I Love Youtube: Stairway to Stardom

Before there was YouTube, it was kind of a struggle getting your singing, dancing, joke-telling mug up on screen. You had to be good lookin', you had to be able to sing or act or tell funny jokes, or have a dad with a camcorder. It was for the most part, home videos or the plain big leagues, real TV or the actual movies.

For a brief, glorious period of time, however, cable providers with more than a certain number of subscribers were required by law to fund, operate and broadcast "public access" channels, to give real, actual ugly people like you and me the chance to speak to the same folks the dudes on Miami Vice were. The cable companies even had to pay for the cameras and studios, in some crazily old-fashioned seeming fit of legislative dedication to free speech.

Then it all but disappeared, thanks to a law suit on wikipedia that I don't understand but, thanks to people like Michelle Sharpe and yes god damn it YouTube, we can travel back to a freer, uglier, more first-amendmentier time and watch what people with no jobs in New York that also had cable were watching in the early 80's. Specifically, clips from the program Stairway to Stardom:

Lucille Cataldo sings "Hairdresser, Hairdresser", an original composition, as sung by Rosie Perez before she actually existed.

 

 

What do you think Lucille's Hairdresser was thinking about when Lucille was sitting in her chair getting a wave done and thinking "I am going to sing a song about this and sing it on TV wearing a leather jumpsuit and people will be laughing their genitals inside out 26 years later"? I bet it was about when she could get drunk next.

Precious Taft gets upset about cinnamon?

 

 

The love of the hachimbodied? The sun? She definitely threatens to bash someone's head on a radiator at the end there.

Michelle Sutlovich dances to the "Fame" theme:

 

Dear Mr. Johnsnarsnen:

 

Please excuse my daughter Michelle from math class so she can spin around in a basement in front of some plants wearing a sweet-ass leotard and unwittingly inspiring a series of creepy Calvin Klein ads 20 years from now p.s. math sucks.

Richie Triolo does stand up i guess

I… half of this dudes routine is just… talking about being hit. There's no jokes, just that "comedian voice" that they do and stories about abuse.

 

Seriously, there's like 70 more... go look but don't come crying back to me if everything you eat tastes like 1983 for the next four days