Monday, January 05, 2009

Those were the days

Sometimes I worry that I'm stuck with a lifelong passion for "Seinfeld," Nirvana, and flannel shirts (hurray '90s revival!), not to mention occasional pangs of Clinton-nostalgia. Boyz II Men will forever evoke slow-dancing, and I refuse to believe that this woman is Courtney Love.

Turns out this is something worth worrying about it. Failure to leave the period of one's coming-of-age can result in monstrosities like Stanley Fish's top-ten list of the best American movies. Films that didn't appear a good three decades before Alvy Singer are, it seems, unworthy.

4 comments:

kei said...

I do this all the time and have been waiting for the 90's to be revived! I received the DVD series of "My So-Called Life" this Christmas; they were dead serious about their (baggy) plaid shirts. Angela's closet overflows with plaid, but I have to say her hair is pretty timeless. There were a couple of references to the Clintons in the show too--the principal keeps a picture of Bill in his office and Angela's parents attempted to be the Clintons for Halloween.

Speaking of "those were the days," that kid Heung (sp?) from our astrophysics class/lab was in the Marxism class I'm taking now at Northwestern. Apparently he's in their PhD program for philosophy. He even started talking about dark matter and the Big Bang _in class_ and kept looking at me and acting like I was going to chime in at any moment. As if I was going to remember anything! I just remember being sad that Don Lamb was wrong about his hypothesis and cheering for him as he jogged in the rain and fog in the PBS special. Not relevant to Marxism at all.

Dana said...

I totally am attracted to plaid to this day because of '90s nostalgia, despite the connotations of "sexy lumberjack" that necessarily attend plaid cut into miniskirts and dresses. My boyfriend likes it, although he also likes House of Pain's "Jump Around."

Why is Fish still relevant? Seriously. In literary theory he's passe, and I have no idea why he feels qualified to opine about the law (even if they was there at the beginning of the now defunct law and literature movement), and I don't know why people would care about his list of movies. Besides, that list is missing Reality Bites. Oooh, snap, '90s strikes back.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

On the flannel front, I was vaguely curious about this shirt, until I saw it on the model (bottom pic). What is going on with those jeans? If that's how they look on a model, my confidence in anything from L.L. Bean that isn't outerwear or a backpack is gone.

Anonymous said...

The model has an inflatable raft on under her clothes.