Tag Archives: nostalgia

There’s a Duran Duran documentary on Netflix that I decided to watch last week. And I *LOVED* it.

Wow. The memories. Not just the music, which is really vivid. I bought all three of the first albums and played them to death. Songs that I haven’t thought about in eons popped back into my head, lyrics and all.

But the whole thing. The videos which were on all the time. The fashion. The insane pop stardom. I had photos on my college room wall.

It’s a great documentary. They are so charming now and told a great story.

I never saw the band live. And I never saw Power Station or Arcadia.

Except.

I remembered that I went to an in-store at Licorice Pizza — I want to say this was in Ventura and it was probably 1985. Maybe 1984. I remembered these amazing photos.

We didn’t get inside. We waited around the parking lot and I don’t remember who all was there except for John Taylor. Maybe he was the only one?

Please enjoy these amazing photos of John Taylor. What a day! hehe.

I kept a journal back in those days and I dragged it out and paged through it so see if I could dredge up any details. The info *might* be in there but the journal is terrifying and should be burned. It mostly talks about how badly I thought I needed to lose weight and how much I partied.

FOR PAGES AND PAGES.

I finally joined a streaming thing — I know, what is the opposite of early adopter? I don’t know why the idea of a monthly subscription irks me so much since I used to buy 2-3 albums/CDs or similar media per month. CDs were $15-20 each in the 90s and sometimes I was replacing media I’d already purchased in an earlier format.

But also I hardly ever listen to music anymore. But maybe I will now. Time for my Duran Duran playlist. (Or songlist, as I called it earlier when I was talking to Bob.)

(edited to add: I can’t even do calendars right. Clearly Tuesday was not “the day” — today is the day. Happy Thanksgiving. xo)

Three more posts — I am running out of juice.

Another one of our favorite downtown food carts just ended their business. This has been our go-to burrito cart for years.

There are still a few carts close to the office but the food cart culture is mostly elsewhere these days.

We’ve been going to Fuego (the cart) once a week since we found out they were closing.

Another long gone cart: Go Fish — they had really yummy soup and made these little cheesy biscuit things in the shape of a fish. There was Shelly’s burrito cart. There was the whole giant pod on SW Alder where a fancy hotel/condo building went up and they were supposed to create a space for food carts but mysteriously it hasn’t opened yet.

I had to get a medical test down by the south riverfront (is that what they call this area?) and took a few photos from the hallway. This was a couple of months ago. I completely forgot I had these. This one is looking south — you can see the tram tower. The photo below looks north and you can see the Willamette River.

Bob gave me a book called “We Had A Little Real Estate Problem” (Not an affiliate link, I don’t have those anymore.)

The book is about Native comedians and quite a bit is about Charlie Hill.

At one point, Charlie Hill is in an episode of The Bionic Woman. which I *loved* as a kid. I went and found the episode on Roku channel and watched it.

It aired in the 70s so obviously Charlie is a magical NDN and there is a magical amulet and lot of goofy “my soul your soul” talk that’s super ridiculous. At that age I think I was oblivious to NDN representation in the media. I have no memory of seeing this so I can’t create some tale of how I was moved to see a Native person on TV. The episode was kinda vague — it seemed like they were romantic but the actual words made it like they were friends.

In the comedian book, Charlie said that he and Lindsay were into each other but she was so famous at the time and her handlers discouraged them from having an interracial relationship. Yikes.

It was still fun to watch. I love how Jamie had such amazing hair that she flipped around while doing her bionic things. There is also a moment when she turned around: Ditto jeans! They had a very distinct seam on the butt. I had Ditto jeans! I think I had light blue corduroy Dittos. What a great memory.

I just finished rewatching the entire series of Friends. 236 episodes. I never watched more than 1 a day and sometimes would go a week or longer without watching an episode so it took at least a couple of years.

May 6 was the 20 year anniversary since the airing of the series finale.

I’ve seen a few episodes here and there since then but I never did a re-watch from beginning to end. The show holds up for me. I think Season 5 is the best — every episode is a classic.

For individual episodes: the one with Phoebe’s “my eyes! my eyes!”, the one with Monica and Ross’s routine, and the one with “PIVOT!” are my favorite.

At work, if we’re ever in a meeting and someone uses pivot, my colleague and I will spend the rest of the day exclaiming “PIVOT!” with Ross intonation and die laughing every time.

We lost Matthew Perry during my rewatch. I had already decided to skip his memoir but I ended up getting the audiobook- which he reads. It wasn’t sad in the moment because while he was reading it to me, he was there. But the end was super sad because he was so optimistic about his future. I should rephrase this because the memoir itself is really sad. This guy had troubles from a young age and I think getting so much fame and money so early on top of that made things tough for him.

After all that I re-watched the reunion show which was aired in 2021 so the audience is sparse and many are wearing masks. The reunion show was so enjoyable and well done. I could watch the cast reacting to their own bloopers all day. The other night I dreamed I was watching Friends with Matt LeBlanc. He was very nice and we were both laughing hysterically.

I wish I had some clever concluding thoughts but as always, this has been sitting half-written for two days and if I don’t finish now, I don’t know when I can get back to it. I will say this, the show was whatever the opposite of a perfect storm would be: the creators, writers and cast were fabulous and came together perfectly. There is no other show like it.

This is what a busy intersection in downtown Portland looks like on a weekday during quarantine. It was painful not to be able to take advantage of all that street parking.

When I was in elementary school the playground had a set of hanging rings in a circle — I can’t believe I can’t find a photo of this type of thing to link to. I guess this isn’t hasn’t been normal playground equipment in eons.

They were tricky to do — you had to learn how to swing your body around to get from one to the next and then you needed to time it just right so you could re-catch the swinging rings once you completed the circle and were going for another round.

I finally learned how to do it. I think maybe me and a friend rode our bikes over there on weekends to practice? I don’t think there would have been enough time at recess. There was always a line to get on and if you were taking a turn and you missed the next ring you had to jump off and let the next person go.

On Fridays after school there was a contest on the playground for who could catch the most rings and I thought I had a chance. I was really timid in elementary school (or my entire life) so it was a big deal that I even tried.

I made it the first lap around but couldn’t figure out the timing and I can still clearly see myself hanging from one arm back and forth trying to catch that swinging ring.

The girl who won was one grade ahead and the mean older sibling of one of my friends. She won the contest every week. I can’t remember the prize. Candy?

These are my flowerbeds 2 weeks ago. It would have been headline news if not for all the other stuff going on. Long gone by now.

When I was a freshman in high school I arrived at my locker one morning and someone had hastily scrawled “plastic and pasty” in pencil across it in small letters.

Because of course I did, I fretted about this.

Was this intended for me? If so, what did it mean? It’s a strange insult.

Did people thing I was plastic? Or pasty? I didn’t have a huge circle of friends or enemies. I kept to myself so it was unlikely that I had stirred up trouble with someone.

Plastic I can guess — phony? At that age anyone can be accused of acting phony. But pasty? Pale?

I didn’t erase it, I left it there. I mostly hoped the message wasn’t aimed at me.

But 40 something years later I still remember it. I can picture the exact location of my locker — I can’t remember my locker location for any other year.