I Never Had Big HAIR

My daughter's in choir this year. A few nights ago, they had this big concert performance thing with the other high schools in the city where we live. Mostly, the choirs sing the kinds of songs you'd expect high school choirs to sing: old songs, frequently religious in nature, that sound very somber and serious. Mostly, it's uninspired, safe choices, but that's the way these things go, right?

Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions even when the school is staying within the paradigm, but, generally speaking, the music isn't very... exciting.

However! One of the schools did a whole 80s-themed set with music by the likes of Tears for Fears and Queen. It was a lot of fun, and the kids even dressed in (mostly) 80s styles. The one thing they didn't get right? The HAIR! Not a single one of them had appropriate 80s HAIR!

Now, look, I get it: 80s HAIR takes a certain amount of commitment, possibly more than is appropriate to ask of a high school student for a single evening's performance, but I think it would have taken their performance up another level.

But, then, who am I to talk? I never had 80s hair.

Hey! It's not my fault! My hair was already thinning by the time I was 15, and you can see the progression of my hair loss in my student IDs/yearbook photos. No, I can't show them to you. For one thing, I only have one of my yearbooks (and that not exactly on purpose), and, though I still have my student IDs (at least, I'm pretty sure I do), I have no idea where they are in the catastrophe of boxes that is my garage. (If you want to buy any of my old collectible stuff, make sure you check out my eBay auctions!)

At any rate, the whole HAIR thing got me to thinking... And I kind of wish I had an old 80s photo of me with big HAIR to post: But do I really? Okay, no, not really. Don't get me wrong; if I had one, I would post it, but, alas...

Oh! But the HAIR thing got me thinking; I'm just not sure about what. How weird things were in the 80s? Where things actually weird in the 80s? Would I go back and re-live the 80s and high school if I could? The answer to that used to always be "no fucking way," but I've been rethinking that a bit lately. Not because I would want to go back to the 80s for its own sake, but it's clear to me now that the 80s was when we really started to go off the rails as a nation. Reagan's presidency was a disaster and set up for so much of what is going on today. So, yeah, I would probably choose to do that all over again just so that I could be more politically aware at a younger age and start working then to stop what is happening now.

And, well, opt out of "christianity" at an age where I could have been saved from "christianity" and its harmful effects.

So, anyway, one of the songs that choir sang was "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," and that also got me thinking. I mean, would I want to rule the world? At this point, oh, absolutely! Which I never would have said when I was younger. Or even a few years ago. So, I thought, hey! I'll write a post about that in relation to the song! I mean, that would be cool, right? But...

The problem arose when I looked up the lyrics to the song... What the fuck? What does any of that even mean? Which reminded that I have actually looked up those lyrics before and had the same thought. Other than the line, "Everybody wants to rule the world," which is pretty self-explanatory, the rest of the song is nearly meaningless phrases joined together by... nothing. And maybe that's what the 80s were like? Anyway... Because it's probably still a good song, here you go: