Freaky Funny Friday - TGIF Let's Just Have Fun! - I Miss Laverne & Shirley

I stumble across a Laverne & Shirley Reunion this morning on Yahoo and realized wow!!! Do I miss real entertaining TV.   I know it makes me sound ancient but I grew up with shows like Laverne & Shirley.  Since it was filmed in Milwaukee (right around the corner) it gave me hope and inspiration that there was more to life than milking cows and country lanes. 

My up bringing was in a very conservative home where women didn't work outside the house and their future plans were to get married (and obey.)  The only acceptable career aspiration for someone without the holy Y chromosome was to be a mother.  We were not rich enough to dream about going to college and finding a husband; no, your choices were your neighbor's son (the farmer) or the guy at church, who maybe (if you were lucky) had a profession, something like a plumber.  If those two didn't cut it, our you didn't cut it for them, then you may become the dreaded "spinster."  But fortunately for me I was little in the 70's and shows like Laverne & Shirley gave me the hope that I needed.

I wasn't allowed to watch the show because of it's raciness but often I would sneak down and sit on the stairs to watch or possibly whine enough so that I could at least catch part of the week's episode.  It showed me that these two women were able to make it on their own, be happy, date (without falling straight to the pits of hell) and have all kind of amazing adventures right in my home state making me realize that I didn't have to end up a farmer's wife.  No disrespect to farm wives anywhere; it is just that it is sooooooo much work and I didn't want to do it.  I wanted to be where the action was, the excitement was and I wanted to be OK if I decided not to get married.  Unfortunately as fate would have I did get married (and divorced) young anyway but I have to give some credit to the influence of 70's pop culture for the path I took to get where I am now.  I am independent and I do have a career and I do live in a city where things are always happening (not quite the crazy antics that you would see on the show but sometimes it could be close.) 

The thing is, when I was growing up I was constantly told that I could be only one thing in life but with shows like Laverne & Shirley, Mary Tyler Moore & Happy Days, it showed me that I could be basically be anything I wanted and still have a bright future.  Unfortunately I do not see that in today's television, often this generation is being shown images of people halfway killing themselves to do stupid pranks or sitting on a fake island somewhere pretending to be a "Survivor" or swearing and cussing in Jersey while doing beer bongs.  I hope that some day soon they will go back to producing things that are entertaining while still teaching young people that life can be fun and exciting with out the negative drama.  Show them something we would want them to aspire to be; don't teach them that it is alright and normal for a young lady to get in bar fights.  Laverne & Shirley may not have been exactly who you would want to have your kids growing up to be but they at least they were not a 14 year old mother-to-be in the middle of literal soap opera life; now that is what I hope my grand kids look up to, Not!

Oh Well at least we have reruns and YouTube, enjoy....

Happy Birthday David Bowie

David Bowie turns 65 years old today.   Really, good Lord where does the time go?  Granted he is older than I am but I grew up with his music and it just seems like yesterday.


Growing up in the 70's and 80's was a really strange time but maybe it feels the same for all generations and I just noticed mine.   As I was growing up there was such a wide range of changes in things like technology and pop culture it wasn't the same country in 1980 as it was in 1970.  There are so many things that the kids couldn't live without today that were first introduced to the public during my teens.  Things like . . .Satellite dish, heck when I was young many of us still had black and white TVs . . . Cell phones, the phones in our home still had to be connected to the wall and it was a novelty to have a one in any other color than black or ivory . . . Computers, I felt so lucky that our family had a type writer (first one wasn't even electric.)  When these technologies changed so did our pop culture along with how and where we would listen to our music.

I the 70's, aside from a live concert, the radio, record player,  and boom box was where you would listen to your music.  But in the 80's along came satellite TV and MTV!   I was a typical teenage girl so I was obsessed with my music.  I liked rock and blues most and my favorites where David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Blues Brothers, and Alice Cooper but basically I loved all music from that genera. As a boy crazy teenage girl, MTV fed both of my obsessions by not only blasting the music but the images of what it was to be a big haired rock star.  Every boy and girl in my school dressed to look like either a member of Van Halen or The Bangles.

During the 80's, the band's or singer's hair was almost equally as important as whether or not they could sing.  If you didn't have the hair you might as well hang it up.  David Bowie had the hair, the talent, and the rebellious style that we all craved at the time.  Was it really so long ago that I was jammin' to Fame and trying to "rock the house down?"  Yikes! time flies...


Happy Birthday David Bowie and thanks for fulfilling the music needs of a rebellious teenage girl.  I hope you have a great one it was a lot of fun.