August 13th, 2008 Prime Leader Zanramon
For whatever reason, more than 17,000 people visited Addicted to Words today. I have no idea why, but rather than let this present surprise become ATW’s dying gasp, I have rallied to put actual words and thoughts down. A Prime Leader Zanramon original if you will. Let’s party like it’s November 2007.
My pen’s a bit rusty, so this probably needs lots of editing and probably some self censorship, but here goes…
—
2008 will be remembered for many things. The worst US president since Andrew Johnson is leaving office. The Olympics will be held in communist China. Gas got ridiculously expensive. Britney Spears went bat shit insane.
All certainly notable things, but when it is all said in done, 2008 will be remembered as the year of nostalgia. Everything old has become new again. The Boston Celtics handily beat the Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA Championship. 19 years after the last one, a new Indiana Jones movie was released. American Gladiators made a comeback. Even Beverly Hills 90210 has been remade. Ideas from decades past seem fresh and young, (arguably) ready to take the world by storm.
Nostalgia is a powerful weapon. It is the reason people continue to buy a new boxed set of Star Wars DVD’s each year, despite the fact that the only new feature might be that Darth Vader’s light saber is tinted 3 degrees more red. In the right hands, it can spread joy, good cheer, and free spending ways. In the wrong hands, nostalgia can be boring, mundane, or even depressing.
There are three kinds of nostalgia. Two of them are enjoyable, one of them is somewhat more tolerable than eating shards of glass. They are each embodied in current nostalgic presences in pop culture: the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the re-emergence of New Kids on the Block, and the remake of Beverly Hills 90210.
The release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The first kind of nostalgia is the most enjoyable and commercially successful kind. It has been 19 years since the last Indiana Jones movie, the Last Crusade, was released. It was one of the strongest of the three movies, and Indy presumably hung up his hat, whip, and adventurous zeal, on a high note. As time passed, history smiled upon the Indiana Jones movies. People that were not even born yet when the Last Crusade came out discovered them. There is literally not one person in the world who does not absolutely love Indiana Jones.
Thus when word came out that George Lucas, Steven Speilberg, and Harrison Ford were getting the band back together, excitement began to build. Most people assumed that the new Indiana Jones movie would be the best movie of all time, which probably is not a fair assumption. Simply because of how beloved the previous Indy movies were, there is no way that this one could live up to expectations.
Yet, it came close.
For one, as previously mentioned, it has been 19 years since a Indy movie came out. Each year that went by, the nostalgia surrounding Indy simply kept growing. Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford could probably put on a shadow puppet play, and as long as it was called Indiana Jones and the Something of the Lost Something, obscene amounts of people would go out to see it.
So Indy has a significant built-in audience, which is the first ingredient of successful nostalgia. The people love Indy and have been waiting an extremely long time for this, they are coming out to see it no matter what.
The second ingredient of this nostalgia pie we are baking here, is Harrison Ford. Of course, not everything has to have Harrison Ford to be successfully nostalgic. It is how Harrison Ford is still thoroughly Indiana Jones through and through. Yes, he is much older than he was, but he can still do everything he used to be able to do. If anything, Ford seems to solve puzzles and beat up Socialists easier in KOTCS than in any of the other three previous movies. Seeing how much Ford has aged could easily make us all feel old, and make the movie feel depressing, but he has not slowed at all. It ends up making us feel younger. Age is just a number for Indiana Jones, why can’t it be for me? This is why old cartoons are the most successfully nostalgic thing ever. They never age, and take us right back to how we felt when we originally watched them. Despite dealing with real live, aging humans, Indiana Jones has somehow achieved something similar to this. The same goes for Madonna.
The re-emergence of New Kids on the Block: The New Kids on the Block had some popular songs that were awesome in that ironic VH1 sort of way, and they wore some clothes that probably were the same. Mark Wahlburg was somehow involved in the early days, and he was in Boogie Nights, so that seems significant.
After a rather long hiatus, in which TNKOTB presumably were hanging tough, they have re-emerged. Nobody expects them to do anything of note anymore, I’m fairly certain that they don’t either. This is why they are successful, they know that they were ridiculous in their prime, and they know that they are much older now, and they know that doing what they were doing before except for being much older is one of the most ridiculous things ever. And they know that run on sentences are sometimes appropriate.
It is all a big joke, and we all feel in on it because we were around for the first incarnation of TNKOTB. Everybody likes a joke as long as they get it. Like a fine wine, Indiana Jones got better with age. TNKOTB are like Franzia, it spoils with age, but drinking Franzia is kind of funny in the first place. If anybody drinks that spoiled Franzia, it will be hilarious.
The re-make of Beverly Hills, 90210: Beverly Hills, 90210 is being remade for 2008, rebadged as simply 90210, maybe to seem more modern. It doesn’t matter, the re-make of 90210 is a terrible idea. This is where nostalgia fails, where it hits the proverbial 5 second mark of “2 Girls 1 Cup”. Admittedly, the old 90210 was not ever anything I really appreciated. Any time I spent in my youth and early adolescent years watching TV was almost always spent watching cartoons or sports. I missed out on a lot of shows people my age consider important TV. Full House, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and of course 90210 got the short end of the TV watching stick. I never really watched any of them, and other than the ability to recite the entire Fresh Prince theme song, I am not aware of any details about any of them.
If I were to guess, Full House would be about a house where a few too many people live leading to lots of hilarious incidents involving somebody taking too long in the shower, the Fresh Prince would be about Will Smith’s remarkable odyssey from being wrongfully accused as the antagonist in a fight to sitting on a throne in Bel Air, and 90210, of course, would be about the glitz and glam of that famous zip code.
The fact that I don’t know a lot about 90210 doesn’t hurt my point in the slightest. It was a successful and popular show in it’s heyday, which seems to lead television execs* thinking it could be a successful and popular show today. Problem is, in the 2008 version of 90210, nothing is the same. All of the actors from the original show are too old to reprise their characters, lest it take place in a world where all high school students are pushing 40. Some of the original actors, most notable Shannon Doherty**, will have cameos in the show. As adults. Kids are adults now, which isn’t nostalgic, it is pretty darn depressing. It reminds us that we are growing old, that our lives are finite and our time in this world is short. Or probably something less dramatic, but equally as ineffective at creating that nostalgic feeling.
The only constant in the new 90210, as compared to the old 90210, is grown up kids. That doesn’t take us back to better times, and is absolutely useless at creating that warm nostalgic feeling. People will tune in to relive the good times and tune out feeling every one of their twentysomething years and unfulfilled potential hanging over them. (Am I self-projecting too much here?)
In a year where nostalgia reigns over the land like smog over Beijing, 90210 simply does not make the grade. 2008 won’t stand for such drivel, I won’t stand for such drivel, and you should not stand for such drivel. Three drivel’s should properly illustrate my point.
-Zanramon
zanramon@addictedtowords.com
*In the biz, we like to shorten executives to execs. We also like to say “in the biz”, in the biz.
**I claim that this is the most notable fact due to Shannon Doherty being one of the only people I’ve heard of in the new 90210.
Posted in All, TV, Movies | 2 Comments »
April 20th, 2008 Prime Leader Zanramon
In an effort to get as little accomplished as is possible for a human of my mental prowess, I’m watching my eighth NBA game this weekend right now. And by this weekend, I don’t mean the vast undefined span of “weekend” which always includes Fridays, often includes Thursdays, and frankly can sometimes include any day other than Tuesday. No, I’m using the traditional definition of weekend, which is simply Saturday and Sunday. In two (2) days I have watched eight (8) NBA games. Admittedly not all of each one, but certainly more than 79% of all of them.
I guess the reason I’m explaining all of this is sort of to trick myself into finishing the weekend off with a bit of homework or pontificating or whatever else productive, but mostly because I wanted to share some ideas about redemption and masturbation.
As stated, I’m watching my eighth (8th) out of eight (8) possible NBA games this weekend. Currently, the Boston Celtics are playing the Atlanta Hawks. More than most teams in the NBA, these two teams embody the theme of redemption. The Celtics were awful last year, and after trading for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to join Paul Pierce this last offseason, have been rolling up wins like Del Taco workers roll up burritos, quickly, efficiently, and fairly easily. Vegas has them as the favorite to win the NBA title this year, which would almost certainly mean redemption for Allen and Garnett and Pierce, who are three (3) of the NBA’s best players yet have never had much postseason success.
The redemption theme with the Celtics doesn’t stop with the players either. Their coach, Doc Rivers, was considered a very poor coach last year, despite the fact that his nickname would suggest a rather high level of competency. It was painfully apparent that he wasn’t a real doctor. He’s done a markedly better job this year, surely garnering some votes for Coach of the Year. Danny Ainge, the Celtics’ general manager is cruising happily on the fresh asphalt of Redemption Road as well after having what can gently be called rather limited success as a GM, not to mention being fleeced by Kevin Pritchard to take Bassy Telfair for what became Brandon Roy.
The Hawks on the other hand, managed to end the NBA’s longest current playoff drought this year. Atlanta has not qualified for the playoffs since 1999, where they lost to the Knicks and promptly traded Steve Smith for Isaiah Rider, a man who once kicked the female manager of a sports bar. I can only speculate to what type of kick Rider prefers. A dragon kick? A two footed jump kick to the chest? A Ryu/Ken sweep kick straight out of Street Fighter II? I digress. As a rule of thumb in life I like to avoid kicking managers in general, much less managers who are women. I don’t think anybody would disagree with me classifying that trade as a mistake. Thus, even though the Hawks finished 8 games below .500, at 37-45, qualifying for the playoffs at all has to be considered redemption.
This raises the question though, with all these obvious redemption themes weaving like a drunk driver all over this playoff series, why did I just hear “Dancing With Myself” over the PA system during a timeout? Isn’t that just about the least logical song to play during a playoff series like this?
Dancing With Myself is a song by Billy Idol that is ostensibly about masturbation, possibly while looking at yourself in the mirror. I fully understand that playoff series’ don’t have official themes, and the PA DJ’s probably aren’t really concerned about that type of thing anyway, but let’s put that aside for the sake of this essay. Dancing With Myself doesn’t fit the theme of redemption at all, and might even be the worst choice possible.
Masturbation is what one resorts to when they do not have an actual other human available for sexual pleasure, redemption is all about redeeming yourself. Maybe if Dancing With Myself was played a lot during timeouts last year, and I have to assume it was because it’s far too random of a song to just casually throw on the playlist this season, an appropriate song this year might be “Cradle of Love” (if we are sticking with Billy Idol) which not only was as high as number two (#2) on the charts, but is also blatantly and boldly about hooking up with a hot chick. Thus redeeming yourself if you spent all of last night masturbating.
With a little bit of forethought, Boston’s PA DJ’s could have firmly entrenched themselves in the upper echelon of PA DJ’s, but they squandered the opportunity. They certainly deserve credit for involving Billy Idol at all, and not sticking to such drivel as the Baja Men, but I just can’t ignore the magnitude of the opportunity. This redemption theme, so obvious it might even embarrass that rat at the end of “The Departed, should have continued to have been built upon. It wasn’t, and we’re left with a two (2) story split level rather than a Pearl Tower, a tragedy indeed.
-Zanramon
zanramon@addictedtowords.com
Posted in All, NBA, Sports, Music, TV | No Comments »
April 4th, 2008 Prime Leader Zanramon
My nostalgia for the OC seems to be becoming Biblical, and Hollywood isn’t helping by churning up fond memories and parading beloved actors.
It may be my mind playing cruel tricks on me, but I could have sworn I had a Benjamin McKenzie sighting during an 88 Minutes trailer. I realize a quick trip to IMDB would answer my questions, but I choose not to go there. Benjamin McKenzie has become such an enigma in my mind that it seems like it couldn’t possibly be him exchanging glances with Al Pacino. What if this is true? I won’t pretend to care about 88 Minutes at all, I only care about the return of Kid Chino and his Fists of Fury.
Ryan Atwood has emerged, and in full health, done biding his time in the poolhouse. I can’t handle that kind of disappointment, were it to be false. I discovered the Chupacabra, and I’m just waiting for people to tell me that I’m wrong and it turns out that it was simply a rare, but regular, reptile-kangaroo-coyote-dog-dinosaur animal that was drinking my goat blood stores. I’m living on stolen time. I’m a festival, a parade, a fugitive in plain sight.
If all this is true, the real question at hand here becomes: can McKenzie make up for the terribleness that Al Pacino lugs around with him? The Ocean crew fell from grace and a higher plane due solely to the fact that Al Pacino stood up to them and managed to work in something about a gold phone. I fear I’ll never find out the deeper meaning of the gold phone, but a part of me wants to believe McKenzie could. He’ll puncture Pacino’s chest and drain his blood completely.
Ryan Atwood brought out the raw emotion in people. He was both a fighter and a lover. His powers could solve the mystery of Al Pacino. The Bigfoot of Latino Culture has all the answers we need.
-Zanramon
zanramon@addictedtowords.com
Posted in All, TV, Movies | 6 Comments »
March 19th, 2008 Prime Leader Zanramon
I keep hearing murmurs and hearsay about the Twilight books and the movie. It sounds like it has got the requisite fantasy elements I so desire in my stories, so I may delve deeper one of these days.
Point being, Cam Gigandet plays a vampire named James in Twilight. Cam Gigandet, being, of course Volchok, the Krang to Ryan’s Leonardo* of my beloved OC tv show. I know nothing about James the vampire, although I would guess he is an evil vampire because, well, Vampires are generally evil, and Volchok is a less than wholesome guy.
As stated, I know nothing about anything involving Twilight, save for the presence of vampires and a few tidbits Rita has tossed in my general direction, but something I do know is that Volchok is one of the most reactive elements on the planet. He’s all the way on the left side of the periodic table, an Alkali metal with one Valance electron, violently reactive.
And in case you can’t tell thus far, I’m delighted to see him showing up all over in this post-mortem OC era. Adam Brody has floundered around, lost somewhere in the Land of Women. That guy in Chuck, Zachary Levi, stole Brody’s Seth Cohen identity anyway. Benjamin McKenzie seems to have hung up the wrist cuff and clogs, as we haven’t heard a single thing from him. And I think Mischa Barton died.
Rachel Bilson has been lurking in our collective consciousness a little bit, but as I discussed before, it just seems misguided and contrite seeing her in anything other than the OC. Seeing Volchok run free in the wild though has had the opposite effect on me. He gallops beautifully like a gazelle.
I haven’t seen it (and admittedly, the trailers probably tell the whole story) but Volchok’s other current movie Never Back Down seems like it takes on some sort of weird 2 Fast 2 Furious car porn characteristic that means at the very least it will be entertaining to watch on TNT in 18 months, solely for the presence of Volchok.** He might bring down the Twilight movies as swiftly as he killed Marissa, and to a less talked about extent, Ryan’s new car***, but he also might, for lack of a better term, take Twilight and never back down.
Don’t ever underestimate Volchok, save Oliver, Ryan Atwood has never met a more formidable foe.
-Zanramon
zanramon@addictedtowords.com
*Marissa Cooper would have been Raphael, Seth Cohen would be Donatello, and in a hotly contested decision, Summer Roberts would be Michaelangelo. Also, how Splinter was Sandy Cohen?
**That Blood Diamond guy Djimon Hounsou is pretty excellent too. So is the presence of a character called “Beatdown DJ Swagga”. I digress.
***Incidentally, that was the second Ryan helmed car Volchok ruined. He keyed “Lil’ Bitch” into the Range Rover.
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February 28th, 2008 John
Teleporting is undeniably awesome, so I suppose it was inevitable that I would go against fashion (and some would say common sense) and go see the movie Jumper. My love of teleportation overcame any bitterness I have of Hayden Christensen doing his best to ruin Star Wars. The premise of this movie is that some people are born with the power to teleport anywhere in the world, and Samuel L. Jackson is apparently tired of the motherfucking teleporters jumping all over this motherfucking earth so he makes it his life goal to hunt down and kill all of them, under the guise of the religious title Paladin. Also, his inexplicably silver hair seems to say that he subscribes to the Sisqo method of personal grooming.
As promised, Hayden Christensen did plenty of eyebrow acting and looking uncomfortable, but this was more than overshadowed by the unadulterated joy of watching a grown up Billy Elliott play a borderline sociopath teleporter. I could see the grace he carried over from his days as a possibly homosexual dancer as he bashed in Paladin heads with a baseball bat.
The tragedy of this movie though is watching Rachel Bilson as she gets all Radiohead and attempts to disappear completely. Skinniness aside, there is something inherently sad about seeing her play somebody other than Summer. She’s playing pretty much the same character that Summer was from OC season 2 and on, and it brings up painful memories. It makes me mourn for the potential that show had and the emotion I had invested in it. My life is littered with the corpses of 1,000 failed tv shows and I miss none more than I miss the OC.
It wasn’t terribly bad, certainly better than say, 1408 was. Although, I suppose it can’t be that good of a movie when the main thing I get out of it is that I miss the OC tv show. I really should move on.
-John
john@addictedtowords.com
Posted in Magical Things, All, TV, Movies | 4 Comments »
February 27th, 2008 John
I’m going to coin the term Spearsian. Jamie Lynn and Britney have taken absurd acts to new previously unseen heights. Britney’s saga has been going on for so long and has been so weird, I don’t even notice it anymore. It’s sort of faded into the background as pleasant white noise. Jamie Lynn though, I’m still noticing, and she did something particularly Spearsian recently. Journalistic monolith, Star reports that Jamie Lynn and her baby’s daddy plan to pander to as many stereotypes as possible and buy a double wide trailer to start their lives together. Which, as we all know is the best environment for a baby, especially when the Disney Channel Nickelodeon has paid you formidable amounts of money that you can use to, you know, an actual house.
That’s not even the highlight for me though. Star almost tosses it away at the end but, panned from the most serene of brooks, we get this golden nugget:
Just days before announcing her pregnancy in December, Jamie Lynn shocked a boy at a party by asking him for sex. “It’s cool, I’m pregnant,” she said. “I can’t get pregnant again!”
That’s an offer you just don’t turn down.
-John
john@addictedtowords.com
Posted in All, TV | 3 Comments »
February 22nd, 2008 John
My brother takes the helm as ATW’s first guest speaker. Take heed as his stream of consciousness finds balance in the wonderful days of the 90’s, which is rather amazing when you consider he wasn’t even alive for the entire decade.
- John
About a month ago, when my brother (John) was in town for what was dubbed by my US History teacher as “non denominational winter break”, he asked me if I would like to be a guest writer for his blog sometime. I said “maybe, ill think about it”. In my language this usually means no thanks. However as I got to thinking about what to write about, somehow i got on the subject of John Goodman. This made me think of the movie “The Big Lebowski” in which there is a motif of urinating on carpets, which made me think of the period of my life that I did not understand the concept of a toilet and consequently urinated on carpets. This made me think of the 90’s, specifically TV and movies in the 90’s and how ridiculous they were. First off, I remembered the TV show “Dinosaurs” 
and thinking back, I’m not sure how I was not scared out of my mind when watching this show. Second, I don’t even know how I remember watching this show considering it had a life span from 1991 to 1995. According to IMDB, Dinosaurs somehow won four Emmys and was nominated for two more. I then proceeded to Google pictures of the TV show, specifically the Sinclair family, the main family of dinos in the show, and I noticed that the baby of the family, aptly named Baby Sinclair, bore an odd resemblance to the character Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Oddly, I thought that Krang from TMNT bore and odd resemblance
to a chewed up piece of chewing gum. Somehow, and I’m not quite sure why, this reminded me of the movie “Coneheads” featuring Dan Aykroyd as the father of an alien family with cone-shaped heads.
Unlike Dinosaurs, Coneheads actually freaked me out. And by freaked me out, I mean it shook my very soul. Somehow, people with cone-shaped heads scare me more than dinosaurs with the same capabilities as us but with no opposable thumbs. Maybe its the fact that the baby looks like Krang/chewed gum. Anywho, there are many other terrible Movies and TV shows that were products of the 90’s but it would take much too long to name them all. But even all of the bad things from the 90’s movie and TV wise were balanced with good things such as, the original American Gladiators, Walker Texas Ranger, oh and of course, Duck Tales.
- Henry
Posted in All, TV, Movies | 6 Comments »
February 16th, 2008 John
I just watched the NBA Dunk Contest and it boggled the mind. I’m a rather fit, rather healthy 22 year old male. I consider myself decently athletic, I’m quick and marginally strong. The flying men of the dunk contest however, make me look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The grace, power, and athleticism of these guys appears God like. The Superman costume Dwight Howard donned on his second dunk was an epic redundancy. Profession aside, he is the closest thing to Superman the human race has.
Which isn’t even mentioning the showmanship and creativity these enigmatic humans posses. This is where Gerald Green and Dwight Howard set themselves apart. See Green take off his shoes, autograph them, and leave them on the judges table as he dunks in his socks. See Dwight Howard do Clark Kent proud as he takes his jersey off revealing the aforementioned Superman costume. (As much as Howard tried to say it was a homage to Soulja Boy, this was all Christopher Reeves heroism.)
Most of all, see the Birthday Cake. Green’s teammate Rashad McCants brought out a ladder, placed a cupcake with a birthday candle on the back of the rim, lit it, and then bounced the ball to Green who blew it out as he dunked. He blew his birthday candle out levitating 10 feet in the air. It was beyond my wildest dreams.
While not the most athletically impressive, that honor goes to Howard’s dunk from behind the backboard, the Birthday Cake was, albeit certainly kitschy, the most creative and entertaining, which is exactly what I want from the dunk contest. Such a shame that Green did it first, allowing it to become somewhat overlooked. Had this been last, up against Howard’s less than spectacular small rim-to-big rim, it would have brought the crowd to it’s knees and delivered Green his second consecutive victory. The fact that he did it first assured the Birthday Cake of becoming this year’s version of the sticker dunk that Howard did last year. It’s majestic nature will stick with you and only grow as time passes.
While I lament this travesty, and wonder what could have been, this dunk contest was undeniably the best since Vince Carter ate the souls of anybody watching in 2000. I only hope evolution can be applied to the dunk contest, with progressively more absurd feats each year. Next year, I want a homage to Teen Wolf. Off the top of my head, somebody (Travis Outlaw perhaps) dunking in a Teen Wolf suit is the only thing that can top the pure unadulterated joy I feel about the Birthday Cake. Gerald Green, you’re a winner in my heart.
-John
john@addictedtowords.com
Posted in All, NBA, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »
February 8th, 2008 John
For my birthday in November, my roommates threw me a middle school dance/90’s themed party. No trimmings were 
spared, right down to the authentic EZ Bake Oven and a thoughtfully worded Ricky Martin book in Spanish on one side and English on the other. The party, as it were, was a god damn epic success, a Puff Daddy party on our scaled-down scale to measure parties. People had fun and would fondly look back on it as one of the most successful parties in our quickly dwindling college career. It was so much fun, in fact, that the decision came down from the house patriarch to have a 90’s Party Part Duh. Duh obviously being an ever so “90’s” catch phrase, and an ever so clever play on Deux. (One of my many contributions, although I fear I may have stolen that joke from some VH1 show that is even more wistful and nostalgic than I am.)
To the first 90’s party I rocked a pretty excellent vest over my 1990 Western Conference Champions Trail Blazers t-shirt. (Yes, I’m fiercely proud.) I felt I walked the fine line between being festive and trying too hard quite well. It was a subtle 
statement, yet one I hope resonated. When the time came for me to drudge up a new outfit in the style of the 1990’s, my mind immediately filled with visions of a vest sequel. The fashion gods conferred with the thrift store gods and they decided to smile upon me. Not only did I find a vest of amazing build and design, it came with matching shorts to boot, all for the low low price of $2.99. Ignoring the fact that this was a women’s getup proved to be easy as well. The fact of the matter is, this thing was bright yellow with a vegetable print. I would wear almost anything that has a vegetable print, be it for women, or babies, or transvestites, or whatever. If it has a vegetable print, odds are good I will wear it.
My joy was tempered only slightly, I’d say I was 3% less excited, when I returned home and found that the shorts don’t come close to fitting, unless I wear them at dangerously high levels, which in turn leaves my, um, manhood dangerously close to a reveal that almost nobody wants. Nevertheless I wore the vest proudly and loudly, sans matching shorts. Again, I felt like I walked that elusive line between still participating and screaming my 90’s-ness. Accessorize, don’t revolutionize. 
The vest went over well at the party. The vegetable print delighted people, as a vegetable print tends to.
The thing is, since the party, I have been taking heavy criticism about my choice of 90’s costume. People don’t see the connection to the 90’s and some even have the gall to accuse me of not putting effort into my weapon of choice. Quite frankly, these accusations are unfounded and unfair.
First of all, like I said, this was not some outfit I just had laying on my bedroom floor. No, the thrift store stars had to align for me to find this certifiable treasure of a vest. And as I’ve explained twice now, it takes lots of thinking to be subtle and still festive. I could have easily bought the pink one piece ski suit at the very same thrift store I bought the vest. Ignoring the fact that it is more 80’s than 90’s, a pink one piece ski suit is fairly awesome, but that would have been the lazy route. Any asshole can be outrageous, as the saying goes subtly is godly.*
I don’t know what it is about them, but I feel that vests are an integral part of the quintessential 90’s experience. Admittedly, I have no data to back this up, but I would almost certainly bet that vests were worn more in the years of 1990-99 than any other 10 years in the history of our world. Vests are ubiquitous in the unofficial official television shows of the 1990’s, Friends and Seinfeld. Matthew Perry and the ever melancholic David Schwimmer embraced the vest, the great Jerry Seinfeld loved the vest. These three men are powerful symbols of the 90’s. We looked to them for guidance as well as a good joke. How can a vest not go hand in hand with the 90’s? How this would not be immediately apparent to somebody is beyond me.
And as for the vegetable print, well that is just undeniably awesome.
-John
john@addictedtowords.com
*The saying that I just made up.
Posted in All, NBA, TV, Portland | 3 Comments »
January 30th, 2008 John
I have a problem, I cannot think of anything to write about. Any perceived eloquence I had is more gone than Marissa at that party where Sandy found out the real dirt about the Heights and bought it from the Newport Group for a dollar. This is terrible and beyond frustrating. Any ideas for writer’s block breakers out there? I need a real life Brickles game for my mind. Help help help.
-John
john@addictedtowords.com
Posted in All, TV | 2 Comments »