The Dream of the '90s is Alive...
A Monday morning hello.
Anybody else miss Portlandia?
So, last week’s flooding catastrophe was thankfully not as bad as it initially seemed. We stored a bunch of items in that corner of the basement—nothing priceless, just old movie posters and things we weren’t using but didn’t want to toss—and the bad news is, those items were soggy and moldy and needed to be trashed. The good news is, they sopped up most of the water and kept it from seeping into the walls. So…yay?
It sucks that it happened, but thankfully it turned out okay.
In the meantime, I had four interviews last week, three of which were with musicians I’ve been listening to since the ‘90s (hence the email heading): Luscious Jackson’s Jill Cunniff, Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Glen Phillips, and Tracy Bonham, whose interview was published last Friday.
Teenage/young adult me was having the MOST amazing time last week! I mean, I was singing along to Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “All I Want” when I was still in high school. And here I am, talking to the band’s lead singer about it! Life’s crazy sometimes.
After the round of interviews was over, I decided to put together a little playlist of some of my favorite ’90s songs. It’s by no means a complete list—that would go well into the thousands—but it’s a start. Sharing it with you here, in case you’d like to take a trip down memory lane…
Speaking of memories…on Friday night the boys were away on a camping trip, so I decided to watch Valley Girl, which I hadn’t seen in years. OMG that movie is so, like, totally good, fer sure! It may be the only time I’ve found Nicholas Cage attractive. And the music is perfect. Just pure ’80s joy.
So I took to Threads and Notes and asked my fellow Gen Xers what their favorite nostalgia movie is, and I got quite a few great responses—everything from the expected (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club) to the very unexpected (The Deer Hunter??).
If you’d like to chime in, you can find the conversations on Threads or Substack’s Notes.
Well, I hope you enjoyed my interview with Tracy Bonham. I’m sharing a video clip from our chat over on Instagram later today, so follow me there if you want to check it out. Later this week I’ll share my interview with Kevin Lingenfelser, who has overseen the special effects on hundreds of high-profile films and TV shows. His latest is Netflix’s Man on Fire, and we talked quite a bit about the show and the bizarre research he has to do to make visual effects look realistic.
That’s it for now! Have a wonderfully creative week!
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