Wayne Gretzky was a secular saint in his home country of Canada. Canadians revered him as the undisputed master of their national game. Kids spent countless hours on their backyard rinks attempting to make those blind passes and hit the puck out of the air into the goal like their hero. It was assumed by everyone (including Gretzky) that he'd stay in Edmonton with the Oilers for the length of his career. But hockey teams aren't run by players, they're run by owners and in this case the Oilers were being run by an owner, Peter Pocklington, who had become hard up for cash after a series of business deals had gone bad.

So what's a cash-strapped owner to do? Well, if you're Pocklington you eye the secular saint on your hockey team's roster and shop him around to the see what kind of offers you get. In this case he got one from the Los Angeles Kings that he couldn't refuse (a slew of draft picks and, most importantly, $15 million in cash).

And so it came to be that on August 9, 1988 after weeks of back door negotiation Pocklington called a press conference and confirmed that Wayne Gretzky - The Great One, the NHL's MVP for the past 8 consecutive years, the man who had delivered 4 Stanley Cup Championships to Edmonton - was being shipped off to southern California. There were attempts made in Parliament to find a way to block "The Trade" (as it became known). Pocklington was burned in effigy. Oiler fans were outraged with some labeling Gretzky a traitor and others too broken up to speak. But it was all for naught. Gretzky was gone and nothing was going to bring him back. It was as if Elvis had moved to London. The closest parallel that could be drawn in sports was the trade that sent Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees seven decades earlier.

Hockey in Canada would never really be the same after his departure, nor would hockey in the US. Because while the Kings never won a Stanley Cup with Gretzky (they did make it to the finals once) his presence in LA created a bandwagon of biblical proportions, one that not only transformed Kings games from sedate exercises conducted in a half empty arena into star studded sellouts but that ultimately led to the league expanding into markets it had never considered viable before. The San Jose Sharks, Phoenix Coyotes, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers and Anaheim Ducks can all be said to owe their existence either directly or indirectly to the effects of The Trade.

Here's an short piece chronicling the Gretzky effect on the LA sports scene.

1988 represented the low point of 80s music, what with the likes of Tiffany, Richard Marx, Rick Astley and Whitney Houston cluttering up the airwaves. Music was in a holding pattern as new wave had exhausted itself and the seismic shift that was Nirvana was still a ways off.

Still there were a few gems to be found if you were willing to sift through the waste material and this is one of them. A remake of a minor 1968 hit by Neil Diamond UB40 took the original and reggaed the s**t out of it. The result was a pop music masterpiece that sounds as good today as it did then.

Michael Dukakis was doing well in the polls in the late summer of 1988. Comfortably ahead of George Bush and basking in that post-convention afterglow. Then somebody in his campaign had the idea that what they needed to really put him over the top was a butch image. Something that would head off any claims that he was 'soft on defense'. So the campaign packed up the wagons and headed to Michigan where MD donned some standard issue tank wear (including a helmet with Princess Leia ear buns) and was photographed riding around conquering the General Dynamics parking lot.

To say that the resulting image backfired would be an incredible understatement. The hooting and hollering started almost immediately though nobody could quite put a finger on exactly what there was about the image that made it so cringe worthy. Dukakis was an army vet after all and had served his country honorably. Personally I think it was the helmet.

"Help me Obi Wan. You're my only hope!"

There were two big stories that came out of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. One was splashed all over the front pages of the world's papers, the other was whispered about from Seoul to Timbuktu. The front page story was Ben Johnson being disqualified for using steroids after setting a new world record in the men's 100 meter dash. The other story concerned one Florence Griffith Joyner (better known to the world as FloJo) and her, let's say "remarkable", performances on the world's biggest athletic stage.

Before 1988 FloJo had been a pretty good sprinter. Nothing incredible, nothing to indicate that she'd shatter world records and set marks that would still stand nearly a quarter century later. Her fastest pre-1988 100 meter dash had been 10.96 seconds and her quickest 200 meter had been 21.96. Yet at the 1988 U.S. Olympic trials she ran the 100 meters in 10.49 seconds, destroying the previous world record. At the Olympics themselves she ran the second fastest women's 100 ever, clocking in at 10.54 seconds. Then she shattered the world record for the 200 meters during the Olympic quarter finals and then beat that time with yet another world record in the finals, covering the 200 meters in 21.34 seconds; more than 6/10ths of a second faster than her pre-1988 best. Mature sprinters (she was 28 at the time of the Olympics) just don't make quantum leaps in speed like that.

The fact that she was mowing down records wasn't the only thing that made people suspect she'd been drinking from Ben Johnson's water bottle, her physical transformation was just as shocking as her new found speed. Her huge, rippling muscles were in stark contrast to the lithe physique she sported just a couple of years earlier. She attributed her new superhero profile to a new workout routine. Ahem, uh, okay.

To almost no one's surprise FloJo retired from competitive racing immediately after the Olympics and her records were allowed to stand. Tragically she died in her sleep in 1998 at the very young age of 38.

FloJo in 1986 (left) and 1988 (right).

Dan Quayle was a controversial selection for George Bush (Sr) to make for a running mate. The guy had the face of Opie from Mayberry and (publicly at least) he did not seem to be what anyone would call an intellectual giant. Still he had the backing of conservative Republicans and there was no chance he was going to outshine the man at the head of the ticket.

But on October 5th 1988 in the only vice presidential debate of that election year he still managed to draw the media spotlight to himself and earn a place in American political sideshow history when he remarked in response to a question about his qualifications that he had as much experience as John F. Kennedy did when he sought the presidency in 1960. Though technically true his counterpart, Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, jumped on the comparison and countered "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

The crowd whooped and hollered, applauded and snickered. Quayle was left a bit red faced at having been bitch slapped so publicly but generally kept his composure and called Bentsen out for his breach of political etiquette. Bentsen earned plenty of democratic cred for his mean spirited put down but it was Quayle who'd get the last laugh in November when he and Bush won the general election.

"Man in the Mirror" live at the 1988 Grammy Awards. Happy New Year!

He hobbled to the plate like grandpa Walton his team down 4-3 with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth. The 3-2 pitch from Dennis Eckersley was low and away. His swing looked more like a get-acquainted wiff than anything serious yet the ball fell head over heels for Kirk Gibson and sailed toward the outfield. It sailed and sailed and sailed before landing several rows up in the bleachers as the crowd went berserk, delivering the Los Angeles Dodgers victory in game 1 of the 1988 World Series over the heavily favored Oakland A's.

The fact that Gibson was available to bat at all was remarkable. He'd injured both legs during the NLCS and was battling a stomach virus. After hitting his historic shot he limped around the base paths pumping his fist, while in the announcers booth Jack Buck screamed the now immortal line "I don't believe what I just saw!" It would be Gibson's only plate appearance of the entire World Series but talk about making the most of your opportunities!

The shot seemed to invigorate the Dodgers and conversely spook the powerhouse A's (who'd won 104 games during the regular season) with LA going on to win the series 4-1.

In the 80s the F-117 Stealth Fighter changed the way people thought of fighter aircraft forever. Looking like either a flying hat box or a flying Hershey Kiss it didn't really look like it could do much flying at all. It was the end product of a process that began with the 1964 publication of a paper by Soviet mathemetician Pyotr Ufimtsev in which he proved that the strength of a radar return was directly related to the edge configuration of the object and not its mass. At the time no country possessed the technological know-how to build on Ufimtsev's idea but in time that would change.

The F-117 was designated a fighter aircraft (hence the "F") but it was not capable of engaging other airplanes or dogfighting. Its job was to sneak in through a country's radar and drop bombs or launch missles at targets on the ground. The F-117 made its first flight in the Nevada desert on June 18, 1981. The following year the first planes were delivered and the plane was declared operational in October 1983. It was still a "black program" however and the air force vehemently denied its very existence for a further 5 years, until November of 1988.

In all 49 F-117s were built and saw service in Panama in 1989, the first Gulf War in 1991 (where it flew with impunity over an otherwise heavily defended Baghdad), Serbia in 1999 (where the first and only of its kind was shot down with the wreckage sold to the Chinese), the Afghan war and the Iraq war.

In 2005 the decision was made to incrementally retire the F-117 in favor of the new, sleeker F-22 and on April 22, 2008 the last of the Stealth Fighters was decomissioned. But though its gone now it will not soon to be forgotten for something about the war plane captured the public imagination and, for better or worse, became part of the new, hi-tech image the country was formulating for itself in the 80s.

The F-117 Stealth Fighter on the ground and in the air. Who knew Hershey's Kisses could fly?

The 80s were a great time to be a Batman fan. After being lost in the creative wilderness for years 1986 saw the release of "The Dark Knight Returns" which aggressively yanked Batman out of the kid-friendly universe and set him down squarely in the world of thinking adults where actions had consequences, people got hurt and everyone was prone to moral and ethical compromises. Following the earthquake that was TDKR came 1987's "Batman: Year One" and right on the heels of that "Batman: The Killing Joke".

Alan Moore's story delves more deeply into the origins of the Joker recounting his days as an engineer and his subsequent attempt to become a standup comedian. Failing miserably at that and desperate to support his pregnant wife he agrees to help a couple of crooks in their plan to rob a card company next door to the plant where he used to work. But when Batman intervenes he attempts to flee the scene by escaping down the company's toxic waste pipeline, only to discover when he emerges that the chemicals have irrevocably altered his appearance, and the Joker is born. Throughout the story we're shown how Batman and the Joker's personalities tend to mirror each other in subtle yet disturbing ways and in the end the Caped Crusader himself seems to come to a deeper understanding of his long time nemesis.

While Moore has almost offhandedly stated that to him "The Killing Joke" was "just another bat comic" artist Brian Bolland worked long and hard to make TKJ something special. Though Moore's casual casting aside of the project hurt Bolland to an extent it wasn't until he viewed the published pages that his heart sank completely into this stomach. He had envisioned a palette of "November" colors and was horrified to find what he called "hideous glowing purples and pinks" throughout. 2008 finally saw that affront rectified as DC published a 20th anniversary edition of TKJ with coloring by Bolland himself that restored his original vision for the piece.

The image below shows the 1988 version of Batman: The Killing Joke with its original coloring (left) and the same page from the 2008 version that restored Brian Bollands intended color scheme (right). 

copyright DC comics

Before he was a bit player in comedies about hungover dorks, before he was a wrestling curiosity, before he developed a taste for earlobe, heck before he was Malik Abdul Aziz, he was Iron Mike Tyson the baddest man on the planet and one of the most feared boxers in the sports history.

Mike Tyson was born and bred on the mean streets of New York. His father abandoned the family when Mike was two and his mother died when he was 16. Tyson spent most of his youth in trouble with the law and was arrested dozens of times as a teen. It was when Tyson was doing time in a reform school that a counselor noticed he had fighting abilities and introduced him to boxing trainer Cus D'Amato, who removed him from the school, took him in and began his formal training as a boxer.

After blazing a bloody trail through the junior ranks Mike Tyson made his professional debut at the age of 18, a fight he won by first round knockout. After that he won 25 of his next 27 fights by knock out or technical knock out with 16 of his KOs coming in the first round. Just 18 months after turning pro Tyson was given a title shot against WBC champ Trevor Berbick. He won the fight by TKO in the second round and became the youngest heavyweight champion in history. Five months later he added the WBA title and five months after that he became the first heavyweight to hold all 3 major heavyweight title belts when he beat IBF champion Tony Tucker in a unanimous decision.

Mike Tyson did not float like a butterfly and sting like a bee he attacked and turned you into a motionless lump on the canvas. There was no pretense of gentlemanly competition in a Tyson fight; when he said he was there to hurt you, he meant it. He was lighting quick, could slip any punch and when he hit people solidly they usually ended up on the mat. But he wasn't just fists of fury either. He was the Bobby Fischer of boxing, destroying opponents mentally before a punch was ever thrown. He brought back alley terror to the ring in a way it had never been brought before and when he stood opposite opponents before the opening bell in his signature black trunks and black shoes with no socks you could almost hear the opponents knees knocking together. Such was the degree of intimidation he radiated at his peak.

A prime example is Michael Spinks, who had won an Olympic gold medal in boxing and had been both undisputed light heavyweight and heavyweight champion himself. But he had never faced someone like Tyson and he completely fell apart mentally in the moments leading up to their 1988 bout. Tyson, sensing blood, attacked at the opening bell and 91 seconds later it was over. Spinks never fought another professional fight.

Toward the end of the decade rot began to set in after Don King weaseled his way into Tyson's corner and in time he'd fall apart completely. But the mid 80s belonged to Mike Tyson who rose from the societal depths to lay undisputed claim to the boxing world. During the 3+ years he was at his peak he was a singular phenomenon: unpolished, unbeatable, unbelievable. Odds are we'll never see another another like him. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to you.

Clip: Mike Tyson knocks out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds.

It was supposed to be just another routine flight between the Hilo and Honolulu in the Hawaiian Islands. But for the 95 passengers and crew on board Aloha Airlines flight 243 it would turn into a nightmare that would stun the aviation world.

23 minutes after what seemed to be a normal takeoff from Hilo airport part of the fuselage ruptured and the resulting decompression tore an entire section off the top of the aircraft, exposing passengers and crew to the extreme conditions of traveling at hundreds of miles per hour 24,000 feet in the air. Chief flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing, standing in the aisle near the front of the plane collecting drink cups from passengers, was sucked out of the opening and vanished into thin air. Several other passengers and crew members were seriously injured by flying debris but stayed on board and the captain managed to maintain control and bring the crippled aircraft in for an emergency landing 10 minutes later at nearby Kahului's small airport.

The accident was determined to be the result of metal fatigue from tens of thousands of compression/decompression cycles (takeoffs and landings), combined with corrosion caused by the tropical environment in which Aloha operated its planes. Stricter maintenance guidelines were enacted by the government in response to the accident but the public would never again take for granted that older airplanes were necessarily safe to fly in.

Boeing's "Maxi-view" 737. Survivors gather near crippled flight 243 after emergency landing April 29, 1988

Few people I've ever met are aware that the soviet Union had its own space shuttle. It was called Buran (snowstorm) and bore more than a little resemblance to its US counterpart; it looked like the US shuttle, it flew like the US shuttle and it was transported on the back of a huge airplance like the US shuttle. The only significant difference was that it didn't use solid rocket boosters to lift it into orbit. The Soviets stated categorically that any resemblance was strictly coincidental. Whatever.

The Buran came into being as a direct response to the US program which the Soviets determined was actually a military program disguised as a peaceful scientific and commerical program. They couldn't say exactly what the military uses for such a craft would be but that didn't matter. They felt that as the program went through design and construction its military uses would become apparent. One orbiter was built and on November 15, 1988 it lifted off (unmanned) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (the USSR equivelant of Kennedy Space Center) for a fully automated flight which took it through two orbits of the earth before returning it safely to the ground. It was the only fully automated flight of an orbital vehicle ever accomplished by any nation and remains a technological achievement of the highest order.

As fate would have it though, before another launch could take place the Soviet Union collapsed and funding for such luxury defense programs dried up. No additional orbiters were built and no additional flights of the existing Buran spacecraft ever took place. The vehicle was retired to a hanger in Kazakhstan where it was destroyed when the rusting, antiquated building collapsed onto it in 2002.

Left: The Soviet Buran Shuttle seconds before its only liftoff. Right: Comparison with US Space Shuttle.

There was talk of a Wilburys tour at one point but as Tom Petty said when asked about the subject: I think it would ruin it in a way. Then you're obligated to be responsible and it's not in the character of that group. It would make it very formal and that would be the wrong spirit.

I find myself forced to agree with him on that. A big part of what made them so special was their ephemeral nature. Like the whistle of a lonely freight train sounding across the prairie at night their music carried the spirit to far away places and evoked a common memory of things that may or may not have ever actually happened.

Here's another great track from Traveling Wilburys Vol 1. It's a Dirty World baby.

A few facts about George Michael's album "Faith":

• 50+ weeks in the Billboard Top 10
• 12 weeks at #1
• #1 on the US R&B charts
• 4 #1 singles (including "One More Try")
• 6 singles inside the Billboard Hot 100 top 5
• 11 million copies sold in the US
• 25 million copies sold worldwide

George Michael wrote all the songs on this album, played many of the instruments and produced the whole thing himself (something I didn't know until I did some research for this post). But of all the great songs on this record this one stands out for me. A beautiful vocal performance that's never let down or overwhelmed by the production. His voice and the instruments trade off the lead as if they're dancing around each other. To me, listening to this song is like watching a bull fight in slow motion; you know he's going to get gored if he gets too close but you also know he's going to risk it. Great song. Great album.

George Michael - One More Try

A movie so big it had to be filmed in color!

The Naked Gun arrived in theaters in 1988 and became the standard by which I judged all other comedy. Leslie Nielsen redefined the term 'straight man', taking it to such deliriously absurd heights I thought I was going to throw up I laughed so hard.

Frank (Leslie Nielsen) to Jane (Priscilla Presley):
"Jane, since I've met you, I've noticed things that I never knew were there before... birds singing, dew glistening on a newly formed leaf, stoplights."

I've seen it probably a dozen times since and it still makes me laugh out loud. Credit has to be given to the producers, the supporting cast (George Kennedy take a bow) and especially the writers, but without Leslie Nielsen I don't think this boat floats. He's the glue that holds the whole improbable thing together. His comic timing was peerless and he always knew exactly what the character required.

Two more Naked Gun movies were made after this and there were rumors for years of a fourth which never materialized.

RIP Leslie Nielsen

Naked Gun - trailer