Days Lose Their Names And Time Slips Away

[Serge]

I was talking to someone at work this week and made the rash claim that the new album by The Soft Pack was the best album since David Bowie's 'Low'. Even as I said it, I was contradicting myself in my mind, thinking that Kraftwerk have released at least three albums since then that I'd say were better than The Soft Pack album, but anyway, that's beside the point. Later on, I was thinking about it, and thought, what about 'Nevermind'? My mind started to wander and I realised that although I think of 'Low' as being from a long time ago (being a classic seventies album), and 'Nevermind' as still being a recent album (don't ask me why), less time passed between the release of 'Low' and 'Nevermind' (fourteen years) than has passed since the release of 'Nevermind' (approaching nineteen years now). I mean, whaaaat?

But it's weird that your mind can play tricks on you like that. Recently, I was talking to my friend Dave about films, and he mentioned that the first Scorsese film he saw at the cinema was 'Raging Bull', so all the films before that are 'old' Scorsese films, and everything since is, to him, a 'new' Scorsese film, since he can remember them coming out. "Even, say, 'Last Temptation Of Christ'?" I asked him. Yep, to him, that's a 'new' Scorsese film, despite being twenty two years old.

Just to further boggle my mind, we have a kid working at the shop who has recently celebrated his sixteenth birthday, so when 'Nevermind' came out, he wouldn't exist for another two years. I know this is all pretty obvious stuff, but it's stuff I never really think about, and when I do, I start to feel like an old man. And I'm not even forty yet! But it is strange that I can still think of things like 'Screamadelica' or 'The Silence Of The Lambs' (to give two examples of things from 1991) as being recent, when they're both probably about due for 20th Anniversary editions (and probably a remake for 'Silence' at some point). In short, what's going on? Are me and Dave deluding ourselves into thinking we're still youngsters, or does everybody share the same delusion?

Or am I just losing it in my old age?

[purlieu]

Being on the younger side myself, only 25, I'm finding it difficult to adjust to the fact the 1990s - they were only yesterday, surely! - were over ten years ago now.  Urban Hymns and OK Computer were 13 years ago.  The last FSOL album 14.  Jurassic Park 17.  It's all nonsense, the 1990s have just ended and I can't wait for this exciting 21st century thing.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I could only remember snatches of my a-level field trip to Malham (the group from the girl's school in Kent were that easy), where I went for a hike yesterday. It was frightening to think that was 7 years ago, and that's more or less how long it's been since I was let loose in the outside world. Our adventures on that trip now play out in my head like an episode of The Inbetweeners.

[mr. logic]

Yeah, I hear you.  I'm just gone twenty four (which is, worryingly enough, one of those ages that older people speak of as one you look back on and wished you enjoyed) but this happened the other day when I was talking to some kid about the South Park film, which came out a year before he was born.   

The trick is, I think, to avoid this crushing internal realisation of creeping age having any visible effect on you, and carrying on the conversation in a kind of wistful 'eeh, you don't know you're born' tone, all the time thinking on the rattle of approaching death. 

I also watched the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the other day, thinking of how big a deal it was at school and college, and it all seemed grown up and exciting, but now I'm seven years older than Buffy, and college, which I'd convinced myself was five minutes ago, is actually miles away.  The dead cool media teacher we had who chatted about Buffy to us in a totally hip way- because he got it, yeah?- has taught, what, hundreds of students since he last set eyes on me and is probably now into The Wire.

My gran was telling me the other day a story of when she was five years old, which I suppose is the flip side of this, when you're the young person in the conversation.  Because that just seems bizarre to think that one day I'll be seventy thinking back on when I was five...

...but, the alternative, as they say, is unthinkable.

[mr. logic]

Being on the younger side myself, only 25, I'm finding it difficult to adjust to the fact the 1990s - they were only yesterday, surely! - were over ten years ago now.  Urban Hymns and OK Computer were 13 years ago.  The last FSOL album 14.  Jurassic Park 17.  It's all nonsense, the 1990s have just ended and I can't wait for this exciting 21st century thing.

This is true, the mid nineties exist in a kind of strange otherplace for me- vivid yet stangely hued.  I'm convinced that had Newcastle United won the league in 1996 I would have a job in the city and a mortgage.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

We did. Didn't we?

[mr. logic]

Well, yeah, obviously we know that....aaah, man, that season.  That home game against Manchester United.  I once woke up when I was about seven or eight crying about death and how futile it made life and my mam was able to comfort me with lots of wise and loving words and by letting me sit up and watch Beetlejuice with her, and I felt fine again.  That game against Manchester United ruined all her good work.  I was right.

[An tSaoi]

Yep, to him, that's a 'new' Scorsese film, despite being twenty two years old.

I heard a Simpsons audio commentary where (I think) Matt Groening said that he still sees Hank Azaria as 'the new guy' because he joined the cast in the second series, even after 20 years.

As for me, it makes me feel all weird when I contemplate that I was born during the run of Blackadder Goes Forth. I wasn't even alive when they made Back To The Future II, Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. I'm younger than the kid who played Anakin in The Phantom Menace!

[mr. logic]

Simpsons audio commentary:  that's another one.  "The episode aired in 1993, we're doing this commentary in 2005" (polite chuckling when somebody suggests a commentary of the commentary in twelve further years time).  2005, the summer I would have first watched that DVD; England won the ashes, I moved to university.  It's fucking ages ago.

[chand]

We did. Didn't we?

You would have loved it, loved it, if you did.

[An tSaoi]

American Psycho and Gladiator are ten years old. The South Park Movie, Fight Club, The Matrix and the second Austin Powers film are 11 years old. Jesus, they still seem recent.

Edit: 13 years since Titanic.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Oi, most of you are far too young to be in a thread like this, and should be out playing in fields and doing some wicked stunts on your rollerskates and things!

Sure, I felt a bit nostalgic for my youth back in my early twenties, but it's only since I hit my mid thirties that everything seems so terribly far away. I've been drinking in pubs for nineteen years, which seems insane as I still remember the days when the idea of doing such a thing seemed repugnant. There are girls I fancy now (Hayden Pantierre, for instance) who weren't even born when I was having my first wank. And this summer will be the 20th anniversary of leaving school. I had such dreams back then. Such ambition. And yet this is how things have turned out. Christ.

[An tSaoi]

Do you know what's weird? The ideas that there are pornstars who were born in 1992.

[the midnight watch baboon]

-2010

[scarecrow]

i have a compulsive habit of buying dvds so often that i develop an enormous backlog. Sometimes I view a film and then realise that I have owned the disc, and been meaning to watch it, for four years and don't feel like i have made much progress in that time.

[Ginyard]

In short, what's going on? Are me and Dave deluding ourselves into thinking we're still youngsters, or does everybody share the same delusion?

I'm mildly disconcerted when I think of the number of people here who were a long way from being a twinkle in their daddy's eyes when Marty McFly was charging down a '50s high street in a shitty nucleur sportscar. But, I'm glad I was around in that era to see things like Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters the first time round and recall the excitement of it all.

In my loft is my old Computer World tape I bought in 1984 when I was about ten alongside a kit vocoder from an ad in E&MM I built with my dad. Those two things seem forever ago and yet as if it was last week. Its weird how our brains suspend these tiny events in our brains and make them fresher than seemingly more important things.

The other night I sat at the computer choosing some old photos from when my son was a baby for a little film I'm making for my wife for valentines day, and couldn't believe its been six years since we were at the locations shown. Although he looks tiny in the photo, the events seem more recent in my memory. After that, I went up to his bedroom and looked at him asleep, a dim glow from the wall lamp enveloping him, cuddling the teddy blanket he's had since birth, with his charlie and the chocolate factory audiobook murmuring away faintly in the background. As I stood there I felt some real tears well up as I thought about the march of time and how quickly he's grown. How long left 'till he's too big for a swaddle hug?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Being on the younger side myself, only 25, I'm finding it difficult to adjust to the fact the 1990s - they were only yesterday, surely! - were over ten years ago now.

Same here. Although I'm 26, you whippersnapper.

I got a weird feeling recently when I realised that next year will be a decade since I started university and yet I don't really feel any more mature.

[An tSaoi]

Where's a question: who are the youngest and oldest VWs?

[rudi]

Where's a question: who are the youngest and oldest VWs?

I'm both; it's a long story...

[the midnight watch baboon]

No, JK's up for both categories... he's the oldest, but he'd enter the youngest one too.

Spoiler alert

obviously

[close]

[biggytitbo]

I find it quite hard to accept that the year 2000 was a whole decade ago, it barely seems more than a few years. If a decade can go this quickly then I think i'll be dead in about  5 years.

[hoverdonkey]

It really is best not to think about it. Although that does nothing to help this thread.

[Jemble Fred]

I find it quite hard to accept that the year 2000 was a whole decade ago, it barely seems more than a few years. If a decade can go this quickly then I think i'll be dead in about  5 years.

It's because the last decade was the blandest pile of fucking shite since the 1900s – where it wasn't bland, it was sickeningly crass. Thank fuck it's over.

Seems shocking that Spitting Image was singing about the 'bland 90s' 18-odd years ago.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

We remember some things as being more recent than others though.  Nevermind came out about the same time as the World Wide Web was invented.  Does that seem an incredibly recent invention?  It doesn't to me because it has evolved so quickly to take over our lives.  Mobile phones only became ubiquitous about ten years ago, when Titanic came out we still hadn't reached the mobile phone event horizon - yet to me it seems like phones came in a lot earlier than 1999...

[Serge]

But, I'm glad I was around in that era to see things like Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters the first time round and recall the excitement of it all.

Oh yeah, I mean I'm glad that I was around for all the things I mentioned too. And I'm sure my dad is glad that he was around when, say, 'Revolver' was released, or indeed 'Low'.

The other night I sat at the computer choosing some old photos from when my son was a baby for a little film I'm making for my wife for valentines day, and couldn't believe its been six years since we were at the locations shown. Although he looks tiny in the photo, the events seem more recent in my memory. After that, I went up to his bedroom and looked at him asleep, a dim glow from the wall lamp enveloping him, cuddling the teddy blanket he's had since birth, with his charlie and the chocolate factory audiobook murmuring away faintly in the background. As I stood there I felt some real tears well up as I thought about the march of time and how quickly he's grown. How long left 'till he's too big for a swaddle hug?

Although I don't have kids of my own, that is another way of surprising yourself at how quickly time passes. My niece was four just before christmas, but her birth seems so recent to me that it might as well have been in the last few weeks!

I find it quite hard to accept that the year 2000 was a whole decade ago, it barely seems more than a few years. If a decade can go this quickly then I think i'll be dead in about  5 years.

I love it in 'Flight Of The Conchords' when Murray makes some reference to it being 'the nineties', partly because in my mind it still is. I can't get used to these modern-fangled years with a '2' at the front.

Do you know what's weird? The ideas that there are pornstars who were born in 1992.

Well, not quite yet, one would hope.

[hoverdonkey]

As I stood there I felt some real tears well up as I thought about the march of time and how quickly he's grown. How long left 'till he's too big for a swaddle hug?

That's the terrifying thing. Thomas is only just two and has just started talking. He said 'Hi Daddy' to me down the phone this morning, probably the highlight of my last six months, but it's all happening so fast.

[chand]

I'm 29, I find it slightly depressing that 21-year-old girls are probably too young for me and I'd look a bit creepy if I dated one. Doing an 18-year-old would be tantamount to being a paedo. It keeps striking me that people born a full decade after me are now adults, that I'm quite often older than the average age of the football team I support, and that some of our players were born in the nineties.

The worst part of all this is that every time I notice things like this I feel myself slipping into some kind of inescapable boring adult cliche. The other week there was an invitation pinned to the fridge inviting my parents to their god-daughter's 18th birthday party, a girl I last remember seeing as a child of about 8. Before I could even stop myself I'd blurted out some tedious nonsense about how "Anna can't possibly be 18, little Anna?! Last time I saw her she was yay high! Bloody hell, where does the time go?". It's only a matter of time before I start thinking of modern music as "just noise" and failing to see the point of new products.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

On Channel 4 News last night the reporter pointed out that there's soldiers fighting in Afghanistan who'd have been in junior school when the conflict started.

[Guy]

slipping into some kind of inescapable boring adult cliche

I think this may be the only event that is ever happening at any time.

The other week there was an invitation pinned to the fridge inviting my parents to their god-daughter's 18th birthday party, a girl I last remember seeing as a child of about 8. Before I could even stop myself I'd blurted out some tedious nonsense about how "Anna can't possibly be 18, little Anna?! Last time I saw her she was yay high! Bloody hell, where does the time go?".

I'm a little bit disgusted with myself for being disappointed about that story not going anywhere.

[purlieu]

Yes, I expected a juicier story from the prospect of an 18 year old girl's birthday party, too.

I have those.  My cousin Victoria is five, this little curly haired girl.  I found out at Christmas that "Vicky" has just got home from her first semester at university.  My response was "How the hell is she nineteen?!  She's FIVE!"