Emblems of the half-generation gap
Sophisticated IM habits. My sister Abby and cousin Shannon are 10 and 13 years younger than me, respectively. They are my primary insight into the half-generation younger than me. I already knew that their primary way of talking to their friends is AIM and that there are nuanced etiquettes and mores that I can’t even decipher. Now that I’m actually logging into AIM (well, iChat) regularly, I see that one of these is leaving elaborate and detailed away messages. “studying!!!” “real world” “laundry”.
Napolean Dynamite. T and I saw this last summer when Kim was in town, and we all were really craving going to the movies, and there was officially nothing playing but this. There were exactly two things I thought were funny: 1) when he stuffs Tater Tots in his pocket 2) yeah, the dance scene. Everything else was just painful. But damn if the kids don’t love it, with their Vote for Pedro T-Shirts and their little pranks.
September 29th, 2005 at 8:25 am
Honestly, Napoleon Dynamite is more a big long MTV show than it is a movie. I thought it was really quite stupid and vulgar, but the dance scene and the very very end were amusing. There’s something about things like that… like the viewers who love it are all saying that they can laugh at anything, nothing can make them squirm, derision is complete. I don’t know–I suppose I sound like an old lady or basically just don’t get it. I guess I can compare it to old John Hughes movies, but the dumb-funny jokes in those films were not always the point for me. Or maybe the things they made fun of just seemed less ugly… or rather the things they reflected seemed less ugly because I knew them and they seemed benign. It’s the knowing, or not knowing, that seems to be the thing. That 1/2 generation gap–yes! Blabble gabble.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I’m pleased to finally find some people who agree with me on Napoleon Dynamite. I honestly though it was the biggest load of rubbish i’ve seen for a long time. It’s like the whole thing was just building up to the dance at the end, but the film makers were lucky i didn’t turn it off before i got that far. Cool blog by the way