The Coffeeshop Tour of America Continues
I’m in a coffeeshop in Madison. Stephen Merritt is on the stereo here, singing of being “tongue-tied and weak-kneed;” of the sweet, sweet romantic love, as is his wont. Frankly I’m really not into such a thing today, Henshaw. Ah well. We don’t always get what we want—or need, though some people I know might say different. I say, the better Stephen Merritt song for me today would be “I Don’t Believe You”.

Moving right along, though.
For today I thought, a list. As you know, one chief pet peeve on this end of things is with this current cultural over-indulgence in irony. This weird commodified nostalgia thing that’s gotten so fricking popular: “Remember the ‘80s? The ‘90s? Two days ago??” PJ O’Rourke wrote this strangely prescient essay back in like, 1985, entitled “A Thoughtful Look Back at the Last 15 Minutes,” which is exactly what it sounds like. A fake retrospective of a quarter-hour of his life whose tone is, of course, dripping in irony. So really, it’s not that distance in tone itself that bothers me, but rather the engineered nostalgia of all those freaking VH1 specials, that any time before this moment gets this sepia “Oh, we’ll never see the likes of those days again”-treatment. The avoidance of dealing with and living in the now. We’re squandering our current minutes and hours because we’re being told and told that it’s just not, it just can’t be, as good as some impossible Then.

And. At the same time.
There’s the fact that of course, I don’t hate it. Not part and parcel. A few weeks ago, my dear, dear friend had a skating party for her birthday and a gang of us dressed up in pink tights and leg-warmers and danced and skated to JJ Fad and Nu Shooz. What is the difference. We were skate-dancing with pure abandon, and I did feel a comforting camaraderie among all of us there, a return to being ten and in Girl Scouts and rolling around and around those wood floors under the multicolored lights.

I haven’t figured out how to reconcile it. I do know that I don’t like being told how to feel by the media, and maybe it comes down to that. Whether it’s my idea or yours that I should now Remember 1998. (Ah, we’ll never see the likes of those days again…hah.)

So. In this spirit, here’s my latest confession.

The top songs I’ve been listening to while washing face and brushing zee teeth and otherwise getting ready for bed in the artsy garret™ are the following:
1. “The Eagle”
2. “The Name of the Game”
(both by Abba)
3. “Hysteria”
by Def Leppard
4. “Heart and Soul”
by D’Pau (roller-skating one-hit-wonder song of my youth)

I entreat you to write in, to supply your own. No one’s telling us to do this, Henshaw. It’s just between me and you, with your anonymous internet-moniker. And I won’t tell.