Professional wrestler and sometime actor Captain Lou Albano died this morning at age 76. I never followed his career inside the ring, but like any kid who watched too much MTV in the ’80s, I was plenty familiar with his work as the father figure in Cyndi Lauper’s videos. Beyond those claims to fame, Albano’s ubiquity on MTV, and his symbiosis with Lauper, helped bring back wrestling as a mass pop-culture phenomenon, popularizing Wrestlemania and fueling the rise of the WWF.
But we ’80s kids will particularly know him for asking us, “Whatcha gonna do with your life?” RIP, Captain Lou:
