1988
July 29, 2018 10:52 PM Subscribe
30 years ago, a look back at 1988 Where were you in 1988? Some remarkable news stories and memories from 30 years ago.
1988 was my first year in high school and my first year at all in a public school and man was that odd. Also, damn the cold war was terrifying, but well structured at least. And remember when Dan Quayle was too damn stupid to President?
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:25 PM on July 29, 2018 [13 favorites]
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:25 PM on July 29, 2018 [13 favorites]
I was working a summer job in London between my first and second years at university. These pictures made me feel a bit sad and old: a glimpse back into one ugly time from another. Jim Henson can't hear me asking him to take it easy & look after his health. Axl Rose outlived Prince & George Michael. As for a certain red-tie-wearing real-estate developer, I guess there's no way of travelling back through the decades & tattooing DONT VOTE 4 ME on his smug face.
posted by misteraitch at 11:53 PM on July 29, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by misteraitch at 11:53 PM on July 29, 2018 [6 favorites]
1988 I graduated from high school and went to university. Canada decriminalized abortion, the Free Trade Agreement was signed with the US, Glass Tiger was rocking the charts, and Kids in the Hall launched their first pilot.
Egad!
posted by chapps at 11:54 PM on July 29, 2018 [8 favorites]
Egad!
posted by chapps at 11:54 PM on July 29, 2018 [8 favorites]
8th of August, 1988. 08:08 am and 8 seconds. My brother and I have stopped sniping at each other and have instead synchronized our Casio digital watches so we can mark this momentous occasion. We are on a plane traveling from Stockholm, Sweden to Atlanta, Georgia. I’m supposed to stay with our parents for the year my dad is planning on working in the US, but my brother is heading back in a few weeks to start at university. The world is full of endless possibilities. Moving to America! Everyone in my tiny hometown knows about it. My classmates are jealous. My best friend cried when we said goodbye. But it’s only a year! I’ll be back soon.
30 years... I’m going back for Christmas, but I’ll never live there again. It feels like a lifetime ago, and I’ve now lived here longer than there. Not sure exactly what possessed us to put such weight on that particular instant, but I’m glad. My life is divided in before that moment and after, so it seems right. It did turn out an adventure, just not quite how I had imagined...
posted by gemmy at 12:06 AM on July 30, 2018 [47 favorites]
30 years... I’m going back for Christmas, but I’ll never live there again. It feels like a lifetime ago, and I’ve now lived here longer than there. Not sure exactly what possessed us to put such weight on that particular instant, but I’m glad. My life is divided in before that moment and after, so it seems right. It did turn out an adventure, just not quite how I had imagined...
posted by gemmy at 12:06 AM on July 30, 2018 [47 favorites]
Why is that particular incarnation of the California Raisins so scary looking?
Well, to begin with Red doesn't have his hallmark red glasses on, Stretch looks no "stretchier" than Beebop, and A.C. and Red are lacking their stylish hairdos. I'm sayin' that those aren't in fact the California Raisins at all, just some sad imitators. Raisinmania was huge back in the day, so imitators were everywhere, but I'd expect The Atlantic to do some basic fact checking and give us the real thing.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:10 AM on July 30, 2018 [16 favorites]
Well, to begin with Red doesn't have his hallmark red glasses on, Stretch looks no "stretchier" than Beebop, and A.C. and Red are lacking their stylish hairdos. I'm sayin' that those aren't in fact the California Raisins at all, just some sad imitators. Raisinmania was huge back in the day, so imitators were everywhere, but I'd expect The Atlantic to do some basic fact checking and give us the real thing.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:10 AM on July 30, 2018 [16 favorites]
In 1988 I was riding my bike across Helena, MT, to visit my Sicilian-born friend and his family. My hands were white with cold, and his mother made me bury them in a pot full of pennies that she warmed up with the stove. They had a color TV, a VCR, a NES, and his older sister had amazing, blown-out hair and Whitesnake posters in her bedroom. I don't remember what we ate for dinner, but his father ate a pigeon from the coop in his garage. (In the summer I was introduced to a deer hanging from the garage rafters, blood dripping into a bucket.) Everyone else refused to eat pigeon. They were all bi-lingual except for the father, and at dinner they spoke only Italian. 30 years and The Sopranos later, I scratch my head, wondering what prompted a Sicilian to truck his entire family to a remote city in Montana. We had ice cream and watched Simon & Simon while his mother sewed clothing in the other room.
posted by Brocktoon at 12:22 AM on July 30, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by Brocktoon at 12:22 AM on July 30, 2018 [11 favorites]
The USA took the bronze in basketball in 1988 - the last year they sent college players to face pros from other countries. In 1992 the Dream Team swept any opposition.
Memory does not provide a date, maybe it was not 1988, but my husband had one of those Motorola "brick" phones.
posted by Cranberry at 12:30 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Memory does not provide a date, maybe it was not 1988, but my husband had one of those Motorola "brick" phones.
posted by Cranberry at 12:30 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Canada got completely shut of of gold medals at the Calgary Olympics but we still have the best Olympics anthem of all time.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:40 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Space Coyote at 12:40 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
1988 was Piper Alpha. I can remember several documentaries at the 25 anniversary... not so much this time around.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:55 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:55 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
1988 was the year I started college, and as such was the year I moved to New York. I was the only person back then who believed I would be moving here for good - most of my family thought I'd eventually leave.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:41 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:41 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
August '88! The Tompkins Square Park riot! Good god, I'll never forget that. It felt like the culmination of all the terrifying PURGE and 1988=1933 Missing Foundation graffiti that had shrouded the Lower East Side for months previously.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:21 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:21 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Was "Flo-Jo" for Florence Griffith Joyner the first instance of this particular portmanteau for celebrities that's now ubiquitous? It seems like it, especially that while the pronunciation fits the pattern, it included a hyphen.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:35 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:35 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
I turned 14, a few weeks after my baby sister was born.
She's 30 now, and earlier this year I celebrated 30 years of having a little sister, and 30 years of using her milestones as excuses to make jokes about feeling old.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:02 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
She's 30 now, and earlier this year I celebrated 30 years of having a little sister, and 30 years of using her milestones as excuses to make jokes about feeling old.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:02 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
I saw the Flo-Jo picture and thought, "Oooh, Jackie Joyner Kersee!" (The 'pedia informs me that JJK is the more all-around athlete...whose heptathlon record set at the 88 Olympics still stands, and whose brother was married to Flo-Jo). Strangely enough, Flo-Jo died almost exactly 20 years ago.
1988 was the year I came back from my first year of college to be a deadbeat skateboarder for a year. Not much came of it, I was pretty much just waiting for my friends to graduate high school. It was fun. It was when my "worked at the mall for a few months" story occurred.
There was a guy at the other school in town, also a skatepunk, and also a prodigal track star. I didn't know him, but we skated the same places and knew the same people. The Facebook era brought me the news that he had died in the Lockerbie bombing. "Wild!" I thought, since it's kind of hard to feel bad about something that happened 25 years prior and been batted around like a political football since then. Here's to ya, Dan!
Why is that particular incarnation of the California Raisins so scary looking?
Because those aren't the actual California Raisins, just people dressed up in California Raisin costumes. Despite their popularity and widespread exposure, the California Raisins actually were rarely seen in public.
posted by rhizome at 3:18 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
1988 was the year I came back from my first year of college to be a deadbeat skateboarder for a year. Not much came of it, I was pretty much just waiting for my friends to graduate high school. It was fun. It was when my "worked at the mall for a few months" story occurred.
There was a guy at the other school in town, also a skatepunk, and also a prodigal track star. I didn't know him, but we skated the same places and knew the same people. The Facebook era brought me the news that he had died in the Lockerbie bombing. "Wild!" I thought, since it's kind of hard to feel bad about something that happened 25 years prior and been batted around like a political football since then. Here's to ya, Dan!
Why is that particular incarnation of the California Raisins so scary looking?
Because those aren't the actual California Raisins, just people dressed up in California Raisin costumes. Despite their popularity and widespread exposure, the California Raisins actually were rarely seen in public.
posted by rhizome at 3:18 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Preachers were cautioning us that the time of Jesus' return couldn't be known, and we shouldn't be drawn in by 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988.
posted by clawsoon at 4:21 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 4:21 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Space Coyote: Canada got completely shut of of gold medals at the Calgary Olympics but
...we still got to see that thrilling silver-medal skate by Elizabeth Manley.
posted by clawsoon at 4:28 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
...we still got to see that thrilling silver-medal skate by Elizabeth Manley.
posted by clawsoon at 4:28 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
So many of these 'flashbulb moments' are seared into my brain. I was 8 years old in 1988 and I can recall the Challenger disaster. :( It's kind of corny but I remember a "very special episode of Punky Brewster" that tackled the disaster and all the questions a lot of children had about it.
I vaguely recall the Berlin Wall coming down but it didn't mean much to me as a child, only learned about it's significance later on through some history books at a much older age.
posted by Fizz at 4:30 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
I vaguely recall the Berlin Wall coming down but it didn't mean much to me as a child, only learned about it's significance later on through some history books at a much older age.
posted by Fizz at 4:30 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
1988 was 8th and 9 th grade for me. I had just returned from spending 6 months living in England while my dad took his sabbatical to do research at Cambridge. My mom did not come with us and my dad was busy working and I lived basically that whole FPP about kids needing more freedom. I had so much freedom (in England! Cambridge! I stood in line for movie tickets behind Stephen Hawking!) It was basically the formidable experience of my childhood. And then in 1988 I came back home to Pittsburgh to my regular life and it suuuuuucked. Middle school is terrible forever. Pittsburgh in the 80s was... not quite the gleaming modern city it is now. I lived in a neighborhood with nothing to walk to and nowhere to go. Basically 1988 was the nadir of my young life to date.
The music sure was good, though.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:30 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
The music sure was good, though.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:30 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
I wonder: Was Susanna Hoffs contractually obligated to shift her eyes like that whenever a photo was being taken?
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:35 AM on July 30, 2018 [18 favorites]
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:35 AM on July 30, 2018 [18 favorites]
I was living in Cambridge MA that summer, biking back and forth between the MIT residence where I lived and my job at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, where I had a research grant and operated the CfA mm-wave telescope by myself in the middle of the night. (A radio telescope can run any time of day but I was a lowly undergraduate so only got the middle-of-the-night shifts) .
Michael Dukakis was easily seen around town. I saw him more than once, getting his haircut in Harvard Square at his regular barber.
posted by vacapinta at 4:40 AM on July 30, 2018
Michael Dukakis was easily seen around town. I saw him more than once, getting his haircut in Harvard Square at his regular barber.
posted by vacapinta at 4:40 AM on July 30, 2018
I was born in January of 1988. It was a great year of not swimming around in amniotic fluid and making my brain grow and learning how to crawl and stuff!
posted by ChuraChura at 4:42 AM on July 30, 2018 [14 favorites]
posted by ChuraChura at 4:42 AM on July 30, 2018 [14 favorites]
1988. I was with my parents in Germany, on my dad's third tour of duty in Europe. I loved the country, so much so that I hated it when he told me he was retiring and moving us back to the US. I would have loved to stay long enough to graduate high school - our graduation ceremony was held in an old German castle, rather than on the school grounds.
posted by Roger Pittman at 4:45 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by Roger Pittman at 4:45 AM on July 30, 2018
In 1988 I was really getting the hang of potty training.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:53 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:53 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
Given that this photo of Michael Jackson was taken in Kansas City, I like to believe that he was pointing at a three year old Janelle Monae. I also want to believe it was a deliberate choice of Alan Taylor to include this photo of MJ at this time in this city.
In 1988, my family moved to Canada, and I remember feeling unwell the night before we flew into Vancouver, and after arriving in a new house, it turned out that what I had was chicken pox. So I spent my first week in Vancouver in bed, watching the Winter Olympics and Eddie the Eagle, feeling miserable and being unsure if that was because of the pox or the sense of upending our lives again or just generally being an unhappy teenager. But I do remember that announcers on Canadian television always sounded so much nicer that American announcers, and that didn't seem so bad.
posted by bl1nk at 4:59 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
In 1988, my family moved to Canada, and I remember feeling unwell the night before we flew into Vancouver, and after arriving in a new house, it turned out that what I had was chicken pox. So I spent my first week in Vancouver in bed, watching the Winter Olympics and Eddie the Eagle, feeling miserable and being unsure if that was because of the pox or the sense of upending our lives again or just generally being an unhappy teenager. But I do remember that announcers on Canadian television always sounded so much nicer that American announcers, and that didn't seem so bad.
posted by bl1nk at 4:59 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988.
Cathy was a Jesus-freak,
She loved that kind of misery.
posted by notsnot at 5:11 AM on July 30, 2018 [24 favorites]
Cathy was a Jesus-freak,
She loved that kind of misery.
posted by notsnot at 5:11 AM on July 30, 2018 [24 favorites]
A year when there were California Raisins cover bands.
America was once a great country. By 1988, that was over.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:19 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
America was once a great country. By 1988, that was over.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:19 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'd dropped out of college the year before but still living in State College and was driving pizzas and painting houses for a living. I met my ex- that summer in a dingy biker bar, an event which is really the turning point on the whole rest of my life. That relationship didn't work out in the long run but I followed her to Pittsburgh so she could go to grad school a move which enabled pretty much everything else that's happened in my life. Without that relationship that started in July '88, the whole rest of my life would have been radically different. We wouldn't have our son, I wouldn't have met my wonderful wife, maybe I would have finished my degree but probably not as easily as I was able to do at Pitt.
So yeah, '88 was kind of a shitty year for me, failed college career and all but it turned out to be pivotal to the life I have now.
posted by octothorpe at 5:22 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
So yeah, '88 was kind of a shitty year for me, failed college career and all but it turned out to be pivotal to the life I have now.
posted by octothorpe at 5:22 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
I turned 25 in 1988. My wife and I were living in Chicago; actually, we moved from Rogers Park to Evanston that summer, just before I started graduate school that fall. It was a brutally hot summer that year, at least by the standards of the 1980s, before the effect of global warming were very noticeable. Upthread vacapinta mentions seeing Michael Dukakis around Cambridge, but that was the summer he was running for president, and my wife still has a Polaroid of me standing next to Dukakis...except that it's a life-sized cardboard cutout of him, but it looks real enough to fool anyone on first glance.
posted by briank at 5:40 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by briank at 5:40 AM on July 30, 2018
Raisinmania was huge back in the day
I was four in 1988, so this is the part of the piece that resonated most strongly with me. Looking back it's almost impossible to explain, but, yeah, HUGE.
Also, despite being someone who has never partaken of anything stronger than bourbon, that picture of Dan Quayle made me want to do drugs.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:45 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
I was four in 1988, so this is the part of the piece that resonated most strongly with me. Looking back it's almost impossible to explain, but, yeah, HUGE.
Also, despite being someone who has never partaken of anything stronger than bourbon, that picture of Dan Quayle made me want to do drugs.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:45 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
1988, after a wave of strikes, talks started between the completely bankrupt government and the Solidarity opposition to dismantle the socialist-communist system in Poland. They would culminate in a semi-free election in June 1989, five months before the Berlin Wall fell.
I was six, and relatively privileged family-wise, but I still only got oranges for Christmas, and chocolate and bananas only when a family member came back from a visit to the West (see: relatively privileged). Meat was smuggled by "veal ladies" who carried pieces of illegally slaughtered calves and cows in dripping newspaper-wrapped packages, making the rounds of our block of flats every month or so. I remember helping my mother take old newspapers to the collection point to exchange them for scratchy grey toilet paper. It was the only way to get toilet paper due to the paper shortages.
I think it was 1989 or 1990 when I saw the first white toilet paper roll. A couple years later, I was in France and there were like ten different brands of loo roll to choose from and I was in legit culture shock.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 5:51 AM on July 30, 2018 [23 favorites]
I was six, and relatively privileged family-wise, but I still only got oranges for Christmas, and chocolate and bananas only when a family member came back from a visit to the West (see: relatively privileged). Meat was smuggled by "veal ladies" who carried pieces of illegally slaughtered calves and cows in dripping newspaper-wrapped packages, making the rounds of our block of flats every month or so. I remember helping my mother take old newspapers to the collection point to exchange them for scratchy grey toilet paper. It was the only way to get toilet paper due to the paper shortages.
I think it was 1989 or 1990 when I saw the first white toilet paper roll. A couple years later, I was in France and there were like ten different brands of loo roll to choose from and I was in legit culture shock.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 5:51 AM on July 30, 2018 [23 favorites]
I had forgotten about the Ramstein Air Base disaster. I remember that day. My brother called my parents in Canada to reassure them he was all right. We had no idea what he was talking about, because the news hadn't reached us yet.
He was at the air show, had even staked out a nice spot on a slight rise to get a good view. Being in the Canadian Air Force and stationed in Germany he knew a lot of the pilots, had even been drinking with the Italian pilots of the Frecchi Tricolore after a previous show. And like a good Canadian had gone to get a few beers during a break in the show. When he got back his spot was overrun with other people so he found a different vantage point... just before one of the Italian planes clipped another during a maneuver and plowed into the crowd on top of that slight rise he was on just a few minutes before.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 6:00 AM on July 30, 2018 [8 favorites]
He was at the air show, had even staked out a nice spot on a slight rise to get a good view. Being in the Canadian Air Force and stationed in Germany he knew a lot of the pilots, had even been drinking with the Italian pilots of the Frecchi Tricolore after a previous show. And like a good Canadian had gone to get a few beers during a break in the show. When he got back his spot was overrun with other people so he found a different vantage point... just before one of the Italian planes clipped another during a maneuver and plowed into the crowd on top of that slight rise he was on just a few minutes before.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 6:00 AM on July 30, 2018 [8 favorites]
I was finishing high school, and working to help get rid of Pinochet.
posted by signal at 6:09 AM on July 30, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by signal at 6:09 AM on July 30, 2018 [8 favorites]
I was at UMASS Amherst in my sophomore year, very involved with the LBGA, as it was known then, and just learning about this chat program ON OUR COMPUTERS called "cyber," which allowed people in the Grad Research Tower to spend all day typing at one another instead of turning our chairs around and talking.
posted by xingcat at 6:09 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by xingcat at 6:09 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
I was in grades nine and ten, and there was not much of interest going on in my life at the time, I tell you what.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:13 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:13 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
I was five, and that was the year my grandmother died. I remember the funeral home visitation very well, and the funeral the next day almost not at all. I was also really, really into Mac Tonite, who is apparently now a white supremacist. So really it was all down-hill from there.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:15 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:15 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
Oh man, somewhere there is a video of my mom donning a California Raisin outfit for her school's teacher variety show.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:23 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:23 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
1988 was a standout year as the UK (and I) discovered acid house and its evolution into the rave scene that buoyed me through my University years into the early 1990s. Happy (altered consciousness) times!
The Lockerbie Bombing was a terrible end to 1988. I was in a pub in Ayr (it's about a two hour drive away from Lockerbie) and watched it all unfold on the TV news. Reporters speculated if was the IRA? Was it the Ulster Defence League? Why would they target Scotland? It took quite a few hours for the international nature of the terrorism to become evident. A few days after the bombings a newspaper ran a story with a terribly grim photo of a makeshift morgue with body bags lined up in rows. That photo has stuck with me ever since.
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 6:25 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Lockerbie Bombing was a terrible end to 1988. I was in a pub in Ayr (it's about a two hour drive away from Lockerbie) and watched it all unfold on the TV news. Reporters speculated if was the IRA? Was it the Ulster Defence League? Why would they target Scotland? It took quite a few hours for the international nature of the terrorism to become evident. A few days after the bombings a newspaper ran a story with a terribly grim photo of a makeshift morgue with body bags lined up in rows. That photo has stuck with me ever since.
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 6:25 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
1988 was probably when one of my dorm neighbors found a great deal on 5 1/4 inch floppies - and bought several years worth.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:26 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:26 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
I was born on a very, very wet, monsoon-in-full-flow-kinda-day, in India.
posted by Nieshka at 6:32 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Nieshka at 6:32 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
In July 1988 my current partner and I went on our first date, a hike/picnic in the Angeles Crest forest.
posted by notyou at 6:33 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by notyou at 6:33 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
I finally started college, eight years after graduating from high school, and after 18 months sober. Good times. It seems like a lifetime ago.
posted by corvikate at 6:45 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by corvikate at 6:45 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
I was a freshman/sophomore at UW-Madison in 1988, not doing very well academically, working too much, and having a lot of issues with my aunt, who hadn't wanted me to leave her house after I'd finished high school in 1987. She said she was proud of me in public, but her behavior towards me about it behind closed doors was... unhinged.
Later that year I voted in my first national election (my first election was voting for Paul Soglin in the Madison mayoral race). The news was all a blur, thanks to the family problems. I don't remember any of it except for the election and the shooting down of Pan-Am 103.
That summer in particular, when I had to go back to Milwaukee at the end of the spring semester, was pretty traumatic. It was the last time she ever hit me, though. I made damn sure of that.
posted by droplet at 6:53 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Later that year I voted in my first national election (my first election was voting for Paul Soglin in the Madison mayoral race). The news was all a blur, thanks to the family problems. I don't remember any of it except for the election and the shooting down of Pan-Am 103.
That summer in particular, when I had to go back to Milwaukee at the end of the spring semester, was pretty traumatic. It was the last time she ever hit me, though. I made damn sure of that.
posted by droplet at 6:53 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
I remember most of the events shown in the photos, but not all. Trump wasn't someone I noticed at the time at all, other than probably glancing past some headlines about his latest marriage or financial scandal. And as mentioned above, I remember Solidarity being a huge part of the news that year.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:54 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Dip Flash at 6:54 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
In 1988, I graduated from high school and went to college. My youngest child, my daughter, just graduated from high school and will be going to college in August. So she's in the same spot today as I was in 1988. She's so much more prepared for everything than I was. I was over-protected and coddled and I was a spoiled, indulged asshole. She's none of those things. She's kind and hard working and smart and funny. I used to think that it was harder for us back then, with the cold war and the threat of nuclear war hanging over us. Now we have Trump (I remember thinking way back then that he was sleazy and gross) and literal Nazis are back (having never actually left, it turns out) and everything feels like shit. I don't know how she and her friends and so many others their age are so positive and clear-headed. They're optimistic and I wish I knew how they did it. They're fired up and ready to vote and ready to change everything. I hope they do.
posted by cooker girl at 6:57 AM on July 30, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by cooker girl at 6:57 AM on July 30, 2018 [8 favorites]
I was just a few months younger than Prince Harry 1988, still blonde haired, and definitely would have made that exact same tongue-out face in just about any photo taken of me. We were tongue-sticker-outers, us 80s kids.
posted by dis_integration at 7:02 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 7:02 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
In 1988, no one I knew had pagers, let alone cell phones. Email was a relative rarity, though it was starting to become commonplace at colleges and universities. Apple was still split between Macintosh and Apple II's, though the latter was on the way out.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:04 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:04 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
The fashion sense here is speaking particularly loudly to me. In 1988, I would have gone into Grade 10, and I would be wearing Tracy Chapman's outfit of jeans, t-shirt, and dark cardigan for a few years yet, well into university. The oversize overcoat like Sting's wouldn't last as long -- I wore the shit out of that very quickly and it just crumbled.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:05 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:05 AM on July 30, 2018
I was 8-9 and going to a super-hippie Montessori school. It was an amazing experience that I think still informs a lot of the way I see the world/my place in it now (in fact I am hoping to send Baby Moon to Montessori at least for preschool). I remember being aware of the election, and the Lockerbie bombing, and definitely Michael Jackson, and having a sense of the cold war but not really a clear understanding of it.
posted by n. moon at 7:06 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by n. moon at 7:06 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Obligatory.
I was just out of undergrad, living at my parent's house, unemployed, without a clue of what I was going, or even wanted to do, and making spending money by doing occasional odd jobs—I roofed a house that summer and I did a few simple freelance writing gigs. But mostly I got up every day, biked 25 or 40 miles, swam in a lake (here I learned that Mickey's Big Mouths are ideal beers for the water because they will float perfectly upright) and spent my nights at a bar which I swear to God was being run as a tax shelter because the owners let us do practically anything we wanted—run up tabs, gobble snacks out of the refrigerator, smoke weed in the bathrooms, have flashlight lightsaber battles on the back deck, all of the above.
The really amazing thing, in retrospect, is just how inexhaustibly patient my parents were with my bullshit.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:08 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
I was just out of undergrad, living at my parent's house, unemployed, without a clue of what I was going, or even wanted to do, and making spending money by doing occasional odd jobs—I roofed a house that summer and I did a few simple freelance writing gigs. But mostly I got up every day, biked 25 or 40 miles, swam in a lake (here I learned that Mickey's Big Mouths are ideal beers for the water because they will float perfectly upright) and spent my nights at a bar which I swear to God was being run as a tax shelter because the owners let us do practically anything we wanted—run up tabs, gobble snacks out of the refrigerator, smoke weed in the bathrooms, have flashlight lightsaber battles on the back deck, all of the above.
The really amazing thing, in retrospect, is just how inexhaustibly patient my parents were with my bullshit.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:08 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
I was probably playing Space Quest II on our 20 MHz Gateway 286 with the Turbo button. I was probably wearing a Vuarnet shirt, because everyone had one and otherwise people would think you were doing the drugs.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:09 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:09 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
I had graduated college and was moving from NYC to San Francisco with the guy who would become my husband for a few years. Donald Trump was someone who built some ugly buildings, and whom I had frequently seen referenced in Spy magazine as a “short-fingered vulgarian”.
posted by matildaben at 7:12 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by matildaben at 7:12 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
Having written the above, I recall that it was often a simmering sense of panic over what would become of me that drove me that summer and in that respect—barring the lightsaber battles—it's remarkable how similar this summer feels to that one 30 years ago.
So that's what I need: more flashlight lightsaber battles.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:38 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
So that's what I need: more flashlight lightsaber battles.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:38 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
In ‘88 I went on a summer mission trip with a church group. We were gone ten weeks and went to small towns for a week at a time, ranging from western Arizona to northern Kansas. I’m long out of the church now, but that summer of traveling in a bus from town to town is still a fond memory. Ever since then, I go on road trips whenever I can.
posted by azpenguin at 7:43 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by azpenguin at 7:43 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
A contemporary look back at 1988 from a Canadian TV station, soundtracked by DEVO
posted by SansPoint at 7:50 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 7:50 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
In Conclusion, 1988 Had Many Contrasts And We Did Many Diverse Things That Were All Different In Different Ways.
posted by clawsoon at 7:50 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 7:50 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
I was learning to crawl! :D
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:51 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:51 AM on July 30, 2018
I came back from my freshman year in college in the summer of 1988, went back to my old local BBS, and told everyone that Usenet was the future. Nobody believed me.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:57 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:57 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'd just entered my final year of engineering and met and moved in with the boyfriend who changed my life.
posted by infini at 7:57 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by infini at 7:57 AM on July 30, 2018
I was unpacking my first new pair of red converse all-stars, playing a lot of D&D, killing it as a middle school trombonist, learning the cello, and taking algebra for the THIRD time because my school didn't have the capacity to either send me to the high school for Algebra II or Geometry. I was into music and transitioning from pop into prog rock. I was totally a latchkey kid at that point and organized a 25 kid after-school squirt gun war with my best friend (which meant we had about 20% of my K-8 elementary/middle school participating), which my parents came home to discover our absolute chaos. Also... BRACES.
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:57 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:57 AM on July 30, 2018
My notes also inform me that this was the year of Sham 69’s suitably shambolic return to the stage of CBGB, behind the not-as-terrible-as-it-could-have-been Volunteer.
The new Sham lineup featured keyboards and a saxophone, and the traditionalist skins who constituted their main audience construed this as the worst sort of betrayal – deserving of bloody murder, which they duly threatened. I’ve told this story before here, but I’ll never forget the tension of huddling with Jimmy Pursey inside the band’s Ford Econoline van, illegally parked in front of CB’s, as he screwed up the nerve to play before a crowd he had every reason to believe was tooled up to do him bodily harm. I’ve often described it as some shitty, marked-down 1980s equivalent of being with Lenin on the sealed train to Petrograd.
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:00 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
The new Sham lineup featured keyboards and a saxophone, and the traditionalist skins who constituted their main audience construed this as the worst sort of betrayal – deserving of bloody murder, which they duly threatened. I’ve told this story before here, but I’ll never forget the tension of huddling with Jimmy Pursey inside the band’s Ford Econoline van, illegally parked in front of CB’s, as he screwed up the nerve to play before a crowd he had every reason to believe was tooled up to do him bodily harm. I’ve often described it as some shitty, marked-down 1980s equivalent of being with Lenin on the sealed train to Petrograd.
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:00 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Junior year of high school, was pissed that I wasn't old enough to vote against Reagan.
posted by Sphinx at 8:10 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Sphinx at 8:10 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
1988 was magical! I got my masters, and started my business, I went to an international summer school in Como and had a blast (seriously, if any mefites were there I'd love to host a reunion).
It was the last year of the Cold War, and in many ways it was about dancing on the fear. I always hated the fear mongers, but in 1988 we were ahead of them and we knew it. Yes, the majority of politicians were cold warriors, but we felt confident we could prove them wrong. It wasn't the last good summer, but it was one of them.
posted by mumimor at 8:13 AM on July 30, 2018
It was the last year of the Cold War, and in many ways it was about dancing on the fear. I always hated the fear mongers, but in 1988 we were ahead of them and we knew it. Yes, the majority of politicians were cold warriors, but we felt confident we could prove them wrong. It wasn't the last good summer, but it was one of them.
posted by mumimor at 8:13 AM on July 30, 2018
Fucking Reagan....
All of today’s bullshit started with Ronald Fucking Reagan.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:24 AM on July 30, 2018 [16 favorites]
All of today’s bullshit started with Ronald Fucking Reagan.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:24 AM on July 30, 2018 [16 favorites]
I was hitting early developmental milestones like a champ
posted by The Whelk at 8:27 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 8:27 AM on July 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
It was the last year of the Cold War, and in many ways it was about dancing on the fear. I always hated the fear mongers, but in 1988 we were ahead of them and we knew it. Yes, the majority of politicians were cold warriors, but we felt confident we could prove them wrong.
....Huh.
After a 20-year lapse, I have recently started having nightmares about nuclear war again; they don't terrorize me as much as they did when I was 16 and 17 and 18, when I'd wake up bolt upright with heart racing and be literally too frightened to fall back asleep, but they're unsettling enough that it usually takes at least 20 minutes of watching kittens on Youtube to fall back asleep.
I had one last night and couldn't figure out why - usually other anxieties trigger one, but I'd had a good day - and just realized maybe it was because of this thread, and thinking back to being that age.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:30 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
....Huh.
After a 20-year lapse, I have recently started having nightmares about nuclear war again; they don't terrorize me as much as they did when I was 16 and 17 and 18, when I'd wake up bolt upright with heart racing and be literally too frightened to fall back asleep, but they're unsettling enough that it usually takes at least 20 minutes of watching kittens on Youtube to fall back asleep.
I had one last night and couldn't figure out why - usually other anxieties trigger one, but I'd had a good day - and just realized maybe it was because of this thread, and thinking back to being that age.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:30 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
I was learning to crawl! :D
Me too! I was also in university.
posted by srboisvert at 8:36 AM on July 30, 2018 [16 favorites]
Me too! I was also in university.
posted by srboisvert at 8:36 AM on July 30, 2018 [16 favorites]
I was 11 years old. Turns out the future is a massive bummer. Curse the name of Reagan and the jingoistic orgy of destruction he stood for.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 8:40 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Kitty Stardust at 8:40 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I was trying hard not to suicide and working at BSA summer camps that were thick with both homosexual tension and denial. Didn't even have a word to describe what was going on with my sexuality for another year, and another five years from any of the writing about my gender feels. Erasure was a mandate for survival through midwestern adolescence as I knew it. Erasure the band on the other hand...
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:43 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:43 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
1988 was... not great for me. I'd been out of college for a couple of years, briefly gotten a job that was kind of connected to my undergraduate degree, was unjustly fired from it, got some money back from them and a change of my termination status from "fired for cause" to "separated from employment" which let me collect unemployment until I got a job as a janitor. So, 1988 began with me still in the janitor gig; it was honest work (and better pay, benefits, and hours than the job I was fired from), but pretty unfulfilling. I talk to some friends who had moved to St. Louis not long before, and they reassure me that I would do great there, all these great jobs in the city just waiting for people to come along and apply for them.
So, I quit my janitor gig in the middle of the year, put most of my possessions in storage, and get on the train to St. Louis, planning to couch-surf with the friends until I find a job and apartment of my own... and, well, the situation isn't as rosy as they described. Generally, job-hunting in St. Louis in the middle of the summer when you don't have a car, don't know the city real well, and have a somewhat, ah, spotty employment record is challenging, to say the least. The friends want me out of the apartment ASAP, and when I'm offered a part-time job that would require a car to get to, one of these friends finds someone selling a car and promises them that I'll buy it, without me seeing the car or even having the full purchase price in my bank account. At this point, they're not really my friends any more, and I still wonder why they coaxed me into quitting a decent (if unfulfilling) job to move someplace where I couldn't even find its equivalent; was it to make them feel better about their own not-so-great situation?
Anyway. Eventually, I got a job as a live-in aide for the elderly; pay was crap, but room and board was included, so that problem was settled. The second placement, though... I was replacing someone who was going part-time for health reasons, and so she was my relief during the every-other-weekend that I had off. We started an affair (I know, I know, but at this point, I'm in a town where I really don't know anyone and I'm lonely), and when I decide to break off the affair--she wanted to do something that I really, really didn't want to do--she decides that she's all better now and wants her old job back. I probably could have hung onto it if I'd gone to the agency and made my case (and told them her motivation), but at this point my self-esteem is less than zero. I found some friends of friends in my hometown that would let me couch-surf with them, and pulled the plug. Thus endeth 1988.
On the plus side, I got into Kids in the Hall and GLOW during the last gig, so there was that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:43 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
So, I quit my janitor gig in the middle of the year, put most of my possessions in storage, and get on the train to St. Louis, planning to couch-surf with the friends until I find a job and apartment of my own... and, well, the situation isn't as rosy as they described. Generally, job-hunting in St. Louis in the middle of the summer when you don't have a car, don't know the city real well, and have a somewhat, ah, spotty employment record is challenging, to say the least. The friends want me out of the apartment ASAP, and when I'm offered a part-time job that would require a car to get to, one of these friends finds someone selling a car and promises them that I'll buy it, without me seeing the car or even having the full purchase price in my bank account. At this point, they're not really my friends any more, and I still wonder why they coaxed me into quitting a decent (if unfulfilling) job to move someplace where I couldn't even find its equivalent; was it to make them feel better about their own not-so-great situation?
Anyway. Eventually, I got a job as a live-in aide for the elderly; pay was crap, but room and board was included, so that problem was settled. The second placement, though... I was replacing someone who was going part-time for health reasons, and so she was my relief during the every-other-weekend that I had off. We started an affair (I know, I know, but at this point, I'm in a town where I really don't know anyone and I'm lonely), and when I decide to break off the affair--she wanted to do something that I really, really didn't want to do--she decides that she's all better now and wants her old job back. I probably could have hung onto it if I'd gone to the agency and made my case (and told them her motivation), but at this point my self-esteem is less than zero. I found some friends of friends in my hometown that would let me couch-surf with them, and pulled the plug. Thus endeth 1988.
On the plus side, I got into Kids in the Hall and GLOW during the last gig, so there was that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:43 AM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
8 and 9, third and fourth grade. I remember the election, Lockerbie, Discovery, George Michael, the Bangles, and those goddamn California Raisins.
What’s not in this retrospective is the first issue of Nintendo Power and the US releases of Super Mario Bros 2 and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. The NES and Apple/Scholastic books occupied most of my headspace in those days.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:44 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
What’s not in this retrospective is the first issue of Nintendo Power and the US releases of Super Mario Bros 2 and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. The NES and Apple/Scholastic books occupied most of my headspace in those days.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:44 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I still remember where I was when it was announced that Ben Johnson had failed a doping test. I was in English class. We were reading Under the Ribs of Death by John Marlyn.
posted by JamesBay at 8:45 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by JamesBay at 8:45 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
I was standing on a bluff, with the best labrador retriever in the world, while a bunch of sad, shrunken coyotes eyed us in the darkness. They were well into the effects of the North American drought.
Well, I not standing there for the whole of 1988, of course, But it is one of my enduring personal memories of that year when I left Southern California for good. I can still wear my favorite dress from that year, although it's sad and faded now. I voted for the first time that year.
If you had told me then, that this--and not The Day After--is how the U.S. finally lost the Cold War, I would not have believed you. But perhaps I would have started doing the work sooner.
posted by crush at 8:48 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Well, I not standing there for the whole of 1988, of course, But it is one of my enduring personal memories of that year when I left Southern California for good. I can still wear my favorite dress from that year, although it's sad and faded now. I voted for the first time that year.
If you had told me then, that this--and not The Day After--is how the U.S. finally lost the Cold War, I would not have believed you. But perhaps I would have started doing the work sooner.
posted by crush at 8:48 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
In 1988 I was a dad and breadwinner. Much of my TV time was spent endlessly rewatching a Ghostbusters VHS rather than news or adult programming. But it was all good...
posted by jim in austin at 8:54 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 8:54 AM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
1988. 1988...
I saw my first Grateful Dead shows in 87, so 88? I spent a lot of that on Spring/Summer/Fall east coast tour.
Oh, those 1988 Philly shows were great... That was the year the "Green People" showed up on Sunday...
posted by mikelieman at 8:59 AM on July 30, 2018
I saw my first Grateful Dead shows in 87, so 88? I spent a lot of that on Spring/Summer/Fall east coast tour.
Oh, those 1988 Philly shows were great... That was the year the "Green People" showed up on Sunday...
posted by mikelieman at 8:59 AM on July 30, 2018
It was the last year of the Cold War, and in many ways it was about dancing on the fear. I always hated the fear mongers, but in 1988 we were ahead of them and we knew it.
Yeah, maybe it's only a feeling shared by a small cohort of privileged US/Anglosphere Gen-Xers and maybe it's largely a delusion, but I often think of the period from, say, 1989-1994 or so and of how it seemed like the world was really getting its shit together.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:08 AM on July 30, 2018 [12 favorites]
Yeah, maybe it's only a feeling shared by a small cohort of privileged US/Anglosphere Gen-Xers and maybe it's largely a delusion, but I often think of the period from, say, 1989-1994 or so and of how it seemed like the world was really getting its shit together.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:08 AM on July 30, 2018 [12 favorites]
Around March of 1988, I heard Laurie Anderson for the first time. A rock station I sometimes listened to had started programming a two-hour "alternative" show on Sunday evening. I hadn't really been excited about music for years. Although Mister Heartbreak (previously) had been released four years earlier, the opening track "Sharkey's Day" was the first I'd ever heard of Anderson. I actually pulled over to the side of the road and stopped to focus on the song. Then I drove directly to Sound Warehouse and bought the cassette tape. I listened to it several times in a row, then when my roommate got home I forced him to listen to it while I raved about it. I remember this very clearly.
At that time, I was taking an upper-division poli-sci class at the big flagship state university -- the class was "International Politics" and had only about twenty students. I clearly remember everything we studied; it's almost the only public university class I ever really learned from and enjoyed. I specifically recall that I wrote a paper on the rapid growth in China's recently established Special Economic Zones and in that paper I argued that China would, sooner than we think, become a global economic power.
Also during that spring semester, Al Gore came to town campaigning for the primaries -- Tipper Gore was scheduled to visit a class at the university, and that was the one. But she had only recently been pushing the PMRC crap and I decided I was likely to argue with her about it and, therefore, it would be best for everyone if I skipped that class. Which I did.
Finally, I had been waiting tables full-time for several years, and this was the last year I did. I thrived on the stress (and, in fact, I was starting to get bored and screwing up when I wasn't in the weeds) and liked the customers and made good money at nice places, but I really didn't like a lot of the people I'd worked with.
The last place I worked was a tiny seafood cafe. Maybe ten tables, so there were never more than two of us serving.
One night I was working alone and had only four tables. One was a two-top with a couple having a special night out. Turns out that it was her birthday and the guy asked for the whole birthday routine.
In all those years, there was nothing I hated more than singing "Happy Birthday". (I'd only worked at local, independent restaurants, so fortunately I was never forced to sing some stupud, ersatz song. And one place I worked was high-end fine-dining continental with none of this nonsense at all.) Early on, I'd become adept at disappearing when servers were rounded up to sing. Because I honestly, truly can not sing.
Tragically, that night I was on my own.
I tried to beg off on the singing, but the guy was insistent and, unfortunately, I had a really good rapport with both of them and I didn’t want toscrew up a big tip disappoint them.
Cornered, I had to come up with something. My thought process was probably that if I was going to make a fool of myself, I'd better be an entertaining fool.
Being a child of the 70s, I was quite familiar with one if Bill Murray's iconic SNL characters: Nick the Lounge Singer.
I sang Happy Birthday to You like Nick would have, only worse, and peppered it with several pleas to tip the cocktail waitress and ostentatiously flirting with the birthday girl. When I finished with "Thank you, goooood night!", I was rewarded with enthusiastic applause from everyone in the cafe.
I was tipped well indeed by all those tables -- and to this day I can't quite believe I had the balls to do it.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:10 AM on July 30, 2018 [14 favorites]
At that time, I was taking an upper-division poli-sci class at the big flagship state university -- the class was "International Politics" and had only about twenty students. I clearly remember everything we studied; it's almost the only public university class I ever really learned from and enjoyed. I specifically recall that I wrote a paper on the rapid growth in China's recently established Special Economic Zones and in that paper I argued that China would, sooner than we think, become a global economic power.
Also during that spring semester, Al Gore came to town campaigning for the primaries -- Tipper Gore was scheduled to visit a class at the university, and that was the one. But she had only recently been pushing the PMRC crap and I decided I was likely to argue with her about it and, therefore, it would be best for everyone if I skipped that class. Which I did.
Finally, I had been waiting tables full-time for several years, and this was the last year I did. I thrived on the stress (and, in fact, I was starting to get bored and screwing up when I wasn't in the weeds) and liked the customers and made good money at nice places, but I really didn't like a lot of the people I'd worked with.
The last place I worked was a tiny seafood cafe. Maybe ten tables, so there were never more than two of us serving.
One night I was working alone and had only four tables. One was a two-top with a couple having a special night out. Turns out that it was her birthday and the guy asked for the whole birthday routine.
In all those years, there was nothing I hated more than singing "Happy Birthday". (I'd only worked at local, independent restaurants, so fortunately I was never forced to sing some stupud, ersatz song. And one place I worked was high-end fine-dining continental with none of this nonsense at all.) Early on, I'd become adept at disappearing when servers were rounded up to sing. Because I honestly, truly can not sing.
Tragically, that night I was on my own.
I tried to beg off on the singing, but the guy was insistent and, unfortunately, I had a really good rapport with both of them and I didn’t want to
Cornered, I had to come up with something. My thought process was probably that if I was going to make a fool of myself, I'd better be an entertaining fool.
Being a child of the 70s, I was quite familiar with one if Bill Murray's iconic SNL characters: Nick the Lounge Singer.
I sang Happy Birthday to You like Nick would have, only worse, and peppered it with several pleas to tip the cocktail waitress and ostentatiously flirting with the birthday girl. When I finished with "Thank you, goooood night!", I was rewarded with enthusiastic applause from everyone in the cafe.
I was tipped well indeed by all those tables -- and to this day I can't quite believe I had the balls to do it.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:10 AM on July 30, 2018 [14 favorites]
Can't wait for the thirty-year retrospective in 2019:
Donald Trump is accidentally and fatally injured by the anchor of his own yacht. Incredibly, surgeons turn to Bill the Cat as a donor body in which to insert Trump's still-living brain. Trapped in Bill's body, Trump finds himself disinherited from his financial empire and estranged from his wife Ivana. With nowhere else to turn, he takes Bill's place in the Bloom County boarding house, making unsuccessful attempts to start from scratch and occasionally being given equally unsuccessful lessons on the value of life by Opus. This eventually culminates in Trump regaining power and using it to buy out Bloom County, firing the entire staff of characters in the process. (source)
posted by JamesBay at 9:15 AM on July 30, 2018 [7 favorites]
Donald Trump is accidentally and fatally injured by the anchor of his own yacht. Incredibly, surgeons turn to Bill the Cat as a donor body in which to insert Trump's still-living brain. Trapped in Bill's body, Trump finds himself disinherited from his financial empire and estranged from his wife Ivana. With nowhere else to turn, he takes Bill's place in the Bloom County boarding house, making unsuccessful attempts to start from scratch and occasionally being given equally unsuccessful lessons on the value of life by Opus. This eventually culminates in Trump regaining power and using it to buy out Bloom County, firing the entire staff of characters in the process. (source)
posted by JamesBay at 9:15 AM on July 30, 2018 [7 favorites]
This time thirty years ago, I was just getting ready to move to my first roommate-free apartment, a little one bedroom place of my own in my home town, and I liked it so much that I've lived there for thirty years now.
I'm of an age where I'm programmed by endless repetition of socialization to be developing powerful feelings of nostalgia for my late-teen-to-early-twenties years, but honestly, 1988 was still square in the heart of the Reagan Memorial AIDS Epidemic™, when the government of my own country actively sought to purge people like me through the willful, active refusal to address a disease and the mainstream population just shrugged and ate California Raisins. Plus, the music sucked, the TV sucked, the movies sucked, the cars sucked, the food sucked, the literature sucked, even sensible people dressed like assholes all the time, and everyone stank of Drakkar Noir, cigarettes, and mousse.
It was a dreary, ugly, pathetic time, and as bad as things seem now, they're nothing on 1988.
Fortunately, 45 is the end of the cycle that Grampaw Genocide started, so I'm sanguine in 2018.
posted by sonascope at 9:26 AM on July 30, 2018 [10 favorites]
I'm of an age where I'm programmed by endless repetition of socialization to be developing powerful feelings of nostalgia for my late-teen-to-early-twenties years, but honestly, 1988 was still square in the heart of the Reagan Memorial AIDS Epidemic™, when the government of my own country actively sought to purge people like me through the willful, active refusal to address a disease and the mainstream population just shrugged and ate California Raisins. Plus, the music sucked, the TV sucked, the movies sucked, the cars sucked, the food sucked, the literature sucked, even sensible people dressed like assholes all the time, and everyone stank of Drakkar Noir, cigarettes, and mousse.
It was a dreary, ugly, pathetic time, and as bad as things seem now, they're nothing on 1988.
Fortunately, 45 is the end of the cycle that Grampaw Genocide started, so I'm sanguine in 2018.
posted by sonascope at 9:26 AM on July 30, 2018 [10 favorites]
in 1988, I was mostly looking forward to 1989 -- I just didn't realize it. Although Daydream Nation helped get through all the rain. It always rained in 1988.
posted by philip-random at 9:32 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by philip-random at 9:32 AM on July 30, 2018
At that time, I was taking an upper-division poli-sci class at the big flagship state university -- the class was "International Politics" and had only about twenty students. I clearly remember everything we studied; it's almost the only public university class I ever really learned from and enjoyed. I specifically recall that I wrote a paper on the rapid growth in China's recently established Special Economic Zones and in that paper I argued that China would, sooner than we think, become a global economic power.
My very first semester in college, September 1988, I enrolled in a course called "Nuclear War And Its Prevention" (NYU's drama program gave students a lot of leeway when choosing academic courses). One of the questions on the final was a brief essay question: "what do you think is the best way to prevent global nuclear war?" And I wrote about a theory that I'd just come up with (and I think I've mentioned before) - that it was a generation of people who knew about the destructive force of nukes when we were children that was going to give us a fighting chance. It had scared us all so much, i argued, that we were all likely permanently affected on a subconscious level - and that was going to affect how we voted, to the point that we would be more likely to support someone who was in turn less likely to use nukes. So all we had to do was hang in there until GenX started voting.
I hadn't yet considered the possibility that that same fear could make someone super-boffo paranoid, but I still think there's something to it. So did my professor - who wrote the comment "this is the first time I've ever seen anyone make a generational argument". (I don't remember my actual grade, but he praised the uniqueness of my thinking, at least.) But - in 2009, when Obama - who is technically a member of Generation X - gave a major address in Cairo during his first administration, and was one of the first-ever US Presidents to speak of reducing our own nuclear arsenal, I remember thinking "bloody hell, 18-year-old me was right."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:41 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
My very first semester in college, September 1988, I enrolled in a course called "Nuclear War And Its Prevention" (NYU's drama program gave students a lot of leeway when choosing academic courses). One of the questions on the final was a brief essay question: "what do you think is the best way to prevent global nuclear war?" And I wrote about a theory that I'd just come up with (and I think I've mentioned before) - that it was a generation of people who knew about the destructive force of nukes when we were children that was going to give us a fighting chance. It had scared us all so much, i argued, that we were all likely permanently affected on a subconscious level - and that was going to affect how we voted, to the point that we would be more likely to support someone who was in turn less likely to use nukes. So all we had to do was hang in there until GenX started voting.
I hadn't yet considered the possibility that that same fear could make someone super-boffo paranoid, but I still think there's something to it. So did my professor - who wrote the comment "this is the first time I've ever seen anyone make a generational argument". (I don't remember my actual grade, but he praised the uniqueness of my thinking, at least.) But - in 2009, when Obama - who is technically a member of Generation X - gave a major address in Cairo during his first administration, and was one of the first-ever US Presidents to speak of reducing our own nuclear arsenal, I remember thinking "bloody hell, 18-year-old me was right."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:41 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
In 1988 my family took our first of many summer trips to see family and friends in California. I was 2, so do not remember it very well. I am sure we did not see any California raisins in person, although two years later I would barf up raisins on my mom at a diner in Santa Cruz, so more or less the same effect.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 9:50 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 9:50 AM on July 30, 2018
I remember the droughty-dry super heatwave of 88. Several days of 105 temps in Minneapolis. Lawns and vacant lots turning yellow. One of the local TV stations was tracking the level of the Mississippi River--if the water level had kept dropping (another 5 feet, if I remember right), the intake pipe for the city water system would have been hanging in dry air, and the city of Minneapolis would have no water.
posted by gimonca at 9:56 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by gimonca at 9:56 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
1988 was also when I would occasionally drag my 1st grade aged sister in front of the TV to watch the Tracey Ullman show mostly for the Simpsons clips. And for some reason, I was still watching Star Trek: TNG.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:59 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:59 AM on July 30, 2018
And yes, music sucked. There was good stuff being recorded, and you could hear it on college radio, or at that one bar, or if you knew "that guy" at the record store. But pop culture, mass-market music was at an absolute nadir.
On the other hand, this was the heyday of the Phil Hartman era on SNL, so there's that.
posted by gimonca at 10:00 AM on July 30, 2018 [6 favorites]
On the other hand, this was the heyday of the Phil Hartman era on SNL, so there's that.
posted by gimonca at 10:00 AM on July 30, 2018 [6 favorites]
I still remember where I was when it was announced that Ben Johnson had failed a doping test. I was in English class. We were reading Under the Ribs of Death by John Marlyn.
Oooh ... I remember my philosophy 100 class the day the news broke. Prof asks: How many people here felt elated when Ben Johnson won? How many felt devestated when he lost? How many felt personal responsible for his win? His loss? .... hmmm. Interesting.
posted by chapps at 10:09 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Oooh ... I remember my philosophy 100 class the day the news broke. Prof asks: How many people here felt elated when Ben Johnson won? How many felt devestated when he lost? How many felt personal responsible for his win? His loss? .... hmmm. Interesting.
posted by chapps at 10:09 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Summer of 1988 I was just about to go into high school. I spent the summer reading, notably the Eden trilogy by Harry Harrison. The main character has sex with a female reptiloid.
posted by JamesBay at 10:12 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by JamesBay at 10:12 AM on July 30, 2018
Huh, 1988. I was working at my first "real" job out of college -- doing quasi-administrative work for a division of Prime Computers north of Boston. It was a hellish commute from my parents' house and while I accrued some solid computer skills, it wasn't the place for me. After about 16 months I quit and went back to temping full-time, and moved into my brother's shared house in Cambridge. I made better money temping (although no benefits) and worked in rather more interesting places (GTE, and the Open Software Foundation, among others), and learned about Usenet and word processing and whatnot.
I went to a lot of live shows between 88 and 90: I saw Indigo Girls on tour for their first album, and The Waterboys, the BoDeans, UB40 and Fine Young Cannibals, Springsteen a couple of times. I got much more into music than I had been in the past: I had enough money to buy albums, and a decent stereo at our group house to play it on.
What I remember about the clothes is everything was baggy.
I do remember sitting in a parking lot at a Green Line MBTA , weeping while listening to a report of the Berlin Wall coming down. But that must have been 89, it all blurs together now. In 1990 I went back to school and moved across the country, so that period was pretty short, but it looms large in my memory.
posted by suelac at 10:15 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I went to a lot of live shows between 88 and 90: I saw Indigo Girls on tour for their first album, and The Waterboys, the BoDeans, UB40 and Fine Young Cannibals, Springsteen a couple of times. I got much more into music than I had been in the past: I had enough money to buy albums, and a decent stereo at our group house to play it on.
What I remember about the clothes is everything was baggy.
I do remember sitting in a parking lot at a Green Line MBTA , weeping while listening to a report of the Berlin Wall coming down. But that must have been 89, it all blurs together now. In 1990 I went back to school and moved across the country, so that period was pretty short, but it looms large in my memory.
posted by suelac at 10:15 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Hah! The Limelight (where Axl Rose is performing in #3) is a shopping center/gym now. So sad.
posted by Grither at 10:26 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Grither at 10:26 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also, I thought #47 was Paul McCartney at first glance.
posted by Grither at 10:30 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by Grither at 10:30 AM on July 30, 2018
I was ten. My bike took me everywhere that I wanted to go. Usually it was up to the hardware store to buy embroidery floss for making friendship bracelets. My 4th grade teacher would go outside sometimes and smoke while the class was busy with reading or doing math worksheets.
I remember reading a lot of books that took place in New York City (the Fudge books, the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Harriet the Spy, and the Babysitters Club...who weren't IN New York City but wished they were). I thought that NYC was the center of the world and wanted to live there more than anything.
posted by Elly Vortex at 10:33 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
I remember reading a lot of books that took place in New York City (the Fudge books, the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Harriet the Spy, and the Babysitters Club...who weren't IN New York City but wished they were). I thought that NYC was the center of the world and wanted to live there more than anything.
posted by Elly Vortex at 10:33 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
Freshman and sophomore year of college. Still on a high from actually being away from home and eating all the non-hippie food I wanted. Met the guy who would use me as a beard for the rest of college. But I liked learning things, upstate NY is beautiful, and I made lifelong friendships. All good.
posted by Melismata at 10:52 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Melismata at 10:52 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I was just another cog in the Cold War in 1988, as a nuclear trained electrician stationed at Electric Boat in Connecticut during the construction of the USS West Virginia, soon to be the fleet's newest Trident Ballistic Missile submarine. We had no inkling at the time of what would come to pass less than a year later with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.
posted by e1c at 11:18 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by e1c at 11:18 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I had a mullet.
posted by mudpuppie at 11:37 AM on July 30, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by mudpuppie at 11:37 AM on July 30, 2018 [8 favorites]
My son was born in 1988. It doesn't seem possible that he's 30 now.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:43 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:43 AM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also, WRT TFA, and specifically #35: did the writer miss Peter Gabriel at the far right? (I also wonder who's sharing the mike with Sting.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:43 AM on July 30, 2018
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:43 AM on July 30, 2018
My older brother was in the high school graduating class of '88. Their unofficial slogan was:
Drugs are good sex is great cuz we're the class of '88.Two years younger, mine was:
Grab a Bud grab a Heiney We're the class of nineteen niney.posted by dirtdirt at 12:30 PM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Gimonica, oh god, yes, the heat! I was repainting the exterior of my house in south Minneapolis all that summer long--come home from work, peel down to running bra and shorts, climb up on the scaffolding, sweat and scrape and paint and sweat, while listening to the Twins game on a transistor radio. (I was a huge baseball fan in those years, and it was, memorably, right after the Twins had won their first-ever World Series.) I turned 35 that August, and I remember the whole summer as an endless stretch of long evenings of painting and sweating and pulling beers out of the cooler from time to time and slowly turning thoughts over and over. My mother had died the previous year, I was starting to figure out I needed to break up with my partner of 13 years, and was beginning to see forming on the horizon the realization that I was in the wrong career.
Looking at the photos, I was aware all these things were going on, but they all seemed remote even then. Just a very inward period, out of which grew, over the ensuring several years, a very different life.
posted by Kat Allison at 12:32 PM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
Looking at the photos, I was aware all these things were going on, but they all seemed remote even then. Just a very inward period, out of which grew, over the ensuring several years, a very different life.
posted by Kat Allison at 12:32 PM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
6th/7th grade. I had a perm and a coca-cola sweater and a crush on Jeremy.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:34 PM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:34 PM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I also wonder who's sharing the mike with Sting.
Possibly Janice Pendarvis or Dolette McDonald, both of whom often sang backup with Sting.
1988 was still square in the heart of the Reagan Memorial AIDS Epidemic™, when the government of my own country actively sought to purge people like me through the willful, active refusal to address a disease and the mainstream population just shrugged and ate California Raisins
This needs to be re-stated because it can't be emphasized enough that by 1988 the epidemic had killed nearly 62,000 people—more than the number of US casualties in the Vietnam war—and it still seems like by and large mainstream American culture has barely deigned to notice it. I can barely fucking write this without tears.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:41 PM on July 30, 2018 [16 favorites]
Possibly Janice Pendarvis or Dolette McDonald, both of whom often sang backup with Sting.
1988 was still square in the heart of the Reagan Memorial AIDS Epidemic™, when the government of my own country actively sought to purge people like me through the willful, active refusal to address a disease and the mainstream population just shrugged and ate California Raisins
This needs to be re-stated because it can't be emphasized enough that by 1988 the epidemic had killed nearly 62,000 people—more than the number of US casualties in the Vietnam war—and it still seems like by and large mainstream American culture has barely deigned to notice it. I can barely fucking write this without tears.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:41 PM on July 30, 2018 [16 favorites]
I finally got tired of being “good girl, eldest Filipino daughter” and began the long cycle of working stable jobs, then bartending or waitstaff. This first iteration, in the autumn of ‘88, found me tending bar in a dive off the Clybourne corridor. I was dating a weird soft egg-shaped guy named Paul who had a fantastic mind — an impeccable modern art dealer — who rode a beautiful Norton. I was in love. New Wave & punk ruled in my circle of friends : bright colours, hard geometry patterns, black motorcycle jackets. Berlin, Neo, Space Place, bunches of crappy wonderful bars on west Division Street. Glam bars in River North. Punk in Old Town. shopping on Belmont at The Alley, aka the alternative Walmart. my first and favourite adult childhood.
posted by lemon_icing at 12:56 PM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by lemon_icing at 12:56 PM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]
What's your damage, Atlantic? Fuckit, I'm going to get a slushie.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:59 PM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by iamkimiam at 12:59 PM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
That year was awesome. I turned 16 (but didn't get my driver's license), I went to Europe to join my then-best friend for three weeks of a cross-continental car trip (we even went into East Berlin, and drove out through scary East Germany! and we tried wine!), and I had a decent part-time job.
I got to see Berlin Wall before it came down (we were there for 8-8-88), and my parents gave me a piece of it for Christmas that winter.
I think I went to a sweet summer camp on Lake Of The Woods, Lake Trails, that year.
Lots of firsts in 1988.... *sigh*
posted by wenestvedt at 1:21 PM on July 30, 2018
I got to see Berlin Wall before it came down (we were there for 8-8-88), and my parents gave me a piece of it for Christmas that winter.
I think I went to a sweet summer camp on Lake Of The Woods, Lake Trails, that year.
Lots of firsts in 1988.... *sigh*
posted by wenestvedt at 1:21 PM on July 30, 2018
#34 Three Italian jets collide at an air show in Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on August 28, 1988. One jet exploded in flames and plowed into the large crowd, killing 70 and injuring over 400.
Huh, didn't expect to see this. I remember going to an enforced-fun barbecue for my parents' work (48th TFW Hospital at RAF Lakenheath) maybe the week after this happened and being offered a choice of regular hot-dogs, or "Ramstein dogs", which were ones that had been inadvertently overcooked and were dark and crispy.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 3:06 PM on July 30, 2018
Huh, didn't expect to see this. I remember going to an enforced-fun barbecue for my parents' work (48th TFW Hospital at RAF Lakenheath) maybe the week after this happened and being offered a choice of regular hot-dogs, or "Ramstein dogs", which were ones that had been inadvertently overcooked and were dark and crispy.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 3:06 PM on July 30, 2018
And remember when Dan Quayle was too damn stupid to President?
SAY 'NOE' TO DRUGS
posted by ActingTheGoat at 3:15 PM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
SAY 'NOE' TO DRUGS
posted by ActingTheGoat at 3:15 PM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
SAY POTATOE TO DRUGS
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:44 PM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:44 PM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
Thirtysomething. The Wonder Years. L. A. Law. Moonlighting. The Beach Boys return. The Grateful Dead return. A whole lot of other guys return and call themselves Travelling Wilburys.
And also, this happened.
1988 was a big year for the Boomer effect on culture, at the midpoint of an era when all the kids who got high and/or laid in the late sixties found out they had disposable income, and became the target market to end all target markets.
posted by gimonca at 4:32 PM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
And also, this happened.
1988 was a big year for the Boomer effect on culture, at the midpoint of an era when all the kids who got high and/or laid in the late sixties found out they had disposable income, and became the target market to end all target markets.
posted by gimonca at 4:32 PM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Thirtysomething
YOU KILLED GARY YOU BASTARDS
posted by octobersurprise at 5:51 PM on July 30, 2018 [7 favorites]
YOU KILLED GARY YOU BASTARDS
posted by octobersurprise at 5:51 PM on July 30, 2018 [7 favorites]
This needs to be re-stated because it can't be emphasized enough that by 1988 the epidemic had killed nearly 62,000 people—more than the number of US casualties in the Vietnam war—and it still seems like by and large mainstream American culture has barely deigned to notice it. I can barely fucking write this without tears.
I remember reading And the Band Played On in 1988 and seeing the slow recognition of the crisis by journalists; the contrast between the urgency of the epidemic and the tepid official response is still shocking to me. One of the things I remember from those years was all the obituaries that couldn't or didn't name the disease. So many "after a long illness" or mentioning something less stigmatized like pneumonia. So much left between the lines.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:30 PM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
I remember reading And the Band Played On in 1988 and seeing the slow recognition of the crisis by journalists; the contrast between the urgency of the epidemic and the tepid official response is still shocking to me. One of the things I remember from those years was all the obituaries that couldn't or didn't name the disease. So many "after a long illness" or mentioning something less stigmatized like pneumonia. So much left between the lines.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:30 PM on July 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
I was in 4th and 5th grade and I swear, I remember every one of these things, at least the newsy/pop culture things, from watching the evening news with my parents. We also had a subscription to Newsweek that I read from cover to cover every Tuesday (how do I remember it was Tuesday?) when it came. I also went to a hippie Quaker camp in Vermont, and IIRC, they actually had some people from the AIDS quilt project bring a piece of it to us. It had a huge impact on me.
I remember when it was turning to fall, my 5th grade teacher put out some fall decorations, including turkeys. My best friend and I made little signs that said "Bush" and put them on all the turkeys. Credit to my teacher: she was amused even though she made us take them down (we were too proud of our political satire to not take credit). I also remember telling my babysitter that Jesse Jackson lost the nomination because people were racist (something I was certainly parroting from my dad) and my babysitter earnestly telling me that his parents didn't vote for Jackson but they weren't racist. Maybe my first introduction to white fragility, and even as a white 10-year-old, I knew it was at least a little bit bullshit.
We'd moved to the suburbs a few years earlier and I mostly didn't like my new school or town, but one good thing was that we lived next to a lovely pond surrounded by a thin layer of woods. That year, they were building some McMansions on the other side of some of the woods, and I used to go with friends or by myself to play or read in the half-built houses after school or on the weekends. It didn't occur to anyone there was anything wrong with that, and really, there wasn't.
I still think of those damned Raisins every time I hear "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."
posted by lunasol at 7:25 PM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I remember when it was turning to fall, my 5th grade teacher put out some fall decorations, including turkeys. My best friend and I made little signs that said "Bush" and put them on all the turkeys. Credit to my teacher: she was amused even though she made us take them down (we were too proud of our political satire to not take credit). I also remember telling my babysitter that Jesse Jackson lost the nomination because people were racist (something I was certainly parroting from my dad) and my babysitter earnestly telling me that his parents didn't vote for Jackson but they weren't racist. Maybe my first introduction to white fragility, and even as a white 10-year-old, I knew it was at least a little bit bullshit.
We'd moved to the suburbs a few years earlier and I mostly didn't like my new school or town, but one good thing was that we lived next to a lovely pond surrounded by a thin layer of woods. That year, they were building some McMansions on the other side of some of the woods, and I used to go with friends or by myself to play or read in the half-built houses after school or on the weekends. It didn't occur to anyone there was anything wrong with that, and really, there wasn't.
I still think of those damned Raisins every time I hear "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."
posted by lunasol at 7:25 PM on July 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
I know it's the Atlantic, but the US photos were a mix of neutral/ bad and the non-US seemed to lean more on bad events.
I was in grade 5 in '88 in Canada (no less), knew about Challenger and serendipitously caught the first airing of The Simpsons shorts on 'The Tracey Ulman Show' the year before*.' The Raisins' were claymation.
Holy Moly! Jim Henson and "Reading is Fundamental" all came rushing back.
It's boggling to me that... 30 years ago (boggle) there was a literacy problem (boggle^2) in the USA.
Is "online literacy' something that's going to be a thing we look back on? (if anyone is going to bother defining and tracking it)
*it was an "oh wow!" thing my younger sister and I shared - this was such a totally new thing and it was funny in a way that felt familiar and we were savvy enough to think the other stuff that we didn't get is supposed to be funny, but not enough to understand why.
posted by porpoise at 8:59 PM on July 30, 2018
I was in grade 5 in '88 in Canada (no less), knew about Challenger and serendipitously caught the first airing of The Simpsons shorts on 'The Tracey Ulman Show' the year before*.' The Raisins' were claymation.
Holy Moly! Jim Henson and "Reading is Fundamental" all came rushing back.
It's boggling to me that... 30 years ago (boggle) there was a literacy problem (boggle^2) in the USA.
Is "online literacy' something that's going to be a thing we look back on? (if anyone is going to bother defining and tracking it)
*it was an "oh wow!" thing my younger sister and I shared - this was such a totally new thing and it was funny in a way that felt familiar and we were savvy enough to think the other stuff that we didn't get is supposed to be funny, but not enough to understand why.
Bart: What is the mind? I-is it just a.. system of impulses, or... is it... something tangible?Immediately I knew that Homer was an idiot (recall - I'm 10 year old) and Bart is asking questions I had been asking and no-one could/ would answer (or I didn't call bs on). Homer's an idiot, but he's mostly kind and entertaining, I wanted more continued entertainment from Homer and to see how this family grows.
Homer: Relax! What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
posted by porpoise at 8:59 PM on July 30, 2018
I was 24. My buddies and I traveled around Europe with Eurailpass and went to East Berlin. The other side of the Wall was pristine and looked brand-new. We went through Checkpoint Charlie and to the Brandenburg Gate and there was a low barbed wire fence and guys with submachine guns on the other side. (I visited Berlin later and it was strange to just be able to walk through.)
No one would look at us or talk to us on the street. You had to exchange Deutschmarks 1:1 for East German Marks (we called them Scheissmarks) even though the exchange rate was something like 4:1, and you couldn't convert it back. (East Germany: the only country with a cover charge.)
The money was really weird. The bills were small like Monopoly money and were crisp like new but had been printed in the '70s. The coins were made of something like aluminum and you could barely feel a handful in your hand.
We found a nice restaurant and ate our way to freedom with an absolutely delicious and decadent feast for about $20.
It was very interesting and oppressive and I'm glad I had the experience. The next year some other friends were visiting Europe and I was mad at them because they didn't go to Berlin for the Wall coming down.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:08 PM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
No one would look at us or talk to us on the street. You had to exchange Deutschmarks 1:1 for East German Marks (we called them Scheissmarks) even though the exchange rate was something like 4:1, and you couldn't convert it back. (East Germany: the only country with a cover charge.)
The money was really weird. The bills were small like Monopoly money and were crisp like new but had been printed in the '70s. The coins were made of something like aluminum and you could barely feel a handful in your hand.
We found a nice restaurant and ate our way to freedom with an absolutely delicious and decadent feast for about $20.
It was very interesting and oppressive and I'm glad I had the experience. The next year some other friends were visiting Europe and I was mad at them because they didn't go to Berlin for the Wall coming down.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:08 PM on July 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
11th grade on long island. AIDS,beastie boys,going into the city to get high with old friends from catholic school. Campaigning for Dukakis.
posted by markbrendanawitzmissesus at 4:23 AM on July 31, 2018
posted by markbrendanawitzmissesus at 4:23 AM on July 31, 2018
Campaigning for Dukakis.
Oh god, I did that. It literally took me another 18 years before I could campaign again.
posted by octothorpe at 4:31 AM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
Oh god, I did that. It literally took me another 18 years before I could campaign again.
posted by octothorpe at 4:31 AM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
8.8.88 was big news in South East Asia and parts East. People jostled to buy lottery tickets and gamble.
posted by infini at 11:47 AM on July 31, 2018
posted by infini at 11:47 AM on July 31, 2018
Been mulling over this.
I've talked about the "I moved to New York City" bit and the "nuclear war fear" bit. But another big thing that happened to me, which started this year: y'all, I was seriously Catholic as a kid. Not, like, "I'm contemplating being a nun", but pretty Into It. And pretty....sexually repressed as well (I hadn't ever dated when I came to college, or even been kissed). Part of that was the Catholicism, and part of that was because I was from a community that was pretty spiritually homogenous (there were like two Jewish kids in my grade school and that was about it).
And within only two months of attending college, this super-Catholic never-been-kissed small-town girl from CT was regularly having philosophical conversations with Jews, Muslims, atheists and Neo-Pagans and attending screenings of Rocky Horror Picture Show at the original 8th Street Playhouse, and basically Mine Eyes Were Opened.
I was once at a cast party about ten years ago where everyone was getting all philosophical and someone asked me what I was like as a kid and I said I was super-Catholic; everyone in the room all chorused back "Really????"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:42 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
I've talked about the "I moved to New York City" bit and the "nuclear war fear" bit. But another big thing that happened to me, which started this year: y'all, I was seriously Catholic as a kid. Not, like, "I'm contemplating being a nun", but pretty Into It. And pretty....sexually repressed as well (I hadn't ever dated when I came to college, or even been kissed). Part of that was the Catholicism, and part of that was because I was from a community that was pretty spiritually homogenous (there were like two Jewish kids in my grade school and that was about it).
And within only two months of attending college, this super-Catholic never-been-kissed small-town girl from CT was regularly having philosophical conversations with Jews, Muslims, atheists and Neo-Pagans and attending screenings of Rocky Horror Picture Show at the original 8th Street Playhouse, and basically Mine Eyes Were Opened.
I was once at a cast party about ten years ago where everyone was getting all philosophical and someone asked me what I was like as a kid and I said I was super-Catholic; everyone in the room all chorused back "Really????"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:42 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]
I was four, living in Peru. We had the Shining Path, so car bombings once in a while, massacres in rural parts of the country, a horrible but charming president who would end up exiled in France years later. The terrorists would also develop the habit of bombing power plants so we'd end up going from blackout to blackout fairly often. Mum bought a kerosene stove and we'd have camping food so in my innocent mind it was super fun.
Our currency was so worthless people would get their salaries in-kind (as in a 10 pound bag of rice, milk, etc.) Somehow my parents managed to shelter us from all this. Luckily for us, we were upper middle class. Mum would sometimes purchase little "luxuries" like Johnson and Jonson conditioner from the black market. Poor mum tried to spoil us as much as she could but imported stuff was really hard to find. Like even shitty american candy was a treasure. Until recently saying something is imported was like the ultimate showing off in Peru.
What else? Oh, I remember being obsessed with old timey Disney movies (Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland...we'd go to the betamax rental place with dad often and we knew Alice in Wonderland by heart. the oysters were our favorite characters. They had shoes but they had no feet!) and the treasured three tier cake my mum made for me for my birthday. It was pink with turquoise flowers and looked majestic.
Also Peruvian TV showed mostly British and Japanese programs for children so we'd watch Candy Candy, Heidi, and Family Ness nonstop.
posted by Tarumba at 7:13 AM on August 1, 2018 [4 favorites]
Our currency was so worthless people would get their salaries in-kind (as in a 10 pound bag of rice, milk, etc.) Somehow my parents managed to shelter us from all this. Luckily for us, we were upper middle class. Mum would sometimes purchase little "luxuries" like Johnson and Jonson conditioner from the black market. Poor mum tried to spoil us as much as she could but imported stuff was really hard to find. Like even shitty american candy was a treasure. Until recently saying something is imported was like the ultimate showing off in Peru.
What else? Oh, I remember being obsessed with old timey Disney movies (Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland...we'd go to the betamax rental place with dad often and we knew Alice in Wonderland by heart. the oysters were our favorite characters. They had shoes but they had no feet!) and the treasured three tier cake my mum made for me for my birthday. It was pink with turquoise flowers and looked majestic.
Also Peruvian TV showed mostly British and Japanese programs for children so we'd watch Candy Candy, Heidi, and Family Ness nonstop.
posted by Tarumba at 7:13 AM on August 1, 2018 [4 favorites]
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posted by Miss T.Horn at 11:12 PM on July 29, 2018 [2 favorites]