The [your name here] Awards!

Shoutout to the days when you could call a video game just 'Tennis'.

Wow, how can you pick between so many great video games?

No Spinal Tap for best film? You broke my heart, Drac.

Don't be a pussy.

There's no way season 10 of The Jeffersons is better than season 1 of The Cosby Show.

No, it isn't. Firstly, the Fake Lionel episodes are terrible. I hate that guy. And secondly, the show had lost its edge in the 80's since Norman Lear left and the Married with Children people took over. Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye are awesome, but it just wasn't the same show. It lost the political/social commentary and got sitcom-y. The same shit happened to All in the Family when Gloria and Meathead got replaced by the little girl and became Archie Bunker's Place. And let's not forget Good Times when J.J. "Dynomite" Walker took over. Basically, none of Norman Lear's shows were consistent except for maybe Maude and some of the shorter running shows.

If you see the real Lionel and George Jefferson has that bald man afro, it's an early season. If you see the fake Lionel, it's a mid-run season. If you see the original Lionel but George Jefferson looks like he did on Amen (remember that show) it's one of the later seasons. The last few seasons DID have their standout episodes. The Martin Luther King Jr one is really good and generally considered one of their best episodes. But that was like... season 6. You're talking season 10! You can't even get season 10 on DVD unless you buy the complete series box set. That's how unfavorable it is.

How do you know this?

Night Court was awesome.

1983

Best Film
Right Stuff, The
Scarface
King of Comedy, The
Videodrome
Dead Zone, The

Winner:

Worst Film
Twilight Zone: The Movie, The
Strange Brew
Jaws 3-D

Winner:

Best TV Show
NewHart (Season 1)
Cheers (Season 1)
Taxi (Season 5)
St. Elsewhere (Season 1)
MASH (Season 11)

Winner:

Best Video Game
Dragon's Lair (Arcade)


Confession: though I'm nominating this game I've never actually played it or even seen a Dragon's Lair cabinet in an arcade, but from what I've heard actually playing this thing is the least fun part of it.  The game was part of a short lived trend where an arcade machine would essentially play a laser disc and have the early chapter selection feature of that medium to allow the player to sort of guide the character.  The result was graphical capabilities that were vastly beyond anything else in video games but very minimal control from the player, more or less requiring you to memorize a series of button prompts.  The most famous of these was Dragon's Lair, which featured original animation by Don Bluth as you guided a knight on a quest to save a princess.  I've watched the whole thing on youtube and it's pretty cool looking.

Mario Brothers (Arcade)


A lot of casual gamers don't even know that there was a Mario before Super Mario Brothers but that game needed to be designated super for a reason.  This arcade classic is at once similar to and different from its more famous little brother.  It's still a platformer about jumping, but the stages don't really scroll and the goal is to bump the ground below your enemies rather than to jump on top of them.  It's mostly supposed to be played cooperatively, but it's also very possible to fuck over the second player in a number of amusing ways.  It's cool that this would form the basis of something bigger and better, but the original is a classic in its own right.

Sinistar (Arcade)


Sinistar was kind of a landmark achievement for it's time, a triple A blockbuster in a time before the phrase existed.  I don't know that it was the first game that could be said to have a boss battle or voice acting but it's certainly notable for having both and it was way more complex than most space games.  It forced you to go around "mining" smart bombs from asteroids while fending off enemy space craft.  All the while the Sinistar is forming and taunting you and once he comes alive you're going to need those smart bombs badly.  An unprecedented experience.

Spy Hunter (Arcade)


Pretty much the closest thing to a good James Bond game we'd get for decades, Spy Hunter was basically a simulation of a chase in a Q labs modified car complete with machine guns, oil slicks and the like and had a lot of neat touches like the way your car went in and out of a truck and could even convert into a speed boat.  It also had a very cool chipTune rendition of the "Peter Gunn" theme that played throughout.  Personally, I was never any good at the game, but it was still very cool for its time. 

Star Wars (Arcade)


It's no secret that there's a lot of money to be made off of Star Wars, and that's what led Atari to go all out with their arcade game licensed from Star Wars.  The game used vector graphics to recreate the Death Star battle from the first film.  At first glance that would seem to make this one of the most impressive games of its era, but it's ambition is also a weakness.  If you know what you're doing you can beat the game in all of two minutes and then you just have to do it all over again to try to run up you're score.  It hasn't aged beautifully, but it was a good achievement just the same.

Winner:

Best Hit Song
"Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson

I don't know that 1983 was an exceptionally great year for music overall, but if you were to judge it for its top five best hits you no one would blame you for thinking so.  All five of these nominees are stone cold 80s classics.  Of course the year would probably be best remembered for being the year Michael Jackson's Thriller (which was released on November 30th 1982) took over radio.  "Beat It" was probably ultimately the more famous of its singles, that song has the weakness of forcing to listener to pretend that Michael Jackson was in any way capable of breaking up a gang fight and that is... laughable.  Billy Jean on the other hand, all you have to accept to roll with that one is that Michael Jackson has not impregnated a woman... which is eminently believable.


"Every Breath You Take" by The Police

"Every Breath You Take" is one of those songs that became such a victim of overplay even to this day that it's easy to take it for granted but in its sheer simplicity it is a really impressively crafted little song.  It's one of those songs that everyone thinks is a straightforward love song but which is actually kind of menacing if you think about what Sting is saying.  It's essentially a song told from the perspective of a stalker and his interest in this lady is kind of creepy.  But, it has a really great bass line so it's easy to not think of that.

"Little Red Corvette" by Prince

Prince's early work was all about him reconciling the "fast" women in his life with the misogynistic view of women that had instilled in him by his religious upbringing.  The purest distillation of this is probably in "Little Red Corvette," a song that is decidedly not about a car.  Describing a Saturday night one night stand with a woman who is very comfortable in her sexuality, the song does come dangerously close to being a full on slut shaming anthem but there is something honest and interesting about the way the song teeters around the virgin/whore complex and it also very vividly paints a picture of this whole encounter with a lot of atmosphere.

"Sweet Dreams(Are Made of This)" by Eurythmics

This is one of those songs that seems to show up constantly in movies and in commercials, and it's not hard to see why.  That synth riff is unstoppable and the chorus is both strongly worded and also vague in a way that is enticing.  Who are these "abusers" who might want to "be abused?"  Is this song about S&M?  And who is this lady who's traveled the world and the seven seas?  Truth be told, the song might work better in snippets in other media than it does when you listen to the whole thing.  That "movin' on" part kind of kills the vibe, still, total New Wave classic.

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" was written by Jim Steinman, who is otherwise most famous for writing the music on Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell albums and he had apparently originally written the song to be part of a Broadway musical based on Nosferatu.  This both A. makes me desperately wish that musical had been produced and B. explains a lot about why that song is what it is.  It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to conjure up images of a dude dressed in a Count Orlock costume saying "turn around bright eyes" as his vampire bride mourning her immortality and insist that she needs him more than ever.  But let's think less about the song's origins and more about how fuckin' epic it is on its own terms.  The way the song sort of builds up to a peak, crashes down, then builds up to and even bigger peak is really effective and when Tyler is going on like she's shouting at the heavens is kind of powerful. 

Winner:

Hmmm... where does Donkey Kong fit into this?

Well, the Donkey Kong of the Donkey Kong Country games is actually the grand son of the original Donkey Kong (who is that old bearded "Crankey Kong" guy in those games) and the son of Donkey Kong Junior.  This implies that the DKs age regularly while Mario/Jumpman is immortal...