Tag Archives: pointless nostalgia

NYC, Pointless Nostalgia

Close Encounters of the Gen X Icon Kind

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I’m leaving work, headphones jammed into my ears and a large box under my arm. I’m in that vague, annoyed space of not paying attention to much of anything, of wishing I was home already, and feeling like every step I have to expend to get there is a personal insult. It’s a little after 6pm. The early evening is a little windier and chillier than I anticipated. I wish I’d worn a jacket.

A few blocks up on Hudson Street, I spot a woman in a red tank top, revealing a few tattoos on her upper back and arms. I haven’t seen her face yet, and still she looks vaguely familiar, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. She must feel me looking at her, trying to figure this out, so she turns her head, in that I’m-not-trying-look-behind-me-but-I’m-totally-turning-my-head-so-I-can-see-this-person-peripherally. That’s when I figure out that this person is Janeane Garofalo.

In the span of nanoseconds, this revelation brings to mind a few distinct memories from my misspent youth. The first is that, during my college years, I had the habit of running into random celebrities in the streets of Manhattan and somehow scaring them to death.

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NYC, Pointless Nostalgia

My Encounter with the Wondrous Hypercolor Tapestry

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I hate to be one of Those People, but New York City ain’t what she used to be. Then again, she never was. In New York, the old is constantly being subsumed by the new. The pace can range from light speed to glacial, but nothing can last. Complaining about this is almost as old as the city itself. I bet Peter Stuyvesant bitched when they started building houses above Canal Street.

There is one thing that has disappeared from New York in my lifetime, however, and I do think the city is worse off for it. That is the Weird Little Shop, which has virtually no chance of surviving in the NYC of the 21st century, where real estate is at such a premium it can no longer accommodate the eccentric dreams of kooks who somehow luck into retail space.

By Weird Little Shop, I don’t mean a place that specializes in one curious niche, because those still exist in droves. And I don’t mean a thrift store, either, because there are still plenty of those, too. And a thrift store usually has some kind of focus and organization. What I mean is the kind of hovel that had zero focus and sold whatever the hell it felt like. Not a single thought or deed was spared to appealing to anything but the proprietor’s whim.

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Pointless Nostalgia Video

Pointless Nostalgia Video: British Airways

In the late 1980s, British Airways began trying to bust into the crowded American airline market. Initially, they tried to do this with a cutesy, more American approach, as in this ad where people come together to form a face that winks for some reason. Presumably, this was meant to demonstrate British Airways’ friendliness. However, something about the way it was assembled and filmed made it seem more foreign than welcoming, like a higher class version of a Mentos commercial.

So they went the other, more British route and made a commercial that showed how much better they were than everyone else. It featured a group of the stuffiest, stodgiest English actors ever giving performances that exuded the proper amount of staid attitude and catty bitchiness endemic to British businessmen.

The plot: There’s some hotshot in New York who “thinks he can tell us how to run things.” His rivals plot his downfall by forcing him to fly the red eye to London. “He’ll be hungry…and tired,” purrs one, sounding like John Heard as Caligula in I, Claudius. But their Machiavellian plot is thwarted by British Airways’ accommodating business class cabins. So when the young lion arrives in Ol’ Blighty, and one of his executioners queries, “Pleasant trip?”, his voice dripping with bile and sarcasm, Our Hero responds simply, “Yes, thank you.” The evil overlord’s face sags, realizing all at once that he’s been defeated.

This commercial–excuse me, advert–could only be more English if it was wearing a Man U jersey and chowing down on beans and toast. It made a very real, very deep impression on me as a young lad. Perhaps because I’d already been exposed to so much British TV via PBS. Between my dad’s love of Monty Python and my mom’s love of Masterpiece Theater, there was a lot of Anglophilia in my house growing up (despite my dad’s on-again, off-again Irish pride).

Watching it again as an adult, I’m impressed by the depth of performances by these wicked old hags who dream of luring their young rival to London “like a lamb to the slaughter.” It’s like a two minute version of House of Cards, with a triumvirate of Francis Urquharts.