It All Started With Fame...

...and went downhill from there.

Wanna feel old? Picture your favorite actor/actress from when you were 10 or so. Now, if your fave has gone from gracing the cover of Tiger Beat, to People, to Lifetime, to do commercials for vitamins, pain relievers or life insurance, congrats...you're over 40!

This all started because I saw this trailer at the drive in the other night before Harry Potter. There was some dancer and the words "It all starts with a dream..." This song was playing at the beginning and I knew the words and started singing along, but couldn't place WHY I knew the words:

Sometimes I wonder,
where I've been.
Who I am,
do I fit in.

I may not win,
but I can be strong
Out here
On my own

Then suddenly, before I can say "Oh, that's On My Own" and be mad that they cut a part from the lyrics, that haunting refrain from another WAY more popular song came in:

"Remember, remember, remember..."

And I DID.

"HOLY !@#, they're redoing FAME!" I screamed to Kevin. Man, I just about SOILED myself. Suddenly, I was mentally trasported back in time to middle school. My middle school was an independant private school called Crossroads in downtown St. Louis that was run almost mom and pop style by an amazing collection of hippies, professors, educators, outdoorsman, businessmen and EVERYONE'S parents. It's the only school where I had Sledding for gym, a field trip to watch the Cardinals World Series parade, had an econ class through school store and a host of other really cool experiences, most of which were just phenomenal in terms of real world learning. My dad even came in and did a ton of awesome computer programming stuff back when it was still something you wrote lines of text for.

Anyway, the creativity aspect is what made it a prime jumping off place for VAP, St. Louis's Visual and Performing Arts magnet school. Kids in my school were always hanging around writing their own plays and music and all this other neat artistic stuff...and then FAME came out and EVERYONE was a dancer or a singer. Heck, even I wanted to be Irene Cara and I wasn't allowed to see the MOVIE back then (rated R, so I just heard about it and watched the subsequent tv show). 4 different chicks did "On My Own" for the talent show!

So, after seeing that and singing the song for karaoke at tournament this year (which, if you've never seen improv comedians doing karaoke, I HIGHLY recommend...we had the ENTIRE dancing in the street scene going on the dance floor in front of me!), I came home and looked up the movie, only to find out that it came out in 1980.

1980, people!

Seriously, Fame is coming up on its THIRTIETH anniversary! I'll be 40 two days after the remake comes out and the movie will be 30 a few months later!

That's when I started looking at where they are now and what folks are doing and got that bolt of reality. Gene Anthony Ray (Leroy) is dead, as is Mr. Shorofsky (who was already older, but MAN!). That kinda stuff makes you look at all the other famous folks of the time, like Farrah & Michael and Lindsay Wagner...the Bionic Woman is doing SLEEP NUMBER beds! Robin Williams was on Letterman doing an entire monologue on HEART SURGERY.

And meanwhile, the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus still live...

Where is the JUSTICE, people? Are these children DRAINING the lives from our faves and using it for media sustenance? Who among us is NEXT???

At any rate, now that the rose colored glasses are off, the movie itself looks...okay? I mean, I'm only going from the way the dancers are dancing and the remake of the theme song, but it seems kinda...slutty?

Again, I'm probably just getting old, 'cause when I go back and look at the tv show, whenever they break into spontaneous dancing (which is ALWAYS), there's a ton of pelvic thrusting and whatnot that I now see as a bit suggestive (watch about 2 minutes into this and see if you think Debbie Allen woulda kept her teaching license TODAY!). But the music seemed to be more heart pounding and exciting.

The new version...there's a lot of girls SLIDING into splits and arching bodies (wow, I sound like some old censor lady or something!). And the new beat doesn't make me want to jump up and spontaneously dance, unless there's a pole involved. Plus, look at this poster! Are we selling sex and Pepsi or something???

Age. I'm not scared of getting old, but I can remember when all music was fun and I couldn't imagine sleeping through Saturday morning cartoons. Suddenly, I'm not even TOUCHING the TV on Saturdays because of all this computer animated and video game crap (says the woman who actually watched THIS power hour on Saturdays) and listening to more and more JACK FM.

D.