Rollerskating and Aerosmith

Growing up, if you wanted an AWESOME birthday party, you had it at Funway. Or maybe Pizza Hut, but Funway was a better choice.

This is from my friend Sarah's birthday. It hung on the bulletin board at Funway for probably 10 years.

Funway provided pre-teens of the far-west Chicago suburbs with all recreation they could possibly want: video games, bumper boats, batting cages, and the most popular of all activities: rollerskating.

I did my share of skating in my formative years and I loved it. I wasn’t particularly good, I couldn’t do turns or skate backwards (I always HATED when the DJ decide it was backward skate time. Backward skate meant nacho time for me), but I could stay on my feet and generally avoided embarrassing myself.

I hadn’t been on skates since the last day of 8^th grade, when kids with good grades got to go to Funway, while everyone else finished up their missing work. That all changed when, while doing my student teaching, we decided to take the kids on a trip to Skateland. (Anchorage’s answer to suburban Chicago’s Funway). I didn’t plan on skating, since it had been 10+ years since I’d been on skates, I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of my students, and I didn’t have health insurance, but after some begging and pleading from my students, I begrudgingly laced up some roller skates. Turns out, I can still do it. (Thank goodness, because a broken bone would have been really expensive…)

I was pleased to see all my students on roller SKATES not roller BLADES. In fact, I don’t even think Skateland offers roller blades. I was even more pleased to see that my kids were REALLY good at it. They could do tricks and spins and skate backwards (which is still impossible for me). I always kind of feared that rollerskating would become a dying art, left to roller derby girls and former roller disco fans. But there’s a whole new generation of roller skaters hanging out at the roller rink on Friday nights trying to get the object of their desire to couple skate with them, so all must be right with the world.

Keeping with the era, this week's hot jam is Don't Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith. Picture it, it’s 1999, you’re skating around in overalls and an Adidas/Old Navy t-shirt, and you hear the DJ say in his smooth DJ voice, “Alright folks, this skate is for couples and trios only.” Cue those fateful first chords of Don’t Want to Miss a Thing. You think, “Is he going to ask me to skate with him? Oh my gosh, I would totally die if he did.” No, he’s probably not. (Middle school boys are generally not known for brazenness with the opposite sex) So you grab two girl friends and skate around pretending you don’t care that you don’t have a boy to skate with. Or, if you're a more sensitive young lady, you go cry in the bathroom. Regardless of your sensitivity levels, Don't Want to Miss a Thing is a hot jam. Because couple skating to Mambo No. 5 just isn't as romantic.

Teen Movies and Tupac

Most of the time Netflix thinks I'm a 60 year old gay man with small children. It suggests things like Columbo and Transamerican Love Story and Dora the Explorer. Yes, I realize the suggestions are based on what I watch, so maybe I'm a 60 year old gay man with small children on the inside, but that is totally beside the point.

Anyway, Netflix must have had a flash of genius the other day because I literally gasped with joy when I saw that Drive Me Crazy starring Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier was available for streaming (finally!)

This 1999 gem stars Melissa Joan Hart as a high school socialite and Adrian Grenier as her slacker-with-rebel-tendencies neighbor. They come up with a scam to get their respective love interests back, makeover ensues, and you can probably guess what happens in the end. (Spoiler: K-I-S-S-I-N-G)

I have a soft spot for teen comedies from the late 90's. They remind me of sleepovers and eating Warheads and giggling in somebody's basement. There is nothing quite like a middle school girls' slumber party.

This is actually from my going away party in 8th grade, not a sleepover, but it's what most of our sleepovers looked like too.

Teen movies have very few story lines: makeovers, modern-day Shakespeare remakes, prom, graduation. That about covers it. You know what to expect from teen movies, there are never plot twists.

You think, "Oh, I wonder if those two are going to get together?!" Are they the main characters? Is one a nerd and one in the popular crowd? Is the world trying to keep them apart? Then yes, yes they are. Cue the credits.

Teen movies are the cotton candy of the film world. Soft, airy, and fabulous. Sure, binges on teen movies would probably make you barf but a little never hurt anyone.

Keeping with the 90's theme, this week's hot jam is Changes by Tupac. Released posthumously in 1998, Changes is a Monster Ballad of the hip hop world; a little more radio-friendly, a little more accepted by the masses (and the Catholic church.), and a little less police violence. It address some serious issues and probably would have been used in some sort of Save the World celebrity fundraiser if it was released before Tupac was killed. Normally, I wouldn't consider any Save the World songs hot jams, but this one is by Tupac, and let's be honest, everything he did was a hot jam. Pour one out and turn it up.