2004-05-22

Blast from the past

I've been in the process of a major house-purge, ever since Lexi hepped me to a giant multi-hipster yahhhd sale that's taking place over at T. Max's place on June 12. Seriously, chickens, this is going to be some hot shit.

So I've been ruthlessly whipping through the closets and bookshelves, ridding myself once and for all of:

• all items with dubious sentimental value, like the fuckin' Sailor Moon crap I bought up when I was 25 and thought was cute to own in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that I was 25
• dresses that might fit if I lose 5 more pounds, maybe
• books that I barely got through in graduate school but that I mistakenly believe make me look all well-read and shit
• just plain weird stuff, like the Eva Gabor wig that's still in its pink, Eva Gabor'd box

I haven't even put a dent in it all.

Another thing I've been doing is going through all the "time capsule/time bomb" bags that are all over my house. Bike messenger bags and knapsacks that just get all stuffed with crap to the point where I just start a new bag. Very interesting stuff. In a "Hello Kitty" backpack that I was totin' when I was far, far too old to be doing so, I found a folder full of some writing I'd done back in '98, for a website run by a pal of mine, which was called "The Daily Review." The premise of the site was pretty simple: a handful of us were allowed to write reviews of whatever we wanted. This yielded reviews on everything from albums to biscuits-n-gravy. The site itself is no longer around, and I'd been kicking myself for ages for not saving some of the stuff I'd posted.

The thing was, was that I HAD. Being that this was 1998, I'm pretty sure that I was drunk when I printed out a bunch of my reviews for "posterity," and crammed these into my very professional-looking "Hello Kitty" backpack before running outside somewhere to puke.

Here, for your reading enjoyment, are a couple of reviews from said site:

Monday, February 9th, 1998: SURGE
"That new Surge soda from Coca Cola stinks. I'm not kidding." -- Evan Dorkin
I had a can of this at my parents' house last weekend. I made the mistake of pouring it into a glass, so I actually got to see what color it was, which is, um, disturbingly similar to what shows up in the toity after you've had two cups of coffee and a multi-vitamin. Sorry to gross you all out, but it's true. And the packaging sucks, too. For some reason, its design reminded me of the Saturday morning "Plasticman" cartoons from the early 80's, which were originally kind of fucked-up and cool, but then went the way of all burned-out series when "Plas" married that dipshit blonde reporter and spawned "Baby Plas." That in turn reminded me of that last, dreadful season of "Mork and Mindy" where Jonathan Winters wore diapers and spewed Orkian baby-talk while calling Pam Dawber "Shoe." Then I got real depressed and dumped the rest of it down the sink while my father kept saying, "It was on sale, it was on sale." Taste-wise, it's sort of like flat Mello-Yello. Plus, it gave me a headache.

Tuesday, February 17, 1998: Ethan Hawke
"I can sound so unbelievably pretentious." -- Ethan Hawke
Uh, no -- actually I can believe this. Few celebrities can provoke such nausea in me than Mr. Ethan Hawke, actor/writer/director/putz extraordinaire. Everything about him just reeks of self-satisfaction. He's so indie, man, and yet he commands a cool mil for every shitty movie he does. He wrote a novel called "The Hottest City" some time ago, and I'm just waiting for it to show up in the remainder bins so that I might buy several copies to give to my friends who have hefty piles of pink slips and crappy day jobs, while the Ethman gets a contract just for being a goateed movie star. I have nothing against movie stars; what I have a problem with are movie stars who think they're Beats. Ethan, if and when you ever end living in Allston, MA, in a suckhole with four other goateed slobs living on Top Ramen, THEN you can wax rhapsodic about the plights of the struggling artist. Until then, get a haircut and lighten up.

lisamcc at 7:23 p.m.

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