WBCA Washington Parade 1990 (What I learned)

If you follow me over on the ol' Twitter account, then you are aware I recently picked up some home movies on VHS at a local thrift store. Some of those tapes included some truly gold vintage TV recordings. One such treasure was titled Washington's Parade 1990 and its a taping off the TV broadcast of this WBCA event. I sat down and watched most of the recording as it was truly fascinating.

Hopefully, I will be able to upload the video to my Youtube channel in the next few days. For now, here are a few things I learned while watching a recording of the 1990 WBCA Washington's Parade.

Apparently, Laredo in 1990 had no qualms with using blackface.

Lupita Benavides was already looking great with her sweet 1989 hair. 

Cigarroa High students danced the Lambada and nobody batted an eye. #Forbidden

The Unicorn Restaurant (1987) Whatever happened to? (part 1)

Whatever happened to....? The Unicorn was a good place..with "fluent English".

Laredo has come a long way since 1987. Not too long ago, our city was apparently nothing but a backwards, corruption filled city with dusty, unpaved streets. Those post JC Martin years now seem like a distant world, a Laredo from another parallel universe. 

Case in point is this advertisement taken from the 1987 edition of the WBCA annual booklet. It seems that restaurants from that era had to go out of their way to advertise themselves as a place that has "fluent English". Never mind the fact that we are still in good 'ol US of A, but Laredoans of the time seemed to feel the need to reassure tourists that English was spoken here, even in this border outpost. 

"Fluent English" is not something that a local modern Laredo restaurant would emphasize in their advertisement today, but in 1987, speaking English in Laredo was apparently all the rage.

The Wraith (1986)

Every now and then, Netflix instant streaming actually surprises me with a decent title.  One such surprise was The Wraith, a movie that my brother and I would watch religiously back in 1986-7. The movie would play on CineMax (or HBO I can't recall) and we would catch it on those weekends when the channel offered a free preview or there was some extreme screw up at the billing department.

The soundtrack is pretty cool(Ozzy, Billy Idol, Motley), the special effects are Burger King-cheesy good, and it reminds me of the days when Charlie Sheen was actually cool (eons ago). The plot is really not important, other than to say that Sherilyn Fenn has a bikini scene (sweet!).

I bring up the movie for no apparent discernible reason other than to say that I just realized that I attended zero, ZERO WBCA events last month. I actually feel awful about that. What kind of Laredense skips the carnival, the parade and the Jalapeno festival? What kind of local blogger does not report during the most important  social event of the year? Why didn't I buy more bean dip?

 These questions were swirling around in my head as I was watching The Wraith and as I realized that I had not full-filled my duties as a blogger. But I won't dwell on it too much. I'll get back to my movie now, just had to get that off my chest.