the Bride of Chucky hit theaters.
October 17th
25 years ago, on October 17th, 1997, Warren G sued Garth Brooks over use of a “g” in his logo.
This has to be right up there on the list of strangest music beefs of all time.
On this day in 1997, Warren G sued Garth Brooks. Over the letter “g.”
Warren G (it turns out) always used a lowercase “g” as his logo. Garth Brooks used a lowercase “g” logo for his 1997 tour. Warren G’s lawyer claimed the Garth Brooks “g” logo “dilutes the value of the trademark” — and might confuse Warren G fans into buying Garth Brooks merch.
He’s got regulators in loooow places, after all.
Garth Brooks filed a counter-suit. His lawyers claimed Warren G’s suit was without merit because Warren G’s logo “[was] a stencil ‘g’ with the words ‘funk music’ on it … [Brooks’s] is a ‘g’ with a circle around it and no other words.”
The two artists reached an undisclosed settlement in 1998, under which both were allowed to continue using their respective “g” logos.
The story could’ve died there, but after the settlement, Garth Brooks gave an out-of-left-field statement about what he “learned” during the process.
“The letter ‘g’ has a special significance to [Warren G] and to some members of their community,” Garth said, “In that it symbolizes kids and young people who have risen above drugs and violence and who are worthy of respect because of their positive contributions to the world… Knowing how much the symbol ‘g’ means to Warren, I will strive to reach the standard that the ‘g’ represents to him and his community.”
That statement is almost as bizarre as the feud itself.
1981 - Christopher Cross’s Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do) hit number one.
1983 - The Sally Jessy Raphael Show premiered.
1987 - Hans and Franz debuted on Saturday Night Live.
1987 - Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s single Lost in Emotion hit number one.
1988 - The Traveling Wilburys’ debut album was released.
1989 - Billy Joel’s album Storm Front was released.
1989 - The World Series was delayed by an earthquake in California.
1997 - I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Devil’s Advocate hit theaters.
1998 - Jump, Jive, an’ Wail by the Brian Setzer Orchestra peaked at number 23.
1998 - Barenaked Ladies’ single One Week hit number one, and stayed there for exactly one week.
1998 - Jay Z’s single Hard Knock Life was released.
1998 - Halloweentown premiered on Disney Channel.
October 18th
35 years ago, on October 18th, 1987, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! was released for NES.
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is considered one of the best boxing video games ever (at least in a mainstream sense, not for hardcore boxing game aficionados).
The secret to Punch-Out!!’s success and popularity, both 35 years ago and today?
It’s not a boxing game. Not really. It’s a series of video game boss battles masquerading as a boxing game.
Boxing is a complex sport (the “sweet science” as cigar-chomping sports broadcasters wearing tweed jackets would say). Its complexity — and the lightning quick chess battle of it all — didn’t translate well to video games, at least pre-motion controlled games.
Punch-Out!! recognized that. So rather than attempting to simulate boxing in any sort of realistic way, it matched up an underdog who could throw a total of three different punches against a series of cartoonish video game bosses.
And like any good video game bosses, the bosses get progressively harder — but all have a fatal flaw and learnable patterns. Defeating each boxer took a mix of timing and video game savvy. No boxing know-how required.
In these three-and-a-half decades following Punch-Out!!, the sports video game genre diverged in two directions. There were games that aimed to be ultra-realistic simulations of their sports (the EA sports games, Madden) and there were games that went for cartoonish fun (NBA Jam and Wii Sports, to name two prime examples).
There are certainly markets for both and a place for both. But cartoonish sports games are now, and have always been, an essential branch of the genre. And they exist, in part, thanks to the road paved by Punch-Out!!
1977 - Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in a World Series game, inspiring the game of baseketball in the process.
1988 - Roseanne premiered.
1991 - My Own Private Idaho and Vanilla Ice’s movie Cool As Ice hit theaters.
1996 - Sleepers hit theaters.
1996 - Swingers hit theaters.
1997 - The infamous Walker, Texas Ranger AIDS episode premiered.
2002 - The Ring hit theaters.
October 19th
1982 - St. Elsewhere premiered on NBC.
1985 - a-ha’s single Take On Me hit number one.
1987 - The stock market had the “Black Monday” stock crash.
1988 - Roxette’s album Look Sharp! was released.
1994 - Clerks hit theaters.
1994 - Dinosaurs premiered during TGIF.
1998 - Cher’s single Believe was released.
1999 - Being John Malkovich hit theaters.
2001 - Riding in Cars with Boys and Mulholland Drive both hit theaters.
2002 - Making the Band 2, which made a group literally called Da Band, premiered.
October 20th
1980 - U2’s debut album Boy was released.
1988 - The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series, defeating the Oakland A’s.
1989 - Drugstore Cowboy hit theaters.
1990 - The Cincinnati Reds won the World Series, defeating the Oakland A’s.
1990 - James Ingram’s single I Don’t Have the Heart hit number one.
1990 - 2 Live Crew were acquitted on obscenity charges in Florida.
1992 - Madonna’s album Erotica was released.
1994 - The website WhiteHouse.gov launched.
1995 - Ace of Base’s single Beautiful Life was released.
1995 - Get Shorty hit theaters.
1995 - Mallrats hit theaters.
1998 - 98 Degrees’ album 98 Degrees and Rising was released.
5 ‘80s and ‘90s trivia facts
There’s an irony to Baywatch’s status as the most famous “eye candy” show in history.
One of the creators of Baywatch, Douglas Schwartz, was legally blind. Despite missing 90% of his vision, he was still the director of nearly 40 episodes. Schwartz says he’s the only legally blind member in the history of the Directors Guild of America.
Eddie Van Halen played the guitar on Beat It… and never saw any money.
He played the guitar on the track as a favor to Michael Jackson — so he never received any royalties. He describes the decision as him being “a complete fool.”
If the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man were real, he would weigh almost four million pounds.
According to the model shop supervisor for Ghostbusters, who had to keep the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man at the right scale, he was 112.5 feet tall. Based on his density and the weight of marshmallows, he’d clock in at 3.87 million pounds.
Pac-Man is the highest-grossing arcade game ever.
It made an estimated $6 billion during its time in arcades. Space Invaders is second, at an estimated $3.8 billion. And despite coming out long after the golden age of arcades, Street Fighter II is third, at $5.3 billion.
Jennifer Lawrence, Margot Robbie, and JonBenet Ramsey were born within six weeks of one another.
Although their names became known when they were different ages (and for JonBenet, tragically, in death)… Margot Robbie was born on July 2nd, 1990. JonBenet Ramsey was born on August 6th, 1990. And Jennifer Lawrence was born August 15th, 1990.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd reunited at New York Comic Con last weekend.
Liam Neeson is starring in a reboot of The Naked Gun.
Heads up, roller coaster operators: The 1996 Marky Mark/Reese Witherspoon movie Fear is getting a reboot as a series by Peacock.
The trailer is out Netflix’s Addams Family (movie) reboot Wednesday which debuts November 23rd.
The Quantum Leap reboot has been doing well enough to receive an order for six more episodes this season.
Geena Davis says she had a “bad” experience with Bill Murray while making Quick Change in 1989. It included him using a massage device on her after she refused.
Ryan Reynolds and Colin Hanks are making a documentary about John Candy.
Cyndi Lauper launched a new fund called Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights, to “advance the fundamental rights and health of all women and girls.”
The world’s first punk rock museum is opening in Las Vegas in January.
Angela Lansbury, whose long career included Murder, She Wrote in the ‘80s and Beauty and the Beast in the ‘90s, passed away at age 96.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
Seinfeld: The Official Cookbook came out this week. It has “more than 60 recipes inspired by the [show]” including muffin tops, a butter shave turkey, a big salad, babka, and all the rest.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
McKids children’s clothes were an amazing scam by McDonald’s. Getting kids to beg their parents to buy the clothes — it was people paying to advertise McDonald’s. And the line was once such a big deal it had entire areas of Sears department stores devoted to it.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
In 1990, Coors — apparently unaware of the jokes everyone made about their beer — released a line of water. Coors Rocky Mountain Sparkling Water only lasted a few years — somewhat shocking since most big companies were able to print money with bottled water in the ‘90s.
Have a great week!
-Sam