Regrettable Yesteryear

As a person born too late to really remember the '90s, as in the '90s, my main recollections are of boy bands and Sugar Ray. Like, I remember actually sitting there with a cd player or a radio, listening to them. Other music was filtered into my subconcious such that as a result, I can recognize a large variety of music that I can't really recall listening to. This was the kind've stuff my mom would play when I was little, but the music I actually sought out for a short period of time was N'SYNC and Backstreet Boys. I missed the early nineties, the substance of it, the stuff that's still remembered, for better or for worse.

What this means now is that I have a deep, impassioned appreciation for the '90s as they were outside my tiny sphere. This means also that I am deeply wounded whenever someone old enough to really remember that decade, the feel of it, the sound and the smell of it, totally disses it. They recall this last decade of the twentieth century as sucking massively, but as someone who came of age in the beginning of this millenium, the '90s was the last great attempt at a real subculture. It was right before people became easily accessible and capable of spilling their sick, perverted guts all over the Internet. The intentions were already there, but as of yet they had not found their outlet. The music was an outlet of sorts, but now it's faded into the background of yesteryear.

The nineties pulled the curtains shut; it was the last chance to create anything even seemingly original, and now we're stuck in the future, full of cancerous pedophilia, and the most terrible, tasteless music.

Things I've Noticed Watching X-Men: Evolution

1. Professor X relies on Jean Gray, the young, attractive sweet-talking telepath, to recruit new teenaged X-Men before Mystique can. She keeps failing, though.

2. Scott (Cyclops) is a terrible whiner; he's meant to be the "attractive" one, since Wolverine's a little old for the show's demographic. And despite his laser beam-powered eyes, all he can do is knock people around. He can blow up walls, but other people just get the wind knocked out of them.

3. If Jean Gray also has telekinesis, and she happens to get caught by the bad guys and tied up, can't she use her powers to untie herself?

4. Storm drives Professor X around in his car like his personal black chauffeur. I mean, come on, hasn't the Professor heard of hand-powered brakes? I thought he was supposed to be a genius. He also still hasn't mastered stairs in his wheelchair (which is weirdly cumbersome, even being what it is).

5. Don't these kids ever just sit around and eat pizza?

I Satisfy My Own Requirements

I don't see that there's anything wrong with "good enough," as long as it really is good enough for you. It doesn't seem like people necessarily need everything to be perfect, we just all have a complex (at least Americans do) about never settling for less. Sure, people settle for things all the time, but isn't there always this nagging voice in the back of their heads, saying, "Why the fuck did you settle?? Why didn't you do more, try harder?" When we go through primary school, the message is usually to shoot for the moon, at least in the media and through endless subliminal wording. Not that you're actually capable, but that you really have to try, because we're Americans for chrissake, that's what our Constitution is all about.

The problem, really, is that people are fed an ever-evolving but always-unattainable American Dream, and so we're never allowed to be satisfied with anything that's just "good enough."

I Never Want To See This Again

I finally watched Aviator last night. Let me add that Leonardo DiCaprio looks a lot like my brother. His facial contortions every time his OCD started acting up really freaked me out. Both because I felt really sorry for Howard Hughes as a person, suffering so much as he did from this disorder, and also because I could feel my own stomach clench up in knots as though I suffered as well. I mean, guy broke out in a sweat, he was seriously wigging the fuck out. I can't explain it more than that, especially if you haven't seen the movie or didn't get the same feeling.

[Spoiler warning, stop reading now]

And, oh my god, the crash scene, that just about killed me! Seeing him buckled in but thrown back and forth, bloodied and on fire, I thought I was going to be sick. I can't imagine seeing that on the big screen, I think I would have had a goddamned heart attack.

[End of potential spoiler]

All that aside, I thought it was a good movie. It'd be funny if it was a ride at a theme park, like the kind where you're strapped into a movie theater seat and it jerks around with the action going on onscreen. Those so-called "rides" are awesome!