Toucan ever, Sir, enter

Most guys my age suffer from Early Eighties Nostalgia.

Those were good times – most houses still had TV antennae, even those with the magic box that bestowed Fraggle Rock, MTV, and out-of-town UHF stations. Heck, MTV actually played music then, and thus, said music was doubly cool.

Yeah, it was largely a collection of lame synth hooks, one-hit wonders, and thinly-veiled references to self-manipulation – but it was on television. And you’d get Van Halen or “Money for Nothing” if you waited all of seven minutes. And Martha Quinn! Shut up, Elton, and let someone who can appreciate – oh, crap, it's Mark Goodman. What’s the next song?

Corey Hart, “Sunglasses at Night.” Time for homework, then.

OK, so that’s not really fair, but it’s hardly untrue, either. I can look back and laugh – after all, I’m laughing at myself as well, and why not? In fact, today at work “Sunglasses at Night” popped up on the Randomizer, and I was struck all over again, step by goofy step, by the living comedy.

Start with the hook:



Those opening bars sound like something Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox cooked up as a gag when they were hung over, then thought about for 2.3 seconds and said, “Ha ha ha, OK, seriously, let’s go write Missionary Man.”

Then, the image. Corey’s wearing sunglasses at night, dude! Excellent! It must be serious and cool and other adult things. (At least, as long as he doesn’t do any actual adult thing like drive a car.) Oh oh oh - check it, he’s gonna sing about it!



I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can, so I can
Wonchle weavie breeze the pony’s flies

Uh, wha-?



I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can, so I can
Boffle jackal visions in my eyes!

OK, not only was that still gibberish, it wasn’t even the same gibberish. How can you have any vision at all in the dark while wearing Ray-Bans?

While she’s deceiving me
She cuts my security and
She’s got control of me
I turn to her and say –

Finally! Answers!



Don’t plushie shave on a guy in shades, oh no!

Oh, no.



Don’t masquerade on a blithe Kincaid, oh no!
I can’t believe it!

Can’t believe what? SPIT IT OUT, jackass.



You’re wearing plaid with a flying shade of gold!

Well, that would be a fashion nightmare.

We had access to music videos, but not yet to 100,000-song lyric databases, so we were forced to give up at that point. I just assumed it was spy talk,* sort of like Golden Earring’s “Twilight Zone,” except this was a special-needs secret agent with light sensitivity issues. And maybe there was something to that, after all. Consider the clues:

1. synth riff stolen from the Eurythmics’ dumpster
2. by a hero so super-secret he wears shades in the dark
3. lyrics mumbled in code
4. a mysterious, deceptive woman who endangers and controls the hero, who
5. shouts more mumbled codes at her
6. and nobody can quite peg where any of it is going.

You know what I think now? I think that Corey Hart is really Dan Brown, and the entire song was accidentally left out of The Da Vinci Code. Everything makes much more sense that way.

* Martha, by the way, is still a cutie.
* Nope. It was this. But you can forgive the many people who thought otherwise.
* Of course, all clips hosted by Castpost.

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