All of America heaved a sigh of relief when the seventies were finally over. Things had been getting sour near the end of our funk era, what with disco’s drawn-out death and all our nation’s lovely political faux pas. Our country hated Vietnam veterans, feared African Americans, and ate fried food three meals a day. Things weren’t so hot. We elected Dick Nixon twice, people. Twice.

We needed a change, and we needed it fast. It was time for new fashions, new ideologies, and new entertainment.

Boom. Welcome to the eighties. Tight rolled jeans? Ripped denim tops and bottoms? Muppets? Cocaine? Yeah. We got those. Voodoo economics? That shit was great!! The eighties offered all the absurdities of the seventies with a little more style, a little more pizzazz.

Other decades have been good. I’m sure we all would have loved to be young in the sixties. Weed, rock, peace, love, and careless sex. Not exactly my least favorite things. And now that we’ve left the nineties, we can look back and think, "Alright, that wasn’t so bad." Everybody liked Pearl Jam, right? And who’s going to complain about Seinfeld?

But really, what other decade offered the smorgasbord of entertainment that so prevailed in the 1980s? None, that’s what decade.

The eighties saw television achieve a pinnacle that it may never reach again. Even putting aside the epics Dallas and Dynasty, there were some tremendous choices on the tube. Who could forget Michael J. Fox’s overachieving yet adorable Alex P. Keaton? He was, quite simply, the man. The Cosby Show taught us that black people weren’t scary, and Head of the Class showed us that nerds were people too. Webster was big (sorry), Knight Rider was huge, and Voltron was everything that a cartoon should be.

We certainly can’t forget the great granddaddy of all TV series: The Dukes of Hazzard. Those Duke boys, I’ll tell you what. No onscreen duo since has exuded the raw energy of Bo and Luke, and none has had a more southern car. Families across the country welded their doors shut in emulation of the Dukes, and countless hijinx ensued.

To complement TV’s stellar performance in the eighties, Hollywood rolled out some of its most priceless gems. In only an hour and a half, The Breakfast Club captured the essence of adolescence. The Goonies led the life everybody dreamt of, and Ferris Bueller had the hottest girlfriend any of us had ever seen.

Most importantly, though, the eighties offered us not one, or even four, but six wondrous episodes of the Police Academy franchise. The senility of Commandant Lassard, meshed with the fury of Captain Harris, mingled with the cadets’ lack of discipline made for a hit every time. Maybe the entertainment value waned around the time of Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach, but they were still better than any of today’s Freddie Prinze, Jr. crap. Oh Steve Guttenburg! Oh humanity!

Finally, there was the music. And oh, what marvelous music it was. Forget Madonna, Michael Jackson, and all the other stock eighties rock stars. How quickly we forget bands like Night Ranger, The Cars, and The J. Geils Band. Men Without Hats alone had two of this millennium’s greatest pop songs: "The Safety Dance," a euphonic reflection of independence, and "Pop Goes the World," an epic, crescendoing meditation on detonation.

All the Midwestern butt-rock of the seventies evolved into something much more refined in the eighties: the hardcore hair-band. Pre-nineties, Motley Crue couldn’t do anything wrong. They were too fast for love, taking walks on the wild side, and kick-starting hearts across the globe. Poison followed suit, along with Warrant and Winger. Even some bands leftover from the seventies got into the groove. Rush graced us with "Tom Sawyer," and Styx bucked the oppressive devil with "Mr. Roboto." To them we say arigato fellas, domo arigato.

Tomorrow night in the Smith Campus Ballroom, those crazies down at CCLA are offering us a chance to celebrate all that was great about the eighties. Sure, there won’t be any beer at the party, but beer was never a big part of the eighties. The eighties were about Bartles and James golden wine coolers, long, slim cigarettes, and cocaine in deserted bathroom stalls. Smiley Eighties (now in its umpteenth year) has long been a major component of Pomona’s party fiber, and everybody should go and pay homage to our nation’s decade of decadence.