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Easter 2024

Bizarre Bazaar

Pop Culture Details From My 6th Birthday Party

This year marks the 35th Anniversary of my being 6 years old! A remarkable achievement, I know! But that's not what this is about, nor is it about celebrating some milestone that's divisible by 5. This is about an exploration of some photographs taken on a Saturday night in mid-February of 1989 and the evidence therein to corroborate that context. Come with me on this journey. 

Sadly, though unsurprisingly, my attire remains timeless, which was a conscious decision even then; the shirt-and-tie combo was just how I dressed, much to the bemusement of peers and family, but in my mind it was a neutral cosplay I could pull off in plain sight while I pretended to be whatever hero or villain I chose to be on any given day. And to think Nicholson's Joker was roughly four months away from validating and solidifying this fashion choice for me. 

It's weird to imagine my world before Batman, before Dick Tracy or Edward Scissorhands or The Simpsons or various other Danny Elfman-related things. What kinda vacuous, empty void were the 1980s anyway?? Certainly there must have been other outlets of entertainment, especially for someone my age. Fortunately this picture of my birthday cake exists, lest we forget. 

I included this photo in a STAR WARS essay I shared some years ago to illustrate the expanse of my love of the films (and particularly the character). But doing that math now raises the notable point that, at the time of this photo, there hadn't been any new theatrical movies in nearly six years and yet the Force was still strong in not just me but the culture; you could still go to Kmart or Woolworth's or wherever and get a Vader helmet cake pan as though it were just a normal baking accessory. (Credit to my Great Aunt Olly for the skills here.) 

Typically a child's birthday party will have a consistent theme in which everything falls under the same pop culture canopy: the cake, the plates, the cups, the napkins, the hats, the piñata, sometimes even the gifts are all Looney Tunes, all Scooby-Doo, all Paw Patrol. Now I don't know what kinda input I had (if any) when it came to these party supplies, but each bit of tableware has been pulled from different areas of my 6-year-old mind and I don't know how that was accomplished. Let's start with the Real Ghostbusters paper plates.

While wrapped and sold separately from the other accoutrement, I'd have to assume they were all sold in the same aisle and probably the same shelf, and yet whomever purchased these disregarded a potential set and looked beyond, went further, cut deeper when it came to something as significant as, say, the napkins.

Again I choose to point out that had I required a full-blown California Raisins bash I coulda whooped it up in style - and I would've been perfectly fine with that; their inexplicable burst of popularity captivated me as much as it did the rest of the nation (world?). Though on this particular Night to Remember I settled for a mild paper accent of Raisin and a box of delicious Colorforms. 

And beneath the cake and plates and napkins and wicker bowl of Kit Kats and Peanut M&Ms lie the paper cloth that really tied the function together. 

DuckTales rounded out this collage of consumables and ephemera that was eaten/discarded just hours later so this photograph lives on as an emblematic coat of arms representing only this very narrow gulch or interests. And they were about to meet their match. 

I was late to the game with this toy of toys. But I was aware of it (as my GTFO face suggests) - I'd played one before and understood its addictive colors and sounds and it stayed with me, though I never believed I'd have a System in my living room that I could play whenever the TV was allotted to me. And for the entirety of the following day, it was: I woke up and began playing Super Mario Bros. in my pajamas, and continued to do so until it was time for bed. I never got dressed and I had food brought to me, and most of that day was spent trying to conquer World 1-1. But there it was - I would be able to cross the finish line of the 80s on the right side of history; I was Charlie Bucket no longer, deprived of this millennial birthright, and the central thread of The Wizard would eventually have a more relatable context. This is why childhood nostalgia is so powerful; life would never be this good again. 

If anything, this lengthy series of photos illustrates the immediacy of youth obsessions and their fleeting endurance, as it was always onto the next thing. It seems narcissistic to suggest that it was a blessing to be this age during this period of time, but as I now have a nearly-6-year-old son whose primary interests are STAR WARS, Ghostbusters, Batman, and Nintendo makes me feel as though I was in on the ground floor of pop culture - as it was and as it (apparently) forever shall be. 

- Paul

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