During the Christmas holiday season I found some time (due to the cold ass conditions outside) to catch up on some movie watching. Reality Bites is one film that I just never got around to watching. I know I owned the soundtrack (mmmm... Lisa Loeb) but never saw the movie. I had a feeling it might be one of those films I could not recall seeing, but when I finally got around to watching it my brain would click and I would remember having seen it. Nope. I really had never seen it, or my memory is going.
I was so surprised by how many big name actors/comedians/celebs are in the film [Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, John Mahoney, Evan Dando, David Spade, Andy Dick, Renée Zellweger]. And I was surprised by how much I liked it. Or maybe how much is grabbed my attention and took me down memory lane to 1994. I watched it twice. That Gen X slacker mentality which was so cool. And everyone smokes in the movie. After about thirty minutes I wanted to run to the corner shop and get a pack of smokes because it looked like so much fun... but I didn't because I don't smoke and I think cigarettes are like $9 a pack in Chicago.
Reality Bites makes 1994 life seem so simple. I remember writing checks for pizza deliveries back then. Can you do that anywhere anymore? Life was focused around buying tons of 7"s and then listening to them over and over again. Bands like Velocity Girl, Eggs, Love Battery, The Spinanes, Hazel, Heatmiser, Further, Lois, Pavement, Beck, Tsunami, Urge Overkill, Unwound (college indie rock... if you did not get the picture). It was the slacker generation - and it got the best of me. I was the slacker... Working on things like the radio station not my classes. I wanted so badly to be these slacker characters, but not realize that they were soon to be headed to nowheresville too. I spent money on buying all of the cool Gen X books never to read them. I still own them, and have finally been getting to them.
1994 was the year I should of graduated college, but I didn't (it took me well more than four years to get my B.S. - but I did get it!). I was so wrapped up in being busy with unimportant things. I kept believing that life was so complicated and I just needed to figure life out before I should do my homework... or maybe I should just swing by the record store to make sure there aren't any new 7"s out so I can play them on my radio show. All of which I have a tad bit of guilt about, but I was young and needed to do a whole lot of growing up. Lucky for me my move to NYC was coming and I did a ton of growing up there.
Wow... what memories one film opened up. And you know, I've never seen Say Anything either.
