Also known as the hot mess edition.
Maybe it's the changing of the seasons, but my attention span is even
more fractured than usual, so bear with me here.
Memory is a strange thing. In
particular, my memory is a
strange thing. Driving around with Chuck the other day, I recognized
a now-abandoned storefront as one of the first video rental stores in
the area. It's funny that my mind can be foggy on what I did a few
days ago, but I can still name and locate the multiple video rental
stores in the region like it was yesterday. Given that 98% of them
are now just either ghosts of VHS past or new homes to crummy
businesses, this is moderately impressive. Of course, a huge part of
this was the fact that these stores were a massive part of my
childhood. They were my Disneyland, with each row promising all sorts
of new worlds, stories and faces. I love the digital age and all of
the easy access that comes with it, but it does make me a little sad
that there are kids that will never know this joy. That said, no
nostalgia here. Nostalgia is always a fallacy and tends to fog up the
reality of the past.
Speaking
of nostalgia, I overheard these two girls the other day, talking
about how they were “nostalgic” for the 90's. (Keep in mind both
were more than likely in their early 20's at the most.) This is so
depressing. I'm a pop culture girl in so many ways, but I do wonder
if our own culture is basically encouraging this atmosphere of
premature longing. It's one thing to be hitting your golden years and
laugh wistfully about the time your cousin almost lost an eye in a
lawn dart accident. (Heck, scratch the golden years part. That's
funny to me now.) But for someone who is just now legally old enough
to drink longing for Little Mermaid dolls and “Saved by the Bell?”
That's just plain sad. Plus, lawn darts trump Zach Morris every
single bloody time and those things were banned by the time I came
into this world. Bam.
Another
fallacy of looking backwards in our culture is this tendency of
saying someone is “the New insert dead hero here.” Case in point,
Rolling Stone awhile back called former xoJane and current Vice
columnist Cat Marnell “the New Bukowski.” Now I'm actually a fan
of Marnell's writing but seriously, the New Bukowski? The only thing
those two have in common realistically is that they are writers and
the topic of chemical abuse comes up. One was a genius working class
poet/prose writer with decades of life and writing experience and the
other is still a very much young and talented non-fiction writer from
a financially privileged background. Both are good but clearly, if
all you get from Bukowski is “uhhh drugs and alcohol” then your
eyes are in your pecker.
To
wrap things up, nothing soothes the weary soul like music and the
Butthole Surfers have been hitting the sweet spot lately for both the
hubby and myself. Even better, we just found out that the band is
offering a free download of their classic, “official bootleg”
Double Live album. If all you know about this band is “Pepper,”
then please check out this out. Nobody loves Southern Fried weirdness
more than myself and the Butthole Surfers are a classic example of
this. Also? Paul Leary is a huge hero of mine. Maybe I can be the New
Paul Leary? I jest.
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