...and Reality Bites as a campy period piece?

i think all of that and i’m only 3 yrs younger than you

i’m a mere 26, but am quite ok calling ‘reality bites’ a campy period piece!

Yesterday a student said to me, of Groove Is In The Heart, “this is really retro”. Which I guess it was even in 1991, but he didn’t mean it quite like that. I felt old.

it felt odd watching oasis get a ‘lifetime achievement award’ but 1991 *does* feel like a long time ago.

I am going to watch my son’s band tonight! (he’s 14)

1991 is the first year i really remember in any detail at all

i thought that “reality bites” was a campy period piece when it came out 14 years ago!

not to mention that i have a hard time with kids referring to the cure, the smiths, and depeche mode as “oldies” — much less nirvana, wu-tang, and the prodigy.

The kids who were born when I was a teenager could quite possibly be grandparents!

I thought that when arguing with Louis the other week—“hang on, you were IN PRIMARY SCHOOL on my 18th birthday!”

Going back to my old university the other week didn’t help either.

I was collecting signatures at Reading Festival the year before last, and people were putting down their DOB as “1990”. That made me feel old. They were 7 when Fat of the Land came out.

I more or less had the same feeling when I was standing in some takeout place last night.They were playing Stereo MCs on the radio and I realized that I was probably about the same age as some of the teenagers standing there. I don’t want to know exactly if this statement is true (or if I was older) because it would be sort of depressing, really.

kids i used to babysit are now going to uni, which is really weird. hell, they probably babysitters.

I just calculated it. Not really. *sigh of relief*

they probably babysitters.

ew

People I went to high school with have kids in high school. Eh.

The first time I saw a birthdate of 1980 in a reasonably adult looking person I freaked out a bit. Now 1990 isn’t common. It’s weird playing gigs with these people—like, I’ve been playing guitar longer than they have been alive.

When I first started working at the library, DOBs on student cards for the youngest kids were 1983. Now it’s 1988. That’s kind of spooky.

i realize that may sound sinister in BELGIUM < / ZING >

xpost

kids born in 1990 are probably out trying to get fake IDs or grow beards to go to the casinos in atlantic city — just like we did in high school.

have you been working at the library for five years, Sick Mouthy?

kids i used to babysit are now going to uni, which is really weird. hell, they probably babysitters.

Hold on, you said you were 26, at what age did you start babysitting?

Some kids born after Cobain killed himself are almost 13 years old already, man.

Hold on, you said you were 26, at what age did you start babysitting?

— Tuomas (lixnix...), February 15th, 2007.

15–16 i think.

didn’t babysit babies.

you childminded

Oh, I thought “uni” = “university”.

Okay, now I get it. Stupid me.

The first post was an x-post.

I read that as “Didn’t babysit Scabies”

Well, Rat is old enough to look after himself!

you childminded
— RJG (RJ...), February 15th, 2007.

yes, suppose so. always called it babysitting. from the fens, what can i tell ya.

have you been working at the library for five years, Sick Mouthy?

Suprisingly enough, yes.

I didn’t get across what I meant—83 was dealable with, because I was 4 so don’t have memories of it. 88 I have memories of. Kids born in 88 are younger than my girlfriend’s little brother... who’s now 20. Nearly 21. Scary.

tuomas, if this shit is freaking you out now @ 27 wait’ll you turn 37 (as i am about to in a month) ;__;

spooky

The first time I saw a birthdate of 1980 in a reasonably adult looking person I freaked out a bit. Now 1990 isn’t common.

i freaked out when i realised that dizzee rascal was born in 1985, and maria sharapova in 1987. now that kids born in the 1990s are winning matches on the senior women’s tennis tours i’m kind of beyond the shock.

The first records I bought when I was a kid (Madness, The Jam, The Beat) are as relevant to today’s kids as ‘Rock Around The Clock’ was to me.

tuomas, if this shit is freaking you out now @ 27 wait’ll you turn 37 (as i am about to in a month) ;__;

Me too. So old. So very old. Already too old to be an actress or a popstar. Only novelist is left as a career option.

I’m already too old to be an actress or popstar or novelist, at 25

Or, err, painter! x-post

you’re 25?

xpost

I’m going to have to be a painter

I was just kidding; I am 19

too old, though

19 is too young to be a novelist, unless you want to write about dragons.

I was at a party on New Year’s Eve, and spent some time drunkenly chatting to a 21-year-old until I suddenly realised to my horror I AM ACTUALLY OLD ENOUGH TO BE YOUR MOTHER and then I wanted to die.

But 19 is already old enough to hate all young promising 17 year-old football stars making zillions a day and playing serie A championships, as i start to experience

Yes. It is the perfect age for that.

As for being a painter, I would already have to know how to paint, which I do not. So, novelist it is.

“It was a dark and stormy night...”

I’m not really 19

Well, you’re ahead of Picasso, then! He said it took him ALL HIS LIFE to learn how to paint like a child. You don’t have to do that, you can just take off and start now. Be primitive! Express yourself! Painting is all very NOW again in the British Art Scene.

what about finding out someone you interact with on a forum is 15 and then you realize that most of the people on said board are at least a decade younger than you. EK! (it was a celeb pic forum btw)

I’m not really 19

Liar, eh?

Be primitive! Express yourself!

Nobody needs to see that. I am doing the world a favour.

When we went to the Picasso museum in Paris last year, I was staggered to discover just how prolific the old goat was. He painted something like 20,000 pieces, and was constantly doodling and banging bits of wood together and claiming they were guitars. I can just imagine him chewing a bit of stick in a cafe and then telling people “oh, it’s a guitar” when they ask him what brilliant thing it is he has just made.

**Already too old to be an actress**

Liz Smith was about 50 when she first worked professionally. Buster Merryfield was either a school teacher or bank manager (can’t remember which) until virtually retirement age before he became a professional actor.

yeah, i’m not sure if i admire picasso for that. in fact, i don’t, he was a bit of a fanny.

a fanny but a good fanny

there is such a thing

Yes. I have one.

Right, off to work down the abstract mines.

: S

hey didn’t you hear that 50 is the new er...well something younger. the upside of this revelation about aging is the opportunity it presents to free yourself from the cult of eternal adolescence. in other words I learn a lot and enjoy hanging w/young ppl on line but I wouldn’t want to be 25 again let alone a teenager.

wait till you have peers who are grandparents!

Finding out that Natalie Curtis (daughter of Ian) was in her 20s a few years ago was the shocker for me.

he died in 1980!

This year would be my 20th high school reunion. I’m sure some of my classmates have kids old enough for college. I’m equally sure I’m not going to go there and find out.

To me, anyone with a date of birth later than my younger sister’s (1981) is still a child. I realise this attitude needs revising.

he died in 1980!

COuld have kept the sperm and made the baby in 2002. ;-))))

I feel the same way Archel. My sister was born in 1975 and has a child of her own.

...and have you ever noticed how YOUNG the policemen are looking lately?

The kids who were born when I was a teenager could quite possibly be grandparents!

— M Grout (mark.grou...) (webmail), February 15th, 2007 10:31 AM. (Mark Grout) (later) (link

I keep forgetting that Mark is my age or even older. I’m glad there’s not an “ILX Geezers Reprazent” thread.

Haha when I was in hospital I got totally sniffy about the extreme youth of the doctor that first attended me. Although I think it was more her flashy earrings and inability to find anything she needed that actually bothered me.

A number of freshmen at UCI next year will have been born the year I was a freshman at UCLA. Slightly disconcerting.

I still regularly listen to, and enjoy, rap music that’s more than 20 years old. Realizing that this is about how old (or less!) the Beatles were when my parents were listening to them in my childhood is mind-boggling. It also blows my mind to think that current youth never knew a time when hip-hop was new and revolutionary or before MTV. (my father when I was bringing home Public Enemy: “this is a fad! It will never last!” HAH!)

My moment of age schock was realizing that my friend’s freshman comp students could be my actual biological children and it wouldn’t even have been a tragic teenage pregnancy. Just a run-of-the-mill teenage pregnancy.

Just a run-of-the-mill teenage pregnancy.

haha, when I was teaching, upon hearing my age, it was not uncommon for a student to say “you’re the same age as my mom!” I taught middle-school (12–15 yrs) though so I think this qualified for tragic teenage pregnancy.

Echo Johnson—first Playmate younger than me.

I suppose there will be one coming up soon that I’ll be old enough to have fathered.

Is it creepy to anyone but me that they put pictures of the Playmates as young girls along with their girly-handwritten surveys?

It is creepy. It shows that they once had a life outside of bending over that pool table.

there are soldiers fighting in iraq who were 13 when the twin towers fell.

“stop researching my life!”