I wasn't kidding

Another early '90s tune, a barely remembered classic (at least to my ear)--Kym Sims, "Too Blind to See It," which tiptoed into the US Top 40 way back in in 1992 but which stomped its foot on position 5 in the UK charts.

Funny that. I was once again more tuned into what was going on in music in Britain way back when (rave, Kylie Minogue, The Shamen, Q magazine), even when it was essentially American music playing on BBC Radio One. Wrong country, wrong time.

I made my first trip to the UK in 1993, when I probably should have gone in 1983 or before, being more new wave than rave. Nevertheless, it was fun being there in the summer of '93, INXS playing a concert in some pub, videos for The Shamen on giant screens on Oxford or some other high street, the secret wish that I'd see Kylie in some random shop. The best I managed was Eric Bogosian, Annie Lenox (sort of--she regularly had lunch in Crouch End, where I was staying), and some unknown Brit actor that I recognized from American TV, forgotten to me now.

I just wish I could have stayed longer. But, really, balding at the ripe old age of 32 and decidedly not stylish like perhaps I was for one brief, well-put-together moment in the '80s, I already felt out of shape and out of place in any sort of under-25, G.A.Y.-oriented environment. Alas and alack. The amount of time I have spent in my life worrying that I was too old, too ugly, or too unhip. What a waste.

Anyway, Kym Sims. This is a great song and an alright video, so evocative of the era, musically, stylistically, and crazy camera-anglely. What is up with those rapid close-ups and reverse-outs? And that dancing--much faster than the song itself, very out of sync. Silly.

And pre-Worldwide Web as well. Imagine having to get all your music news from magazines and BBC broadcasts, letters from friends, and the occasional foray overseas. Yes. Really. That's the way it worked.

To be honest, I miss it. Oh, I love the Web and I make use of it thousands of times per day--and looky, even to write this blog that I'm never sure anyone's actually reading. I met my current boyfriend thanks to the Web, keep up with friends and make new ones through it, do my serious and fun research thanks to it, shop, read, work, stay up-to-date on current events and cultural happenings, goof around, play games, and generally eat, sleep, and breathe it. It makes me more sedentary perhaps, but it also helps me to "travel" through my conversations with others. And it makes me much less lonely than I might have been during my extended sentence in the hell that is Pittsburgh.

But, still, nostalgia. A couple of weeks back I went to a bookstore--yes, a bookstore!--a new one opened by a friend of mine here in town. How fun and exciting it was just to browse in a bookstore again and buy whatever struck my fancy.

Sure, we can do that in a way through hyperlinking and web-surfing, but . . . it just seems different now, more passive, less interactive, than going to a physical store and searching through the shelves, stacks, and bins.

Maybe it's a Pittsburgh thing or a small city thing, living in a place that doesn't have enough people and disposable income to support more retail. We still have a couple of contemporary music stores and some fantastic vinyl shops. We seem to be seeing a resurgence of bookstores, with two now open in Squirrel Hill after a few years of bookstore death. There are some other types of shops as well--cards, gifts, housewares, design, etc. They are few and far between, though, not nearly prevalent or promoted enough.

But do I go to them? No, not really. Rarely, in fact.

Some of it is due to money--trying to be wise with it for a change and not spend it on more stuff that I don't need or will have to pack and move at some point. Some of it is due to focusing on my true interests--music and media, mostly, when it used to be more about music, books, clothes, and food.

But, all in all, I'm just not that interested, and I'd really rather . . . live, work, and shop online.

And watch early '90s videos, remembering when, twenty years ago, and who I was then and reconciling it with who and where I am now.

God help me, I've rediscovered the early '90s

I really don't know what triggered it--maybe a message from a friend reminding that it was 20 years ago when Kylie Minogue released "Put Yourself in My Place" or the Nirvana/Kurt Cobain tributes of late--but I have suddenly remembered the '90s.

Not all of the '90s, mind you, but just certain moments, mostly related through pop music.

It was 23 years ago that I left Washington for greener pastures. It was 21 years ago that went to grad school to be a librarian. It was 19 years ago that I accepted my first library job and moved to Texas.
I was aged 30 to 33 during that era. I went to my first (and only) rave. I hung out with kids younger than me in grad school. I was one of the younger people in management when I made it up the ranks of my career ladder. And yet I felt old then, or at least older than the people I would have considered my contemporaries--new library school grads, new librarians, many of my friends.

Imagine me now: Twenty years later, I feel positively ancient.

It is what it is, and I think I'm coping with getting older these days, much better than I did when I turned 50 a couple of years back.

Nevertheless, I'm feeling a little nostalgic for early '90s music and style (I would have totally worn D:Ream's windowpane check suit, although 10 years earlier), trying to remember myself then before things got busy, I moved around a lot, and 20 years slipped by in a blink.

Perhaps, too, it's a way to come to grips with the middling present. In some ways, relationship-wise, I'm happier and more satisfied than I've ever been. In others--the lack of friends nearby, the sense that the culture has changed too much and has passed me by, and work, above all else, work--I am not so happy.

So a return to 1990-1995 is in order. It's a way to help me remember who I was then, compare it to who I am now, and try to remember what I wanted out of my life.

Before another 20 years passes me by. Before it's too late to do anything about it.

Exterminate!

On the next episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor finally regenerates in female form as an African high priestess.

Meanwhile, in a vain attempt to appear more happenin', the Daleks don gold lamé Members Only jackets, then borrow some old robes from an Enigma video shoot to change up their winter wardrobe.

Just add Ecstasy. And patchouli-wearing, techno-loving Hippies.

* * *

I kid, but "L.S.I. (Love Sex Intelligence)" is one of my favorite songs from the '90s and I'd even say in my Top 25 for all-time pop favorites.

But the video, not so much.

Like me, the video has not aged nearly as well as the Doctor. But then I don't get a new body and face every time my contract runs out.

The video is definitely a product of its era--rave culture, which I only briefly experienced in my early 30s, way too late for it to have any effect. I already felt too old in my 20s; by the time rave got going, I was positively ancient.

Ancients of Mu. Heh.

Was this the beginning of Cool Britannia? Perhaps. After the synergy of the 1980s, I do think this is the point at which British and American pop culture began to diverge radically, at least for a period of time. First rave, techno, Madchester, and drum and bass; then Oasis, Blur, Suede, Lush, and all those other one-word bands. I don't know if they would qualify as shoe-gazers, but the era does seem full of navel-gazing.

But then, that's the experience of a then-30something American, who was living in Texas at the point, one who was well placed outside of the Gulf Stream of pop culture, one who had a better handle on what was happening in the states (Mexican and American) that bordered the Gulf of Mexico than he did on the sound of a bright cool Britain.

Would I do it differently? Should I have stayed in the mainstream rather than a backwater? I don't know. Sometimes I feel as though I missed out on something, excising myself from Washington, D.C. (a backwater in its own way, at least as far as happenin' international pop culture is concerned), at the beginning of the '90s.

However, I'm not sure I missed out on enough to make me truly regretful--other than for my lost youth in general.

* * *

Feh, regrets, I've had a few, but I've done it mostly my way so far. And yet, there has been this nagging question throughout my life: Canoe on the bayou or kayak on the raging river? April shower or eye of the hurricane? Champagne bubbles or supernova? Manhattan, Kansas, or Manhattan, New York City?

This feeling got to me again on a recent trip to Toronto, in which our hero, unable to find suitable parking at any West End TTC subway station, attempted to drive via Dundas, Bloor, and a number of wrong turns into the artificial heart of Hogtown. Mission accomplished, physically and vehicularly unscathed but psychologically frazzled, a situation made no better by the sky-high parking rates, humidity, and sensory overload of Buskerfest. (Not an intentional destination, I can assure you.)

I realize at moments like this that I'm not Kingston--a place visited in the spring for a job interview--but I'm not necessarily Toronto either. If anything, I'm more Montreal, a large city in which I feel extraordinarily comfortable--serene, sophisticated, soul-nourished, stimulated, safe, satisfied.

Which is problematic when the man you love lives in the TO suburbs and is unlikely to shift from that spot anytime soon.

This is also problematic because I haven't had a clue on what to do next for a couple of years now, and I don't have the stomach for more of the same. No plan, no direction, no emphasis, no ideas of any permanence.

You could say I'm living more in the moment than I ever have. But you might also say I'm rudderless, listing, unable to see beyond the end of my small craft. The world looks flat from this vantage. I could fall off the edge at any moment.

Forget the peace at last vs. blitzkrieg bop metaphors. This is more rock-meets-hard place, a spot that is hardly comfortable but all too familiar.

Whoa!

Where to begin with this one?

My friend, the Music Lover, and I were out shopping on Saturday and made our regular pilgrimage to Barnes & Noble, the last-man-standing of the big-box book, DVD, and music retailers, at least in little ol' Steeltown USA.

While the Music Lover busied himself with a purpose (and not a dubious one, finding for sale the final season of Secret Diary of a Call Girl), I wasted a few more precious moments of oxygen scouring the bargain bin for, hope against hope, something worthy. And cheap.

And, lo, I was rewarded! Here was something cheap and worthy--for me to poop on! A 10-episode (count 'em, 10!) DVD collection of "very special episodes" of early '90s nominally successful TV series, Blossom, starring Mayim Bialik as the titular character, TV journeyman Ted Wass as "Dad," and he-of-the-formerly-auburn-locks-and-snug-fitting-blue-jeans Joey Lawrence as the the guy who said "Whoa!" a lot.

How to explain Blossom? It was 'tween when 'tween wasn't quite yet cool or at least ubiquitous. The storyline was essentially this: Blossom's mother abandoned the family to pursue her own life and career interests. As a result, Blossom's cool Dad of a session musician was struggling to raise young Blossom (get it? Blossom? Young, sweet, just beginning to grow and come into her own? Do we need to spell it out for you?!), her dumb jock brother Joey (sort of Justin Bieber for 15 minutes in 1993, but with better hair and a penis), and the other one, played by Michael Stoyanov, a recovering drug addict and alcoholic.

Add in Blossom's quirky, sidekick friend Six, and hijinx and hilarity ensue.

In the '90s, this was known as family comedy. In the 2010s, this would be known as a cry for help resulting in a Child Protective Services order.

For someone so disparaging, I do know a little too much about Blossom, don't I? You caught me out: I vaguely remember watching episodes of the show (at least ten very special ones, I'm sure) on Friday nights with an old boyfriend, Moody Cat, during the early '90s. For me, part of the show's lingering . . . appeal? . . . fascination? . . . trainwreckification? . . . was this: Moody Cat did the best imitation of Blossom's goofy, too-cute charm. Sort of a misshapen smile with the word "Heeee!" gurgled out softly and finished off over a slightly protruding tongue between the teeth. "Aren't I just the cutest thing?" was the text (it was Blossom; there was no subtext). I can't convey it here, or really at all. You just had to be there. It may be the only fond memory I have of that relationship and 1993.

To me, the show never seemed to find its surest footing (was it a comedy? was it a drama? was it a parody?) and appears to me now to be another fine example of how pop culture went straight into the toilet immediately after 1985. Seriously, who but a misanthrope or an imbecile (or a stage mother) would dress the show's star in a crazy-old-lady sunflower hat and slipcover of a dress and try to sell the concept as "fun" to tween girls? They got Joey Lawrence right--every tween girl (and then some) would want to have sex with him, even if they didn't quite know what sex was yet. (This was the early '90s after all.) And Dad-as-cool-musician would appeal as well. But extra-brother-as-recovering-social-realist-drug-addict, this was a good character exploration for whom exactly? And Mom-as-absent-yet-constantly-present-specter in the lives of Blossom's family? Yeesh. I'm beginning to understand why the mother abandoned the family in the first place.

Despite my old boyfriend's snarky imitation, Mayim Bialik was never the problem with Blossom. (Really, weren't there enough already?) She's gone on to an advanced degree in neuroscience from UCLA and a guest starring role on The Big Bang Theory as Amy Farrah Fowler, Sheldon's intellectual peer, arrogant fellow traveler, and sorta-kinda girlfriend. You go, Blossom!

So, like the DVD cover tantalizes, if you want to "see how it all began!" for Mayim (and where it all ended for the other actors on the show), be sure to stop by the $4.99-or-less bin at your local Barnes & Noble.

While supplies last.

Don't rush.