It was the summer of 1984 and I was all of ten-years old. I guess, looking back on the events that unfolded, I could say that I discovered the kind of woman I would become, for better or for worse.
And that woman, my friends, was never going to be Sandy Olsen from the movie Grease.
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You see, during that summer I was attending daycare in the home a Grease fanatic whose love affair with all things Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsen rivaled that of the Bella/Edward craze that would send suburban moms into a lust-frenzy some 30 years later.
Due to her unbridled passion, my babysitter forced her young charges to sit in front of the television and witness thirty-year olds pretending to be high school students while they sang and danced about love and pre-marital sex all the while coaxing us females into fighting over who would act out of the role of Sandy when we inevitably re-created the movie in the afternoon (this was called “creative play”).
And, for the love of all things Chewbacca, it was never, ever me… thank God.
To me Sandy was sad and pathetic; all obsessed with regaining the love of an asshole who spurned her after a summer filled with hand-holding and closed mouth kissing. I mean, why on earth would a girl want to pine away for a jerk like that? (Even at that tender age I knew what I would and would not tolerate in a dude).
As the summer progressed (and with it, another showing of that damn movie) I grew to hate the sound of Frankie Valli with a fiery passion that, to this day, still remains, so when I was asked to sit down in front of the television yet again on a rainy summer’s morning I steeled myself against the onslaught of pain that would occur the moment the theme song from Grease would key up on the screen.
But this time something was different.
For on this day, Grease was not the word for once and instead we watched another summer romance movie musical called The Pirate Movie and it changed the way I would look at movie musical love forever.
Because in this instance, the female protagonist was not a goody-goody who made you want to puke from her saccharine sweet morality, in this film, the girl who was looking for love was named Mable and she was a dork…just like me.
(If you haven’t seen this flick, do so immediately. Yes it is a stinker, but it is also fantastic in the way an awesome bad movie can be and dammit, it rocked me to my core as a tween so props must be paid…and it referenced both Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark which makes it triple Rad).
Now teen love is often horrible to witness what with all the angst and over-wrought emotions, and when you add people bursting into song for no apparent reason it can be even worse, but Mable was different from Sandy in that she was strong and independent and wanted to be adored for who she was and when she sang her “love me please” song, it wasn’t a melancholy ballad like Hopelessly Devoted to You it was called Pumpin’ and Blowin’ which is just, well hilarious:
And that wasn’t all that Mable had over Sandy.
She was feisty and could sword fight. She was politically smart and willing to stand up for what she believed. And when her “man” had to choose between her and his duties (and, of course, he chose his duties) she didn’t get all sad and weepy like Sandy, she told him flat out she would fight him to the death and she did (only they got all horny for each other before she could ram a sword through him and she decided she wanted a happy ending instead of bloodshed).
Now, when this movie ended I was psyched. Not only had I found a female movie musical protagonist that I could thoroughly get behind, I actually wanted to be her for “creative play”, a concept I would have laughed at only the previous day.
But of course, no one wanted to play “Pirate Movie”. Oh no, they wanted to go back to playing Grease because they liked that Sandy turned herself into a big flashy whore at the end so that Danny would like her better (and yes, I know that he lettered in a sport so she would think he was worthy but remember, he threw that sweater away as soon as Sandy walked in with her camel-toe pants so it doesn’t count).
So there I sat, alone, humming Pumpin and Blowin’ to myself while all the girls sang Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee at the top of their lungs and hoping with all my heart that I could cut them all open with a sword and laugh as they bled to death.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I promised myself that when I became a teenager and broke out into various songs (because I believed that’s what would happen the moment I reached puberty) I would be just like Mable and get my own happy ending complete with adventures, love and lots and lots power ballads.
And thanks to the influence of The Pirate Movie I did-only the adventures were more of the acid trip variety, the love was strictly a one-sided thing (my side usually) and the power ballads, well, they were mostly by The Dead Kennedys and weren’t so much ballads as they were primal screaming but all-in-all, I got my happy ending.
And, yeah, I still sing Pumpin’ and Blowin’ almost every day – so take that Sandy.
