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.

Conditions at Kennedy Space Center in Florida were anything but ideal for a Space Shuttle launch on the morning of January 28, 1986. The temperature was 31 degrees farenheit, far colder than for any previous shuttle launch. Engineers at Morton Thiokold (manufacturer of the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters, or SRBs) warned against launching in such cold temperatures. They feared there was a distinct possibility that the O-rings on the SRBs might not seal correctly in such temperatures. Engineers at Rockwell International (primary contractor for the Shuttle program) also expressed grave concerns over the temperature. Primarily over the possibility that ice, which had accumulated all over the Shuttle and adjacent launch pad, would break free during launch and damage the critical heat absorbing tiles on the Shuttle's underbelly. Both sets of engineers advised against launching.

Their bosses however, feeling the pressure to launch after a week of delays and in the full glare of the public spotlight due to the presence of the first "teacher in space" (Christa McAuliffe) among the crew, overroad their engineers and gave STS-51L the green light.

They should have listened.

Just 73 seconds after lift off the Thiokold engineer's worst nightmares were realized as super-heated gas leaking through a failed O-ring on the right hand SRB burned through the external fuel tank causing a cascading series of events that led to the breakup of the Shuttle Challenger 48,000 feet over the Atlantic. Contrary to popular belief at the time the Shuttle was not torn apart by the explosion of gases in the external fuel tank but instead by aerodynamic forces exerted on the orbiter when it veered off its intended trajectory due to thrust anomolies coming from the right SRB (which had broken loose) and the external fuel tank. The last words heard from Pilot Michael Smith just milliseconds before the orbitor was torn apart were an ominous "Uh oh."

In a grissly discovery made some weeks later it was learned that several members of the crew had apparently survived the orbiter's breakup and activated their emergency oxygen supplies. Indeed Pilot Michael Smith - in a valiant but hopeless attempt to gain control of the situation - had been working the control panel, activating switches in an apparent attempt to restore electicity after the breakup. Because of these discoveries many experts now believe that at least some of the crew members survived the entire 2 minute 45 second free fall to the ocean's surface and that it was that impact with the water - at 207 mph - that was the likely cause of death, not the explosion or orbiter's initial breakup.

In the aftermath of the Challenger disaster the Shuttle program was grounded for 31 months while changes to the decision making culture at NASA as well as new, more robust safety procedures were implemented.

The crew of STS-51L were: Dick Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Greg Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka and Christa McAuliffe.

Aha's single "Take on Me" is one of the great pop songs of the 80s (or any decade for that matter). The video that accompanied the song was also groundbreaking in its fusion of animation and live action footage and won numerous awards. Key to the success of the video was the young actress who played the girl drawn into the comic book world of the singer. Her name was/is Therese "Bunty" Bailey and she was Aha lead singer Morten Harket's girlfriend at the time the video was shot.

So what ever happened to Bunty Bailey?

After "Take on Me" Bailey went on to star in Aha's follow-up video "The Sun Always Shines On TV" and then had a short career in motion pictures. After a 16 year hiatus she returned to the silver screen in the 2008 low-budget comedy "Defunct". These days Bailey is a dance teacher who describes herself as "happily married" and is the mother of two teenage children.

(left) Bunty Bailey in Aha's 1985 video "Take on Me" and (right) in a recent photo

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!"

On March 11, 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev, 54, became General Secretary of the Communist Party of The Soviet Union. His ascension was hailed as the dawn of a new day for the hidebound superpower with leaders in the West salivating over the prospect of finally having someone in the Kremlin that they could, in Maggie Thatcher's words, "do business with".

Gorbachev energetically undertook the daunting task of trying to breath life into the corpse of the USSR initiating his programs of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) and letting it be known that the USSR was no longer intersted in playing the role of the cranky old uncle with all the guns in international relations.

A new kind of General Secretary: "Gorby" mingles with the people - 1985

To say that his 6 years as the big cheese atop the Kremlin wall were eventful would be an enormous understatement. He signed agreements that ultimately lead to huge reductions in the number of nuclear weapons held by the US and USSR, he relaxed state oversight of Soviet media and encouraged criticism, he released political prisoners, began the process of opening up the Soviet economy to privately owned business and reduced the overall size of the Soviet military. Yet he also oversaw the catastrophe that was/is Chernobyl, tried desperately to prevent Soviet satellite states from gaining their independence as the USSR began to crumble and was largely ineffective in trying to ram through meaningful economic reform. In the end his efforts would come back to haunt him in unexpected ways and he'd wind up losing power to Boris Yeltsin and overseeing the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 1985 many saw his coming to power as a sign that significant change was on the horizon. Few, if any, could have predicted just how significant those changes (intended and unintended) would turn out to be.

For me Christine McVie's contributions to Fleetwood Mac are almost always overlooked. She had a beautiful soft voice and wrote uncomplicated, catchy love songs that stuck in your head on the first listening. This gem from the band's 1987 multi-platinum album "Tango in the Night" is a perfect example. The song reached number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent 3 weeks at number 1 on the adult contemporary charts.

Say it ain't so, Pete!

Pete Rose was (is) Major League Baseball's all-time leader in hits and games played, has three World Series rings won three batting titles and made 17 all-star game appearances. There was never a sliver of a doubt that he was going to the baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot. That is, until allegations surfaced in early 1989 that Charlie Hustle had bet on baseball games and not only that, but that he'd placed many, large bets on games involving his own team the Cincinnati Reds. Outgoing commissioner Peter Ueberrroth dismissed the allegations but his replacement Bart Giamatti reopened the case after assuming the commissioner's job and retained a lawyer to formally investigate.

On August 24, 1989, when it had became clear that there was substantial evidence against him Rose voluntarily accepted placement on baseball's permanently ineligible list and lost his job as the Red's manager. Two years later the Hall of Fame voted (in a move nearly everyone believes was directed specifically at Rose) to ban anyone on the ineligible list. Thus Pete Rose, undone by his own boneheaded decisions and hubris, was sent off to wander in the baseball wilderness.

He remains there to this day, a kind of curious ghost inhabiting the fringes of baseball culture, desperately seeking validation from the fans and hoping against hope that one day baseball will open it's arms to him once again and welcome him back.

Huey Lewis and the Afterthoughts, uh, I mean the News became music superstars with the release of 1984's "Sports". Lewis himself looked like he worked at a machine shop during the day and let his sister-in-law cut his hair and pick his stage outfits. In many ways though it was his everyguy image that underpinned his popularity and Lewis never shied away from it. Following the pinnacle of "Sports" and it's followup "Fore" HL&TN began a long slide into obscurity. By the late 80s they had parted with their record company and gone on an extended hiatus. The advent of grunge drove the final nail into the coffin of Lewis' brand of feel good, uber-mainstream, working class pop.

So where is Huey Lewis today anyway?

Huey Lewis then and now.

Huey Lewis and the News still do a fair number of live shows each year, though these days they play venues like the California State Fair and the Cape Cod Melody Tent. Their new album "Soulsville" did manage to crack the Billboard 200, peaking at number 121. Lewis himself doesn't seem to have changed much over the years. He's still a happy go lucky figure who seems quite content to get together with the boys and play to whoever will listen.

Spanish Bombs is my favorite tune from the Clash's third album, the double LP classic "London Calling".  Some have said that London Calling is a 1970s record but the fact is that while it was released on December 14, 1979 in Britain it wasn't released in the US until January of 1980. That same month saw the release of the Pretenders self-titled debut album. What a great time for rock music.