7/21/05: Vintage

I wonder how fondly we'll look back on 2005. It seems like a pretty charmless year, nothing good has really happened*. But I guess if somebody came up to you on July 21st, 1993 and asked you for a mid-year evaluation, you might feel the same way.

"This year is kinda lame," you'd say. "I miss 1989. 1989 was the shit."

And you'd be right. 1989 was probably the shit. Ask anybody, except someone living in 1989.  They'd tell you 1980 was a million times more dope.

But me, I'd settle for some nice thick 1993 if that was all that was on the menu. In fact I think I'd prefer it.

1993 was probably one of the 3 most pivotal years in my life. If I did a top 20, it'd go something like this (listed with one or two key events from that year, although perhaps not THE key event**):

1985 (flunk out of high school)
1987 ("graduate" high school; start college; begin to deeply explore mysterious, cavernous world of alcoholism)
1993 ("The Dunk"; get beat up by thugs in epic 12 on 12 street fight; catch tennis ball thrown from moving car; move back to NYC; start current job (!))
1978 (discover girls, baseball)
1995 (begin dating wife)
1990 (dunk a basketball; purchase a moped)
1999 (struggle with place in the universe)
1984 (discover basketball)
1983 (transition between junior high and high school; master the game Zookeeper; see a dude get shot dead on the sidewalk)
1989 (peak as a basketball player)
1992 (flounder in Madison while envisioning big things for self; possibly violated by a houseguest while in an alcohol-induced coma)
1994 (discover joys of NYC nightlife and still-glistening youth, epitomized by nights guzzling Red Stripe at Babyland on Avenue A; Knicks make finals; personal hero John Starks chokes the whole thing away)
2002 (get married)
2000 (after receiving professional assistance, accept place in the universe)
1996 (dunno exactly, seems like a lot of cool shit happened in 1996)
1979 (Thurman Munson dies, Yankees fail to win WS for first time in my baseball watching career; I realize that life is cruel)
1986 (regain semi-control of academic life, Len Bias dies, Space Shuttle explodes)
1988 (drink 1000 beers in 365 days, beginning a streak that will eventually reach seven consecutive years)
1980 (elected Class President; transition between elementary school and junior high)
1991 (graduate college; fail to look for high-paying job; fail to land high-paying job)

I left out a ton of shit that I will kick myself for tomorrow, I'm sure.

1993 was a particularly interesting year for me. You know how sometimes you watch an old episode of Seinfeld, and you find yourself amazed that like three of the most famous and incessantly referenced Seinfeld plotlines all take place in 1 episode?  And you're like, wow, I remember all these stories, but I remember them as complete shows, not subplots? And furthermore, how the hell can they jam all that into one 30-minute episode? That's how 1993 was for me. So many things happened, it seems like every day must have contained at least one moment of significance. It's hard to believe, but 1993 must've featured plenty of days where I just went to work, drank a Snapple, punched out and spent the evening watching TV on the futon.

I bet if you looked it up, 1993 was like 852 days long.

New stuff from cW today. If you have any problem with the tunes, try either playing 'em in iTunes or updating your player to accommodate m4a files. As Sir Paul McCartney once so eloquently explained, that's what the man said.

Whodat for 8.5 points? I hope that's not a repeat. That would be a bad sign.

* Except, obviously, the birth of my beautiful baby, who actually smiled at me today. It wasn't so much a smile of happiness or recognition as it was a smile of "Who the fuck are you?" So maybe it's not an official smile. But I'll take it.
** Certain important events are left off to protect the privacy/dignity of myself and others. Also, the first few years of life are probably full of important stuff, but who remembers any of that?