The Future of Anxiety?
In the '50's we worried about Communism and in the '60's we worried about Civil Rights and in the '70's it was the environment and in the '80's we worried about nuclear war (remember The Day After?) and in the '90's it was AIDS and in 2000 it was terrorism; these were all serious issues, but I hope in the coming decade we will choose something more entertaining to worry about . . . such as angry poltergeists or giant ants from the center of the earth or Ice 9 because, as George Lang says in Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner: "Worry is like interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due."
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11 comments:
I just got "Spanish Prisoner" from Netflix! We liked "A Prophet." The time travel movie was ok but not as good. I'm worried about bad haircuts and skyrocketing property taxes. David Mamet's daughter was in "The Kids are All Right" (and Mad Men too, but not the carousel episode). How does this all come together?
Spanish Prisoner is good.
that worry quote is originally from william ralph inge. *the* william ralph inge.
AIDS was an 80's concern, not so much a 90's one; I think maybe you had trouble remembering what people worried about in the 90's, which is because the economy was very good for more than half of it, and New Kids on the Block and Vanilla Ice were early 90's but soon thereafter made fun of, and the new era of boy bands was not yet there, so grunge ruled, which we can all live with even if we don't live and breathe Seattle garagey noise moan rock, so the music was good and you had a few bills in your pocket, and it was a great era for movies like Dumb & Dumber and Dazed and Confused, the Farrellys and the Coens and Tarantino and Kevin Smith were all in top form, so music and movies were cool and the economy was pretty solid, plus we were in our twenties, and let's face it -- people in their twenties worry less than anyone except people in their nineties who no longer fear death but accept and even look forward to it, twentysomethings are carefree, no more school and you can drink legally and you get laid more than ever, and you don't have a ton of cash but so what you can buy a 12-pack and pay cheap rent or crash on a couch, sometimes with a girl, sometimes even kind of hot, and you are in pretty good shape without doing much, and mortgages and children and wives and careers and blogs are all miles away, so really, for us, we didn't worry about anything in the 1990's, I mean some people worried about the president getting blowjobs, but we just laughed, and some people worried about Waco and OK City and OJ and serious stuff, but we were so far removed from it that we didn't laugh but we didn't worry, well, we laughed about OJ, I mean it's double homicide, so it's not a knee-slapping laugh, but it's a sardonic wincing grin at the hopeless ridiculousness of it all, anyway, we sure as shit didn't worry about AIDS, if I did, I would've worn condoms in the 90's (sorry, ladies), but I don't think we worried about ANYTHING in that decade, so I say we try to recapture whatever it was then and do it all over again . . . maybe it starts with the economy . . . or maybe the president getting a blowjob.
Oh, and I really liked The Spanish Prisoner.
. . . which . . . was released in the 90's.
game set match for igor-- i didn't worry about AIDS in the 90's, for obvious reasons, but i figured somebody was.
i think the zman needs ritalin.
and rob, william ralph inge thanks you.
also, we need to do over/under at obft on spanish prisoner-- i would have never guessed so many saw it. . .
i saw it, too. quite enjoyed it. though i always thought gerard depardieu was french.
saw it in the theaters. I learned about an "angry pirate", nice move for the boudoir. Angry Pirate could be the concern of the 2010s.
i am worried about angry pirates, somali and otherwise.
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