While I’m blogging…

In the last couple of weeks my loving look back to the early nineties has sometimes brought a tear (of joy, of course) to my eye. Witness the journey:

- a few weeks ago, Renda brought her old cds to the office. I filled in some of the gaps in my nineties music collection, including: the complete Beat Happening discography, a random Bratmobile album, Slanted and Enchanted, and some later Belle and Sebastian. That weekend, at an unrelated brunch, the formation of a Vaselines “tribute” band was discussed. Look out for us (Man / Boy) in Summer 08 when we tackle the Vaselines 19 songs.

- one Sunday morning, while riding the subway listening to the aforementioned Bratmobile album, I realized that although Riot Grrrl as a philosophy was hugely influential to me as a middle schooler, the music itself was not to a large extent, uh, listenable. (Disclosure: While in middle school I tried to form a riot grrrl band. It was fun but didn’t last long. The drummer had every distortion pedal known to man, and I liked that part a lot.)

- this led later that day to the attempted rental of the (not-so, sadly) classic romance Untamed Heart. For those of you unfamiliar with this 1993 gem starring Christian Slater, Marissa Tomei, and Rosie Perez, it’s set in snowy Minneapolis. Christian plays a busboy with major social anxiety – he doesn’t speak to anyone. We later learn that he is an orphan and he grew up thinking he had a monkey heart. Really! And Marissa Tomei, the too-nice girl-next-door, falls for him big time. It’s so good and heartbreaking and weird. There is no movie like this one.

- Sadly, the video store didn’t stock this film (”I’ve worked here for a long time, and no one’s EVER asked for Untamed Heart,” said the clerk. He knew everything about the movie, however, including the original title The Baboon Heart, which we both agreed would have been better.). Instead I rented Singles, which is much more fun to watch in your twenties than your teens. I also BOUGHT Untamed Heart (which you are free to borrow!) and …

- Don’t Need You: The Herstory of Riot Grrrl , a documentary as good as it sounds. I was TOTALLY inspired by Kathleen Hanna, her first Bikini Kill concert in D.C., Ian McKaye talking about how she killed it. I was totally inspired by the riot grrrl convention, the riot grrrl manifesto, the zine-making, etc. I am so happy to be reminded of these things, and somewhat sad that I was too young for this at the time.

- Last but not least, in the spirit of all this goodness, I revisited my Sassy collection. Sassy, perhaps the most important publication for young women of a certain age and interest level between 1988 and 1994, has been sitting preserved on my bookshelf for the last 13 years. I discovered in this recent perusal not one but two gems from the October 1990 issue. 1) A Twin Peaks inspired fashion shoot. 2) Ian Svenonius as Sassiest Boy in America. This confirms my suspicions that Sassy was perhaps the best thing that could ever have happened to me. I have been excited to share these discoveries with others, including some 90s DC’ers, who had indeed heard of this Sassiest Boy in America article, but never seen the artifact. They say they remembered that haircut.

All in all, the nineties are alive in our hearts and minds, and maybe better than we remember.