NOSTALGIA: More Than Just an Escape?

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Why do we cling to certain memories while letting others fade? Dominick and Virginia take you on a journey through time, challenging the oversimplified clichés that define entire decades and generations. Together, they dismantle the reductive portrayals of Gen X in contemporary media and examine how nostalgia serves as both a comfort and a compass for identity.

From questioning whether violence has truly increased over time to exploring how famously unparented "latchkey kids" developed unique forms of resilience, this conversation reveals how our selective memories shape both personal and collective narratives. The hosts share childhood recollections from 1970s and '80s California that paint a more nuanced picture than what's typically portrayed in films and television. The discussion moves beyond mere reminiscing as they consider psychological research on memory reconstruction and how we choose stories that align with our evolving sense of self.  Most powerfully, they question whether our perception of the past as "simpler" or "more innocent" is an illusion. As they note, every generation believes they're living in unprecedented times, while simultaneously longing for a golden age that may never have existed at all.

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Chapters

• 1:30 Introduction to Nostalgia and Generation Gaps
• 7:35 Nick's Editorial on Nostalgia and Historical Cycles
• 27:55 Virginia's Perspective on Gen X Identity
• 37:07 Comparing Notes: Decade Stereotypes and Realities
• 1:06:40 The 80s Revisited: Defending Gen X Culture
• 1:33:15 Serial Killers and the Illusion of Safer Times
• 1:54:47 Memory, Identity, and the Stories We Choose to Keep
• 2:14:37 Finding Balance Between Progress and Our Past

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:45

Hi guys and welcome to Language of the Soul podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. Today, virginia and I want to talk about a topic that's been on both of our minds and we've been playing around with the idea of discussing this with a listenership for a while now, in part because when Rob Zabrecki came on he and I just reminisced about the 80s. His memoir Strange Cures was just so accurate in its depiction of the San Fernando Valley in the 70s, which is a very specific and peculiar animal. And then Jim Urbanovich, my brother-in-law, was just blown away by both the book itself and the interview with Rob that when he came on he and I did the same thing. We were largely talking about just how, when you grow up in the same hometown, you have a shorthand. You have this shared worldview and sensibility that you don't really encounter later in life and it forms a bond. So in that spirit, virginia and I have been talking a little bit about just nostalgia in general. I think there's five years between us, maybe six, so I tend, you know, I was kind of already an adult when I think she was enjoying some of the early 90s like pop culture things that I just, you know I was a little busy working away at Disney and establishing myself. So there can be quite a difference in worldview and that did come up on the podcast with Jim. There's five years between he and I. So, for example, jim and my two older sisters and Jim are similar in age and they were part of the rock and roll generation. You know, for my sister it was Zeppelin and Halen and Ted Nugent, whereas for my generation, although we liked the rock and roll bands and we had our Aussies and our Black Sabbaths and metal continued on.

Speaker 1: 2:38

My generation, or, more aptly, my age group, were the first to really get into ska, oi, punk rock, mod rockabilly or the latest version of it, punk rock, mod rockabilly or the latest version of it, new wave as they called it at the time and, um, you know, we went out to thrift shops and bought our cowl necks and our cardigan sweaters and our penny loafers and everything vintage and, uh, I, I don't know that we were anti-rock and roll, but literally we were the new wave and we knew disco sucked right and we knew country sucked. I don't feel that way now at all. Of course I fully respect country music. I was being a little facetious as a bratty teenager. You know, we had nothing to do with it and we were too young to go out to the discos or learn to dance, if that makes sense. So we kind of had our own identity. There can be a huge difference in just those five years. That said, virginia and I are both, by definition, gen Xers.

Speaker 1: 3:32

The way the concept for this episode came about was we were just kind of chatting about this generation gap that you see endlessly portrayed in mostly like Netflix streaming programming or Netflix series let's see whether it's and Just Like that or the revival of Tales of the City or even White Lotus. You see this really inflated war between the generations and I find some of the tropes really problematic, especially defending my generation. But the way Gen Xers are portrayed I'm not going to go too far into the meat of the episode. We're surely going to talk about some of this, but I think there's a lot of misnomers about, yes, the latchkey generation, which Virginia and I will both identify with, the neglect and the fact that we were famously unparented, you know, and the angst that we're supposedly defined by. But I fight some of it and some of it's regional. You know, I grew up in LA, which is again its own animal. So, again, I'm going to save most of it. But it just came about because some of the tropes are really limiting and I think there's more to the picture. One great way of putting it is when you look at a John Hughes film. Right, supposedly that defined a generation. I'm watching it going.

Speaker 1: 4:55

I enjoyed them all, of course, but I thought, yeah, that's the Midwestern version of what it was to be a teenager in the 80s. We were cool, right. In LA and New York we were much cooler. Everything gets reduced to a bit of a stereotype, right? Not everything in the 80s was airbrushed or zebra-striped like Z Gallery. Nobody today is going to even know what that is. It's a very different story and there was a lot more authenticity than makes the history books. If you believe Dallas and Knotts Landing and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, the 80s were just all about cocaine and decadence and capitalist greed, and it ain't necessarily so. One of my students did use the term 80s bliss, and I do relate to that, but for probably different reasons than one would expect. So, yeah, I'm going to defend my generation a little bit, but I also think there's some really interesting cultural issues that are not always what they seem.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Our podcast is largely about how we are the product of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and how our entire national identity is really based on myths, folklore and, yet again, stories we collectively tell about ourselves. I think it's fascinating to look at time periods the same way. What do we say about the roaring 20s? Oh, the decadent 20s. Okay, got it, you know. What do we say about the 30s? Ah, the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, a lot of hardship. So yeah, virginia and I just kind of wanted to take a look at the 80s and maybe rethink a couple things, maybe exonerate our generation a little bit. But, more importantly, just consider the lenses through which we view history and I guess, being dinosaurs now we are part of history. I'm going to start by reading my own editorial, which I've prepared, and Virginia's going to do the same, and, as always, we're going to discuss afterward which I've prepared, and Virginia's going to do the same and, as always, we're going to discuss afterward. My editorial is on nostalgia in general and the value of the past.

Speaker 1: 6:57

Unprecedented seems to be the word of the day Lately. It's been floated endlessly in the cultural vernacular Unprecedented climate change, unprecedented divisiveness, unprecedented political violence. But are any of our existential threats or societal ills really unprecedented? According to many, especially those who have been around long enough to see history repeat, it has always seemed like the end of the world. There have always been doom speakers convinced the end is near and we're all going to hell in a handbasket. In the Republic, plato warned when rulers lose wisdom, the city sinks into decay and ruin overtakes it. In Politics 5, aristotle noted that All governments perish. Corruption destroys them and from their ruin another rises In Apology, socrates said. In Macbeth, shakespeare wrote All sound like they could have been written.

Speaker 1: 8:05

Yesterday, one of our guests here on Language of the Soul, a sociologist, cited the pervasive understanding in his field that all cultures and civilizations fancy themselves on the cutting edge of ideological progress, on the cutting edge of all things, as it were, while at the same time prophesying that the end is nigh. Most prophets wore their robes, notably Nostradamus, and the Bible placed the apocalypse ambiguously in the future, but in all cases it's imminent. Let's take the example of seemingly unprecedented political violence. The truth is, our forefathers tarred and feathered tax collectors as early on in our history as pre-Constitution Tea Act enforcement between 1765 and 1770. And post-Constitution, those same founding fathers wasted no time following suit. Tax collector John Neville was attacked by the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791. Our first assassination attempt was that of Andrew Jackson in 1835, and the first successful one was, of course, that of Lincoln in 1865.

Speaker 1: 9:12

Flash forward I was born in 1968, when the world was on fire, the year of my birth. Both Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy were assassinated, not to mention the Chicago DNC fiasco took place that year at low point in police brutality. Add to that the endless riots and demonstrations around segregation, civil rights and the Vietnam War, and one loses count. All those clashing ideological forces were literally coming to a head. With all that in mind, it's difficult to imagine that this moment is more divisive. Is it possible our expectations, our standards have simply been raised, or do we just have a short collective memory for history? I do want to point out that when we cast doubt on, for example, whether or not our weather patterns truly are unprecedented, it serves to minimize the issue, to lower the stakes. When we issue caveats like the earth has cycles and I'm not an almanac this diffusion can result in very real issues not getting the diagnosis or attention they merit. Same with the play-by-play descent into authoritarianism this administration is leveling on America. Let me go on record saying that not only have I not seen such fascist measures enacted in my own lifetime, but never in the history of this democratic experiment known as the United States have we devolved so far into fascism. It is indeed unprecedented in our history and terrifying to boot.

Speaker 1: 10:47

It's said that the more things change, the more they stay the same. If human nature has not evolved, what has changed is the cultural landscape. Technology is known to increase exponentially. As such, can we be expected to keep up with it? Humans are very adaptable, but there are doubtless growing pains during the lag periods when we find ourselves literally unprepared for advancements. We're often caught unaware, individually and collectively Deer in the headlights of advancement. Notice, I did not say of progress.

Speaker 1: 11:22

As a metaphorical example, young people today have online access to not just terrorist beheadings in broad daylight, no less, but to every kind of porn known to man. Rule 35 of the internet holds that if exists, there's porn for it, and my research bears this out. Colloquially, personal computers have become known as porn boxes. Younger generations are privy to bestiality and furries and fuzzies and wound sex and stump sex and, perhaps most problematically of all, sexuality as currency and complete objectification With no context. In other words, one's worldviews and value systems are far from cemented. In youth, anyone or anything can get hands in the clay. Only once one has an understanding of sex as the natural extension of intimacy or as an expression of affection and affinity, can one bring in the farm animals. Only then can one have a firm context for sex, unfettered by fetish or the fun complexities of the human sexual psyche.

Speaker 1: 12:29

But without context, such exposure can prove very dangerous to development. Many studies, indeed many books, indicate that repeated exposure to pornography overstimulates the brain's dopamine reward system, leading to desensitization where greater or more novel stimuli are needed to achieve the same arousal. This is known as upping the ante. This overexposure also contributes to synaptic fatigue or burnout, reducing responsiveness to natural rewards. These outcomes inhibit the chances of sustaining healthy sexual dynamics within the context of intimate relationships. It's hard to recover boundaries once objectification has become the norm. This dissatisfaction, for the record, is largely self-reported.

Speaker 1: 13:18

I offered this singular example as a metaphor. The larger implication is this If young, malleable and impressionable minds are overexposed during very formative developmental periods impressionable minds are overexposed during very formative developmental periods any notion of normalcy is the casualty. Historical ideologies get lost in the mix, world views and value systems become skewed. This is the reason so many young millennials and Gen Zers are vulnerable to online radicalization or otherwise find themselves inculcated in deep, dark internet rabbit holes or otherwise find themselves inculcated in deep, dark internet rabbit holes. This is the reason, in part, we have reached a seemingly insurmountable cultural divide.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Many of us dinosaurs find ourselves reminiscing about the Cretaceous, when the world seemed simpler, more innocent. But is this temptation to bask in nostalgia nothing more than comfort food? Is the appearance of the past as a more innocent time nothing more than an illusion? Is the kinder, gentler past or you-fill-in-the-blank, more civil, respectable, classier past a nightlight, an invented place in which to take refuge and feel safer? Woody Allen love him or hate him spoke to the theme of nostalgia in Midnight in Paris. The film treats nostalgia as both enchanting and illusory. Critics note its romantic glow around the past, while Allen himself has said it reflects the denial of a painful present. Through protagonist Gill's journey, the film suggests that every era longs for another, quote-unquote golden age, exposing nostalgia as a cycle of idealization rather than a solution to present dissatisfaction.

Speaker 1: 15:01

Sociologists generally agree that at this moment in history, the human race inflicts less physical hand-to-hand violence on its own per capita than ever before. Harvard's Steven Pinker popularized this view in his 2011 book the Better Angels of Our Nature why Violence has Declined. More recently, however, anthropologist Raul Oca at the University of Notre Dame has challenged the redeeming notion. Violence is on the decline. Those dead set on seeing the glass half-empty will suggest that violence has simply been subverted into oppression, marginalization, exploitation, slave trade and human trafficking. Regardless, overt physical violence is at an all-time low, according to most anthropologists and sociologists. As with all civility, despite the pendulum swings, the forward march toward human potential remains steady. As Martin Luther King said, paraphrasing Theodore Parker, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice, and so the arc continues.

Speaker 1: 16:07

It is surely an illusion that many of our societal ills are unprecedented. As vigilantly as we strive to quote, remember the horrors of history lest they repeat themselves, our cultural ADD means our memories are prone to slip. From my own personal experience, I attribute the illusion of a kinder past to one thing the resilience of youth. When we're young and egocentric, the big bad world simply does not quote get in. At the time, I had no idea the world I was born into was on fire. The Vietnam War was the first televised war, as it was called. Our mom was smart enough not to leave the news on during dinner, so I was blissfully unaware, beyond passing remarks, about the odd veteran who'd returned home whom folks stopped just short of blaming for the war. It seemed they were hardly better than those darn hippies.

Speaker 1: 17:00

For some reason, during the Carter administration, I started paying attention To inflation, to horrendous gas lines, to the hostage crises, to the Iranian revolution. Perhaps I happened into a compelling teacher? Or, more likely, the first-hand accounts of an Iranian refugee who landed in my 6th grade class shocked me. Her version of show-and-tell included accounts of nightly curfews and POWs being chopped bit by bit, starting at the fingers of the feet in her words, until gangrene set in. Other than vivid accounts like Susan's world events failed to enter my psyche and traumatize or trigger me.

Speaker 1: 17:40

Reagan's attempted assassination occurred when I was a senior in high school, as did the Challenger explosion. I noted them. They got a double-page spread in our yearbook, but somehow they didn't make the world seem like a less safe place. Nothing about the world seemed any more or less crazy than the next thing. I had nothing to compare it to 9-11 was my wake-up call.

Speaker 1: 18:04

I had long since come into my own during college, found my peeps and questioned my socialization and learned what made me tick In the way of Plato's cave analogy. I'd emerged from the cave and knew well what cast the shadows on its walls. What all this meant is I had the world by the balls. I knew we chose our own realities and we manifested what was on our vibrational radar. I'd benefited from the alchemy of youth and manifested a career and affluence, as it turns out, as virtuous as my theoretical worldview rang, it was nothing less than the hubris of youth. It was not sustainable Thinking any one of us had power over our circumstances. 9-11 taught me there was a big, bad world out there over which I had no control. Sure, we all had the free will to choose how we responded to circumstances, but it turned out my aunt, a nurse for the FBI, had been right in all the doomspeaking I judged her for over the years She'd been right every time she'd whispered at Christmas or Thanksgiving. We are so vulnerable to terrorism in this country, you guys have no idea. The crumbling of the two towers became an iconic moment in the shaping of my worldview. It mirrored the crumbling of my ideals, also a rite of passage in the spiritual journey.

Speaker 1: 19:25

As a Scorpio, I tend to cling to the past more than most. As a Scorpio, I tend to cling to the past more than most. Oh, I don't perseverate on it, define myself by it or imprison myself with disempowering narratives, but I carry fondness, attachment and affinity with me. In short, I value the past. Legacy matters to me, whether my grandfather's or my own. I've been the family archivist and historian, pictorially documenting all family events, long before the advent of the surgically attached iPhone. Did I mention I'm a Scorpio? My friend Sherry, the mother of my godson, shares my birthday. We often peruse photo albums of our glory days, what my students have affectionately named the blissful 80s.

Speaker 1: 20:10

For me, those moments of joy and beauty define me. They define the making of me, the becoming. We live in a culture that encourages us to live in the moment. I don't disagree with this sentiment. I'm a big subscriber to Eckhart Tolle and the Power of Now. I agree that the past is conceptual and the future is an illusion. The present is the only thing that's real. However, those that are quick to reject the past are often those for whom it represents trauma. Who can blame another for avoiding triggers. Just as often those who virtue-signal about living in the moment are those running from the past, from former versions of themselves they've outgrown. For those of us with no skeletons in the closet, those who own all parts of ourselves, including former models that are rough around the edges, it's not a threat to dwell in the past from time to time, to indulge those fuzzy memories that keep us warm on cold nights. I'm a big defender of the value of the past, for a myriad of reasons. I'm going to read a portion from my book on this topic, warning a line or two may echo what I've already said the Value of Past and Future.

Speaker 1: 21:27

At the age of 20, for my first creative writing class in junior college, I wrote a short story titled La Gare about a train station. In it, two strangers each waiting for a respective train, hold a conversation. It turns out the woman the man's senior is traveling to a high school reunion in hopes of recapturing something from her youth that has gone missing. The younger man's destination is a new town where a romantic opportunity and a promising livelihood await. On arriving, he's sure, life will be fulfilling. It's a parable. Of course. Both characters miss the charm of the train station itself and a surreal twist leaves the reader wondering if it exists at all. It's a parable.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Of course, I'm not alone in my fascination with time. Language itself is fraught with idioms, colloquialisms and figurative expressions on the matter. We love time when it heals all wounds and we lament it when it marches on. We embrace time when it's on our side and resent it when we run out of or are in a race against it or have none to lose. Some sayings are contradictory. There's no time like the present, and yet hindsight is 20-20. We waste time and never have enough of it, and yet time abounds when there is plenty of time for something. At its worse, time destroys all, and all good things come to an end in time. You get the idea.

Speaker 1: 22:58

In the late 90s, popular culture touted the value of being in the moment. Eckhart Tolle's the Power of Now entreated us to stop ruminating on the past, defining ourselves by it or imprisoning ourselves in its narratives. Similarly, the book dissuades us from fretting about the future, as it's purely conceptual and this moment is all that truly exists. I subscribe 100% to the above. I'm acutely aware that many find themselves trapped in past narratives, beating old drums that do little more than justify the less thanthan-desirable circumstances and conditions known as their present. I see families that insist on holding members to old roles, limiting their freedom to grow and transform. The challenge is universal.

Speaker 1: 23:45

As an artist, I counted a blessing that my chosen craft brings the built-in perk of limiting mental chatter and placing me firmly in the moment. And yet another quality I would count among those that make me an artist is my nostalgic streak, my love and appreciation for history, for style and its evolution, for the dialectic of our human evolution. My fond memories, and even those with darker edges, are 100% what I draw on in my writing. The reservoir of archetypes that live in me, infused with the authentic charge of a lived experience, is where the universality lies. I would not trade this love of the past for the world. The bonds I share with family and loved ones was forged by shared experiences and time spent together.

Speaker 1: 24:35

Love requires a past. Indeed, so does the future. The word quere in Spanish is used for to love, but literally it means to want. In my experience, desire. Another word for love is the wanting of more. It's a projection of hope and aspiration on an imagined future. All creation comes from envisioning what is not yet manifest but will be in the imaginary future. And so I am torn.

Speaker 1: 25:09

I strive to remain unhindered by the past, unshackled by narratives, mantras and counterproductive thought forms. After all, beliefs about the world are really just familiar neural circuits, the thoughts we keep thinking. At the same time, I value my memories and the collective annals of human history. On the macro level, memories of the past keep us warm on cold nights and visions of the future inspire us to rise another day. It's known as hope.

Speaker 1: 25:39

To add to the value of past and future, consider the familiar conventional wisdom. We must remember history lest it repeat itself. Communities and ethnic groups who have been marginalized, ostracized or even subjected to genocide very much honor this sentiment. There is value to both past and future, as long as one maintains balance. Funny, balance seems to be the key to a lot of things in life. I am constantly inspired by luminaries like Jane Fonda, hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem, who insist on remaining relevant. Rather than taking us dinosaurs out to pasture or to the glue factory, society might benefit from the wisdom that only comes with age. These legacies, war stories, fond remembrances and tributes are the means by which we continue to transform and evolve. Okay, thanks so much for listening, and Virginia is going to read her editorial, which will likely highlight a very different aspect of nostalgia and the value of it. Take it away, virginia.

Speaker 2: 27:10

Take it away. Virginia had been shaken by Watergate, families were feeling the pinch of inflation and gas shortages, and the very idea of stability was shifting. At the same time, culture was reinventing itself. Saturday Night Live debuted that year, music was crossing from disco into punk and new wave, and the first personal computers were beginning to emerge. I was born into that cultural soil, one of disillusionment, resilience and a growing skepticism about authority. Of course, I don't remember much of those early years, but from 1984, my memories are vivid. My parents' marriage unraveled and ended in divorce in 1984, leaving me a latchkey kid, before that phrase was even popularized.

Speaker 2: 27:45

I bounced between towns all throughout Central and Southern California, such as Ventura, san Luis Obispo, san Bernardino, pasadena, always adapting, always learning how to fit into new places. Alongside my personal people, the wider world was just as turbulent. We had the Cold War and nuclear fears, the Challenger explosion, the Berlin Wall coming down, desert Storm unfolding and Bill Clinton's election. Like many Gen Xers, I grew up between worlds. Analog childhoods became digital adulthoods. Mtv, nickelodeon and cable television expanded the landscape, but they were nothing compared to today's constant streaming and scrolling. I remember when not knowing was a comfort, when the world wasn't in your face every second through a screen. That innocence, that space to just be it is part of what nostalgia stirs in me. But nostalgia is more than a memory. It's a kind of storytelling. The stories we long for from the past aren't always about the details of that time. They're about what those moments symbolized Safety, freedom, belonging.

Speaker 2: 28:59

For me, music was one of the deepest anchors Madonna, queen, guns N' Roses, depeche Mode, the Cranberries, u2. Those are just a few. Each carried not just a sound but a message. They were the soundtrack to both my rebellion and resilience, reflecting the angst of my generation and our hope for change. Movies like the Breakfast Club, ferris Bueller's, day Off and Stand by Me didn't just entertain us. They mirrored our questions about identity, belonging and the need to push back against expectations.

Speaker 2: 29:32

Nostalgia also carries the values and beliefs we absorbed along the way. Those messages, whether from family, culture, our communities, shape the stories that we fold into our central sense of self. That's why two people from the same generation, such as Nick and I, can look back at the same events and pull forward very different wisdom. Each of us chooses, consciously or not, what we carried forward. For us, for me, that's where the nostalgia ties into identity. It isn't only the comfort food of our soul. It becomes part of who we are Through a lens that I use in counseling conscious, rational identity theory. Nostalgia is one of the ways we define ourselves by selecting the memories, values and stories that still serve us, while letting others fall away. In that way, nostalgia isn't escaping into our past. It's about bridging the past and present, linking generational wisdom to our current identity and reminding us that the stories we tell ourselves are always shaping the people we're still becoming.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Beautiful. Thank you so much, virginia. I really enjoyed that and loved the takeaway at the very end. You said something in there I wanted to follow up on because, ironically, in preparation for today, I just looked up the word zeitgeist. I've heard it thrown around a lot but I just kind of knew I didn't know exactly what it meant, because I thought it really meant like a wave or an explosion of some kind of trend. But it really is the spirit of a moment, of some kind of trend, you know, but it really is the spirit of a moment, right. And so in your piece just now, you said something like it's not so much about the events that happened during a given time period, but it's about what they symbolize, right, for us personally. And so I I want to follow up on that and do a little exercise, if you're open to it, and the spirit of our podcast I've suggested that.

Speaker 1: 31:31

You know, we're largely products of the stories we tell ourselves individually. And then, culturally, we're a product of the stories we tell about the human condition, humanity, our national identity, right, the america. We've got a lot of some false narratives and a lot of folklore, you know, but we tell stories about ourselves that may or may not be accurate, so I think it's sorry. Interesting to think of time periods the same way, right, like, what stories do we tell about the tens and the twenties and the thirties? Uh, so I well, let's be fully transparent. I did tip Virginia off to come up with some adjectives, and I have my short list of adjectives too, and I just want to see if they align, because there are regional factors as well. Right? And then, as we said, we're seven years apart. I kept saying five, but my birthday's in November and, by the way, virginia just had the big five-oh, happy birthday. Are you having it today?

Speaker 2: 32:29

Yes, today they're not recording.

Speaker 1: 32:32

She had her party yesterday, but like it just occurred to me yesterday, holy crap, we're doing a podcast on your birthday. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2: 32:41

It's better than how I celebrated it last year.

Speaker 1: 32:44

So you want to talk about it?

Speaker 2: 32:47

Last year I buried my mom on my birthday.

Speaker 1: 32:49

Oh my God, are you serious?

Speaker 2: 32:51

Dead serious. Yeah, and that was not a pun to be intended when I said dead serious. But I can laugh about it now, but yeah, it was because it was Saturday last year and it was the only Saturday that I could get everybody in town for her.

Speaker 1: 33:04

So it was the service itself. Yeah, the service itself.

Speaker 2: 33:06

Yeah, wow. So the service itself. Yeah, the service itself.

Speaker 1: 33:08

yeah, wow, so does that become like an association? You know some people. Forever they'll associate their birthday with whatever happened that day. Is that a?

Speaker 2: 33:24

good thing or about it could be a good thing an opportunity to honor or pay tribute to your mom or reminisce about her. And I did. And I did go to her and my stepdad's therapy. I did do therapy too. I did therapy on Friday, but, no, we did at the end of my day, before I went to the party. I did go to the cemetery and go see both my stepdad and my mom, because they're very obviously side by side and then my nana is not too far from them. So did go see all three of them before coming home and getting ready for the party. But when I planned the services not that we went to get into this, but talk about nostalgia and just reminiscing a little bit my husband swore to me that when, when I planned the services and he saw that it was going to be on my birthday, he's like I do not want you to bring that up every year.

Speaker 1: 34:07

And I was like oh, good call, Good call.

Speaker 2: 34:09

Yeah, so it was a good call for him. So yeah, in the back of my mind it is so, it, it. It does mark two things for me. It did mark that it has now been officially a full year since both of them have passed Um, but at the same time and I mean I'm like sad that they weren't here to see the big five-oh with me, but at the same time it also, in my mind, kind of helped solidify that I'm in a new chapter of my life too, so I'm marching forward, and they got to spend at least almost half of my lifetime with me.

Speaker 1: 34:42

So, oh yeah, that's a great way to look at it. And true, you know, it's not just a spin, it's effing true.

Speaker 2: 34:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:50

So yeah, I love that. Anyway, before we forget the premise of the exercise, I do want to compare notes and see, you know, because even education changes to what I was told. I think it's fascinating that like, oh wait a minute, the Gulf war, that was yesterday and it's in the history books that Riot Gen alphas are learning about, and to me it's yesterday. I mean, I remember getting those calls. I was, we were just short of a draft and not everybody knows that. But I didn't just get recruiters calling me. I'm positive I was flagged for the draft, but because I was at Disney and working away and contributing to the economy, they left me alone. But anyway, all of that is like yesterday to me and I'm like, and it's in the history books. How are they characterizing that? I think it's fascinating.

Speaker 1: 35:37

So let's compare notes. Let's see what do I? What do I have? I guess I left out the tens. I started with the twenties.

Speaker 2: 35:44

I did the same. Okay, and where are they? Okay, I've got well. Well, do you want to go first? How about you go first?

Speaker 1: 35:54

okay, I'll go first so I had roaring, because obviously we know roaring 20s, I mean that's just what it's been titled.

Speaker 2: 35:59

Um then I had flapper, and then I had the speakeasy right, right, oh, just those three.

Speaker 1: 36:06

Perfect, I have all three of those exactly. Let's not, because this could get long, I'm just going to read them quick roaring 20s, jazz, age, decadence, mainly decadence rebellion, bootlegging and speakeasies. That's so funny. And then I put culture clashes question mark, second gilded age question mark, because there was this idea of prosperity as bliss. And then I, at the very last minute, I wrote moholland because I thought that was 30s, but then, you know, the interwebs corrected me, so I think it was like the moholland thing was the epitome of capitalist greed yeah, I think it was like right at the end of the 20s into the beginning of the 30s yeah yeah, that's what I'm thinking about it, yeah

Speaker 1: 36:45

so to me again. I don't want to go on and on about all these because it could get quite long, but I did notice. Tell me if you noticed this. Like with every decade, it's so easy to look at the generation gap and the forces that are colliding. Do you know what I mean? The younger way of thinking, the more progressive way, and then the old school. So every decade I put like culture clash or like generation gap, and you had to address what was coming right and then what was being ushered out. It'll probably come up more. But yeah, at the last minute I thought, oh, I guess it was blissful.

Speaker 2: 37:19

But there was this, I don't know, like something was on the horizon about capitalist greed and um well, you think about we had a lot of the inventions because of the industrial age, so, and you had the luminescent light bulb.

Speaker 2: 37:30

I about we had a lot of the inventions because of the industrial age, so, and you had the luminescent light bulb, I mean there was a lot of the plumbing was starting to become more common, and not just the higher end society but working its way down into the middle class and lower class. I mean, it's just, it's. It's crazy, but we don't think, and that was considered progressive, like right you're driving a car like what's wrong with the horse and buggy, like this always did it right.

Speaker 1: 37:53

Well, if you watch, uh, downton Abbey, you know the electric light, like they just thought it was the beginning of the end and the devil's work. And it is hysterical because they seem so innocent and non-threatening. Now, some of these advancements and um, but I did at one point I I keep saying googled, but I guess I chat gpt'd, you know, with AI on the horizon and all the boogeyman talk and all of that I thought, well, every advancement brings right all these fears. And, yeah, everyone was terrified of the light bulb. For God's sake, come on. Oh, and, by the way, did you know what was the first town with street lamps, electric street lamps? I can't remember. It's not what you think. I'll give you that hint.

Speaker 2: 38:39

I know, I know it wasn't New York and I know it wasn't Chicago. It was, but it wasn't.

Speaker 1: 38:44

It was way up in the Rocky mountains, it was Telluride oh that's right, telluride, isn't that weird? It's so counterintuitive, so counterintuitive, but yeah, I think it. Maybe Edison was just trying to compete with Tesla, so he did it on his own territory or something. But I learned that you know, when I had a film in the Telluride Film Festival, I got a tour, and that was my one takeaway. Okay, this is us speeding things along. For the thirties, I have Dust Bowl. Oh, sorry, you were going to go first.

Speaker 2: 39:13

Okay, oh no, you're fine. So I just, I just did like one word, so I have dusty, desperate dust, ridden and desolate.

Speaker 1: 39:21

A lot of a lot of alliteration there. You're a true poet. Yep, I have Dust Bowl, great Depression, both of which amount to economic hardship, right. And then I did write, meanwhile, social Unrest to do with, like the WPA, and Roosevelt was seen as socialist. There was kind of a backlash against socialism. And then, yeah, our more socialist policies mirroring the rise of fascism in Europe. Posters for the WPA, for example, they're using the same aesthetic, as you know, that idealistic, constructivist look, as the third Reich was using for their propaganda. So, yeah, some weird mirroring going on. All right, forties what you got.

Speaker 2: 40:07

Um, obviously, cause we're moving toward that March of the war. So I have patriotic war torn, rationed and resolute Rationed. We're talking like silk stockings, things like that, yeah, like people take in the hub caps I mean any type of metal that wasn't yeah and I remember grandparents talking about that, um and and doing that almost like today's end timers where you're.

Speaker 1: 40:34

Were they saving for an emergency or just rationing to make it through the war?

Speaker 2: 40:39

ration to make it through the war. Um, obviously wanting to westward, the patriotic part comes in, wanting to do their part by. You know anything extra they could give, like the old tires, those kinds of things, so it could be used toward the war effort. Um was a big thing and I want to say, if I remember correctly, I think they would get coupons toward groceries to kind of help subsidize them, which was also why a lot of family did that.

Speaker 1: 41:04

Which sounds very socialist right.

Speaker 2: 41:06

Yeah, it was.

Speaker 1: 41:07

I mean it's, yeah, a very kind of like early food stamps or welfare or that sort of thing, right, actually, I mean, I'm sure welfare came in in the 30s with Roosevelt, right, it had. Anyway, yep, I've got wartime escapism because there was this bliss, you know. I mean, 1939 was, yes, maybe the tail end of the depression and we weren't affected by the war yet, but there was just, you know, they say entertainment prospers during a war, and so I see it as an escapist time. And then I put silk stockings, like you were kind of hinting at everything was scarce.

Speaker 1: 41:45

And then I put film noir, kind of like hard-boiled detectives and femme fatales. So there was a sort of tough quippy and a clever discourse going on fast, talking corruption in Holly weird, you see, that trope a lot right, like more like modern day film noirs making reference to the corruption in hollyweird, rise of women in the workplace due to the war, and then kind of like over romanticized blissful images like the sailor coming home and right kissing theame. So it's cute and it's romantic, but a lot of it was escapism from the war, I think.

Speaker 2: 42:20

Yeah, and when he said like the whole story of coming home and kissing the dame, I started thinking of the movie South Pacific the musical the musical which did give more of that romantic spin to to the war, to the hard time.

Speaker 2: 42:34

And and and I love that. You said um, oh gosh, and I can't remember which which word it was uh, was it was, it wasn't, escapism, was something else, but oh, um, I had to go back to the rushing and um and people going into the war. But, um, and the depression, that's what it was. So, not my family, this is my husband's family hit one of, because we both have grandfathers who served in the war. But, um, one of his grandfathers actually joined the war before they started doing the draft because of the depression, so he would have food to eat oh, yeah, yeah, yeah they.

Speaker 1: 43:14

I read my grandfather's or my sister obviously has read a lot of my grandfather's diaries and the writing of her book and so much of his, so many of his decisions were made, you know, on the basis of how do I feed my family? You went where the work is. You know he worked on handsome dam and like, wherever the work was he went. So yeah, I can imagine after the Great Depression how you just take the work where you can get it. You know, and I do have great uncles, yeah, great uncles my grandmother's brothers absolutely voluntarily joined the war effort. It was volunteer based. Okay. So for the tail end of the 40s, I have the beginnings of the US savior complex right as defenders of democracy, like post-Normandy invasion. I think that's when we cemented our savior complex. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 44:04

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 44:05

Okay, so 50s. What do you have for that?

Speaker 2: 44:08

So I have conformist wholesome, sterile suburban, and the reason why we use suburban is because that is where we started getting that whole concept of the nuclear family.

Speaker 1: 44:20

Ironic that it's got the word nuclear right there in it. Isn't that interesting? Yep, wow, but that's not by design.

Speaker 2: 44:28

No, not at all.

Speaker 1: 44:30

No, it could. Okay, wow, that's interesting. Okay, I've got squeaky clean. Cementing of American dream, the white picket fence and American supremacy, height of conformity, as you said, giving rise to youth. See, that's the thing. When you live in a conformist society, you get your James Deans right, and so the rebellion and the subversion and I think Jimmy Dean says it all and rebel without a cause. But then you also have these underground movements, like the beatniks, you know that were all about fucking the man and society and the status quo. Sorry, I'm getting all over the place here, but then I, oh, and teenagers were a demographic for the first time. There was no concept of your teenage years until the fifties, from what I read, but it kind of makes sense, you know. Oh, they're humans, they're organisms that are going to become humans. We better like, treat them as more than property, you know.

Speaker 2: 45:26

Right, but at and I was going to say at the same time you also had, because obviously this is when Elvis was starting to come up to, and the Beatles, even though they weren't really huge names at the time. But it was that concept of when the rock and roll era starts to really take off, Like, oh my gosh, this is going to, you know, damage our children. It's going to take them away from this, like you know, holy ideal of what it is to be an American society.

Speaker 1: 45:54

Yeah, yeah. And rock and roll, especially in the South, was really demonized, right. How dare a white boy right have soul or shake his hips, for God's sake. So yeah, I have bomb shelters, unspoken I guess cold, early cold war jitters, right, that was more to come. But you def, I mean you had bomb shelters and this I think unspoken fear to come. But you def, I mean you had bomb shelters and this I think unspoken fear. So you and I in our pieces we both talked about, um, not that everybody had a bomb shelter, but there was an unspoken fear of nuclear war. My in 10th grade Mrs Rossoff anyone listening, any Burbankians listening, will know Mrs Rossoff because we adored her. But she had us do a poetry notebook and she said never before have I seen this much anxiety about nuclear war expressed in the poetry. And this was 83 to 84. Isn't that interesting. It took a while to affect people's psyches.

Speaker 2: 46:50

But I could see it because, if you think about it and this kind of goes into what we're talking about with nostalgia. I mean, here we were talking about the fifties and everybody thinks of it as like this, like, you know, dream kind of, which is like the game fallout came out. For this reason, because it's like this, you know it's set in, but this like 1950s kind of theme, and then nuclear war happens and then all of a sudden you're in dystopia, and so it's kind of like the, the two extremes right being I have never heard of that, but is it a board?

Speaker 2: 47:13

game. It's an online video game.

Speaker 1: 47:15

Oh, okay. But it has I think I don't know if it's Apple.

Speaker 2: 47:26

TV or if it's, hbo is now doing a TV series based off Fallout. Nostalgia's in the air? Yeah, it definitely is, and of course they're in bomb shelters but they went into them like during the 50s. So like this, that very. You know how we just described the 50s, but I think we're taking that concept. So I think of my mom. My mom was born in 1953. And my dad was 52. And my stepdad was 51 was when they were born, so toward the later part of the 50s. They were in early elementary school years and I remember my mom talking about how they would do the like how we do fire drills and now, unfortunately, our children do the active shooter drills with it. They were doing the nuclear drills. Where they're doing the, you know, get under your desk and cover up for the nuclear bombs, if they go out.

Speaker 1: 48:13

Have you watched those lately, those propaganda films? Yes, they're hysterical. They're like, literally she's got a bundt cake in her hands and she'll say, if you see a nuclear blast outside your window, and she's like taping it up with duct tape, it's like, how about just kiss your ass, goodbye, like bend over and kiss you, nope, just put duct tape on the window, it'll be fine.

Speaker 2: 48:32

And you know, sorry, go ahead oh, I was gonna say so what's? And I love that you said because and they say it with like this innocence, and that's the thing we think of the 50s as innocence but the same time, there was like this huge, like you said, this huge fear, anxiety, literally, like you had these two truths simultaneously happening in the 50s yeah, and a lot of it was coping, like the denial was a coping mechanism and maybe over idealizing things, which you could put Disney, the whole brand, in that category of.

Speaker 1: 49:00

again, it's kind of an escapism but I do want to say, you know, renee, my sister came on, as you know, and we discussed her book and in it we talk about my mom watched the mushroom clouds from her schoolyard in Nipton, california.

Speaker 1: 49:14

It was near the Nevada border, so she wrote a really vivid section about that where you know, everybody's a product of their time and that denial was there. But she really humanized it and made my grandmother go wait, is that okay that they're squinting and watching Like she was very actively questioning the wisdom of that and I did connect for the first time. My mom had breast cancer years later and she did try to get reimbursed for her medical bills by proving she went to that one school. But there's no record. I mean it's literally a ghost town Now. We drove by and it's like, oh, one bar is still there but it's, you know, being absorbed by the earth and we couldn't prove she went to that school. So she couldn't qualify for the program. But I did realize her and two of her siblings had different forms of cancer. It's 100% connected.

Speaker 2: 50:02

Oh yeah, and I can say that because, like growing up in Southern California, I would never have put that causation together. But now that I live here in Southern Utah I can't Cancer here throughout Utah, especially in the southern part of Utah is amazing, and I'm not just talking like my grandparents' age or even my parents' age. I see it even with Gen Xers, and I don't know. Well, I do know why. I think it's because of the soil, because this area is considered the downwinders to those testing sites in Nevada.

Speaker 1: 50:38

So you think it's intergenerational, the effects become intergenerational, or are there still tests going on that we don't know about?

Speaker 2: 50:46

I actually asked my husband because he used to work hazmat in California, so this was totally up his alley. I said, you know, tell me more about the downwinders. And I'm like I get, I get the older generations because the testing was going on. But what is it with you? Know, people in our generation, Like we know, probably a third of the people that we associate with have had some form of a cancer and that are in our age group. And he's like, well, you think about it. Radioactivity lasts a long time.

Speaker 2: 51:16

And they're considered the downwinders, and so all the construction that's been going on throughout Southern Utah is kicking all that back up.

Speaker 1: 51:24

Right, right. Yeah, I would think the radioactivity is a factor. But also, once those cells are mutated, they do get passed on, they're encoded, anyway. Yeah, maybe we need to get aaron brockovich on it, on you, on the state of utah yeah, probably okay. The final thing I have for the 50s is anti-socialist sentiment obviously became mccarthyism and the lavender scare. So a lot of that paranoia, okay.

Speaker 2: 51:53

60s 60s is an interesting generation, so I have groovy, hippie, psychedelic, revolutionary, and then I also put folk because, even though everybody thinks of the, like you know, the crazy hippie, bell-bottomed kind of era, I mean this was the generation that my mom did grow up in, you know, throughout her high school, and was the most influential part of her life and she played the guitar, um, but she definitely wasn't a hippie child, she was more in that folk side of things.

Speaker 1: 52:29

Well, I think there was protest rock and folk rock. Is that very different from the hippie movement?

Speaker 2: 52:36

I don't think they were different, but they just had a different vibe okay, tell me more.

Speaker 1: 52:41

No, let's save it, we'll get back into it. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that's what's interesting about the 60s is the moment you say, oh, it was all. Peace, love, flowers. Yeah, you'll see a documentary saying no, no, no, those kids that got off the bus at Haight-Ashbury quickly fell into prostitution to make ends meet, which led to drug addiction, and it's like oh, then you get the biker gangs and Charlie Manson, like, if you believe more conservative documentaries, it was a real quick transition from ideals to like some of the darkest ills of society. You know, there's a lot of ways to tell that story, but I don't. You know, I did grow up with biker gangs. I, you know, I've told you, like owning the hotel, they would bring the hell's angels in for Thanksgiving and I don't know. I saw it as pretty sinister. So, but what is the real difference between a hippie commune and this like freedom, right of just being on the road with a biker gang?

Speaker 1: 53:37

it's pretty similar yeah but anyway, okay, so I could read my list. Do you have anything else for the 60s?

Speaker 2: 53:45

um, I think two people think of. Like all the girls had like that long straight hair and that guys were just really shaggy looking and scruffy.

Speaker 1: 53:55

Yeah, I have Al Nacheral. Well, that was later. The 60s are interesting because there was a huge shift within the decade. Right, I mean, these are illusions. You talk about generations. Obviously there aren't clear cut. I mean there are, by definition, but every generation melds into the next. It's a silly concept. So same with decades, right, but I see you, look at early 60s versus late 60s, huge difference in style and sentiment.

Speaker 1: 54:20

So, yeah, I have the full swing of the youth rebellion beatniks become hippies, peace, love, flowers, communes. I have Ed Sullivan and the British invasion, which would be earlier. Then I have the full backlash against 50s conservative folk, rock, wood, woodstock, moon landing culture, clashes around civil rights, the Vietnam war right, I mean, I was born in 68 and my oldest sister was born in 64, believe it or not. So we were born in the middle of civil rights, segregation, the Vietnam war, and then I, for some reason, I wrote don't trust anyone over 30, right, that whole youth culture, janis Joplin, I even wrote down Timothy Leary and LSD, biker gangs becoming cults like the Mansons. I'm sorry, I don't want to offend anyone, but just kind of that darker edge toward the end of the decade Black Panthers, full mistrust of institutions and bureaucracy and the status quo. Does any of that sound right?

Speaker 2: 55:19

Oh yeah, it sounds totally right and that's why I had the revolutionary thing, because it was to me that was the encompassing word when I think of the fact that we had the Civil Rights Movement, we had Martin Luther King, we had Malcolm X, we had the Black Panthers. You know, you had different groups in various ways. It was definitely. I think we probably should have, you know. I want to say it was probably the beginning of more of that revolutionary kind of attitude.

Speaker 1: 55:51

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 55:52

About. There isn't just a status quo on how to do things anymore.

Speaker 1: 55:56

Yeah Well, a watershed moment like this moment the divisiveness is peaking again, that's what we'll talk about for the millionth time, or is it really unprecedented? You know, we can go on and on about that, but I do think it was a watershed moment by definition. And thank God because, again, without repeating my book or, I think, even the earlier episodes of this podcast, I did lay out, you know, that idea that Woodstock was the quintessence of our interconnectivity and collectivism. Being assassinated, rfk, the DNCs you know the Chicago DNC protests and it was a low point in police brutality. You just had a lot of strife. And yet the next year was the moon landing and Woodstock. So I think it illustrates like oh, actually, growth does result from strife, and strife may be the only thing that forges, you fill in the blank Social evolution, progress, transformation.

Speaker 2: 57:01

Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1: 57:02

I think it's a beautiful decade because it illustrates that Like okay, things have to come to a head. It may seem like the end of the world, but it signals growth. I hope so, or we'll just go to hell in a handbasket and write off democracy for one thing, I don't know. I think it helps to look back at history and see the precedents.

Speaker 2: 57:22

Yeah, and to see that these cycles, it all ebbs and flows.

Speaker 1: 57:26

Yeah, yeah, pendulum swing, all of that it's, but it's hard to see it. We'll get into it in a minute, I hope, but you know if. Into it in a minute, I hope, but you know, if you're around long enough to see history repeat, it's easier not to catastrophize. Yeah, if that makes sense. Everything does seem unprecedented. Sorry holding for siren speaking to the world going to hell in a on basket. A lot of helicopters and sirens around my apartment. Okay, six, we said 60s, 70s yes, okay, yes, okay.

Speaker 2: 57:56

So 70s I have, which is the decade I was born in Disco. Again, I have shaggy, but I don't think of just shaggy, like people being shaggy, I think of like shag as in you had shag rugs, you had people wearing those shag jackets.

Speaker 1: 58:12

Well, jane Fonda's shag, haircut. Yeah, started it all.

Speaker 2: 58:15

There was just a lot of texture in the 70s lots of texture. Okay, I probably should put texturized that's quite yeah, yeah, and it was very decadent. It was again a very decadent time. So you people really accessorize both home and on their bodies. So like lots of like pattern blending, so you would see like stripes with flower. I mean, it was just a very anything goes yeah, it was for someone.

Speaker 2: 58:43

As my daughter, my youngest daughter likes to say, I have a degree in polka dots. Um, because I come from a marketing fashion background originally. Um, it was a very likable decade that's a technical right. It's a very technical term. It just it was, it was just visually and tactilely it was just, it was a very you couldn't do it. But there was also disillusionment in that too.

Speaker 1: 59:07

I have to jump in though Let me bounce this off, you Tell me, because again, we've got seven years between us but for me, being born in 68, kind of that was my first impression of the world, so it stuck. In other words, you know, my first memories are lying on the grass at the creative art center with my mom and her hippie friends and Claude, you know, sculpted nothing but dragons and fortune cookies and puff the magic dragon was on the radio and, like you said, those, those women with the long straight hair parted in the middle with their guitars, would come and sing folk tunes and my Tiny Tots class, and that is indelible and I'm so nostalgic about that moment. The 70s, I was a kid growing up, I wasn't a teenager quite yet, but I always thought, oh wait, there is no fashion. You look around and you're like, oh, it's just al natural. For the most part Nobody really boosts their hair.

Speaker 1: 1:00:01

I would look at my parents' yearbooks and go, wow, they put what is product, like, what you know, there was no style from what I could tell, but I could look at other areas and see the style In retrospect. You look at a catalog, a fashion catalog from the seventies. You're like oh my God, that was all by design and there were bell bottoms and they were be dazzling those bell bottoms and like none of it. You're like a crab in the boiling water. It seems like there is no style in the moment. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 1:00:30

It does and and and I love that. You said that and that's why to me, as somebody who, as again, has a degree in polka dots, why I love the decade I was born into, and obviously I mean for me it's looking back and just seeing the photos, because I was, you know, born in 75. And so those first five years of my life I don't remember too vividly. I can see the photos, you know, the family photos and stuff in the albums and the old magazines. And you know when I Google stuff and when I was in my fashion history class and learning about that I think of now and how we're I'm because right now a lot of people, a lot of the older generation, look at the now generation go Like my husband made the comment like they're wearing like sweat type clothes and going out and in his mind he's like like why aren't people like trying to put effort into, like their presentation?

Speaker 2: 1:01:23

so, and it's literally what you just said like there's no style right now, but it's, it's like a unique. It's a unique blend of how they style, how people are stylizing now, like how they did in the 70s. It was like anything kind of went.

Speaker 1: 1:01:36

That's right, that's what I was about to say. They're borrowing it from all decades. That's why it's kind of lost in the mix. But I live a block from a high school and I'm sure you you know, you have kids, so you see a lot more than I do. But I do live next to a high school and I do look and go, okay, wait, everything's just thrown in a blender Like there are. Are those parachute pants or cargo pants, it doesn't matter? And she's wearing it with the crop tops that my sisters wore in the seventies when Chimenda, fairs and you know, sassoon and all the designer jeans came into fashion. But yet it's frumpy Like they're. They're throwing everything in a blender in a frumpy way, which is cool. I love it. Does that make a little bit of sense?

Speaker 2: 1:02:20

No, it absolutely does. Like I have literally seen people wear sweatpants with like almost like a blazer jacket and I and I know like back when I was doing the fashion thing I would have been like what in the hell is going on. But I think of it like this, like back, going back to the 70s. It's because there was all of this very clear. You know how the 20s were, were the thirties, were the forties, were the fifties, were the sixties. Things started to kind of get heightened up. You get the seventies, which is the aftermath, and so you've got literally that everything's just kind of spit out, regurgitated into this decade and they're just trying to make sense of it all so they can move past into the next decade that we're getting into.

Speaker 1: 1:02:56

Well, we joke right. People our age joke like let's forget about the 70s and 80s mistake, like everything was a big mistake, but I love it now. I mean, anyway, there's a lot of conversations to be a little more philosophical about it. I think some conversations could spin out of this because I'm not kidding when I say I didn't see the Afros. Spin out of this, because I'm not kidding when I say I didn't see the afros. I didn't see the leisure suits or the wide lapels or the horrible tuxedos with the ruffles for men. I didn't realize. Do you know what I mean? That was actually a pimp attire platforms, bell bottoms, like I didn't see it. But in retrospect you can see it and understand its place in the dialectic.

Speaker 2: 1:03:37

Yeah, yeah, you can.

Speaker 1: 1:03:39

Anyway, but I also think it's fascinating. I do remember they say fashion works in 20-year cycles. So whoever's running the fucking world? Right, the kids that are running the world. I do think it's the first time younger, we really suck the teat of youth more than ever because we realize they're consumers with pocketbooks, and so I, within reason, if CEOs of companies like that have any effect on fashion are of a certain age. They're nostalgic about their youth. So that's why it's 20 year cycles Right, why it's 20 year cycles right. And so, anyway, I do remember the first time that flipped up collars came back and I, you know, like izod lacoste, with the collar flipped up, and I thought and double by the way, the double flipped up collar. And I thought, oh, I guess I'm that age where everything is coming back. Are we really so? The retro 70s came back. Then you see, right on cue, then you see the retro 80s and I do think now anything goes, we're just borrowing from all the decades yeah, yeah, I agree all right, but yeah, aging, how about it?

Speaker 1: 1:04:46

yeah, so you're ready for the 80s well and you know, and then retro 90s. I do remember being in europe this is an interesting conversation too and your background in fashion. They say music starts on the East coast and makes its way West. I think I've heard the same of fashion. It starts on the coast and then moves inward. But in theory, if you believe Paris which I don't, is the fashion capital of the world it actually starts in Europe, then makes its way to our East coast. So the world is a smaller place now. There's such easy access that all bets are off.

Speaker 1: 1:05:21

But I do remember in the 90s seeing parachute pants in Europe, in Paris, and seriously going wait a minute, is that person backwards? You know, like mustaches for men held on way after it was okay, or like mullets in certain parts of the midwest, might have held on way longer than necessary. I did not know if I was seeing somebody who's just slightly out of touch in paris wearing parachute pants from the 80s. It turned out it was the beginnings of the cargo pant. Yeah, remember, remember cargo pads.

Speaker 2: 1:05:54

I do remember cargo pants, which was like not, not like banana, like MC Hammer.

Speaker 1: 1:05:59

They weren't that baggy, but it was. I was seeing the beginning of cargo pants, so that's a mindfuck right there, you with me, you with me.

Speaker 2: 1:06:07

Yeah, I'm with you.

Speaker 1: 1:06:09

I wasn't giving him credit. I was like this is Euro trash and this guy's way out of touch. I was. I was the one who didn't get get it. He was actually like early on the wave of cargo pants okay, so 70s, I are you done?

Speaker 2: 1:06:23

yeah, I'm done with the 70s I agree with all of that.

Speaker 1: 1:06:26

And when you say shaggy, I just will say there was an al natural thing going on. Even if there was a you know a method to the madness when it comes to fashion largely hair, facial hair all of that was al natural. But in the 70s, same thing midway through you started getting the Farrah Fawcett feathered hair, so disco right, everything got really stylized. It was almost like a backlash. Yeah, so I just have um, um, seventies, sexual revolution, swingers. I don't think of it as decadent actually, because, as a gay kid growing up watching Harvey milk on TV and Anita Bryant and hearing all this stuff, theoretically I fucking grew up next door to Hollywood and it was still pretty backwards, like it was not okay to be gay. Those were the, the people with the bushy beards and the earrings and the sandals that like should be relegated to san francisco, like it didn't feel like the sexual revolution to me, it was still pretty backwards. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 1:07:24

yeah, it does, because you think about it too. You also had like the archie bunker oh yeah, it went on back.

Speaker 1: 1:07:30

So funny.

Speaker 2: 1:07:30

I literally just watched an episode yesterday which that's which would completely probably traumatize most youth, most youth, now that that was on TV.

Speaker 1: 1:07:42

I love it. I love that it was okay to say all of that, especially when you knew like Carol O'Connor was in on the joke. That's all that matters. They were anyway. I was watching it literally yesterday and I'm just loving Rob Reiner. He's amazing. Anyway, we was watching it literally yesterday and just loving Rob Reiner. He's amazing. Anyway, we'll get into that in a minute. So, yeah, I've got sexual revolution, swingers, san Francisco, gay rights kind of added into the mix of civil rights, the tail end of the hippie movement and the beginning of the yuppie movement, the erasure of Vietnam, vets, the shift from authenticity to commodification that's kind of what I meant by the disco thing, kind of folk rock and protest rock yielded to disco and in terms of what was getting airplay, our natural style shifts to artificiality, the big feathered hair and then just more image consciousness across the board.

Speaker 2: 1:08:34

Yeah, and I can see that Because my parents were huge Neil Diamond fans, which was toward the end of the 70s.

Speaker 1: 1:08:41

My dad loved. Do you remember the jazz singer? Yes, my dad watched that on repeat.

Speaker 2: 1:08:46

So did mine.

Speaker 1: 1:08:47

Really. Yes, I appreciate Neil Diamond, but too much of a good thing sometimes.

Speaker 2: 1:08:53

And my dad taught himself how to play on the piano.

Speaker 1: 1:08:57

John livingston siegel uh, is that a song? I know the book. Was there a neil diamonds? Yes, I always. I'm trying to say neil guyman, neil diamond song called jonathan livingston siegel yeah my dad played on the piano anyway, the one that makes my skin close. They're coming to america. It's so pandering, isn't?

Speaker 2: 1:09:18

it. It is, but unfortunately I think of my parents every time I hear that song, because, yeah, they would play it so loud in the house.

Speaker 2: 1:09:23

So all right, so taking a little dive and going into the 80s yeah, so um with the 80s for me, I have down flashy, materialistic, excessive and neo, neon, neon soaked, and I should probably have had like big hair and like unlimited aquanet and depth gel as well. But you know, with that too you also had, even though we were materialistic, and I probably should have, because it made me, when I'm thinking about fashion, like, um, there was definitely body image became. I mean, not the body image was never an issue in the other decades, but I want to say there was because definitely the 60s we had twiggy. So I don't want to say that that didn't exist.

Speaker 2: 1:10:15

But in the 80s, um, we started using things like um pre-1900s, you know, when we had the corsets and then um the hoop skirts and the I can't think of all the terms, but anyways, all the different men wore heels to make themselves taller, and then eventually women started wearing heels um powdered wigs, all that kind of stuff. In the 80s we started seeing that kind of accessory accessorization happening again, because we had the wonderful shoulder pads and other things that kind of helped alter the way our bodies looked in our clothing.

Speaker 1: 1:10:50

Well, wasn't that when anorexia became kind of on the cultural radar? So think so, yeah, maybe more people, I, I even in high school. I was, you know, 80, 83 to 86 was my high school tenure and, yeah, a very good friend was hospitalized for bulimia, I think it was so. A lot of eating disorders in the eighties and tanning, remember, like we knew it was bad. Come on, we was right, but we did it anyway.

Speaker 2: 1:11:20

Lathered ourselves in baby oil and we laid ourselves out there to like fry, like you know, an egg in a frying pan.

Speaker 1: 1:11:26

Do you remember baby oil with iodine? Yes, oh yeah, that says it all. Right there. Bacon Well, yeah, I look at pictures. I'll show you some where it's like no wonder I've had several skin cancer excisions. You know I am Italian, but I'm the other side. I'm a freckly redhead Really. I had no business doing that and I did pay for it, by the way.

Speaker 2: 1:11:49

I think a lot of us are paying for it later in life.

Speaker 1: 1:11:52

Well, hopefully not by going under the knife. I've been butchered, man. They cut me. They cut me man, All right? Well, I do think we were. We planned on spending a lot of time talking about some misconceptions about the eighties. So do you have other adjectives you want to share, Because I already want to.

Speaker 2: 1:12:11

Nope, I'm going to let you take over.

Speaker 1: 1:12:14

No, I do think everything gets reduced to a cliche in retrospect, right? Younger kids, why would they know the difference? And then you just can't retain all the nuance. So it's natural, you know, you think of the 50s and you think of greasers and jocks, and I think there's, you know, like what's it called Pony boy. The outsiders kind of became required reading in school so it just cements and then Grease cements certain stereotypes and it's all good. But with the 80s, because those were our you know wonder years, our glory days, I get a little irked by not just the reductionism of kind of reducing everything into a cliche, like you said, zebra striped or, you know, marble flecked. No one is going to really remember but Z Gallery in LA, do you remember Z Gallery?

Speaker 2: 1:13:08

I do.

Speaker 1: 1:13:09

Yeah, I was like I had a Z Gallery coffee table that was sprayed with marble fleck spray, like yeah, it was a thing, but not everything that sat still long enough got airbrushed or you know what I mean, like painted with zebra stripes. That's the cliche, I'm sorry. The big hair it's really fun. In fact it's in vogue to share really bad senior pictures or prom pictures, you know, with the big teased hair. But that's Midwest or Jersey, right? All the Aquanet was being sold in Jersey. We were way cooler than that, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 1:13:51

Well, and I think you bring up a good point with that, because obviously at this point you and I were both living in LA County as a whole, and I've I've recently talked about this. So yeah, and I agree, because a lot of that was more midwest um type thought process, but or even the mullet with the mustache like in the wedding singer.

Speaker 2: 1:14:09

Nope, never would have happened in la, that's midwest, so going well, and that's what I say, that's because I started thinking about that. I'm going. No, I didn't see that really in the burbank area and I didn't see when I lived in ventura, but when I lived in the San Gabriel Valley I did see that along the foothills, so I did see that in Covina, I saw that in Baldwin Park area, I saw it in the Glendora area, so it did exist. So LA is kind of its own weird animal too.

Speaker 1: 1:14:38

It's fascinating, right, you can go one block over and the property values skyrocket, and yeah, it's a mishmash. But and I sorry I'm relating to what you're saying because, yeah, I mean, even you go up in horse property in Tujunga or La Cunada, la Crescenta, it's right on the edge of the basin, but it is bucolic and it's the rules change. But it is bucolic and it's the rules change. Is that what?

Speaker 2: 1:15:00

so yeah, so I think I think it was there. It just it was in pockets.

Speaker 1: 1:15:06

Well, I'm going to tell one other quick story. My sister married a hick once. She marries every I'm kidding like every couple of decades, and one of them was a hick. I adore him but, for God's sake, he was born and raised in California. He's not from Texas, he's not from the Midwest, but something about just being raised out in the desert you like, oh my God, it's the same. What is it Bucolic, or what's the word Like? What's the opposite of urban, rural?

Speaker 2: 1:15:34

Yeah, so is he. Is it inland empires where he's pretty much from?

Speaker 1: 1:15:39

It's California city role. So is he in, is it inland empires, where he's pretty much from? It's california city, which is I don't know what. It's probably in your county, it's mojave desert, but you know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 1:15:46

It's in california, it's not texas, but they still kind of the drawl is the same what, and I can say that because my husband is so that's inland empire and my so my husband's from yucaipa.

Speaker 2: 1:15:56

That's his hometown, um, which is the redlands county area and that's part of the inland empire with san bernardino county and, and I graduated from apple valley high, so I was up there in the high desert of the mojave desert. So yes, that does exist. And my little la county, who, like, grew up along the coast from San Luis Obispo down to the border of Mexico, um self and I lived in some obviously valley sections too within LA County. When I went out there I was like in cold shock because I was like this isn't the California I know right.

Speaker 1: 1:16:34

Yeah, well, that's kind of my point is there just are urban phenomena, right, and then there are rural phenomena, and it's fascinating how universal it is. Like even in France they'll say that kind of trope, oh, ignorance is always in the South. Every country in Europe will say, yep, it's in the South. And like we got the draws in the South. Here In French, you know, jacques Brel, jacques Brel, they roll the R's drawls in the South. Here In French, you know, jacques Brel, jacques Brel, they roll the R's, but only in the South. So like the stronger accents are in the South, and for good or bad, it may or may not be true, but we equate ignorance with the South.

Speaker 1: 1:17:12

Now I want to just back that a little bit and say this I come from a long line of miners and geologists and prospectors and I spent half my childhood in the desert with desert rats. I adore them, I have such a fondness for it. So I'm just having fun here, you know, and I just am fascinated, though, by doesn't really matter what the region is, there are just certain tropes that exist, yeah, in urban environments and then rural ones. Have I exonerated my seeming elitism yet?

Speaker 2: 1:17:42

Absolutely, and that's why I brought that up. And the fact that I've lived all over, from central to, you know, like I said, to the border of Mexico, of California, both coastal to inland, because like my dad's from Ontario, my mom's from the San Gabriel Valley, and then I've lived everywhere else around and that's why I brought that up, because we see, especially right now, the 80s is becoming a big thing because we've got Stranger Things, which is what sparked the show. All this has been coming up on social media with the Gen Xers. So, like you know, living in the 80s as a kid or a teenager, a lot of the John Hughes stuff is starting to. They're starting to bring some of those back and do them in the cinemas for like $5 movies at least in my area, nice.

Speaker 1: 1:18:27

I didn't know that, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:18:30

So a lot of our time of growing up as kids is starting to come up. And I was watching, oh, my daughter's watching Grey's Anatomy and I was watching, oh, my my. So my daughter's watching Grey's Anatomy and there was an episode where their private practice was a spinoff of that. And so there's a couple of episodes that I'd never watched Grey's until recently because my daughter's watching it, and so I was watching this episode and they were doing the spinoff from Grey's to like, or for the spinoff to happen for private practice, which is based in Southern California and the clinic in it originally was called Oceanside and I'm like, but wait, they're showing Beverly Hills and then they're showing the Hollywood. So I'm like Oceanside is down in San Diego County.

Speaker 2: 1:19:10

What the hell's going on? And I had to go freaking Google it and realize, oh, they named it that because it's supposed to be this wellness holistic medical clinic that's in la la city. I'm going, okay, but la is not right on the beach and they're making it look like. They're like showing santa monica. I'm going like let's have and that's and that's. That's. What kind of got me talking to you, nick, about doing the show is because I started going. Why do they lump everything like this? Is this, this is what it is, and I'm going? Why do they lump everything Like this?

Speaker 1: 1:19:42

is this? This is what it is, and I'm going. It's not Meaning they're, they're lumping all the tropes into like one big cliche, but it's necessarily so.

Speaker 2: 1:19:48

Yeah, exactly, and I mean especially, of course, for me, it triggered because I'm going that's, that's not what my home area is like, Like it's so much more than that. Like we're not we're not all surfers on the beach at all times. Like that's not Southern California. Yes, it's in Southern California, but that is not every Southern California.

Speaker 1: 1:20:06

Right, right, yeah, it's fascinating. And I mean just to go back to something you said, like I do think nostalgia is in the air, but I think the younger generations are so starved for tactility, authenticity, vinyl, if that makes sense that a lot of these things are making a comeback. And I love it when I watch stranger things because I do think we we have some areas that we want to get to here. Right and uh, just to backpedal a little bit, we were talking about fashion, but it's indicative of values and worldviews, right and um, you know, I guess, yeah, worldviews and, uh, value, what are they called my value system system? Yeah, so we're talking about the outward manifestation of cultural values, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 1:20:55

So when I see the cliche of the 80s that's so reductionist and so counter to what I grew up with yes, in a progressive LA milieu I don't like what it says about the 80s. Oh, it's all cocaine and capitalist greed and excess. And sure, if you were watching Dynasty and Knotts Landing and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, that's what they were selling you. And Knott's Landing and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, that's what they were selling you. But I'm sorry, the 80s were the beginning of. If you look at just illustration, for example, we were coming out of that airbrushy nagel look into a really tactile, textural, sensual, gritty, very real aesthetic, if that makes sense. Madonna was coming up in these underground clubs in New York long before she appeared on MTV. By the way, do you know what I mean? Reflecting a grittiness that was actually happening. You had cyberpunk. That was gritty and real, and so just for that reason alone, I cringe.

Speaker 1: 1:21:52

When I watched the Goldbergs, I did love Stranger Things Sorry, but it was. I love it, I love it and I love the soundtrack. It's so, oh my God. When Kate Bush hit number one again, I was like, oh my God. Thank God these younger generations are discovering her. She's a goddess. I was in heaven and that's actually when I discovered it, when her song made it big. I watched that episode. It was genius. But sorry, the two dudes, what are their names? The makers, the creators? Oh, I don't remember their brothers. I don't remember their names. Yeah, I've watched every extra, you know, every extra feature and every interview with them. I just can't think of their names. But they are too young to remember. Sorry, sorry. So when they did? I don't know if you remember the Phoebe Cates scene from. You know Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Do you know who Phoebe Cates?

Speaker 2: 1:22:44

is yes, yes.

Speaker 1: 1:22:46

They did it with the guy at the pool, the lifeguard. Oh my God, they got it. They nailed that the teen sex comedy of the 80s. But it's kind of a fluke because they can't really remember that. So I can tell you every little hairstyle that's just a little bit off in stranger things, Do you know what I mean? And I can tell you every trope that's a cliche, and part of the problem here is my mom was a costumer and a cosmetologist, so she often did hair and makeup, and when I watch Grease and I see the feathered hair, I think, okay, god love them for making it a disco soundtrack and trying to appeal and be commercial in the moment. But yeah, those pedal pushers would not have been satin, nor would there have been feathered hair anywhere, and so the anachronisms make my skin crawl, especially when they're out of ignorance yeah, no, I understand you, cause I, I did the same thing.

Speaker 2: 1:23:40

My kids finally couldn't watch stranger things with me because anytime I saw something slightly off, I was pointing it out and they're like how do you know I'm going?

Speaker 1: 1:23:49

Cause that was my, I was there, I was there I experienced it.

Speaker 1: 1:23:54

Right, yeah, that's my whole life. Like not wouldn't have happened, nope, or yeah, maybe in jersey, sure, but anyway I more to the point in the spirit of the podcast is I sometimes want to defend the cultural values that these styles kind of represent. So I would say the 80s there was an anti-consumerism authenticity, if that makes sense. It wasn't all excess and glamour. You had the beginnings of grunge. Do you know what I mean? Garage bands came out of the 80s, you know, in a way kind of a backlash to techno and to all the technology anyway, but it's the cultural values that I more want to defend.

Speaker 1: 1:24:38

And again, maybe to to run with this one a little bit, and you already kind of brought it up, but I think in these streaming series there's this trope that I'm kind of tired of, which is this imaginary generation gap or culture clash between the generations and, frankly, young people think I'm a boomer. They don't know the difference between a Gen Xer and a boomer. Anyone that doesn't think like they do is shut up boomer. And so I'm really tired in Sex and the City reboot, which is called, and Just Like that, and then you see it in Tales of the City reboot, you see it in White Lotus and I love all these shows, but it gets really tiresome to see the standoff with these horrible Gen Xers, right, who are like pull yourself up by the bootstraps. I drank out of the hose and I didn't grow a third arm. Go eat some dirt. It builds character and, as you said once, suck it up, buttercup.

Speaker 1: 1:25:38

Suck it up buttercup and, as you said once, suck it up buttercup, suck it up buttercup. Like I'm sorry, we're tough as nails, but in the best possible way. So I'll be done with my rant in a minute and I'm sure you'll have something to say. But when I see my generation portrayed as unenlightened, unwoke, backwards, do you know what I mean? Kind of conservative in that pull yourself up by the bootstraps mentality, I I say no.

Speaker 1: 1:26:02

Where do you think you got the luxury of having your high ideals and your wokeness? We started it right in the 80s. You had donahue and then oprah and you had this very sensitive analysis of what was going on culturally and everything was put under a microscope. And that started this whole woke-ism. Right, for good or bad, you had people beginning to think about the power of their words and the cleaning up of the language and taking responsibility. I will say, even in Burbank, I'm shocked at how many of my peers turned out to be right-wing of my peers turned out to be right wing, a little ignorant and backwards, even in terms of LGBTQ issues. But for the most part, do you know what I mean? We laid the groundwork for what they take for granted now, right, which is this woke mentality. What do you think of that?

Speaker 2: 1:26:53

No, I absolutely agree. So the step that I list off. Obviously you know this is supposed to be the cliches and how people see our decade of growing up. And even though, yeah, there is an age gap, because I was 10 and 85, but I do the 80s because of when I was born there's always that joke for being born in the mid to late 70s is are we 80s product or are we an 80s product? And sometimes we're a product of both. I see myself as an 80s product, we an 80s product or we an 90s product, and sometimes we're a product of both. I see myself as an 80s product and here's why because, like I said in my little monologue, um, that we both did at the beginning.

Speaker 2: 1:27:25

I talk about how, um, like, I was literally in elementary school but I fell in love with madonna because she was a rebel. I liked that rebel. Call that. A lot of the music I listened to um brought up in me Same with like, like the Goonies. You know, I know it was like these dorky kids that got beat up and it has again the cliches in there. But when I watched the Goonies cause literally the same age as Sean Austin.

Speaker 2: 1:27:52

It's kind of weird to think that now, but at the time I didn't, I wasn't in my brain, I wasn't thinking that, of course, cause I was a kid too. But it was the whole underdog thing, like, even though we're kids or we're teenagers, we can make the change and this old mentality and I and I don't not begrudging my parents, my grandparents, but this, this mentality that we have to just stay this course and conform to this one way of thinking, was not it? I mean, I remember on all of my notebooks, especially by the time I hit my, you know, my, preteen years, so early adolescence, I was doing anarchy symbols on all of my book covers, I mean because I was like were you a punk rocker?

Speaker 2: 1:28:31

Oh, I was all about burn it down, I was all about the fire, so like, let's just burn it all down and start over. I was totally into the anarchy mentality. I mean, I wore my doc martens you know like I I go ahead um creepers yes I think sketchers doc martens get all the credit, but in burbank you know it was creepers yeah, and I mean, and I was very much where I was blasting, you know, uh, my favorite song was zombie from the cranberries.

Speaker 1: 1:29:03

I would blast that song see, that's where our seven years make a huge difference. Like you listed some of your musical influences, I think, in your uh, in your uh editorial that you read and I was like wait a minute, like they were so randomly and uh, from different time periods, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 1:29:25

I think of cranberries as yesterday.

Speaker 1: 1:29:28

Yeah, I was an adult, I was working at Disney. That is yesterday. I was already teaching at Art Center, so that's very different. I don't know. I remind me who you mentioned in there.

Speaker 2: 1:29:38

I mentioned U2 because U2.

Speaker 1: 1:29:40

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 1:29:42

Yeah, they had songs, but I also listened to Fleetwood Mac. I was a huge Fleetwood Mac fan.

Speaker 1: 1:29:46

Well, and that's the 70s. That's way earlier.

Speaker 2: 1:29:48

Yeah, way earlier. So I mean because I had my parents' influence, like I mentioned, you know, like they listened to Uldum. I used to dance around to ABBA too as a kid, but um, but music that really spoke to me like Madonna is still to this day my. When someone says, like you know who's your favorite musical artist? And I mean, and there's other people I like because of talent, but when I think of my youth, of like influence, madonna was it.

Speaker 1: 1:30:14

I, I was again, you were younger, so maybe it even had a bigger impact on you because you're impressionable. Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 1:30:22

Yeah, yeah, Cause I was. I was elementary school. I can't remember what grade exactly I was in. I was somewhere between third and fifth grade.

Speaker 1: 1:30:29

I can tell you that much but just for fun I was going to say, you know, I was in 10th grade when the first was.

Speaker 2: 1:30:35

It called Madonna, the first gosh, the first, no, the first one's like a virgin and that was and that yeah like a virgin was her first out and that was okay, doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 1:30:47

I have never bought an album. I did buy the one with um zephyr in the sky oh yeah, that was later that yeah, I bought that.

Speaker 1: 1:30:58

That's the only album I've ever bought and I love it. It's amazing. I love her and I love everything she stands for. I think she's amazing, but I've just, for whatever reason, never bought an album. But I'm telling this just for fun, cause this is our nostalgia episode.

Speaker 1: 1:31:11

I was the right age, I was 10th grade, when that first album came out and literally in Burbank there was a dance club called Mr Rogers and it was for teenagers, it was underage. So that's where we went. But then some of us that were cool went down to Florentine gardens in Hollywood and somehow got in. You know, there were real dance clubs we could get into, but at all of them the teenage girls. We called them Buffalo gals. Right, they were already wearing, by the way, the panties and their hair and all the bracelets and the crucifixes and they would just ah, when starlight, star bright came on, they would scream and run on the dance floor and, um, madonna was made for us, if that makes sense. The girls mostly. So I just love that kind of. We rode that wave.

Speaker 1: 1:31:57

And then I was the right age, frankly, for Jaws, the first real summer blockbuster came out, and Star Wars. I was nine when that came out, it was made for me. But then little movements like the slasher films, you know the Freddy Krueger's and Halloween and Friday the 13th, I was in junior high and they were made for us. The teen sex comedy, like from Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Porky's to Last American Virgin, those were made. Do you know what I mean? Those were my wonder years. So I just feel so lucky I was born at that moment. And then the John Hughes films. Every one of them was supposedly about my generation, but that's where you can start going. Hmm, the breakfast club. Is that a cliche of a jock or is that a real jock? Is that the goth chick or is that a cliche of the goth chick? I questioned all of it Even back in the day.

Speaker 2: 1:32:50

I did too Believe it or not, even though I was younger than you, I did as well, and I saw it as a way of poking fun at us. Um, and it kind of having fun with like how our generation of youth was looked at is how I really related to the John Hughes movies is kind of a way to like realize, you know, we, we did have like these, these little social clicks, you know, happening as we were growing up, and that this is how adults view it and we don't.

Speaker 1: 1:33:20

Right, right, right, I mean they were as good as it gets writing for children, right, writing from a childlike perspective, but never quite nailed it. Yeah, did you see 16 candles?

Speaker 2: 1:33:33

I did, and it's funny because recently at work I swear like as we were prepping for this show, I feel like it was just coming from all angles. So because we've got, we've got a mix in our office of no one's over the age, of no one's, no one's, everybody's below 60. So they're all 60 to about 30 in our office to give you an idea of where their age range is. So we've got millennials in there, but everybody was quoting that movie, like different parts of that movie so sexy girlfriend.

Speaker 1: 1:34:03

Yeah, so we had so, yeah, I do.

Speaker 2: 1:34:06

So that's what I was gonna go with. It was using dong, so, um, our receptionist's name is don instead of dong, and so our boss would be like, because you know they're like hey dong, he'd go hey don. And kind of do that same tone long duck dong yeah his name lives in my neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 1:34:24

Oh, he goes to my gym. I've met him. I mean it's been a while, but I met him at a coffee shop and he went to my gym for a while long. Duck dong, but talk about things that would never fly. Now, right, it's up there with blazing saddles and I actually saw it being torn apart online for you know, kind of glamorizing a lot of things. What's the most problematic thing? I don't know, like getting with a chick that's passed out in your car.

Speaker 2: 1:34:51

Yeah, well, and just like what they would do to like.

Speaker 2: 1:34:54

you know what was considered the nerds back then with the, the, you know putting bullying yeah, the bullying and, and I, my kids have even asked me it's like mom really was high school like that michael, not to that extreme, but did things happen? Absolutely, um, I'm not gonna say they didn't. I mean like, yeah, could you really, like you know, mickey mouse somebody into a locker? Now, most our lockers were way too skinny that probably you'd probably break somebody's bones trying to do that. But yeah, you know and and did it make us tough? We can say it did for our generation. But I think there was a lot of people walked away very scarred from it too.

Speaker 1: 1:35:31

Well, when I look at, like you know, the kid, the cliche, or the trope of the kid being thrown in the locker, you name it I just feel like, yeah, those are, every generation has those tropes, you know, and you read the outsiders and the jocks right, you have the socios and the greasers and I just think that's that is synonymous with youth and it's every generation.

Speaker 1: 1:35:53

I think bullying is worse now because of the online bullying and, frankly, you know, I have taught college for over 20 years and I would see the difference with each incoming I'm putting generation in quotes but we started recruiting straight out of high school, which was never the case before. You know, we always encourage students to go out and get their general ed and get some life experience, because our center is incredibly demanding. Well then we started recruiting straight from high school. So, trust me, between that and my 22 nieces and nephews, I see the changes and they're more. They started becoming more clicky. I remember I really value participation in my classes and I felt like, okay, they're taking to me, they like me and they're receptive, but they don't want to engage with each other. It was like pulling teeth to get them because they're so terrified of right being on the in the wrong click.

Speaker 2: 1:36:45

Yeah, no, and that's true because even though, yeah, there was, you know kids that you would consider nerdy or dorky in school when I was growing up and of course I graduated early nineties, so I went into that nine oh 90210 phase Cause that came out when I was in high school. I was like right with them when, when it started, they were all sophomores. I was a sophomore in high school so I was with them and graduated with them and watched the show while in high school in early 90s.

Speaker 2: 1:37:14

But and it's it's interesting because I think back to, and I went to a lot of different schools because I moved around a lot as a kid, so I went to three different high schools, so I can tell you like each school.

Speaker 1: 1:37:25

So you were thrown in a locker or two. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 2: 1:37:28

I wasn't, but I was the new kid three times in high school.

Speaker 2: 1:37:40

So my freshman year I went with the kids that I was in middle school with, right into high school with. But still, you're in high school, you're a freshman and um, yeah, so there, and that was, that was in the San Gabriel Valley, that was Glendora High. I'll say exactly where I was. That was Glendora High. So we had clicks. So we definitely had. When we went to lunch in the quad, I mean, you had all of like this jocks, uh, sports people, um, cheerleaders, drill team, all in the main part of the quad, all the band. And this is funny, I was track person, so I was sports as I hung out with those guys, but I also played the flute and I was banned too. So but, but I never went with the band kids. The band kids all hung out in the band room for lunch, separated from everybody and all of the thespians.

Speaker 2: 1:38:19

I was also a theater kid so I could, so I kind of floated in all the circles, which was kind of weird for me in school, but all the thespians hung out over by the theater and then everybody who was more like the brainiacs were over, always by the library, and that was glendora high and then any of the rebel kids who I also hung out with, which listened to all the you know the hair, the hair bands back then um were across the street, um, we had a little like hill thing across the street from where Glendora High was and they would sit over there and they would smoke, and we actually had skinheads at our school too, so they were a whole, nother separate group of people.

Speaker 2: 1:38:52

That was on the rise when I was a freshman, um, but then I went to San Luis Obispo, which was a tri-city school up in the San Luis Obispo area, so we had three cities that went to that school and so you had surfers and kind of the same kind of breakout group and I was new there, but everybody kind of sat out in the same area just in like their little circles on the grass for school. Where I saw the change, ironically, was when I was in the Mojave Desert. It was when I went to Apple Valley High, which was the high desert. That's where I saw it didn't matter who you were, everybody talked to everybody.

Speaker 2: 1:39:36

So you see a cheerleader talking to, like you know, a kid who was on the debate team. Yet outside of school we hung out in our, in our cliques, but in school we were all one. We we separated by grade.

Speaker 1: 1:39:47

I was going to say is it because it was a smaller student body?

Speaker 2: 1:39:51

Um, I think it's not smaller student body, but it was also um. At that time there was a lot of people from the LA area moving up to the high desert. So you kind of had this influx of Orange County, LA, kind of influencing the high desert, which has now become the way the high desert is now.

Speaker 1: 1:40:11

Yeah, in terms of, like, the difference between then and now, like, yeah, we had all the categories you just mentioned, of course, right, and yes, some of it was geographic the Keystone, you know, my high school was on a street called Keystone and then Parrish on the other side, the Keystoners hung out on Keystone, like we had names for them. But yeah, there was kind of a mad respect for the other groups, you know. And I was in vocal music yeah, theater and vocal music, like you, and I kind of really envy the Glee generation where it was actually cool. We had, like, one football player who was also in choir, but it wasn't far from cool, trust me, you know. And then you watch Glee and you're like, oh, that's how it should be. You know, who knows if it's better or worse.

Speaker 1: 1:41:00

But on that, I'm going to take that opportunity right, it's really easy to create some version of the past that seems more innocent or seems simpler, and the question becomes is that illusion and a sort of safe place that we create? So I'm kind of looking at the clock because, you know, if we add this to our editorials, it's going to be quite long. So clearly, we need to do a second right, we need to do a second installment to this, but I just in kind of bringing it back to the I don't know the thematic spirit of our podcast. I'm going to ask some of the questions I have written down podcast. I'm going to ask some of the questions I have written down.

Speaker 1: 1:41:43

So in my essay I just kind of gently steering this toward a conclusion here I referenced in my little editorial the steady decline of violence over time throughout human history, despite the perception right that it's the complete opposite. Most, as I said, sociologists and anthropologists will say physical violence is on the decline and it's been a steady arc. So when we start asking that question like, oh, do we just view the past as being more innocent, because it serves us, it allows us an escape or it actually could allow us hope, it actually redeems humanity, to say, look at the capacity and the potential from the past, let's recapture that somehow. So with all that in mind, I know you have access to some crime statistics. You've kind of said you know well, serial killers peaked in the 70s. What do you have on that? Do you have any hardcore statistics about you know, crime and what, what that looks like, or what are your feelings about whether the seventies and eighties were in fact a safer place or a kinder place.

Speaker 2: 1:42:50

Um, so I don't have this crime statistics in front of me? Um, I know I have them somewhere, but I didn't pull them specifically for um this podcast. But to answer this question, I can answer it in a few ways. So, and I love the YouTube video you sent me, by the way, on this thing about the 70s and 80s serial killers, which maybe we'll put that link, I think, in our description so people can go look at it, because that'll really help people understand it, but-.

Speaker 1: 1:43:16

I didn't even get through. Sorry to interrupt you, I didn't even get through it myself, but I think I did jot down from that video that maybe the reason it seems that way is because forensics and surveillance are at an all time high, so maybe they get stopped in their tracks before they can kill a string of people.

Speaker 2: 1:43:38

Yeah, they do. So obviously we don't know if there's more serial killers beforehand, because we didn't have the uh criminology that we have now. So the dna and the forensics that we've, you know type of way of doing things. But in the 70s and 80s obviously it was starting to become a bigger thing, um, and so you were able to link people to those multiple kills. Plus, like you said, we did not have the technology we have now, just with like surveillance.

Speaker 1: 1:44:07

So they could go on quite a while without being apprehended.

Speaker 2: 1:44:10

Exactly, and our population wasn't as big. So you think about it. I mean, you look at LA, because a lot we know a lot of them were out in the sand not that they're just out in Southern California, but there were a lot out in Southern California and the 80s is known as the deadliest decade, and a lot of that is because, yeah, it's heavily populated now, but back when we were growing up, as we know, it was not as populated. So you had remote, tucked away homes that as kids we look at and go. That's kind of a sketchy house and then later we find out, you know, um, there was uh like Ed Gaines who was out in the Inland empire, who was in a remote cause. It was very remote out there at that time.

Speaker 1: 1:44:50

Did he have a? Uh, another name at gains? You know what I mean. Did he have a fancy name Like the strangler, or the or the?

Speaker 2: 1:44:58

no, he, I think he did. I think they called him leatherface because he he's kind of who um uh, buffalo bill and psycho um are both based off of and what decade I think, I think he well, I think they caught him in the 70s or early 80s is when he was finally caught. But yeah, he kind of he was the one who was like skinning his victims oh, is silence of the lambs based off him?

Speaker 1: 1:45:25

yeah, buffalo, got it, got it okay, I'm gonna list some that I've got, though add to it if you know of any. I I wrote down gacy the zodiac killer, ramirez bundy, the hillside strangler, night stalker dommer yeah those are all 70s and 80s, I believe yeah, you had been like forgetting, did you have?

Speaker 2: 1:45:45

I did say bundy, okay. But I also think I was redundant because we had btk what does that stand for? Uh bond kill, torture I'm sorry bond, torture, kill btk yes, I remember, yeah he was in there.

Speaker 2: 1:45:59

Yeah, there's quite a few. There was one. He didn't make huge headlines and I don't know if you remember hearing about him. He was called the Santa Claus Killer. He was late 80s and he was a problem out in San Gabriel Valley so he never really made national news. But I remember having to worry about him Cause I was like 12 and I remember him pretty vividly cause it was right after the night stalker.

Speaker 1: 1:46:28

You'll well you'll remember Um did he actually do it in a Santa Claus costume?

Speaker 2: 1:46:34

I don't remember, I really don't.

Speaker 1: 1:46:35

That would be terrifying to a child. I'm sorry to make light of it of it. But yeah, you may remember my friend in junior high and high school. Her mother was the one that survived, Was it Ramirez?

Speaker 2: 1:46:48

Yeah, Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker.

Speaker 1: 1:46:49

And what was his? The Night Stalker? Yeah, she was the one that lived and helped apprehend him.

Speaker 2: 1:46:55

Yeah, I won't say the name, but Well, and it was crazy too, cause when I went to go work in Hollywood, um, on Hollywood Boulevard, when I was working for Frederick's of Hollywood, I remember realizing further West down the street was the hotel he was staying in.

Speaker 1: 1:47:11

Oh well, I should give my dad credit too, Cause every time I I guess I'm going to say the name Mrs Kyle was the woman that uh, you know basically helped arrest him. My dad always then chimes in and said oh, I talked to him at Lancer's Bar the day before the apprehendant, like it's a badge of pride for him, but he sat there and chatted with Richard Ramirez at Lancer's in Burbank. Shout out to my dad.

Speaker 2: 1:47:34

Yeah, I remember that chase I was like again I was, you know. I said I was around 12 years old when that happened and I at that time we lived in low income housing, so we were more in what would be considered like the projects of LA, which is where you know a lot of the neighborhoods that he was running through were, and people were trying to stop him and tackle him down and he went right through the alleyway of our low income housing.

Speaker 1: 1:47:58

Welcome to Southern California. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm going to add to all of this fun 80s bliss. You know I have a student that called it 80s bliss and it ain't necessarily so. But I'm going to add you know, violent cults peaked around the same time. So again, add to this list if you want, but I have. Well, some people are going to fight this, but chat gpt even said scientology and the moonies, right, but if you, if those are too controversial, you've got jim jones and the guyana tragedy, the manson family, the branch davidians, everyone will remember them. Heaven's gate and then, no offense to anyone, but the yfz. Does that mean anything to you?

Speaker 1: 1:48:37

Yes, they do so yearning for Zion, so that whole cult, um. So, putting all of that together, it seems like a pretty tumultuous time and a pretty scary time. How is it we still view it as more innocent?

Speaker 2: 1:48:53

You know, I was thinking about this and I just was reading a book, um, I haven't gotten that far into. It's called the invisible gorilla, um, and in it they talk about um, and it's a book on psychology but they call it the illusion of cause. So basically it's where we claim um, it's that whole. You know, correlation doesn't mean causation, but we start to infer things because of how things.

Speaker 2: 1:49:20

When we go back and reminisce and talk about stuff, or we're watching a movie or reading a book that's based on a certain time frame, we start putting our own um interpretations into, because we're trying to make sense.

Speaker 1: 1:49:33

You know of what it is, so we're, so we just naturally make false correlations or yeah thoughts that may or may not be connected.

Speaker 2: 1:49:40

So I think that we kind of have that going on. And then the other thing they talk about, um, when it comes to memory, is we like to say that we have that, are that we have great memory and you know, and I know like you do that Cause I know you and I have talked and I'll mention something and you'll start saying something like oh yeah, you know, and I'll remember. As you're saying like, yep, I can start saying my own mind's eye, but technically, it's still selective, right it?

Speaker 2: 1:50:06

is, and that's what they talk about in the invisible gorilla. That memory is usually not very accurate. When it comes to nostalgia, that we're basically we're reconstructing memories and so we don't always remember how it happened, but we try and put meaning to what happened. So that's how the nostalgia, that nostalgic kind of reminiscing, happens.

Speaker 1: 1:50:31

Yes, I love it. Thanks for explaining it that way. It makes perfect sense. And being in the two fields that I know you've been in, which is advocacy and law enforcement sorry three. And now psychology I am always shocked when I hear firsthand accounts of, for example, witnessing a robbery or whatever you name the crime. He was wearing a blue hat, he was wearing a green hat. You hear it all. I can't even remember what I wore yesterday. Do you know what I mean? Like? Whenever I hear the accounts, they vary wildly and are incredibly unreliable, in my opinion. I'm an artist. I have a very visual memory. I couldn't tell you what a stranger was wearing on the street that I glimpsed for 30 seconds. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 1:51:18

Oh yeah, absolutely, and most eyewitnesses generally. Um. That's why they have to get multiple eyewitnesses, not just one like they used to the day. Um is because of that exact reason, when, if you get three people who start saying a similar story that have not talked to each other, that don't even know each other, then you know each other, then you know, then you know you have pretty good information, if you only have.

Speaker 2: 1:51:42

But if each one of them's telling you something totally different, then you're like, okay, we've got to quit. Keep digging because, yeah it, my husband talks about all the time with dispatching same kind of thing trying to get when people are in that, that mode, that flight mode. We just our brain tries to again infer what we're taking in and you're trying to process it fast.

Speaker 1: 1:52:05

Yeah, Is it oxytocin, One of the brain chemicals actually does create a heightened ability to recall details, but it's probably not the fight or flight ones like cortisol or adrenaline. Does that make sense? Maybe it's oxytocin that is accounts for a higher memory for details? Anyway, everything you're saying really points to this. You kind of I don't want to put words in your mouth but said we reconstruct, maybe a, let's call it, a narrative about the past based on scant details that are kind of unreliable. Right, but isn't it interesting that there is a consensus, Because the list going full circle here, the list we just wrote about former decades, it's kind of suggesting that maybe that consensus is where the truth lies. Right, If the subjective recollection is unreliable, or if we're all just remembering the resilience of our youth, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 1:52:58

I'm going to go with my two theories, which are we do want to believe humanity is redeemable. So we invent this version of the past that's more civilized or more classy or more respectable, or you fill in the blank, but it redeems us and serves as something we may want to return to. It's like an example. But also, if I was more resilient as a child, as I said in my essay, and 9-11 was the first thing that really got in and made me feel unsafe. That says a lot about the resilience of childhood and our ability to self-create, if that makes sense and maybe it's egocentric, but it goes a long way. It goes a long way so I don't know. Does that make any sense? Maybe the consensus is the reliable reality.

Speaker 2: 1:53:49

It does and it makes me think of again. I'm going to go back to this book and I'm going to make sure we get that link in there for any of the listeners who are curious about the invisible gorilla. So basically, people know what I'm talking about. It's where. It's that scene where you see a bunch of kids playing basketball, throwing the basketball around, then a gorilla walks by. Most people don't notice it, um, so it has to actually and this is a very basic psychology thing that they have us learn um, early, early on in psychology classes um, so they talk about just kind of different things. So one of the things they talk about just kind of different things.

Speaker 2: 1:54:20

So one of the things they talk about is the illusion of memory, which basically goes to nostalgia, often as idealistic blurs, and reshapes memories into stories we prefer to carry forward, which kind of goes back to what I was saying at the end of mine is, you know, is nostalgia are the memories we take with us. Mine is, you know, is nostalgia are the memories we take with us. They start to. There are things that we've latched on to, to to basically help us create the identity we are and therefore we're constantly adding to it. So it's we're constantly perfecting and, you know, kind of critically trying to figure out what, who we are at each phase of our life, um, and what we're projecting out to the world, and so that's how our memories kind of get shaped to like fit that narrative as we move along yeah, it's beautiful and it's to broaden it.

Speaker 1: 1:55:11

I don't want to get too philosophical here, but it's almost like you know, we don't know where memories live. There's no geographic address for memories, but yet they constitute our entire identity. Right, the things we learn are cumulative and thank God there is some database somewhere where you know our personality. Everything I think the default mode network preserves is illusory. We can't find right where it lives. Therefore, you know, that makes, uh, I think dementia and Alzheimer's really, really tricky.

Speaker 2: 1:55:53

Yeah, it does, it really, really does, and I think it also is why you see kind of that. As much as you know, we like to say we're an individualistic society and can be egocentric in many ways on our identity and what shaped us and realize, oh wow, you, even though your lived experience is different, there's these similarities, these correlations that bring us together into that collective.

Speaker 1: 1:56:28

So it sounds like you're saying, as we get older, we immerse ourselves more in the collective or we're more comfortable recognizing our interconnectivity. Is that something that happens to all of us?

Speaker 2: 1:56:41

I think so. I mean, there's always going to be your outliers.

Speaker 1: 1:56:44

So I'm not saying everybody does it.

Speaker 2: 1:56:45

But yeah, I do. I think, you know, I think that's probably why we're I honestly think we're seeing a lot of because, again, gen X, we're a small generation and we're We've never been a loud generation, we've always been the rebels and I'm not saying we're all rebels, because I know, not everybody in our generation is but you know, we're known as the forgotten generation and we're also known as the rebel generation, and take that as you want. I mean that, again, those are cliches, I get it, but, um, I think that's why we're seeing a lot of stuff come up, because a lot of us are going like, hey, we do have a voice, there's just not as many of us, so we're not as it's not that we're not loud, we're just not able to be as loud because we're smaller and but we've all gone through different things, but yet this is what uniquely makes us who we are and we have something to contribute to, to be a part of the whole right.

Speaker 1: 1:57:37

Well, at the risk of steering us away from the close we were so nicely headed toward, I I feel like I do want to talk a little more about those myths, about our generation, right, and whether or not they're true, because what I heard, what I heard, what I heard, what I heard, what I hear and what you just said is a little bit like you know, the the forgotten, the silent generation is the neglected, forgotten. One, right, that's the one before the boomers. Right, my grandmother's generation were the silent generation. I think the latchkey generation, which is ours, definitely feel unparented and neglected. Would you say that?

Speaker 2: 1:58:15

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:58:16

And that's. That's a simple one. It's because it was the first time you had both parents working. And you know my mom God love her. She had a costume shop and it was her own business and my dad supported that, and so it wasn't like she was in the corporate arena. But yes, they were both working and we came home to either a key under the rock or just an unlocked door, like we didn't even lock our door, so famously unparented.

Speaker 1: 1:58:41

And then everybody my age you can tell me if this is true for you or not, but everyone my age has a picture of, I'm going to say, in the delivery room with their legs in stirrups, also smoking, or like the doctor has a martini in his hand. They didn't get that. Ooh, even social drinking may not mix with children and it just anything was fair game. So, I think, alcoholism it was very clear when somebody crossed the line from social drinking into alcoholism, but for the most part, every curtain of every hotel room smelled like smoke in the seventies and uh, we all have, sorry, the cigarette vending machines.

Speaker 1: 1:59:21

Well, yeah, and actually magazines used to be able to, um, advertise cigarettes, which I think, oh no, television used to do it. Now they can't. But anyway, like things like that. We got kind of wrong and I would say, in a very good way. We now know what to protect our children's children's from, like my parents generation. It's not no fault of their own, they're a product of their own upbringings, but they didn't know what to protect us from and we're kind of deer in the headlights. Like when marijuana became so popular, my mom had no idea how to deal with it and she would do the sniff kiss when he came in the door like hi, honey, you know, but did she do anything about it? So I would say my brother was able to be awake and bake and just roll over and take a bong hit first thing in the morning, and she looked the other way cause she didn't want to lose him. Yeah, so they were just unprepared I did, I excuse a lot of that the rose colored glasses and then the looking the other way for just being unprepared for some of the shit that came along. Teenagers were dealing with very different challenges.

Speaker 1: 2:00:26

But anyway, all that aside, I guess the things I would be, I would say are a little off base and the perception of us is, yes, things like blazing saddles, you'd never get away with that now. Even 16 candles, you'd never get away with that now, right. But in all the the canceling and the erasing and we live in a very litigious society, right, right. So you may remember the McDonald's lawsuit, you know, about hot coffee. It's like all of that made it a climate where, ooh, the government must protect us from everything, right.

Speaker 1: 2:00:59

And my European friends think it's hysterical when they see a sign in the United States that says on a metal statue that says careful, may be hot to the touch, they're like, what the fuck, fuck, do I really need to be told that? Like we don't even see it. But anyway, we're, we're very into protecting ourselves from everything all the time. So for me it's refreshing to hear, I don't know, maybe an unwoke or not politically correct racial slur fly now and then in an old movie, because it's like, oh, my God, freedom of speech, you know, but there's got to be a balance, is my point. And so when I hear like, oh, y'all are tough as nails, you've got a chip on your shoulder, you've got some kind of angst. No, we were sensitive, we were thoughtful. We started this introspective trend in society of taking accountability and there are good eggs and bad eggs if that makes sense but I just think we're not getting enough credit for allowing them the climate in which to give a shit about microaggressions Like. Who do you think started this?

Speaker 2: 2:02:09

Are you with me at all? I am. I totally agree because and that's what I was going to say, you know, going back to you know you talk about like our generation was kind of the beginning of the woke generation we did, we started questioning things. We started because we had to look out for each other as teenagers and kids.

Speaker 1: 2:02:24

Oh, interesting yeah. As latchkey kids.

Speaker 2: 2:02:56

As latchkey kids, right. I mean women's rights was all around. But like the really big thing about the whole glass ceiling really started into the 70s and throughout the 80s women going to work and trying to get fair wages. I remember my mom going through that process. My my parents divorced when I was you know nine. So you think about this in in 85 I'm 10 years old in the middle of the 80s with divorced parents. That was like so unheard of. I mean a lot of people looked at me like I if they hung out with me I was going to make their parents break up.

Speaker 1: 2:03:15

Like it's contagious. Yeah, like it was a contagion Did your mom even have a have a checking account when they divorced.

Speaker 2: 2:03:21

She did Cause she was a banker. Thank goodness, there you go.

Speaker 1: 2:03:24

No, but you hear that, like even as late as the 70s and 80s, they started from scratch. You hear Tina Turner and Cher basically started with not even a checking account, which is amazing, exactly, and so you think about that.

Speaker 2: 2:03:37

I mean, the 80s really was a time where there was that pushback, I mean the first pushback on that nuclear family dynamic and so, yeah, wokeism is happening yet again in its own way, but the 80s really was a time where people really started re-looking at things and, like you said, you know you had dual income families and so the kids were raising themselves. So we had to figure out, you know, and so I'm not gonna say there wasn't, you know, bias and racism and stuff, because I mean no generation's perfect. But I think we also realize that if we didn't rely on each other, then we were, as kids, doomed. I mean, someone you were outside playing ditch, someone falls off the roof because that's where they hid and they break their arm. We didn't just scatter and walk away and let somebody else fix them. We all band together, if we like the kid or not, to get the kid help.

Speaker 1: 2:04:31

That is. I never would have made that connection, but that's maybe. Yeah, where the social responsibility and the empathy and the interconnectivity came in is the fact that we were unparented. But I want to again, maybe broaden the conversation because I'm really not here to just defend Gen Xers. But I think there's always a little décollage, there's always a little offset between the perception and the reality, and that fascinates me.

Speaker 1: 2:04:58

About history Again, it's written by the winners. So when you look at even things like, you know, lgbtq issues and representation, yeah, a lot of things get silenced and erased. So I become fascinated. Sorry if I'm repeating myself, but this disfarmer, uh collection of photographs of, like traveling photographers and you just see gay life everywhere all the time but didn't make it in the history books and you begin to wonder what was the level of tolerance you, you know, and it ain't what it seems. And you look at these really intimate letters between men that were totally socially acceptable. Did it mean they were gay? Let's switch out the lens, maybe not? So everything's a mindfuck. That's the point of this episode. Everything's a mindfuck.

Speaker 1: 2:05:45

But I guess what I wanted to say about like exonerating all generations. I'll give two examples In since I mentioned it earlier in a and just like that. No, I'm sorry. Tales of the City. Hold on, which one was it? Yeah, tales of the City.

Speaker 1: 2:06:06

You have a younger guy dating an older guy and then the younger guy goes to get together with all the old farts, right, all the people who lived through the AIDS crisis. Frankly, my age and you know the kid. Just, they think it's a cakewalk. Everybody's living with HIV and it's great, and they didn't see all their friends die. And yet they don't give credit to the older ones for fighting for all these freedoms, including gay adoption and marriage equality, and they just take it for granted. So there's a lot of schooling that goes on, and that's one of the culture. You know. The generation gap or culture clashes that I support is like waking them up and saying dude, we, you should be thanking us for making life a lot easier for you. And so I'm going to tell the Serafina story. Do you remember that movie, serafina?

Speaker 2: 2:06:57

I do. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:07:00

Well, it kind of says it all about the way we judge our parents. Sure, we might be gracious enough to say, oh, times were different, or they were a product of their generation and they did the best they could. We play apologists to a degree and we'll exonerate them to a degree, but we fully judge them for being backwards, unenlightened, unwoke, right Stilted, repressed. I think every generation thinks they invented the wheel and they invented thinking outside the box and progressiveness and all of that. I might be wrong you can tell me your thoughts in a moment but we judge our parents. Then there is a rite of passage where we start to see them dimensionally and we start to see them as humans and maybe give them a little more credit.

Speaker 1: 2:07:47

So Serafina is the one where, you know, the daughter is set in South Africa, so it's set in a climate of apartheid, and the daughter very much judges her mother for not just being complacent but for being beaten down and she's working as a maid for a white family. She's not a slave, but just short of it, and she just judges her mom for being complacent until, you know, she goes out and demonstrates because that's what her generation does, and she ends up being whipped severely and she begins to see like, oh, my mom's working with the system. It's all by design and my generation has the luxury right of speaking out because of their strength and resilience, if that makes sense. So I just feel like every generation does it and even though the generation gap is kind of worn out and tired in some of these shows on Netflix, I think it's kind of a universal thing. Is any of that making sense?

Speaker 2: 2:08:48

It absolutely does. You know I can't really talk to. I mean, I did watch the LGBTQ, you know I remember the gay rights and all that throughout the eighties and into the early nineties. I feel like we kind of did a little bit of a step back as we got to the end of the nineties into the early two thousands on that. But being a woman absolutely because I know what my mom went through, watching her as a single mother throughout the eighties cause she didn't get married until into the almost mid nineties Watching that struggle, being a single mom, being a woman in in the banking industry see the changes that happened with that. And then I come out in the 90s in college and right out the gate of graduating, pretty much walking into a corporate office and making more money than my mom ever did, right out the gate in my early 20s and always knowing it was because of what my mom toiled, because of me.

Speaker 1: 2:09:50

But I look at my- Well, you were one of the good ones then.

Speaker 2: 2:09:52

Yeah, well, and I think-.

Speaker 1: 2:09:54

The hubris of youth is what I would call it.

Speaker 2: 2:09:55

Right, yeah, exactly, but I'm not picking on any of the people I'm in my master's program with that are under the age of 40. I'm really not. But I have sat with some of my cohort who are under 40 and that are female and have heard them kind of make these comments because you know we'll come up about, you know again, the wage differentials and and I hear their angst about it and I'm thinking like but you have so good yeah, you, you have no idea, like even when I came out, like you guys make weight, I mean which you, nick, you know.

Speaker 2: 2:10:32

I mean like we made a minimum wage and what kids make now at minimum wage.

Speaker 1: 2:10:35

I'm going you guys have. Well, I made 365, or did you ever work for 365?

Speaker 2: 2:10:41

No, I started at four, 50.

Speaker 1: 2:10:42

Okay, mine was 365 and I wore a paper hat.

Speaker 2: 2:10:45

Yeah, exactly, and polyester polyester.

Speaker 2: 2:10:48

Right, and so, yeah, and, and so I think of those things now, yeah, I get it, cost of living has changed, so I, I factor that into my brain, but that's that's my point. It's like those are the things I think sometimes get left in the dust when people start talking about nostalgia or the general, like you said, the generational gaps start start happening, like we forget those things. I mean I, I, I think of the civil rights movement. I remember my mom telling me when the first black kids and I mean this was she went, she grew up in compton, um, so you guys know, but it was so you know which was so weird to think it was segregated there. But I remember her talking about the first black kids coming into her school.

Speaker 2: 2:11:24

You know which was such a weird concept to me, because here I was in the San Gabriel Valley, going to school as I learned this and I'm going, oh my gosh, like I have hardly any white friends, like most of my friends weren't white, and so that was like a weird, foreign concept for me to like here. So I think sometimes we need to remember those stepping stones, like as, like, like you're sharing with that story of Serafina, like, yeah, we have to at some point we realize for us to make progress we have to work with the system, not against it. Like I said, I was a total anarchist growing up. Am I still about this? Burn it down and rebuild. If we could do that, I'd absolutely do that. However, you can't just burn it down and restart it. You have to have a plan on what that rebuilding is before you do that. And that's where I've learned that shift. So, as I'm saying, I think to some degree we kind of learned like we have to somewhat work within the system. We can't just completely disregard the system.

Speaker 1: 2:12:21

Yeah, I say amen to all of it Truly. I know my gifts, you know, and I know that I'm meant to make a difference through storytelling. As we said a million times, right, you can't shift paradigms other you know by through persuasion, and so it's my chosen craft and I'll never be a militant activist. I do my wonderful work through my example and my art, but thank God for all of it. Amen to militant activists that don't work with the system, that are kind of more in your face about it.

Speaker 1: 2:12:52

I truly do believe there's value to all of it, but I guess you know, just giving your predecessors, your ancestors, a little more credit, that couldn't hurt. And I do think, in a very beautiful way, when you talk about wages and really not realizing the struggles of the past and how good these younger generations have it, it actually says our tolerance for bullshit is at an all-time low. So, like you know, maybe, even though I think we're overly litigious and we shouldn't expect the government to protect us from everything and I don't love cancel culture the fact that people are easily offended means we're not going to permit Do you know what I mean, like subtle racism or bigotry, where our tolerance is low. And that's a good thing, because we're going to only continue on the arc toward human potential.

Speaker 2: 2:13:48

I agree, and what I want to add to that is and you said this earlier in the show, so to kind of tie it back to what we talked about on the show is in that discomfort, in in the fact, like you said, like you know, having people who are willing to completely go against the system. It allows those who are completely about only being in the system and those of us in between the two to take a hard look at ourselves and go okay, where is that growth potential so we can all move forward in a way that's better for everybody? So it's learning to have that individualistic understanding of self and how it applies to the collective of everybody.

Speaker 1: 2:14:35

Beautiful, yeah, and actually taking from the past what is empowering and not disempowering right and defining ourselves by that. And then, collectively, the story we tell about the collective is more progressive. I'm going to tell one last story because that's a great place to end it on, but I can't resist a couple of things you've said in there. I remember the first time a student because again I noticed shifts, but sometimes a little I'm a little slow on the uptake, but a student, you know, we became friends after he graduated and now we're Facebook friends and I don't know, I just posted a picture of Madonna and Sean Penn for, yeah, nostalgia reasons. And he's whoa, why would you post that? And I think he said it in the comments. And then we took a private and I'm like what? And he goes, well, he, he was a misogynist and he, he abused her. And it's like, oh, okay, but do we count? Like I didn't even know what cancel culture was. I didn't know you got to cancel people. It was the first time I realized their mentality. Does that make sense? And I'm like it didn't even occur to me to not post a picture of Sean Penn because it was the 80s and they were a couple and I just had no category for canceling people.

Speaker 1: 2:15:47

So maybe we just have to find a balance where we continue to progress without feeling the need to disown our past. Every one of us should own our skeletons right, former versions of ourselves that are rough around the edges, kind of best if you can just own them right, and maybe, culturally, we need to do the same same thing. You don't tear down statues necessarily. I understand in some cases if it glamorizes or glorifies something that's painful to a given community, just stick them in the closet. That's what they've been saying lately. We're not destroying these statues, we're just putting them in the way way back of the closet. And so I don't know, maybe we do pick and choose the stories from the past that empower us.

Speaker 2: 2:16:34

I absolutely agree. And, okay, I'm going to add one more thing, because I know we're trying to wrap this up, but I think too, we also need to understand that and I know you'll agree with me, nick like who we were when we were 20, isn't who we are in our fifties.

Speaker 1: 2:16:48

Thank.

Speaker 2: 2:16:48

God Right. And with that I think and that's maybe the one thing I think that is somewhat getting missed. At least I feel to some degree it's getting missed. It's like people are because we have the internet. Now stuff from the past which I know that's one of the running jokes with Gen X is like we didn't have the internet. So therefore, all the pictures of the stupid shit we did is not posted all over social media.

Speaker 1: 2:17:10

So people can't back up and that's the thing.

Speaker 2: 2:17:13

Sometimes we need to let some of that go If we can see somebody has grown beyond where they were once before.

Speaker 1: 2:17:19

Exactly. Yeah, we hope. I mean, come on, I was in cabaret at 19. I have a swastika on my arm. I'm sure somebody could dredge up pictures and post them out of context and I could get in all kinds of trouble. But I mean way worse than that because I was playing a part. But I have it. 1986. I think that was a year after 16 Candles came out. By the way, I absolutely hate to even say it, but there was a 7-Eleven near our high school and everybody knew the Indian that ran it. Yeah, oh wait, indians drive cabs, right.

Speaker 2: 2:17:55

I, I don't know there's so many different cliches on. Yeah, it was one of the but who owns the convenience stores?

Speaker 1: 2:18:00

yeah, pakistanis or Indians yeah so I dressed up with him and, yes, it included the head. I forget what it's called, not the not the.

Speaker 2: 2:18:11

Some of them call them turbans gutra, gutra, I think yeah yeah, yep, and fake mustache.

Speaker 1: 2:18:16

And we went, went out to clancy's, a seafood place, and I've. I somehow ran into my kindergarten teacher who I hadn't seen since the early 70s and, um, she recognized me, even with the beard and mustache and the gutra. So I have pictures of all of that and that could get me in a lot of trouble. I might have even put some paint on my face. There's my confession. Should we just end on my confession?

Speaker 2: 2:18:44

Well, that's what I'm saying. That made me think of my friend. I have a friend who was also from East India and we I went to a wedding celebration and so I had to wear the traditional dress and I'm blonde hair, blue wide, but I have a single picture of me in that.

Speaker 1: 2:19:01

Well, that's appropriation, but that's not. But that's.

Speaker 2: 2:19:04

But that's my point. But somebody just saw the individual picture of me. That that's what they think like oh, you're appropriating, so it's like well, not really, because I was. The context is missing right.

Speaker 1: 2:19:13

Well, in my case here it's all coming back to me now. In my case it was an inside joke because we loved this guy we all. At lunch we had nowhere to go, so we would go to that mini mall with the 7-eleven and, um, I forget the name of it, but the submarine submarine sandwich place, like it's it, was our hang. It was kind of like a tribute to this guy that we all knew that ran the seven 11. That's my defense. But I do remember at one party that night, um, some dude tried to kick my ass cause he was racist and he was not going to let me into the party because I was a Muslim or back then who knows what they would have said. Right, they weren't articulate enough to say you're Muslim, but they they definitely knew I didn't belong at the party.

Speaker 1: 2:19:56

Yeah, yeah so anyway I, maybe the balance is where it's at, cause I do miss humor and you know I mean we're seeing it right now with ABC counseling Kimmel and literally, and Stephen Colbert, we got to lighten up, dude.

Speaker 2: 2:20:11

Yeah, if we can't laugh, I can't remember who you're pointing to, who said it. If we can't laugh at ourselves and each other, we're going to lose who we are collectively in humanity.

Speaker 1: 2:20:22

I agree they do say comedian. I mean I would say as Tonga you may remember Tonga saying they do lay away with intellectuals first because they inspire people to think. And one meme I saw. They said it's the comedians and it's kind of true in the Mark Twain category. That's where they were saying this at the Mark Twain Awards. For some reason it is the humorous in literature and it's the comedians that they want to silence first.

Speaker 2: 2:20:49

That's why we do this podcast.

Speaker 1: 2:20:51

Yes, yep, and God forbid we get canceled. Thank God we don't work for ABC or Disney. Yes, all right On that note.

Speaker 2: 2:21:00

Any final words of wisdom or no, I think we said it all. We definitely said it all, but we'll have a part two anyway. Oh, exactly, we said as much as I should say. We said all. We said as much as we can at this moment in time.

Speaker 1: 2:21:13

Perfect, all right guys. Remember, life is story and we can get our hands in the clay individually and collectively. We can tell a new story. See you next time.