The world's longest running pop culture podcast
Two cultural icons from the mid 1980s: Boy George, a gay singer, and Mr. T, a tough, jive-talking actor.
Boy George had several hit songs with his band Culture Club. Mr. T starred in the hit TV show The A-Team and a cartoon about children who do gymnastics. He also had his own cereal and pitied many fools.
What do you get when you combine a hit TV show, two kidney transplants, an assault lawsuit, and a 2003 run for the governor of California? Gary Coleman, VH-1’s number one greatest kid star!
In 2005, Christian Slater starred in the video game movie Alone in the Dark, was accused of groping a woman in Manhattan, and fell off a roof.
Even though Paul Reiser and Peter Falk’s careers are over, they both just starred in Reiser’s movie The Thing About My Folks (2005). Like you, we probably won’t watch it either.
Will Vinton Studios, the creator of the California Raisins, also created the Noid, the mascot for Domino’s Pizza in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The commercials featured stop-motion animation by Tony Merrithew (tonymerrithew.blogspot.com) and the slogan, “Avoid the Noid.”
In 1989, Kenneth Lamar Noid thought the commercials were a personal attack on him and held two employees of an Atlanta, Georgia, Domino’s Pizza restaurant hostage for five hours. After forcing the employees to cook a free pizza for him, he surrendered to police, was charged with kidnapping, aggravated assault, extortion, and possession of a firearm during a crime, and was later found not guilty by reason of insanity.
In 1990, Capcom produced a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System called Yo! Noid. It’s a classic, right up there with Mega Man and Street Fighter II…not.