Odd

I watch a lot of YouTube videos.  Mostly at work.  It's a fringe benefit, but my supervisors would probably not see this the same way.

Perhaps with slight nostalgia, I clicked on an old skateboard video today.  This led to more and more old skateboard videos being suggested by YouTube, one of which was a clip from the cheesy 1986 film "Thrashin'" with Josh Brolin and Pamela Gidley.  I confess that, as a skater in the 80s, I watched this film repeatedly to the point of memorization.  For many of us it was our first exposure to real skateboarding.  Yeah the story was stupid, it certainly didn't portray the sport in a very positive light, instead making us look like warring gangs torching property.  But the skateboarding, as it always does, rang true, louder than hokey dialog and a predictable plot, totally hooking those of us on the fringes who wondered if there might be something to it other than riding down our driveways on K-Mart boards.

And then there was Chrissy (played by Pamela Gidley), love interest of the main character.  She was everything our underdeveloped teenage brains thought a skateboard girlfriend should be: smart, beautiful (obviously), sweet but tough, supportive of our socially unacceptable hobby and with just a little bit of her own devilish side.  We all had crushes on Chrissy, whether we wanted to admit it or not.

After confirming the coast was clear, I clicked on that link and watched the five minute snippet.  And another.  And another.  A Delorean couldn't have transported me any quicker.  You know what I found?  I'm old, Thrashin' is still a cheesy movie, the skating still holds up and some crushes never die.

While wearing the rose colored spectacles, I wondered what ever became of her.

So I Googled Pamela Gidley.

Only to find she had died at 52.

On April 16, 2018.

And one year to the day I wind up randomly watching her in a clip from the endless sea of them.

The universe is a bitch man.

Brolin and Gidley in Thrashin'