Dazed and Confused hit the silver screen in 1993, but somehow I didn’t notice at the time. It took another couple of years for me to become aware of its existence. I was sitting in English class one day and one of my friends was quoting it. I had no idea what he was talking about, so he clued me in and stressed that I needed to see this movie. It still took me a couple of years to get around to it, but when I finally did, I was an instant fan.
Dazed and Confused tells the story of the last night of school for a group of high schoolers and junior high schoolers. A party is planned, a party is busted, and another party is planned to replace the first one. In between all of this, the many characters of the film weave in and out of each other’s storylines and spend their night cruising around, hanging out at the local game room, drinking, getting high, and thinking about the next phases of their lives. It’s hard to imagine how you could pack so many characters and storylines into a movie about a single night, but Dazed and Confused pulls it off perfectly without it seeming like too much is going on.
The movie is a good interpretation of a night in the life of a teenager in the late ’70s. In those days before the internet when people had “nothing to do”, so they spent their time hanging out with and talking with each other. What a novel concept. The fashion, the cars, and especially the soundtrack combine for an amazing cinematic experience. And the actors all pull off their characters well, and some shine as bright as the sun in theirs. Personally, Matthew McConaughey’s “Wooderson” is not only my favorite character in this movie but is one of my favorite movie characters of all time.
I was a teenager in the ’90s just before the big boom of the internet, and some of my fondest memories of those times is doing exactly what the kids in this film did to kill time. Cruising around town, hanging out with friends, and talking about everything that mattered to us, even if those things didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. This movie brings those times back to mind every time I watch it, and I connect with it on a nostalgic level.
But you don’t have to have that kind of connection to Dazed and Confused to enjoy it. It’s a great coming-of-age comedy with a fantastic soundtrack that just breezes by while you watch it.
4.0 stars for the movie thanks to the whole vibe it puts off, and the nostalgia connected to it.
You know how there are just certain days from your past that you remember more than others? Well October 28th, 1989 is one of those days for me. It was a Saturday, which meant cartoons in the morning, but it was what went on that night that made it memorable. Let me tell you about it.
I’ve talked about the yearly Harvest Festival we had every year at my elementary school. Well, in 1989, the Harvest Festival fell on Saturday night, October 28th. So all day long I was eager with anticipation of that night’s event. It was also the night of WCW’s first Halloween Havoc pay-per-view event, which admittedly, put me in a disadvantageous position of possibly having to choose one or the other to enjoy that evening. So my morning hours were wracked with nervous feelings. Not enough that I couldn’t enjoy my usual Saturday morning cartoons, but it still played on my mind throughout the day. Normally, I can make my mind up quickly about things, but this was different. This particular day offered a very hard decision to make.
But as the cartoons ended and the afternoon started to roll around, my Dad made an offer. Since he would be going to the Harvest Festival with us so he could play bingo, he wouldn’t be there to watch TV. He suggested that we set the timer on the VCR and record Halloween Havoc while we were out! Now keep in mind, this was still the era before we had one of the cable black boxes that allowed us to get all of the PPV shows at no additional charge. At that time, I was allowed to order every other wrestling PPV, and this was the show. I skipped WWF’s Summerslam that year because I had gotten The Great American Bash in July. So we got the PPV ordered and the time set so I wouldn’t have to miss Halloween Havoc after all. With that set, I could turn my attention to the Harvest Festival.
So I spent the afternoon playing with Construx toys while I counted down the time left before time to go to the Harvest Festival. You know how I know I was playing with Construx? Because I was already trying to build what my interpretation was of the Thunderdome cage that was to be featured in the main event of the wrestling show that night. As it turned out, I wasn’t that far off.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I really can’t remember my Halloween costumes from through the years. While that is true, I actually do remember my costume from 1989. I went as a convict. It wasn’t the most creative idea, but at least I had a costume. Time was getting close, so I got the costume on, but I still had a little time before we would be leaving.
It was in that short amount of time that I watched the only episode of the TV show “She’s the Sheriff” that I would ever watch. Since She’s the Sheriff was a syndicated show, and since it had already ended its first run, I probably had to have been watching it on my local Fox affiliate. I can’t tell you what episode it was that I saw that day, and since there are no full episodes on Youtube for me to embed, you’ll just have to make do with a video of the opening credits for the show.
So we finally got to the Harvest Festival and my first order of business was to take my Mom to the showcase and show it off to her. Our school had a big showcase display right across from the office in the main hub of the school. Back then, the top three classes at school all had a part of the Harvest Festival to handle. The 7th graders got to put on the yearly haunted house, the 6th graders were in charge of The Disco, or The Batcave as it was called in 1989, and we 5th graders had to put together the showcase. The theme for that year was antiques, and my Mom had donated her grandmother’s kitchen knife to be put on display with the other relics. The showcase wasn’t really anything special, but since we worked on it, I had to show it off.
Once I got tickets to the games in the gym, it was time to say bye to the folks and go run with my friends for the night while all the parents went to the cafeteria to play bingo. I used to think that would be so boring until I had kids of my own, and then it turned out that the bingo was the highlight of my night when taking my kids to these things.
My friends and I ran around and played games, toured the haunted house, and made several trips to The Bat Cave. Not to dance mind you, but to hear the music and hang out in the darkened room. No self-respecting 5th-grade boy could be seen dancing awkwardly in front of the girls.
But even as I was having all of this fun, my mind kept drifting back to home and the hard-hitting NWA action I was missing out on. The Festival was starting to wind down so I made my trip to the “general store” to buy some old-fashioned candy and got ready to go home to see how things were turning out in the wrestling battles.
The flaw in my plan was realized when we got home and the show was still going. So not wanting to get spoiled on anything prematurely, I waited until it was over, rewound the tape, and started the show!
I had been highly anticipating the Halloween Havoc show because the NWA had done such an amazing job building up not only the rivalries but the theme of the show itself. It had a Halloween setting and had an advertised main event of a Thunderdome cage match pitting Ric Flair and Sting against Terry Funk and The Great Muta. The promotion for the cage itself was fantastic as they boasted it would be the largest cage in history and would be electrified to make sure the competitors stayed inside.
But not only was the main event something I was really looking forward to but there were also several other key matches that night as well. The first meeting between The Road Warriors and The Skyscrapers was dubbed as The irresistible force meeting the immovable object, The Steiner Brothers taking on the mysterious tag-team only known as Doom, Lex Luger meeting Brian Pillman, and other matches.
It was hard staying awake that night to take it all in, but I fought my way through it, and watching that show capped off a great night in my young life.
After all of these years, it’s funny to think back about how a school event and a wrestling show could make such a lasting impression on me. But I think it has more to do with the current state of life we find ourselves in. So much responsibility with jobs, families, and the like, that sometimes our hearts ache to just go back, even if just for a little bit. And that’s what Retro Ramblings is for me. It’s my chance to go back, even if just briefly, to a simpler time. Thanks for taking a minute to make the trip with me.
And just for the record, here’s my ratings for the Halloween Havoc ’89 matches from that night:
Tom Zenk vs. Mike Rotunda – 2 stars
The Samoan Swat Team vs. The Midnight Express & Steve Williams – 3.5 stars
Tommy Rich vs. The Cuban Assassin – 1/2 a star
The Fabulous Freebirds vs. The Dynamic Dudes – 3.5 stars for the crowd atmosphere
The Steiner Brothers vs. Doom – 3 stars for the mystery
Lex Luger vs Brian Pillman – 4 stars
The Road Warriors vs. The Skyscrapers – 3 stars for the spectacle
Rick Flair & Sting vs. Terry Funk & Muta Thunderdome Cage Match – 4.5 stars for the whole experience
With fall most certainly in the air these days, and Halloween not too far away now, I thought this edition of Retro Ramblings would be a good time to talk about what used to be one of the highlights of my year…the annual Harvest Festival at my elementary school!
I’m using the term fall festival so more of you will know what I’m referring to. But when I was in elementary school, ours was called the Harvest Festival. Living in a farming community in the heart of the Appalachians, harvest time has always been a big deal to the people around here. A good harvest was always a reason to celebrate, as the livelihood of most in this area depended on it. The way nature works, the end of the harvest season lines up nicely with the Halloween season. Thus, we had a Harvest Festival at school instead of calling it a Fall Festival, a Monster Mash, or other names I’ve heard these events referred to.
So you’ve probably been to one of these things. The kids dress up, there are games and events, the parents wander around and congregate, and a good time is usually had by all. Ours was always held at our elementary school and was the biggest event on the school calendar with the exception of the end-of-year banquet and graduation ceremonies.
The gymnasium was filled with cheesy carnival-type games where you could win prizes. You know the kinds of games I’m talking about. Like the kiddie pool filled with plastic ducks, and on the bottoms of a few of the ducks was some kind of indicator of a better prize than normal. Everyone got something like a piece of candy or a spider ring just for playing, but if you pulled one of the special ducks, you may win something like a stuffed animal or the like. So games like this littered the entire gym floor. You had to buy tickets on your way in to use to play the games, and the money made from the sale of tickets was used for things around the school.
Our gym was connected to the lunchroom by a set of double doors, so it was easy to bounce back and forth between the two places. The cafeteria was where the parents generally stayed. There were concessions like hot dogs and pizza, and there was bingo all night. And the bingo prizes were top-notch. A lot of the businesses in town would donate really nice stuff to be given away, and this was another opportunity for the school to raise money. I can’t even begin to remember what the bingo cost, but it wasn’t cheap. But the price was small in comparison to how you would be helping the school, and the prizes you had a shot at winning. I’m talking about stuff like brand new televisions, rocking chairs, a date night package with dinner at the restaurant and tickets to the theater….stuff like that.
We also had a haunted house as part of the event. The 7th-grade class was always responsible for putting it on, and they would spend all week setting it up, and then they would dress up and be a part of the haunted house. It was never too scary of an affair, but they tried. We also had a dance room that some years was called The Disco, and other years was known as The Batcave. But you could go there, the lights were turned out and black lights were in use, and there was a DJ spinning the hottest tunes of the time. You and your friends…or your boyfriend/girlfriend could kill time together.
The whole event was great, and it was so much fun getting to run free and hang out with my friends in that environment for several hours on a Saturday night. It was also cool that since it was usually the week before Halloween, everyone would dress up in their costumes to come.
When I find myself drifting back to memories of elementary school, the yearly harvest festival is almost always the first thing that comes to mind. But what about you? Did you have anything like this when you were growing up? Share your stories in the comments section below.
Nabisco unleashed Suddenly S’Mores on the world in 1990, and I was in on them early on. I had seen the commercial numerous times and was on the lookout for them at the grocery store every time we went. Growing up in our rural area, we were always behind other parts of the country when it came to the timeliness of receiving new junk food on the shelves.
So after a while, we finally got them in our area, and I was elated. I remember when we first opened them. They were such a novelty at the time, that the whole family wanted to try them, so there we were, all four of us gathered around the microwave to watch the magic. That’s because the gimmick of Suddenly S’Mores was that it was an uncooked s’more basically. There were the two “graham crackers”…really just two graham-flavored cookies, chocolate on each one of them, and some kind of dehydrated marshmallow sandwiched in the middle. You had to microwave them and then you’d have fresh, warm, gooey s’mores.
Back then, microwave doors were a little harder to see through than they are now, and my mom was a big proponent of how a microwave would destroy your eyes if you looked into it while it was cooking, so she was trying her best to keep my dad, my brother, and me away from the door. All of this took place in like 15 seconds because that’s about all the time they needed to do their thing.
Clipping courtesy of the Sun Herald June 06, 1990
When the first one was ready, I got the honor of trying it. At the same time, my brother was putting one in to try. That first package we had didn’t make it through the first night. We liked them so much, we ate the whole thing!
Of course, Mom was much more willing to part with the money they cost on the next visit since Dad asked her to get more. Our enthusiasm waned a little and the second pack lasted two nights. Things went on like this a couple of more times before the novelty really wore off for everyone in the family but me. I loved those things and was enjoying them on a regular basis.
Then one afternoon I was too lazy to microwave them and just opened a pack and ate one. I found that they were just as delicious as the microwaved version but in a different way. It’s hard to explain, but I really liked them straight from the package. I started taking them to school in my lunch as my dessert and soon found another redeeming quality about them…they were incredible trade bait at lunchtime. Since they came two in a pack (I think), I was able to enjoy one and trade the other for things like a pack of Shark Bite fruit snacks, half of a fruit roll-up, or any number of other tasty treats.
It’s hard to dig up much information about how long these lasted on the market, but I don’t think they made it past 1990. It was a heartbreaker when I finally accepted the truth that they were gone and wouldn’t be coming back. It’s still one of the junk foods I miss the most all these years later.
