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|  1987: A Twenty Year Look Back In 1987 I was in grade two at Lord Strathcona Public School. It was my first year at that school and I made lots of good friends in second grade, including Dale, Erin, Noah, and Gavin. In grade two I learned how to draw a boobie. Right there you can tell why 1987 was so incredibly influential. We all played Transformers at recess, and Dale was the Kissing Monster. He'd chase all the girls around. So now that you have a small idea of what 1987 was for me... here's what it was for everyone else, and how I like to look back on it. Music in 1987    Appetite For Destruction, Permanent Vacation, and Sign "O" The Times As a seven year old, I wasn't listening to a whole lot of music on my own in '87. It was mostly what my sister had in her record collection (Bon Jovi, Run DMC, and Motley Crue), but when I look back now I think of three albums of that year. The first is Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction, the single greatest rock record of all time. I feel almost stupid for not getting into GnR until I was almost done high school, but I don't think I would've been able to really appreciate the record as a child. It was much, much different from anything that was on the Chipmunks' Born To Rock album. Another record I didn't learn of until later was Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation, often known as the Aerosmith comeback album. Not their best record by far, but without a doubt one of their most important. Even my favorite Prince album, Sign "O" The Times was released in 1987. For music, it was an all around great year. The album I was most listening to in '87 though was the soundtrack to the movie La Bamba. That movie was playing in my house just about every Friday night, and the Los Lobos re-makes of the Valens tunes were cool for a youngin' like me and still acceptable for my parents who were around when those songs were first famous. Other big songs of the year were the controversial I Want Your Sex by George Michael and Luka by Susan Vega. Fuck, it was the late eightees. Music was fractioning off into every which direction. Television & Movies in 1987    Full House, Superman IV, and Masters Of The Universe I will never forget my parents taking me to see Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. Mostly I will never forget seeing the preview for Masters Of The Universe and hearing my dad mutter "Great, there's another one we'll have to go see..." As horrible as both of those movies were, they hold very special places in my heart to this day. Even bigger of a deal is the fact that The Princess Bride, possibly the greatest movie ever made, was released in '87. I already mentioned La Bamba earlier, and let's not for a second forget Spaceballs or The Lost Boys or even Eddie Murphy RAW. Perhaps most important was the debut of Full House on television, and the introduction of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Sports in 1987    Wrestlemania III, Edmonton Oilers, Minnesota Twins In 1987 Hulk Hogan picked up the 500 pound Andre The Giant and slammed him in front of ninety-three thousand people at Wrestlemania III. Hulkamania was running so wild that it even inspired Wayne Gretzky and his Edmonton Oilers to win the Stanley Cup for the gazillionth time in '87, bringing it up to about 36 total Stanley Cups for that team in the 80s (or something like that, we all lost count). The Minnesota Twins won the World Series, thanks to all the funky rock that Prince brought to the city, and The New York Giants won the '87 Superbowl.  So until the year 2087, stay cool. - Ryan
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