Long live Hammer-pants

The '80s were a very interesting decade. These 10 years introduced the world to new-wave music, the Rubik's Cube and John Hughes. Since then we have realized that music made with a synthesizer isn't real music, a Rubik's Cube is almost impossible to solve and John Hughes made his last good movie in 1989. So everything pretty much came to an end, but something that will never die is the memory of how hilarious this decade really was.\nI bring this up because this past weekend I attended a theme party at my girlfriend's college in Michigan. The theme was "The '80s Prom." I, along with a few hundred other students born in the '80s, dressed, danced and drank the night away in skinny ties and crimped hair. We looked horrible.\nPersonally, I was wearing a headband, white pants, a "Member's Only"-type jacket, mirrored-shades and gloves with the fingers cut off. I looked like a schizophrenic Jim McMahon influenced by Billy Idol. My girlfriend and her roommates crimped their hair, wore a ton of eye makeup and the brightest pink, purple and green dresses. I said to myself, "I am so glad I didn't live in the '80s because these girls look terrible."\nIt was simple for us to find the right threads to re-create these horrible fashion trends of this decade because the '80s were so defined in its horrible fashion trends. Pretty soon we will be holding similar "'90s Parties" and almost no unusual fads come to my mind. Sure, we had "The Rachel" haircut, and some of you wore Hammer parachute pants in sixth-grade, but these weren't as depressing as "The Flock of Seagulls" hairstyle or hair-metal leather pants. Okay, maybe the parachute pants are pretty embarrassing, but "Hammertime" was so close to the '80s anyway.\nThe thing is our teenage years were spent in such a lazy, casual fashion period that it will be very hard for college students 10 years from now to throw a "'90s Prom." I don't remember my high school filled with girls with big hair. I remember most of the girls having straight hair. Seattle influenced the '90s the most, creating a grunge-style, but that was just because we were lazier than those of any other decade. Nirvana influenced our age group to grow our hair out, wear flannel shirts and not care about anything. This is almost the complete opposite of what the band Poison did. They told us that, "every rose has a thorn," and translated this means to use a can of hairspray each day and wear makeup.\nSo what is wrong with our generation? Why couldn't we make fools out of ourselves like our older cousins did in the '80s, our uncles did in the '70s and our parents did in the '60s? Maybe we weren't original enough to create our own style, since at one time or another we all stole trends from each of these decades. I'm sure that our kids will make fun of our high school yearbook pictures just like we made fun of our parents' pics, but right now I just cannot think of anything my kids will be able to say. Of course by then our fashion will be completely different again. I don't know, maybe Kris Kross will make a comeback and we'll all be wearing our pants backwards. By then I'm sure we'll all be living in moon-homes, driving flying cars and awaiting George K. Bush IV to declare a new war on Iraqkoreastan and won't really care what fashion was like in the '90s. \nNo, we will probably still make fun of Hammer-pants.