Welcome to the website of author Edward Trimnell!
December 31st marked not only the end of 2025, but also the end of MTV (1981 – 2025).
As I explain in the video below, I was one of MTV’s young fans back in the early 1980s.
MTV was a brilliant mechanism for content marketing. Suburban teens like me would discover new bands on MTV. Then we would go to the local mall and purchase the albums.
I discovered many of my favorite bands on MTV, including Def Leppard.
-ET
**View NO SURE THING: A GEN X COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL SET IN 1988 on Amazon**
The year is 1988. Anything can happen, but nothing is guaranteed!
Get ready for a coming-of-age story that will remind you of your favorite teen/young adult movies from the 1980s.
As the year 1988 begins, Paul Nelson is nineteen going on twenty. Paul is an economics major at the University of Cincinnati. He has big plans to go to work at a major bank after graduation.
But Paul’s life is not without problems. His first serious girlfriend has dumped him, and his best friend Scott gets all the female attention, seemingly without trying.
Paul meets a witty young woman who seems to be his perfect match. But then he unexpectedly falls for an older woman who has secrets and an unknown agenda.
Paul’s life spins out of control. He’s also incurred the unwanted attention of the Cincinnati Police Department, criminal elements, and a military man who detests him on sight.
Filled with a wide range of memorable characters and a generous dollop of 80s nostalgia, ‘No Sure Thing’ is a fun and fast-paced tale from a bygone but fondly remembered era.
Using various phone apps, many parents now track the movements of their progeny from minute-to-minute. Some parents even track the movements of their adult children. One of my friends can tell you, at any minute of the day, where his two children are. My friend’s children are 26 and 30 years old.
I won’t mince words here. I find all of this geo-tracking to be a little neurotic, not to mention claustrophobic for those who must endure it.
It was different for those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, of course. At most hours of the day, our parents didn’t know exactly where we were. Oh, sure, they might have had some ideas, in the same way that I know Russia is to the east of me, and Argentina is to the far south. But don’t ask me to give you air travel coordinates. Suburban parents in the 1970s and 1980s relied on similar guesstimates regarding their children’s whereabouts.
During the summer months especially, we took full advantage of this location anonymity. The one thing most every Gen X kid had was a bike. And a bike was a license to travel distances your parents never would have approved of. Some of us planned long quests that would have been worthy of a JRR Tolkien novel like The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.
The motivation for these unauthorized trips was often some kind of contraband: alcohol, cigarettes, or firecrackers. Sometimes it was just the thrill of seeing how far your ten speed would carry you in a single June or July morning.
Among adolescent boys, the motivations were often of an amorous inclination. I turned 13 in the summer of 1981. One of my neighborhood friends—I’ll call him Glen—had somehow initiated a running phone conversation with three girls who lived in a neighborhood far from where we lived. Somehow three of us—Glen, me, and one other boy—started talking to the girls, always via landline (the only communication option in those days) and always from Glen’s house.
The girls sounded both pretty and friendly. The girls said they wanted to meet us, but we would have to go to them. And so we planned a bicycle trip to their neighborhood.
Did we ask our parents’ permission? Of course not.
We set off on our bikes one morning around nine a.m. Being randy young males, we eagerly speculated about what might happen at our destination.
When we arrived nearly two hours later, however, the girls were nowhere to be found. Forty-five years after the fact, I’m not sure exactly what happened. We either had the wrong address, or we were duped. Disappointed, we rode back as a particularly hot afternoon settled in.
The lesson I learned from this was: if it seems too good to be true, a little too convenient, then it probably is too good to be true.
But that is the kind of life lesson that you can’t learn on a computer, and certainly not on social media. I’m grateful that I came of age when free-range childhood was still a thing. To grow up without geo-tracking was both a privilege and a blessing.
-ET
I was ten or eleven years old when I discovered John Dennis Fitzgerald’s (1906–1988) semi-autobiographical series of children’s books, The Great Brain. The books are set at the end of the 1800s in Utah. The eponymous “Great Brain” is a fictionalized version of the author’s older brother.
I’m not sure why I started reading these books back in…1979, it must have been. Probably my mom was familiar with them (?)
Anyway, I recall getting my hands on the first one, and reading the rest in quick succession. Seven books were then available. (The original series was published between 1967 and 1976. A final book, based on Fitzgerald’s notes, was published in 1995, seven years after the author’s death.)
I skimmed through the first few pages of The Great Brain using Amazon’s preview function. I found myself being drawn into the story once again—more than 45 years after my initial reading.
My TBR list is already too long, and children’s fiction has never been my thing as an adult. I must say, though, I would not mind reading The Great Brain books again, or at least one or two of them. This really was—and is—youth fiction at its best. Far better than the much overrated Harry Potter novels, I dare say.
-ET
I’m late to this party. I didn’t realize that yet another television adaptation of Stephen King’s It was in the works. So now I know.
Forgive me if I skip this one. I love Stephen King’s books. (Or well, I love many of them, anyway.) But I read It for the first time as an 18-year-old in 1986. (I purchased one of the original hardcovers at the Waldenbooks in my local mall.)
I reread the book once in the 1990s. I’ve seen two screen adaptations already.
I always preferred King’s shorter, tighter books, anyway. For me, It marked the point where every Stephen King book was no longer a guaranteed page-turner.
But that really isn’t the point. This story has been in my brain for almost 40 years now. I understand that Hollywood prefers stories with prequalified demand (i.e., decades-old franchises). But there comes a time when I want something new.
No disrespect intended toward Mr. King. It was entertaining, the first—even the second—time around. But do I need yet another tour through the mythical town of Derry? Of all the teenage experiences I’d like to relive at the ripe old age of 57, this book doesn’t rank very high on the list.
-ET
Halloween 1980
You’re twelve years old, and trick-or-treating with your two best friends.
You know what they say about the Shipley House. Something very bad happened there in 1959.
For more than twenty years, the Shipley house has stood vacant. No one can live there for long.
You’ve been warned not to enter.
But it’s Halloween, after all. How can you resist?
You try the front door. You’re surprised to find that the Shipley house is unlocked. Almost as if the house has been waiting for you.
You go inside, and walk down the hallway toward the bedroom at the end of the corridor.
Be careful: what you find in that room may drive you mad. And you may discover things about yourself that you don’t want to know.
***
The Shipley house is featured in one of the chapters of 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN, a Gen X coming-of-age supernatural horror tale set on Halloween night, 1980.
Three young friends decide to go out for “one last Halloween before they enter their teenage years. But this will be a Halloween like no other.
12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is available on Amazon, and you can read it for free in Kindle Unlimited.
I vaguely remember the TRS-80 Pocket Computer. Introduced in 1980, this little device was manufactured and marketed by the Tandy Corporation/Radio Shack. (Every shopping mall in the 1980s had a Radio Shack.) Science fiction author Isaac Asimov appeared in a series of marketing spots for the gadget.
I didn’t own a TRS-80 Pocket Computer, however. The MSRP was $169.95. In present-day money, that’s about $670—the cost of a base-model iPhone.
And of course, the TRS-80 Pocket Computer had a minimal functionality when compared to an iPhone. It couldn’t make phone calls, play music, or take photos. It couldn’t surf the Internet—which didn’t yet exist, anyway.
The TRS-80 Pocket Computer was programmable in BASIC (which couldn’t do much for the average consumer). Other than that, it was basically a glorified pocket calculator.
Herein lies an important realization about 1980s tech: it was very expensive, and it didn’t do much. Even if you could afford it, you usually concluded that you could do without it.
-ET
My novel 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is a supernatural coming-of-age tale about three young friends who endure the trials of a 12-hour curse on Halloween night, 1980. To survive the night, they must battle vampires, animated trees, and the horrific creature known as the “head collector”.
12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is one of the most autobiographical novels I’ve ever written. Like the characters in the novel, I was 12 years old in October 1980. The suburban Cincinnati, Ohio setting is very similar to the one in which I spent my formative years.
That said, the main character of the story, Jeff Schaeffer, doesn’t have much in common with me, or with the boy I was more than 40 years ago. And while I had a group of friends, neither Leah nor Bobby is an exact representation of anyone I knew back then.
Oh, and I never did battle with any of the supernatural creatures that appear in the book.
Here is another point of fabrication: I went on my last trick-or-treat in 1979, not in 1980.
I set 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN in 1980 because some of the themes I wanted to explore required an adolescent perspective; and I was twelve in 1980, not in 1979.
But like the characters in the novel, I was somewhat torn (as were the adults around me) about the appropriate age for giving up the trick-or-treat ritual.
In the culture of those times, you were generally okay for trick-or-treating up to age ten or eleven. But once you reached junior high, well, people would give you funny looks if you showed up at their door on October 31st, asking for candy. And once you reached high school, you were definitely too old.
***
In 1979, therefore, my friend Ken and I decided to go out for “one last Halloween”, kind of like the characters in the novel. (Ken, being a year older than me, actually did turn twelve that year.)
I wore a prefabbed costume from Kmart. I don’t even remember what it was. (I seem to recall a green skeleton, but I can’t be sure.) Ken, however, had one of the coolest Halloween costumes I’ve ever seen—before or since.
This was the early Star Wars era, and every kid was a fan. Ken was no exception. His mother made for him a very elaborate imperial stormtrooper costume. This was not something store-bought. She made the whole thing from scratch. It was amazing.
Halloween 1979 in the Cincinnati area provided a clear, pleasantly cool autumn night. We set out a little after 6 p.m., and everything went fine…at first. Then we crossed paths with a group of teenage boys, a hot rod, and some eggs.
***
One thing I’ve noticed about the 21st-century: suburban teenagers are less mischievous than they used to be.
This could be because of helicopter parenting. How much trouble can you get into when your parents are tracking your movements on a smart phone app? Kids today are also very absorbed in virtual worlds of different kinds.
In the late 1970s, however, adolescent entertainment consisted of whatever was on network television (cable TV didn’t become common until about 1982), books, and other young people.
And since there were no parental tracking apps, your parents typically had only a vague sense of your whereabouts at any given moment.
In this atmosphere of fewer ready-made distractions and much less supervision, there were more motives and opportunities for getting into trouble. And plenty of teenage boys jumped at the chance.
***
This particular group of teenage boys, riding around on Halloween night 1979, had decided that it would be fun to throw eggs at the kids who were still young enough to go trick-or-treating.
They were obviously selecting their victims at random. I will retroactively blame Ken for our being singled out. His solid white stormtrooper outfit really did make him a target.
The car—it must have been a Dodge Charger or a Trans Am—slowed down as it approached. Ken and I had no time to assess the situation, let alone take evasive action. Then someone in the passenger seat threw some white objects at us via their rolled-down window.
The car roared away before we realized what had happened: they had pelted us with eggs.
Ken had been walking closest to the road, and he was a mess. The stormtrooper outfit his mother had so painstakingly crafted was now smeared with dripping yellow egg yolk.
Some of the eggs had splattered on me, too…though not very much.
After that, we decided to call it an early night. Neither one of us wanted to walk around dressed like an omelette.
At least the boys didn’t throw rotten eggs at us, I would think later.
***
My guess is that the egg-throwing foray was a spur-of-the-moment thing for the boys.
Speaking of the teenage boys: I never learned their identities. Whoever they were, though, they would all be pushing sixty in 2021.
***
So that was how my last Halloween went, in 1979 and not in 1980. By Halloween 1980, I decided for myself that I had had enough of Halloween and trick-or-treat. It was time to let that childhood ritual go.
Halloween, nevertheless, retains a strong grip on my imagination. 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN was therefore a very fun book to write as an adult.
I was just turning 15 when Risky Business—the movie that launched Tom Cruise’s acting career—hit the theaters in August 1983. I was too young to get into an R-rated movie without an adult; and this wasn’t a film that either of my parents would have been interested in seeing with me.
I neglected to see Risky Business for more than 40 years, partly because I was put off by the much-played clip of Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear. Call me homophobic if you’d like; but that isn’t the way to get me to see a movie. And there were just so many other movies to see.
I finally got around to watching Risky Business a few days ago. (Better late than never!) The movie was quite well done for a film that was originally conceived as a throwaway flick for Reagan-era young adults. (Moreover, despite the ubiquity of that clip with Tom Cruise in his underwear, that scene is a minuscule portion of the 95-minute movie.) Continue reading “‘Risky Business’: an entertaining film that would never get made today”
I have been watching some old movies from the 1980s recently. Some have been movies that I saw, but have long since forgotten. Others are iconic films of that era that I never got around to seeing when they were current.
For example, I recently wrote a post about Mystic Pizza (1988). Last night I watched Risky Business (1983). I will have a post about Risky Business soon.
One thing I’ve noticed is that many films created in 1980-something as disposable teen comedies were actually pretty good. In 1985, did anyone imagine that people in 2025 would still be talking about The Breakfast Club? Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) has been recognized by the American Film Institute for its merits.
Another thing I’ve noticed is the diversity in movies from that bygone era. In 1985, an original movie, properly executed, could make a lot of people rich. But the economics of the 21st-century box office encourage conservatism and a tiresome emphasis on franchise films. Continue reading “The comparative joys of old (1980s) movies”
Fast Times at Ridgemont High, that quintessential teen movie of the first half of the 1980s, hit the theaters 43 years ago today, on August 13, 1982.
On that date I had just turned fourteen. I did not see Fast Times in the cinema. (I could not even drive yet.) I did catch the movie a few months later, on cable. By that time, it had become a must-see movie for anyone among the teenage set.
I liked the movie then, and not just because of the iconic scene in which Phoebe Cates emerges from the pool. Even at that age, I could tell that Fast Times at Ridgemont High was a thoughtful teen movie, as oxymoronic as that sounds.
The movie does contain explicit sex scenes, especially by today’s less tolerant cinematic standards. Fast Times originally received an X rating. The film was reedited to receive an R rating. Primarily because of the sex, all of the “teens” in this film were already adult actors by the time production began. (Jennifer Jason Leigh was almost twenty years old when she portrayed the 15-year-old Stacy Hamilton.)
And yes, that Phoebe Cates pool scene was unnecessary and tawdry, much as it delighted the 14-year-old version of me.
But underneath all the raunch and bawdy comedy, there is a message about hubris-driven teenage risk-taking, and the consequences that result. I would go so far as to call Fast Times at Ridgemont High a teensploitation film with a conservative message.
I watched this movie for a second time a few years ago. I was an adult in my fifties. The 1980s and high school were long behind me.
I thought the movie was even better the second time around.
I’m not the only one who believes that Fast Times at Ridgemont High stands the test of time. In 2005, the National Film Preservation Board recognized the movie as “culturally and historically significant”. This is one time when I agree with the consensus view.
-ET
**View Fast Times at Ridgemont High on Amazon
The early 1980s gave us a famous song named after a phone number: “867-5309”. Even if you do not remember the early 1980s, you are probably familiar with the song.
The song was alternatively known as “Jenny”. Often the song was identified with both names: 867-5309/Jenny.
In the song, a male narrator describes his obsession with a woman named “Jenny”, whose phone number (867-5309) was written on a wall, presumably in a men’s room. (That was a common prank back in the 1970s and early 1980s—writing random women’s names and phone numbers on the walls of men’s rooms. Don’t ask me why.)
Tommy Tutone is the name of the musical act that performed 867-5309.
Tommy Tutone is not a single artist, but a California-based group. The original lineup of Tommy Tutone was formed in 1978. The band still exists today. Tommy Tutone released six studio albums between 1980 and 2019. But the band owes most of its name recognition to 867-5309.
867-5309/Jenny was released on November 16, 1981. By the end of the following year, everyone with an FM radio had heard it.
867-5309 was, and remains, a cultural phenomenon. Not everyone was pleased about the song’s fame, however. After the song became popular, homeowners who happened to have been assigned the number began receiving prank phone calls. Many changed their numbers. Some even unplugged their phones in desperation.
Still others went out of their way to acquire the suddenly famous seven digits. Now that the initial fervor over the song has long since died down, this is the more common trend. It would probably be difficult—if not impossible—for you to obtain 867-5309 as your personal phone number. But your odds will increase in less populated areas, and as the time between the heyday of the song and the present year continues to grow.
In late 1981, I was in the eighth grade in Cincinnati, Ohio. One morning—it must have been a few weeks before the Christmas holidays—I heard a girl in my homeroom say my name. When I turned around, she had a smile on her face. I sensed good things ahead. Continue reading “867-5309, and a lesson in the value of skepticism “
REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS is a coming-of-age supernatural horror novel set near Cincinnati, Ohio in 1976.
But the novel is based on Washington Irving’s 1820 short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.
Revolutionary Ghosts came from the question: “What would have happened, had the Headless Horseman of Washington Irving’s tale invaded 20th-century America in 1976?
In the above video, I describe the series of associations that went into the story, some going back all the way to my childhood. (I was 8 years old in 1976!)
-ET
I was in the 8th grade in 1981-2, when Escape, Journey’s seventh studio album, was the latest thing.
Escape is one of the few rock albums with no duds. Every song is good—if you like Journey’s style of music.
But the best song on the album, perhaps, is “Don’t Stop Believin’”. It is a great song because it is simultaneously specific and universal.
We wonder about the small town girl, and the city boy “born and raised in South Detroit.” What compelled each of them to take “the midnight train going anywhere”?
And at the same time, the song is vague enough that we can each apply it to our individual stories. “Whoa, the movie never ends. It goes on and on and on and on.” My movie has gone on for 44 years since I first heard this song, and counting.
For years, this song instantly took me back to the 1981-2 school year, and the adolescent I was at that time. The song can still do that.
But then a few years ago, I watched The Sopranos from start to finish. (I was about a decade behind everyone else in doing this…the story of my life.) Then, for a long time, I would see the final, iconic scene of The Sopranos when I heard, “Don’t Stop Believin’”.
Most recently, I have discovered First to Eleven’s interpretation of the song. (First to Eleven is a very talented cover band based in Erie, Pennsylvania.)
None of the members of First to Eleven was even born when I heard “Don’t Stop Believin’” for the first time, back in 1981. (They are all very young.) And yet, their music video, and lead vocalist Audra Miller’s performance, put yet another spin on the song for me.
And some people worry—or hope—that AI will replace serious musicians? They base this on the fact (for example) that AI can now reassemble good music into mediocre music. (See my recent post about The Velvet Sundown.)
AI will never be good for anything but mediocrity. Only a human imagination could have come up with “Don’t Stop Believin’” almost half a century ago. And it took human imagination to come up with all these reimaginings of the song since then.
-ET
Some romcoms are good, and Mystic Pizza is one of the good ones. This movie came out shortly after my twentieth birthday, but I somehow neglected to see it.
Mystic Pizza is about three Gen X working-class Portuguese women who are in their early 20s. (Since this movie came out in 1988, Gen X was still young, and still not widely referred to as Gen X.)
Structurally, the movie reminds me a little of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), insofar as there is an ensemble cast (Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor, and Annabelle Gish), each working her way through a slightly different moral and emotional conundrum.
These dilemmas deal with issues of love, sex, socioeconomic class, and ethnicity. (I should make clear, though: Mystic Pizza is not a “message film”. It is simply an artifact from a time when even young adult date movies had artistic worth.)
The movie is set in the late 1980s in the fictional town of Mystic, Connecticut. All three of the young women work at “Mystic Pizza”, a mom-and-pop pizza restaurant run by a late middle-age Portuguese couple.
This was the movie that launched Julia Roberts’s career, more or less. Mystic Pizza also includes the then-unknown Matt Damon in a very minor, nonspeaking role.
Most impressive of all, though, is the performance of Vincent D’Onofrio, who plays the marriage-minded boyfriend of one of the young women. What is impressive is that the previous year, D’Onofrio starred in Full Metal Jacket as the bumbling but mentally disturbed Private Leonard ‘Gomer Pyle’ Lawrence. D’Onofrio displays an impressive range, moving easily from a psychotic villain role in a war movie, to a leading man role in a romcom.
Mystic Pizza is a must-see for all Gen Xers who may have missed it in 1988. Millennials will find some aspects of the movie they like. Gen Z viewers will probably not understand the relationship portions of the movie, but they will marvel at the payphones and Internet-free world of 1988.
-ET
