After all the stoushing of recent days here and elsewhere, I think it’s time for another thread where stoushes are forbidden and good nature rules.
Discussion starter - on the 8th anniversary of Diana’s death, is this claim that the 90s were a more innocent and fun time than the 00s valid? I think it’s significant that we still don’t have a decent name for this decade. “The best music from the 80s, 90s, and now” as one Brisbane radio station tagline has it doesn’t cut it - a song released in 2001 is hardly “now”. Michelle Branch anyone? Pre-serial marriage Britney? Or are decades and comparisons between them so last millennium?
The Naughties, of course!
I spent large swathes of the 90s as a student, or muso layabout. Much naughtier time had by all IMHO.
EP, is it not the ‘noughties’, for full pun effect?
It’s not the decade that counts, it’s the person within it.
For Happy Things that Make Me Happy and Non Stoushful, I give you …. Mr Squiggle! With all the other news on the front page today, it was lovely to see this article. I was flooded with warm memories and it is my contribution to the good nature of this thread. He is more a part of my 80s though. I have no great cultural comment but my 00s are/have been much better than my 90s, all that stupid teen/early 20s angsty shit well out of the way. Stupid angsty late 20s shit is at least more fun.
Did Diana really die 8 years ago? Wow. Her funeral was on the night before my sister’s wedding, we watched it on the TV in the corner of the room while having dinner at the Newcastle Workers Club bistro. All class, us mob. Anyway I was due to read a passage at the wedding 1 Corintians 13, the love bit, which I practised and practised only to have my thunder well and truly stolen when bloody Tony Blair read the same thing at the funeral and was universally acclaimed for it. “Oh yes yes Amanda, you were very good, but did you see that Tony Blair? Oh he was so marvellous blah blah blah.”
Never liked him since.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s we had glasnost and perestroika culminating in major nuclear disarmament initiatives and the swift and largely peaceful collapse of Stalinism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. We also had the surge in environmental awareness and activity associated with the Brundtland Commission and culminating in the 1992 Rio World Conference on Environment and Development. In Australia, whilst we had “the recession we had to have”, we also had the liberal social policies and enlightened environmental policies of the Hawke Government; the subsequent rewrite of history to claim that these policies were electorally bad for Labor had to wait until after Keating lost in 1996 (after substantially retreating from some of Hawke’s most important commitments in these areas). Also, the songs were a lot better than they are now. The 1990s (or at least the early part of them) were largely lived out in the glow of optimism provided by these developments; the name “George Bush” stood for someone more, rather than less, moderate and intelligent than Ronald Reagan, and Osama Bed Linen sounded like something you’d buy on the 3rd floor of Myers.
Noughties, Kim, noughties.
And I found out the Diana news in the relaxing room of the Korean Bathhouse in Brisbane. Whole bunch of really sad wet chicks lounging in towels, and me.
Oh, derr me. Nab’s comment came up first and I missed the early noughties.
In other happy news, the thinking girls’ ABC sex symbol, Adam Hills, last night revealled he had lived in Sweden for a year. I would like to thank you Evil, for making me feel such pleasure anytime anyone says anything at all about Sweden.
Lemme guess, Zoe: your towel was wet, but your humour was dry?
I was just glad to get some more relaxing room in the bath, Fyodor - it’s only a little bathhouse. Although I did have some very elegant porcelain Royal Wedding souvenirs as a schoolgirl.
You should try the Korean Bathhouse in Sydney. The full pounding massage and body scrub after alternating baths, wet & dry saunas leave one feeling like a shiny slinky noodle. And a coupla dozen coldies.
Oh, I am an old friend of that Bathhouse, Fyodor. Wonder if I’ve seen you popping in sometime?
I don’t know what they wear on the blokey side, but little Korean ladies walking over your back in saggy cotton bras and knickers is very therapeutic.
I got weirded out by opening up the wrong door once, and finding a little room with lots of resting kids in it, the women’s children. And according to reports last time I was in town, things had got a bit grotty in the Bathhouse itself.
Ah, nuff said, Zeta. Mayhap you have seen me there, but it’s been a while since my last visit.
Unfortunately, the blokes don’t get little women in knickers. We get little Korean men with hands like jackhammers and the beady look in the eye that can only come from a deeply-rooted Napoleon complex.
Goodness. 8 years ago. I remember I was in Canada at the time… at a BBQ. At a big rich house on a river. And they had a jet ski. And I got in big trouble because as a callow 18 year old I said “oh, poor woman, but can we talk about something else?”
I turned 22 in 2000 so the late 90s were indeed my seminal young adult days, so of course I regard them as being more carefree and innocent. Because I was more carefree and innocent.
From the 90s I have memories of high school and travelling overseas and my first couple of years of uni, of falling madly in love with various people, of trying various substances for the first time, of the music I loved and Doc Martens and so on, watching Buffy the Vampire slayer, and so on.
After 2000 everything changed for me, I entered the workforce and life got a whole lot less fun. Adult responsibilities and all. Daily grind. The world did seem to change but I think it was my life which changed more.
Oh, Princess Di. I remember being glued to my tv to watch her wedding as an impressionable teenager. I even had a Lady Di haircut! (Which I won’t post because Harry has topped the bad hair stakes.)
I never really followed her in the in-between years, too busy having my own life, but when she died it was like such a bookend that I remember it clearly.
The day she died was the Naming Day for my son. We’d spent the day cutting cakes and singing over him and laughing, then someone who had said goodbye and gone to their car dashed back in and said that Princess Di had died in a car crash. Instantly the laughter stopped and the tv went on, much to the disgust of all the men in the room, who were shushed at every scoff. We’d all watched the wedding, we’d all noticed the magazine covers out of the corner of our eyes, we’d all been through horrible relationships with older men (me especially), so we just felt like we owed it to her to watch.
And as silly as it sounds, it was our JFK moment, although I think 9/11 has eclipsed it a tad.
*Fashion alert*
Watching Lateline, it occurred that the Naked Feminist Knitting Circle should be aware that Kevin Rudd, like yours truely, has now abandoned those idiotic little spectacle frames that have ruled for the past 10 years or so.
Just notin’
Yes, and now he needs to move on from the bowlcut.
Gaze not into that upturned bowl we call the Kruddster
for he impotently moves, as you or I.
While I puzzle over that poetry dear Lefty, can I note that I knew the trend was doomed the minute it was embraced by the dreaded Costa.
Let’s hope it can be contained cs.
That’s yer Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam. Original verison has sky, rather than my more contemporary use of Kruddster.
He’s still the best on offer, for my money.
Tony Jones has of course long abandoned the small frames.
And while on the topic, the no frame at all is pure rodent alert.
Remember Janine Haynes’ specs? Like a business version of 70s disco sunnies.
Classic hits and memories.
Faulks, to this day, also takes me back to somewhere …
Where, pray tell, Zoe, is the Korean Bathhouse in Brisbane? Never heard of same in 37 years living hear. Some other types of bathhouse that used to be over at the Gabba - yeah. But not a Korean one.
Was helping a friend to pick some new frames - the no frame look doesn’t look good on anyone as far as I can work out.
Mark, it’s at the Diana Plaza hotel, on Annerly Road in South Brisbane.
You don’t quite get the same delicious feeling you get in Sydney, where you walk out all squeaky clean into the middle of the grotty Cross, but it’s still fun. (And you can park in the hotel at the Sydney one rather than battling for on-street parking - just tell ‘em you’re going to the bathhouse at the carpark entry. This has been a community service announcement.)
Ah that’s just next to my Dentist, Zoe - not an area with positive associations for me!
My grandmother picked a dentist next to the pub so she could have a stiff brandy first. Wise woman.
You’ll be a lot more kindly disposed to the whole area after a bath, promise.
Ok - will try!
I will defend Elvis Costello style little glasses to the death! Particularly in red.
So twentieth century, Kate - although there will always be a cute red exception.
So what is the new trend in spectacles cs?
There’s no way I’m going back to the huge round bookworm frames of my early teens, which covered at least 80 percent of my face. If they come back in fashion, I’m going to go for laser eye surgery.
Don’t know about babes Kate, but for guys it’s gone back to mid-size (cerrtainly not Haynes/Faulkner huge), with v. thin and v. light metal frames, mostly elegant greys, although the Rudster seems to have gone for a rather groovy blue.
I don’t dare enter the field of women’s fashion, but as I recently undertook an intense study tour of all the trendoid spectacle shops in syd-en-ey’s eastern suburbs, I can assure you that the Rudster is right on the money for guys this year. My costa-little-black set are now three cycles ago.
Rimless frames ah la the rodent also tend to remind me of a certain officer class ah la 1940-45. Just observin’
The perennial David Letterman question - why do old guys always wear big glasses?
Yes the rimless glasses do have an air of denial about them. I tried some on last time I got glasses (about this time last year) and didn’t like them at all. I’ve gone the black-rimmed oblong look now - which makes a change for me, used to be John Lennonish owl glasses before.
The major issue, for me, is that the best looking frames have small lens surface areas, which can make it hard to fit multifocal lenses into. If those 80s style glasses come back in I’ll just have to adopt the Mr Magoo squint.
I couldn’t help thinking Ruddy’s statesmanlike gig on Lateline tended to put Kimbo’s walky-talky telephone stunt somewhat in the shade last night.
I don’t know if anyone saw the excellent show on Spitfire pilots on the ABC last night. One of the WW2 vets they talked to had THE most enormous pair of eyebrows I’ve ever seen. But no glasses.
And go the Kruddster!