In Praise of the "Eight is Enough" Theme

Truly, after all these years, I can contain myself no more. I love the "Eight is Enough" theme, the most wonderously bad TV theme song ever.

First, the vocal. Grant Goodeve warbles this with a distressing vibarato while simultaneously sounding like he's being suffocated with a pillow. (As an aside, Wikipedia says that Grant Goodeve had a brief singing career. Very brief, I'm guessing.)

Second, the nonsensical lyrics: "Oh, we spend our days like bright and shiny new dimes." Because we're, er...okay, how exactly do we spend our lives like dimes, new or otherwise? "There's a plate of homemade wishes on the kitchen windowsill." Because wishes, like pies, need to...cool before you serve them?

Third, and best, is the gloriously incongruous disco rhythm track going "thumpa thumpa" in the background. It was 1978, after all, but if this was an attempt to tap into disco fever, I have to say it fails miserably.

And yet, despite all of this, or because of it, the "Eight is Enough" theme works somehow. It's delicious. It's like a White Castle burger; at first, it's repulsive, but soon, you find yourself craving it.

So c'mon everyone, all together now, "There's a magic in the early morning we've found..."

The Replacements in Champaign, 1985

Found some stuff from a show a Replacements show I went to in Champaign (home of the fabulous University of Illinois) in 1985. Tickets were a lot cheaper then.


They played at a place called Trito's, which was a bar on the second floor of a Green Street building.


They gave us a program! Isn't that cute?! The inside of the program helpfully gave us their bio, in case we (at their concert) didn't know who they were:

I remember the show pretty well, and while they certainly were "loose," the show wasn't the messy drunken affair that the Replacements had a reputation for. (Saw that one a few years later in Chicago.) It was a really great show, in a very small venue. Tommy looked like he was about 17. Bob was alternating between wailing on his guitar and a bottle of beer. Oddly, I don't remember much about Paul Westerberg. I also don't remember anything about the opening band, the Outnumbered. Sorry, local Champaign guys!

Interplanetary Unicorn

Hello, all, and Happy New Year! And what could portend happiness better than a trans-planetary winged unicorn, in oil on black velvet? Saw this painting on eBay and HAD TO HAVE IT. Question for discussion:Is the unicorn flying or just weightless?