Tag Archives: nostalgia

Here I am at our first apartment, 1997-ish, Mac Powerbook 520 with my top of the line modem.

Twenty years ago today I first started my website. I was ahead of the curve, one of the first kids on my block to have a page and then later my own domain. I blogged steadily all through the mad gold rush days of blogging when people made money posting about their pets and sandwiches. (Not me, obvs.) Now that blogs are almost dead, I am still here with the same three loyal readers.

Thank you for sticking with me.

Twenty years ago it was called a personal page and it was courtesy of my ISP (Internet Service Provider. Anyone else remember the days before giant corporations were in charge of our internet connection?) and my web address looked like this: www.teleport.com/~prentz

In those days you had to learn how to do html and build the pages yourself. It wasn’t this app-crap where you take pictures of yourself and press a button so that it’s online and then you sit back and wait for other people to press buttons so you know they like you.

The earliest version the Wayback Machine has is August 1999.

I switched to Blogger February 2001 and it looks like I got my own domain in June 2001.

Here’s my post from my ten year blogiversary.

Me and my lime green iMac.

I think I had to switch to Turdpress in 2011 and I’m still not happy about it, but here we are.

I wanted to re-create one of my older posts that I have archived but unfortunately, I just don’t have time to recreate the whole thing with the background and layout from them. There are classic ancient archives still posted that you can find here. The oldest is from our first trip to Germany for our one year anniversary in 1997, posted in 1999.

Here’s an old story 1997 from that I just put into a WordPress post. I felt it was fitting after my week with the squirrels.

Yellow Jacket Fever.

My schedule is going to be insane until the end of the month. Posting more sporadic than usual.

A couple of weeks ago I watched Desperately Seeking Susan for the first time in years and years. Back when I was girl, cable TV was the same 7 movies played over and over, sometimes for months, and I’m betting that’s where I saw this first because I know I’ve seen it numerous times.

I learned that this is the 30 year anniversary. (eek!)

First, check out this trailer. Nice voiceover! Trailers have come a long way in 30 years.

Here’s a 30 year anniversary article told in what is called “oral history” and I call: super lazy journalism. It veers into self-importance at times but there are some great tidbits in here. Like the studio saying if you put two women on the poster, people would think it’s a lesbian movie.

I had to laugh at the quote about how those empty alleys that Roberta was running down don’t even exist anymore.

As opposed to all the cities that are EXACTLY THE SAME thirty years later.

I can’t tell if the movie really holds up. It holds up for me. When it came out I was that point transitioning into adulthood and doing a miserable job of figuring out who I wanted to be. I wanted to be confident and daring like Susan. And Roberta, too.

Instead, I was socially inept to the point of stupidity. I rarely took risks and when I did, it was never a soft landing.

I was watching the movie in a particular mindset that is a strong memory.

It’s worth noting that Madonna was at the very first moments of fame here. In the history they say that when they started filming she was unknown and by the end they had to hire security. Now, it’s hard to remember a world where Madonna wasn’t famous.

A film by Cameron Crowe. Released September 1992. According to the wiki the film was completed in early 1991.

I’ve had these notes sitting here for months. I am a huge Cameron Crowe fan but I only saw this movie one time. I did not love it. I didn’t love Jerry Maguire the first time I saw it but it has grown on me since.

I saw that this was on cable and decided to re-visit to see what I thought watching it now.

I still did not love it.

The movie is set in Seattle and there’s a grunge scene plot thread and several bands including Pearl Jam and Soundgarden are in it (Or their members). As you can see from the photo above, I still own the soundtrack. I must have listened to it a million times because I remember all those songs. It includes Paul Westerberg songs that are probably among my least 2 favorite PW songs.

First, some historical tidbits since it’s hard to remember the chronology way out here in the future.

Pearl Jam released Ten in August 1991. Nevermind was released in September 1991. I always thought Nevermind came out first. It maybe be that Nevermind sold better first — I’m sure this is a researchable fact but I’m not doing any extra credit for this assignment.

It’s a single people finding love story and I didn’t like any of the people or care if they liked each other. I’m not sure if it was the performances or the characters but possibly a little of both. I kinda liked Matt Dillon – hasn’t he had an interesting career?

Here’s what I did like the second time through. Paul Giamatti. He’s in it for 10 seconds as “Kissing Man.” If you look at his bio it’s his third part after “Heckler #2” and “Larry Canipe.” Victor Garber and Tim Burton make brief appearances, too.

There’s also a bit where this woman is getting a video done for a dating service (who remembers video dating!?) and someone refers to Martin Scorsese as “Martin Score-seeze” and I sometimes use this pronunciation as a joke and I didn’t remember this is where it was from.

Finally, there is a subplot involving Seattle traffic. Crowe was so ahead of his time.

My next Cameron Crowe rewatch is Elizabethtown. I only saw that one once, too.

A phoned-in post to get me to the hump: I remember when I was in Girl Scouts we made this thing called Hobo Soup at our camp out. Every girl brought a can of soup and we dumped them into the same pot.

Doesn’t that sound like barf soup?

Amazing sky last night

I’ve had this post started for a week. I hope finally posting it will cure my What A Feeling! earworm.

I pick up the bus downtown in front of a nice restaurant.

Several months ago I saw a group of women arrive at the restaurant all dressed in off-the-shoulder t-shirt dresses and tights with leg-warmers and heels.

I went up to them and said, “I recognize the look, what’s the occasion?”

It turns out there is a musical of Flashdance.

Flashdance came out when I was a freshman in college. I sent a note to my college friends about it and we took a guffawing stroll down memory lane.

I dug around in the archives and found the DVD and I decided to watch it last weekend.

Wow. What a terrible movie. I don’t think I’ve seen it since it originally came out.

My recollection is that I liked the movie and the dancing and the music. I admired the protagonist because she was so pretty and confident and thin. And she was following her dreams!

Upon my most recent viewing I thought she was an idiot and the dancing was mostly awful. What was her boss thinking carrying on with an 18 year old? Coincidentally I turned on a crime show and there was a guest star that looked strangely familiar and I realized it was the actor who played the boss.

The movie is just a series of music videos barely held together with a dumb story about a girl who’s welder by day, exotic dancer by night, but her dream is to join a professional dance company. All the women had to do everything wearing a leotard cut up to her hip bones. Even the ice skater.

Very entertaining in a purely nostalgic way.

To conclude, I leave you with some of the poetry of the songtrack:

Locking rhythms to the beat of her heart, changing woman into life
She has danced into the danger zone, when the dancer becomes the dance!

It can cut you like a knife, if the gift becomes a fire!
On a wire between will and what will be!