There's nothin' left to talk about, unless it's horizontally

I woke up this morning to John Travolta singing "You're the One That I Want" from Grease on my clock radio, and it made me smile 'cause I've always secretly liked that song a lot. And not because I was one of those girls who worshipped Grease and watched it over and over with her friends while painting her toenails and dipping her firsts into an oversized bowl of popcorn. But because we--for some reason--used to have the song on a 45 when I was little.







Which got me thinking of all the albums we had on vinyl when I was little. And they were a horrifying bunch.

I remember dancing--Flashdance-style--around the basement to THIS horribly 1980s, leg-warmer-wearing gem:









And then we had an inexplicable array of Sesame Street & Disney albums, the crowning glories being a 45 of "C is for Cookie" (LISTEN) which has WAY too much chewing in it, and Mickey Mouse Disco whose best song was UNARGUABLY "Macho Duck" (sung by Donald Duck), which really does hold up even after all these years:









We also owned the Mickey's Christmas Carol album which essentially was the audio of the ENTIRE Christmas special transferred directly onto vinyl--songs AND exact dialogue--the highlight of which was the sound effect of Goofy yelping as he fell down a flight of stairs. So we pretty much knew the Mickey's Christmas Carol special verbatim when we'd watch it each year:







All of this also made me think back fondly on the sweet ass record player we had when I was little. It was about 3 feet tall or so and made out of (essentially) red heavy-duty cardboard. And it had a corrugated plastic "window" on the front of it with a multi-colored lightbulb behind it which would reflect in the corrugations and make pretty colors while it played. Man, what I wouldn't give to still have that.

We also had the infamous electrical-shock record player that my parents owned. You had to really REALLY want to listen to something to be willing to use it, 'cause every time you went to turn it on, it would buzz you with a mild electrical shock.

Oh those were the days... Remember back when us children of the 70s & 80s actually used to play on playgrounds that DIDN'T have rounded corners or wood chips but were situated over cement and almost always had rusty exposed screws somewhere?

Safety is overrated.

But shitty record albums and electrocution turntables most CERTAINLY are not.

-------