109: The Last Future

I love looking back at a fake apocalypse to just contrast the real one going on right now makes me gives me the warm and fuzzies. I was given permission by Hunter Harris that we are the only people allowed to do a It's gonna be May meme for meme that died, but we can use we're allowed to do It's gonna be why to May? Yes, Okay, give in mean permission. I think that kind of joke is what one calls a hat on a hat if you're in a writer's around. But we'll go with it. What's finishing

the hat? I still don't understand not a hat. I was going to say, like one of those big kind of like top hats, like fetzy top hats that were really popular around the year two thousands Mystery used to wear. Yes, that's the hat that's not in the case of it's going to be y too may What about a cat in the hat raper hat? Yes, say same, same basic idea.

Keep waiting for those to come back. Yeah. I was going down a long Google image wormhole when I was putting together graphics for this month's Night Calling newsletter and just looking at pacifier necklaces and just really wondering like those. You know, there's been all sorts of nineties nostalgia over the last decade, I'd say, but very little that you hear about passive I ire necklaces. Maybe we should bring it.

It's not like pople aren't doing Molly. We're gonna get into candy flippers today because that was one of my realizations about Michael Jordan, as he dresses like a candy flipper. I can't wait to hear all of your revelations about Michael today. We're gonna talk about sports as well. Sports in the late nineties, so technically on topic um, but first the question to lead into that, we got a night email from Jonathan Tess, would you like to read it?

I would love to read this email from Jonathan Okay high Night Call. A few months ago, the idea of the long eighties I think it was the eighties was mentioned on an episode for Why to May. I was wondering where you all think the long seventies, eighties, nineties, and audies begin and end? The show is always a highlight of my week. Thank you, Jonathan. What do you guys think? Wow? I love how he wrote OS and

you turned it into audies. I did he wrote OS, but I my brain looks at OS and just immediately translates audie. I think if I saw it written like that, I would say two thousand's And that's only because of I love the year two thousand, or the years or the two thousands, like whatever. The Empty One Show was because they had done I Love the eighties, I love the nineties. Did they have I Love the seventies or is that a little out of their purview? I think

they did have I Love the seventies. I don't think they had I Love the sixties. But I definitely watched all that trash. I think definitely nobody who was watching it was alive for the sixties, so they skipped over the sixties. Um, also like the sixties. It's like it's hard to like, I don't know. I feel like if you were just a different documentary, it's a yeah, there's lots of I love the sixties out there, just comes in different forms other than a v H one talking

head show. But um, I want to say, I think most decades, I don't think they really start until midway. I feel like usually the year with the five on it is when it becomes really whatever that decade is going to be. Here's my here's my degree. I'll tell you guys what I think, and then you can you can tell me I'm wrong. Uh. I think the sixties started in like okay, Like I think the early sixties in the late sixties are like two different decades essentially,

because the early sixties are essentially the long fifties. So I want to say the sixties started in like nineteen sixty four maybe for real, um, the first like um big civil rights protests, because I would say that is like kind of the turning point for the sixties. So like, yeah, sixty sixty five, YEA somewhere around the civil rights movement really kicking into gear and the Beatles coming to America. That's what that's when the sixties begins. The sixties end

in nineteen seventy two, thus begin the seven weeks. Why why nineteen seventy two, particularly like Nixon and stuff, Nixon and ship. Wait, but you say decades usually begin in the fives, like halfway through. But you just cited two examples where they both began in like seven three seventy two. That's where I think they start on the third year. Okay, this a little theory. Seventies, Uh go until nineteen eighty two.

I would definitely agree with us. Yeah, eighties begin in nineteen eight three, which is also when you and I Molly were born with our birth. Um, the decade was allowed to begin the eighties and in nine continuing with testa theory, and then the nineties are ninety three to eleven. Uh, what's the quote by um fucking Narromancer author William Gibson? Isn't doesn't he have the quote about how the future

will get here? It'll just like not be evenly dispersed. Um, Yes, I think that William Gibson come on night call please obviously, Yes,

that is like an open invitation for all time. But I think I think the same kind of goes for these decade changes though, because I think if you're living in the Midwest, or you're living in a more conservative place, like it takes a while for some of the waves, like the cultural waves of these changes to hit you, so like it can still feel like the eighties, you know, deep into the nineties. I mean there's some parts of the country or their pockets, I think to where it

never fully moves on. It stays forever in one zone. It's always the nineteen fifties in Burbank. Yeah, I would say that that there are certain I would say there are certain things, though I would say nine eleven is one of them. Um, I would say, I'm fairly confident that the recession, the housing crisis is one where those are evenly dispersed, um and maybe even more dispersed towards places that are not big metropolitan areas where we think

of the center of cultural change happening. Although you would say, like, I have been thinking about this a lot, because obviously this crisis is like extremely not evenly dispersed and being really much more bad. Yeah, there's that. I mean, like the severity is different for for COVID, But I would say that this is definitely something that's happening to everybody

at the same time. It's happening in different ways to everybody at the same time as the same thing with the housing crisis, with kind of all of the shifts that came after that um occupy and all that kind of stuff like it, it affected people in different ways. But like, you know, you can actually say, like, this is a thing that changed pretty much everybody, at least

in our country. Like at the same time, when you think about something like the Manson murders and people saying like the Manson murders was the end of the sixties, it's like, well, kind of just like in l A, you know, it wasn't the end of the Definitely very convenient. And also the reason the sixties really ended in l A, according to Mike Davis, is because a bunch of the prominent black panthers were killed by the US government. So they definitely were trying to make the sixties be over

a sap. Yeah, the sixties is like actually one of the shortest decades if we're going through it like this and not on accident. But yeah, This is an interesting I think about this stuff all the time. This is I think just nine eleven two now is all one decade. I think of it as just all one time period. I would don't think that. I think that. I think the housing crisis is is a turn. I think I think there's a major turn there. I think the whole

twenty one century has been as well. Wait, this might be a good time to bring up, Molly, your brother's theory about Y two K and how will you explain? Okay, my brother think about this constantly. My brother Ben Lambert Lambo Lambo had a theory. I don't know if you read it somewhere or just came up with it, but his theory was essentially like Y two K did happen, and that is when reality split into the multiple universes.

Time about this a few times, talking about it before, But it's very Y two K. It's Y t K. This is like the cornerstone of our Y two k's like the matrix. People like it because it lets you imagine there's a good universe somewhere. But I guess the idea is also like in the universe where Y t K happened, we had to reckon with our lack of preparedness for a global event, we had to come together as nations. I'm writing an Errand Sorkin book about what happened.

You say, I suddenly like perked up as like that coming together as a nation. Um. Yeah, no. But the other thing about that theory that I think is popular among people of our generation and like our friends, is that it conveniently lines up with like the end of us being teenagers. Um, So you know, it's it's very comforting to think that like once you enter adulthood, Uh, then the ever shifted and it was all fake after the only real stuff was when you were like a teenager,

I didn't have anythings like serious to worry about. But also, like we got uniquely a lot of bad things happened. I mean, obviously bad things happened to every generation, but uh, it seems like things have gotten just acceleratedly worse since the year we're speaking to you from a global pandemic.

So it's like, yes, it's it seems pretty bad. But I also think I think the twentieth century was an outlier as a time of just you know, all these circumstances lined up to create growth and prosperity briefly in America, starting with the beginning of the twentieth century. Something I would love to talk about more that you guys don't think quite is I'll be happy to go back and and we can do a whole series on the Nick. Okay, we're gonna do more than the Nick and fewer PBS

American history. And I agree with that American history. But you know, I have been talking a lot about The Magnificent Amberson's which is like a whole novel. Somebody wrote about how much they hated cars, uh, and how they thought cars were going to ruin everything, and I was like, you know what not wrong? Wrong? If you had to choose a world where there were no cars or no airplanes, which would you choose both? Can I have both no cars the new airplane? Now you have to choose one

or the other. That's the point of actually cars, I don't care about airplanes that much. I've never had like a good air travel experience, so you'd rather pick Okay, See, I firmly disagree. I can get around in life, and I have for many years in my life gotten around without a car. But like the possibility of like Oh, if I want to go see some other part of the world, I have to get on an ocean line.

That's how it was. Yeah, But like I think I think I've shared this controversial opinion on on I think it was on the dailies like guys recently when I was a guest on there. I think air travel is great A plus love air travel, being in the sky. I don't like being in the sky. It feels unnatural. I don't think I'm never going to get on a plane again, honestly after this. But I like a road trip.

I think I'm just like, well, if there's no planes, we'll have to drive across the country, like in Stephen King's the Stand to get places, isn't that isn't don't be that bad things happen in the States. Well, this is largely bad things happening. Yeah, I mean it's too on topic for right now. I've watched it a lot of times, but like, have you ever read it? I've never read it. That it's such it's so good, a good book to read, but also like I don't think

I can handle it right now. It might exactly what you want. Well, I also saw some from Stephen King where he was. Like in my sci fi like Dystopia universe, it didn't like occur to me that the government would suck it up this badly right, just like things William Gibson says too, it's just like some of the ways in which society has become bad. It's just like even the people thinking about all the way society could become

really bad, we didn't didn't think about it. That's why we're going back to Y t K, A great time that everybody loves when it feels very innocent and quaint. Right now, where where were you guys on Y two K? I was in jolly old England, are you? It was my first trip to another country speaking of air travel, UM. And it was my mom was doing a research trip, so I was just tagging along with her and we were just staying at like a series of hostels around

mostly northern England. UM. But we had we spent actually the actual turn of the millennium in Cambridge, UM. And I remember there was a huge carnival out on some lawn at Cambridge, but we were not we were not doing any of that. I remember. I remember like the drunkenness level being like and even living in a college town at the time, being something that I had never seen before, like because it's college town times, British times, British exactly. Um, but we spent our evening at like

a cathedral that had been or not. It was a church, an old old church, like a Romanesque church that had been around since like the first millennium. And uh, there was like a kind of service type thing, like a victual or something. And then, um, I drank my first class of champagne among a bunch of old people in a an old church in Cambridge. You had the most delightful y two k I've ever heard of. That sounds great,

That's awesome. Probably where were you. I was at my family friend's house the Moffits with my parents and brother and we were watching it on television. We like went over there for New Year's. Um. I feel like I never did anything party for New Year's in high school because it was like such a pain and like nobody wanted to drive on New Year's And I remember people would always be like going to the beach, but then that would be that was like a five hour clusterfuck

of like stuck there. Yeah, so I would always just hang out with my parents, like the cool kid that I was, UM and my family, and I remember that there was like a PBS or local special of the Millennium around the world, Why two K around the world, and that l A had the worst y two K celebration of anywhere. Everywhere else had something cool. Um there was like some crazy ball drop in Sydney. And then you know, and it's like going through as it it

becomes around the world. You remember seeing something cool looking at the silly like Millennium Dome in England. I just saw this like silly, probably really wasteful infrastructure stuff that they built for the millennium, and then the Eye in London and stop for the millennium. Yeah. Yeah, they built a lot of dumb ship for They built a lot

of dumb ship for the millenning. And then they cut to Hollywood, California, and it's Jay Leno at the Hollywood Sign but and they lit off like two sparklers and that was it. We were, you guys nervous about the collapse of technology at the time. I think I was like curious if it would happen. Really yeah, I don't remember being really actively nervous. And then I think I remember being later at some point, like or no before

it was midnight. We were in some bar or some cafe or something and they had the TV on where they were showing like the Millennium celebrations and like India and stuff like that, and it was like, oh, it's fine, like it's all gonna be okay. Um. So like by the time it was midnight in England, I was like, it's it's it's okay. I'm just gonna like chill and have my my champagne. But yeah, I have no I can't remember, and it's so stressful because I was trying to.

Right before we started, I was like, okay, I think I was in my bedroom online, as a very cool person would be at midnight on New Year's Eve. But then I was like, no, I think I was in Connecticut. Um, because my parents would leave. They were renting in California for work, so when I would have school breaks sometimes we would go back to their house in Connecticut. So even worse than being in like my l a bedroom, I think I was like all alone in my haunted

bedroom in Connecticut. But I was really really stressed about computers breaking and stuff. Most more than anything. I was like, my emails, my AOL emails, It's like the record of my life. What will I do if those are lost? And I think my dad was pretty stressed because he's he was like an early techie, can ask your parents for confirmation. Well, I was like, oh, I should look at my diaries. But then I'm not. I'm not going to go down that road right now. It's too fragile.

Look at your A O L email. Can't. Man, I wish I could. I I don't think that those exist anymore, but I mean they were like that was a big deal to me. I was stressed. I actually have a binder of printed out A O L emails, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. It's not an exhaustive collection correspondences. My correspondences as very victorian with the pen piles. Well, let's take a break and then we'll be right back with some sports. Welcome back Tonight Call. This is a

special news segment. We're introducing UH at my Behest, but also some of our listeners demanded it called Sports Call, the sports podcast within Nightcall. We've got two whole sports topics to talk about, and I would love to have some actual people who are sports journalists and we want to have our friend Holly on sometime to talk about sports. Actually, we are not pretending to be sports experts. We are merely sports amateurs. But what we have our opinions, lots

of them. Well put uh here is a night text twee got asking about the Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance. Hi, ladies, been a listener since your days in grant Land, and this is my first time ever calling in. Given you guys are talking about The Last Dance documentary, I guess my only question is how do you think a figure like Dennis Rodman would be read and consumed in today's

media landscaping culture. Rodman was no doubt a fascinating figure when I was a kid in the nineties watching him, but looking at how social media reacted to seemingly first time discovering who Rodman is in finding old clips of him, he's easily going viral yet again, especially when he talked about his sexuality and how he liked to dress, which at the time was very controversial. Thank you and I

enjoyed the podcast. Wow, thank you so much for this great introduction to talk about our favorite subject, sports, basketball specifically, did you guys get to watch any of the last dance? I haven't yet, but I've I've committed to doing it this weekend. I know, Molly, you started it right. Yeah. It's just a great documentary. I will say. It's like, even if you don't care anything about basketball, and I'm definitely on the low end of caring about it, it's

just a great collection of people and personalities, um. And it makes it very much about how these personalities interacted and what, you know, what made that work and not work for teams. And it's a lot about the corporate medaling, about how the league got involved and fucked up good arrangements and sucked over great players. Um Scottie Pippen is the focus of the second episode. It's all it's very it's very discursive in a way that I like, who

are the villains? The villains? Jake Kang disagrees with me, But the main villain is Jerry Krause, who uh basically breaks up like the threatens to break up the the championship winning bowls. Um Scottie Pippen signs like a bad overall deal because for reasons that make perfect sense that he's like I need to like buy my mom a house, you know, and like they offered him eighteen million and

he takes it. But then he gets to a point where it's like he could be making so much more money and he's like the second best player in the league or something on the best team in the league, but he is making he's like very low on on you know, in terms of getting paid. They talk a lot about the way that the league exploits players, and you know how you have to be sort of like so happy to do anything for the league. Uh. But obviously if you get injured, they kind of stopped giving

a funk about you. But it's really about it's about the late nineties, about Michael Jordan's retirement, and it's ten episodes. I've watched four so far. It's coming out weekly on Sundays, and it's like a big event that everybody's enjoying watching. Can I ask what it's called the Last Dance? Um Our producer Joel says she actually knows why it's called

the Last Dance, so uh. An episode one, Phil Jackson talks about how at the top of each year he would set up sort of a theme or a mantra for the team in order to focus them on a singular goal. Uh. He was pretty sure this was going to be his last season, and so he coined this term the last Dance, and they were all sort of trying to make that last dance a memorable one. Nice

thank you, Joel. So the first episode is focused basically on Michael Jordan's, the second episode is sort of focused around Scottie Pippen, and then the third episode is Dennis Rodman, and then episode four it starts to like weave these They're all being woven together the whole time, which is also why I like it. It kind of jumps around in time and uh, in in careers, in stories a lot um in a way that some people have said

they find confusing, But I think it's fine. You can just follow what year it is by how long people's shorts are. Is it the country music of nineties n b A. It kind of is. Actually it's some, but it's it's better than country music because it's got interviews with everybody. And so it's got interviews from the time period where somebody was just filming their entire season, the Bowl season, and then it's got interviews with everybody in

the present day in their mansions, like reflecting on their lives. Um. And that part is also really interesting. And one of the interesting things about it is that Michael Jordan wears a ball chain necklace in one of the interview setups, and he wears these like huge pants all the time, like Jinko type pants. And that was just like, I had this realization last night where I was like, oh, he dresses like a raver. He dresses like the ravers

I knew who also listened to Sublime. Just be kind of like a proto like SoundCloud rapper a little bit as like a cultural figure somebody like that. Just freaks out parents. Well that's Rodman. Yeah, ro oh, I thought you were talking about Dennis Roman. So that's where funny Jordan wears the ball chain necklace. That's awesome. Rodman kind of dresses like an old new metal guy, which is

also really cool. Um. But yeah, young Rodman, I guess if you had never seen him before, does feel like kind of a revelation because even for people who didn't watch basketball, he was such like a rock star of basketball. He looked very cool and it seemed very cool. But I, as a person who didn't really know anything about the bulls. Uh. I had watched the Bad Boys documentary about the Detroit Pistons, which was where Rodman came up, was in this team

in Detroit. That's also an amazing ESPN documentary that I super recommend about the Bad Boys, um, which was about they basically just started playing really physical and kind of dirty because they were like nobody likes us because we're Detroit and in flagrant fouling. I guess, like Joel fact check, why were they allowed to foul everybody so hard? In the eighties. So back in the day before NBA became a major sports ball franchise, it was um like very

low rent. So in other words, players were getting paid a lot. A lot of them. This was their second job they were doing. They were basically like the cheerleaders are today, where they're like, yeah, you came into here, here's a little chunk of change, go home or whatever. Um. And so it wasn't uh standards and rules and all. That was kind of like whatever, we're playing a game,

beat men like punch each other, It's fine. Uh. And they just kind of had to eventually grow out of that because that we can't be having players who was for violence and things like that. But yeah, back in the day, it was anything goes. Yeah, our producer, Zach Are the producer also says that people got hurt a lot over the years and that was why they reformed it. Basically, the Pistons are like, let's see how far we can push it. Let's just turn it into hockey kind of um.

Everybody else thought that like wasn't a classy form of basketball to play, but super good TV, super good TV, and like super good for sports. And so the Bulls were kind of this prestige team and there was this whole thing about that when they went to play the Pistons. The Pistons had a set of rules for Jordan's that they called the Jordan's Rules, which is the name of the tell all book about Jordan's that my brother red

and told me all the good parts from. And it was basically just like a strategy for playing against Jordan, who they all agreed was like if he gets off the ground, you're you're fucked, you know, like keep him on the ground. It wasn't like hit him in the face. It was a little bit hit him in the face, and it was kind of just like play as rough as you possibly can to keep him from from getting

to the basket. And it worked. But then, like sports broadcasters did not like it because they were like, we have this narrative going about Michael Jordan's and he's the greatest, and like a bunch of you know, roughnecks, like fucking it up isn't part of our narrative. The Pistons are all great, they all show up in interviews, they're probably there. They're chiller than the bulls um because they're all kind of like, yeah, yeah, we did that stuff like it was.

It was cool. There weren't any rules yet, you could do it. It was fine. Basketball in general always makes me. It gives me the Y two ks. I mean this year obviously we were talking, We've all everybody's been talking about the Lakers because of Kobe dying Um and the Lakers won two championships in a row. I think Joel and Zack might know better than I do, But I thought in two thousand and two thousand and one, is that right? Uh? Didn't didn't they win in two? I

want to say maybe then too. But in terms of like Y two k it was a big time for the Lakers. It's kind of like it introduces all these teams that became sort of like the brand name. They're like bands. They're just exactly like bands. It's like a music documentary. It's like people that had to get along with each other in order to work and had like interpersonal conflicts that they had to keep off the you know, the court, but the behind the scenes stuff is great.

We have, don't we have to address our feelings about Dennis Rodman, and because I want to hear what you guys think about your impressions of Dennis Rodman, especially when he first kind of came onto the scene. Oh nice, Oh wait, Joel just confirms that the Lakers won the championship two thousand, two thousand one, and two thousand two. Here.

I love it, I love thank you. I just remember when when we graduated from high school in two thousand one, Um, I was like in a or I guess it wasn't when we graduated, but there was like when they won the championship in two thousand one. Um, I was out with a bunch of my friends and we were on Sunset on the Sunset Strip, and everyone was like hanking and had Lakers flags. And everything, and I was like, maybe I care about the basketball now, well, maybe I

could play baste day. That's the main aspect that I don't like about sports is the like city nationalism, because like, who cares, you know, I don't think my city is better than other cities. It's not about your city being better than other cities. I mean, I I'm a Dodgers fan. Like I I do enjoy that a lot. I enjoyn Scully, I enjoy like the camaraderie. I gotta say. I like city nationalism, not in my sterious like let's start a warway but baby fascism. You'm not cheering for it to right,

but like and you like the New Orleans Saints. I love it despite the fact that I think that that's I don't love it because the sports teams are good, Like that's yeah, but the sports teams are kind of just an accessory to it. Like I like, I like feeling, like you know, I think that sports is one of the good things about it is that it is a nice way to just like, you know, sit at a bar and talk to somebody that you might not talk to otherwise. When I had my brief like dalliance with

being an into football that was sort of fun. Football is a super evil institution, but like sometimes it was fun to just like chat with somebody at a bar, and I think that that's like, that's like a fun thing and it makes and it does make me feel more even though I was never talking about l A football because there wasn't l A football yet. When I was watching football, like it was sort of I don't know, it was just something to another way to kind of

cross the bridge or something to people. Um I, but I will say that the downside of that, like when the actual hooliganism enters into it, because my memory, I wasn't around in l A for those championships around like two. I was here for the one and that I remember really really vividly because I was out at a bar on Sunset. Sunset seems to be the place to be

a championship, and uh, I remember it was. It was Mission Mission Takaria, yeah, um, which is still there, but like in the shadow of the Big Death Star Emerson Campus now um and I lived around the corner from there, and we saw on the TV at the TV that they won and then there was this like weird kind of thing that went over the bar where everybody was like I'm leaving, I'm gonna go home because it's about

to get crazy out here. And it did. Like people were setting fires and overturning trash like like dumpster that was like that. That was like the one good sports. Wait, that's the good stuff I thought you hated, like the saying that's part. It's part of it is like the over you know, it's like I think I'm just just you get people in the stadium. It's a little bit like a rally. You know, there's there's a lot of good.

You like when people go and like burn shipped down after their team by a billionaire like one a sports game because I like when they defaced l A Live. Well, they were defacing more than l A Live. Like we were like overturning cop cars and ship like that's cool. They were also overturning other people's cars to I mean, and it's like it's like I'm I'm I'm totally here for that if it's for a political reason and it's

like to send a message. But it's like the Lakers one, let's destroy some property, Like and I were in Providence, we were in college when the Red Sox one the World Series for the first time in a billion years. And I remember because we went to Legal Seafood. We drove to Legal Seafood and we were driving back to Providence and there were fireworks and we were both like, what the fund is happening? And we were listening to

and it was very magical. You may have been don't you dare diss you know, but I remember we were like, what is it? Because we were both so out of it we didn't know. And then we were like, oh,

the Red Sox one. Although I have to say that the Red Sox so my parents are Red Sox fans because they're both from Boston and then but then they moved to New York and they growing up, I was always fascinated by how much they hated the Yankees because they were terrible at explaining it, and it was like, because they're the Yankees because we like the reds And I was like, but give me more, because I'm five

years old and it makes no sense. And it's like because fun, That's what I'm saying, is like the part of sports fandom that is like our place. You know, Springfield is good and Shelbyville is bad, and like the Springfield will win because like Shelbyville is evil, and it's like as long as it's kind of a it's a joke, you know, it's not serious, Like when I tell like when I meet somebody from USC and I say, like,

we can't be friends. It's so stupid. I never went to a single game, Like, I just like, it's just sort of a dumb joke. It's like, and it's also on this side, like like Emily is saying, when you find it's the one thing you have in common with someone, you know, it can be like a nice form of camaraderie. I definitely find that with the Dodgers, although there's often some tension depending on how many Giants fans are like

with you in your group or whatever. But I mean it's you can start a conversation with someone about what's happening that you're watching. It's it's such a like weird

kind of unique thing. It's not like you go to a concert and you start like talking to the person next to you, like what you think, It's just another show, except you can watch the show in a huge arena and there are good hot dogs from The problem I think also with basketball in Los Angeles is that the Lakers are like prohibitably expensive to see, because yeah, I

would never I've never been to a Laker game. I've seen a w NBA game that I went to a couple of years ago, and I like wouldn't stop talking about it because it was so fun and it was like a sports event with no like bullshit. I was like, Oh, like a dad's brought their daughters here and it's all like big groups of women just like no, no, just macho bullshit. I guess, um, yeah, sports without I was like, oh, there can be sports without macho bullshit. Like I didn't

even know what that looked like in real life. I would love to go to a Sparks game. I've been to at of three, uh three pro basketball games in my life. One was the team formerly known as the Seattle Sonics um when they were the Kingdom was being repaired some time before they decided to just tear it down all together. I really love I have like a

very soft spot in my heart for the Kingdom. But they were playing their games at the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, so I went there and I got in a huge fight with my friend that I went with because um that they did a T shirt cannon and she like knocked me out of the way to get a T shirt. I was so mad at you're gonna say the T shirt cannon knocked you out. I don't know, my friend knocked me out? Uh and then uh. And then I

did go to a Lakers game. I've been to a Lakers game, but it was when I worked for a nonprofit and they would the donors to It was like an after school program, so sometimes donors would give their leg box seats, like really amazing seats to games. So I like was in a skybox for Lakers game, but I like didn't know what was going on. So I was just like doing a crossword puzzle on the couch in the lounge, like, and the kids were all like

having a great time. I was just like I went to the w NBA game with a dance team called the Divas of Compton, who I was writing about for a sports magazine called Victory Um, and they were doing the halftime show and it was great because I got to like go early and go backstage and the Staples Center, which is just like a giant concrete labyrinth, and I was so excited about that. I was like, oh, backstage of like a weird stadium with all just the weird

doors and warehouse stuff of thing about stadiums that I like. Um, stadiums are bad. Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and when we come back a little more sports and maybe another night email or night call. Hello, we are back. Um, Molly, have you ever played any basketball? No, my brother was good at basketball. I'm short. All my sports dreams were dashed by being short. I'm sure too, I'm the same height as you. I think you're not. I'm five five, I'm five two. You're not five to

the last time I saw you. Well, I have a lot of bone loss because I wear sneakers with some height. Give me some height. Also, my grandmother was a high jumper, like an award winning high jumper and like super tall. So I was totally just waiting for my growth spurt and it just didn't drinking of milk as a kid. Yeah, and also just like the sports I could have been good at, like soccer, Um, everybody was too good at soccer. So Emily, I think you said you you are not

a basketball person. No. The only sport I've ever played in any organized way was with softball. They did a softball episode last night on vander Pump Rules, which I was like, what a great idea. I mean on it, like that is what I will say about sports. I know I'm talking ship, but I'm also talking shit more about sports leagues, I guess, and like the business of sports than I am about playing actual sports, you know,

which is fun, I think sometimes sometimes. But I played softball for a long time, like up until junior high went again just like people got big and I didn't, so it was like my time was over. Um, and I loved I was like never very good, but I just loved being on a team, and I loved talking trash still do still do outside of a podcast. Should we take a night email? Yeah, let's do it. So we have a night email from Kate who writes to us.

I was wondering if you guys could talk about the prevalence of forest green and bright purple as a color palette in the mid to late nineties. It was just so hideously ugly. Note the seattle spruce and track suit colors in the piece I attached, which we can put it in the show notes and the really scary patterns like this been hands posts that we're everywhere. Also, Taco Bell in the nineties were this color scheme, the purple and the green. H So that comes to us from Kate.

Thank you, Kate. Um. We were talking a little bit about Y two K color schemes, the purple and green. I'm kind of surprised too to see that be cited by somebody because that felt very specific to the Pacific Northwest for me in the late nineties, but maybe it was everywhere. The it's also like big Barney colors, like like it's like Barney Barney Purple. Spacific Northwest had such a huge influence on everything in the nineties, that's true.

I have to say that I'm a really big fan of forest Green and I when we got this email, I was like really aghast because I have a forest green bathroom. That was like a bold choice that I made, and I thought it was great. And then I went in there and was like, is it okay? Because there's no purple like it. But I think that the the Y two K Forest Green had a lot more blue in it than the current, Like it's more of a like deep emerald without that much it's a true green.

It was like a dark teal more that the teal heels. I don't like the nineties color. It was all of the schools in my school district when I was growing up in a Tacoma Like most of them were a combination their colors of the schools, or a combination of like teal, purple, gray, um blue, and like sometimes a maroon in the college. I feel like the eighties were all primary colors, and so the nineties were like nudes

and jewel tones. Yeah, where their nudes then too. I think of them as being nineties late eighties becoming nudes is eighties and then you still get it in the nineties by like what I was talking about, the effect of like it stays in it stays in the suburbs, like a beige house, like a beige house, and like a very prefab neighborhood will be very like a nude colored.

A lot of those interiors and like the Ryan Murphy shows, like American American Crime Story specifically, like that is just a really great work of art direction as far as capturing I totally I hate all the houses that are slate gray now yeah, So I don't like the houses out here that are basically black. That's the slate, right. Weird, that's but it's it's like it's aggressively dark. They're doing it. They're doing it to like cover the beige, I guess,

but a lot of them are new construction. Somebody posted a Victorian like a gingerbread house in San Francisco. That someone did that too, and it made my heart die. It's so and it's such a stupid choice because it's going to heat your house so quickly, so it would make sense to me in a place that was more often cold than swelteringly hot. It's like you're murdering out

your house. Well, I think I actually think that that is a reaction to so much new construction of the like the McMansion variety being this very stark white where they had these facades where it was like the windows a lot of them had no shutters, there was nothing to break up this like glaring whiteness. And they're huge, so they it just it made them look even huger. And I think that the they started working with the dark slate gray. I remember the first one I saw

was in Echo Park. Um it was a like a small lot ordinance development called the Blackbirds, and there was a huge community response because they were like, these are supposed to be smart homes, but you're painting them black. They're gonna be like little furnaces. And I think the response was like, but these are not. These aren't like

churned out, you know, new construction, Like they're different. They were trying to differentiate it's just like just a signifier of like this is a gentrification house, Well now it is. I think they were trying to discuss it to be like it's not don't think it's that. It's to try to be like it's new because they're building like the same types of apartments. Are getting off topic. Sorry, sorry, we'll haring get back to the Y two K aesthetic. Yeah,

so tests linked to this article in Paper magazine. There was just about an interview with a kind of uh a historian, I guess of the Y two K aesthetic um as this person who runs UM the blog Institute for Why two K Aesthetics, Evan Collins, and um I think that there is especially since the arrival of vapor wave as like an Internet aesthetic, there's been a lot of stuff that thinks it's like Y two K aesthetic, But I appreciated this interview because it's like much more

granular and actually like it seems to be coming from more experience than just like teenagers, you know, not to sound like an ancient old person like teenagers who didn't necessarily it's a different my reaction. I think I've said this before, but like all the kids who dressed nineties now where you're like, oh, it's like a stylized, kind of cartoon version of nineties dressing, like oh, that's how

we dressed seventies in the nineties. But you know, he so, this guy, Evan Collins says that he he kind of thinks that the Y two K aesthetic began in like three and lasted to two thousand three, So it kind of like lines up with our theory loosely that that the decades begin and end with the threes. But also it does I mean, I think of it primarily with the with the nineties stuff as being a music video

aesthetic that then kind of bled out from there. Um. And he says that the key traits of the Y two K aesthetic is like, um, the futuristic feel period, which I'm look, I'm scrolling through this now there's like a great one of left eye like wearing just the most ridiculous Everything looks like um, like those jogging suits that are supposed to make you like sweat more like yeah, yeah, yeah, I think a lot of what I'm thinking about is

like high Williams video. Totally. Yeah, I'm not going to list he does a whole list of all of the Y two K aesthetic signifiers, but I'll just go through a couple of them. Translucency like the iMac translucency, Grady and blue yeah, bondy blue, motion, overlays, warping in perspective like the fish eye, lens um curves and blobs, blobjects, futuristics.

It's really interesting because you can you're like, oh, okay, this, you know, I now see that it is a really cohesive aesthetic because it was all leading up to the future, which was here two thousand. Yeah. But it was like a very i would say, for the most part, a very optimistic kind of future that sort of like was taking its cues from a sort of sixties idea of

the future. It was kind of a world's faise. Yeah, like with the like with the rave influence because I think that, like it's interesting to point like on because that kind of is when club culture starts to really become a thing in the States. Totally. We got the Summer of Love like three years late. Yeah, yeah, we're

related everything like that. But but yeah, so like that, and then you you hear it in the music, and then you see it in the fashion and everything, and kind of there's right, and the idea the two thousand was going to be like a world rave. Yeah, yeah, well that's what everybody. I mean. Like, one of my favorite Ye two K movies is Strange Days, which takes place around UM takes place from like Christmas to New Year's UM in the movie was made UM, but it

ends with this incredible party scene. It's like outside the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown l A. And it's just like this massive crowd of people and they actually did have a huge concert where like a f X twin and a bunch of other people played and they had like a real rave and people went to the hospital because of drug roverdoses like on the set of this movie. UM. And that just seems like the epitome of like what people thought that that moment was going to be like

just the biggest party. Right. It seems like all of history you're like waiting for the release. You're waiting for the drop. I would say, right now, we are waiting for the drop too, and it is the most pressing thing in the world to realize it is not going to be a drop. It's just gonna be like a slow, deep like de crescendo. It's also funny to be like ow, instead of all being outside together, everyone's like inside alone.

Yeah again, never alone. It's if you have a family, you've never been less alone in your life, like having kids and generally not seeing them as much. I mean that's what you're still in, like a quiet place the movie, a quiet place you're like not really, I feel like I'm in the loudest I think, whether you're with family or not with family, like the thing the thing that feels optimistic or like I guess if you're a person

who likes this sort of thing. But the thing that's appealing to you about imagining a huge Y two K esque party, for example, is not so much like the fact of actually being around the other humans as it is like kind of like sharing something again, like talking about sports at a bar with a stranger, like sharing something with somebody that you don't necessarily know, or like having these kind of randomized moments just because you're in a crowd and you're out in the world. Like that's

what we're missing right now. I have to be honest, though, and I think, like this has been discussed a lot on Twitter recently, is I don't know that I'm ever going to be able to go back to enjoying some of those things. I mean, the idea of being in a huge crowd right now, even after that is like permissible, I'm not sure I'm ever going to feel compelled to or like comfortable doing that. I think everyone is like people who lived through the Blitz and they're you know,

everyone's going to have PTSD from this. It's like it's like a nine eleven just happening, just very slowly and like everywhere. Yeah, I totally I feel the same way. And it's really frustrating too, because it's like, on an intellectual level, I want to be able to enjoy those sorts of things, but I could already feel myself like freaking out even about the smallest little interactions right now.

This is gonna be like, so it'll it'll be even worse in a way because it's not even like I won't want to go to a party, So it'll be that I want to go to a party, but I don't think I can handle going to a party, you know exactly. Sadiki had a really good tweet about it, I think yesterday, where she was like, Yeah, it's not

going to just be over like anytime soon. It's not going to be like we're not going to be in a different place probably till like next summer, and then it's not going to be like before and after it's going to be like we're living in the shadow of this event for the next decade at least, you know, the way that nine eleven just became a way to like enact all this terrible policy and be like, well, hey, remember when this one scary thing happened, Like I still

hold onto some hope that there will be positive changes like after this. I mean, you know, honestly, the way that people have kind of come together to try to support local businesses. And I mean today, obviously there's I keep saying obviously today not obviously, but we know that a lot of workers are on strike, and I think that the response to that has been really heartening, and I think people do have more of an understanding of how people put themselves at risk when they work for

companies that really don't care about their well being. So I'm hoping that there can be some kind of like gain shared humanity. But I when I was watching I don't remember what I was watching, but there was a huge crowd scene and I was like, will that ever be something that I will want to do again? Like I'm not sure, you know, No, I've been doing a lot of like triangle shirtwaist factory fire comments in my head about just like the whole country is a factory

that's on fire and like everyone's trapped inside. But people were talking about how that got us a lot of good labor regulation because of that, and I feel like I'm just so beaten down right now that I'm like, they're just gonna like run us over in their cyber trucks, like I don't know. But I also feel like that's

because the news media has been so gutted. There's not a lot of coverage of the stuff that I'm actually interested in, which is also I feel like it's exciting we have a cyberpunk podcast, right, but also stuff like rent strikes, like what a lot of people like what you're seeing a New York low right now. It has nothing to do with like news coverage, has truly just

to do with like ground level organizing and stuff. And I think a lot of people, because of our circumstances right now, you know, it does kind of take something like this to get people to get like start doing stuff that they wouldn't be doing normally. I think people want to build an alternative to the world we live in because like things are so bleak, and maybe maybe we're trying to just make a techno commune because the idea of a physical commune seems too stressful right now.

I want to know if and if you guys back to the wide two case stuff and just thinking because I just love thinking about past visions of the future. It's just like a general bucket of stuff that I'm have a great interest in. But do you think that any of it I felt I don't know how to like bad to you or felt like a wrong thing to hope for because I've been thinking about this a lot, and like I actually think that it's one of the few sort of like aspirational aesthetics that I think seems

pretty wholesome, but maybe I'm missing something. Well. I remember at the time there were a lot of people who didn't like it because I thought it was too glossy, especially in wrap. People were mad at the hype Williams videos,

people that were like underground heads. I think maybe Alex Pepadimus talked about traving to to deal with the fact that he liked those videos even though he was trying to be like indie um, and I think just the indie thing in general, there was like a pressure to not admit you like that aesthetic if you liked also a stripped down aesthetic. So I also had like a come to Jesus moment of like, oh, I actually love all these total Request live videos and it doesn't mean

I can't also like listen to Pavement. I can like all these things. Um. But yeah, people were mad because it was also there's a lot of like sexualizment of the teens around that time as well. Sure, you know, I feel like we were like sixteen or seventeen when the Brittany Rolling Stone cover came out, which is like very peak y. K aesthetic to me like nineties aesthetic, remember being like I'm also sixteen or seventeen and I don't look like the or feel like this, and and

baby spice in retrospect problematic baby Spice. But now that I'm distanced from it, I love it sure well. Yeah, like at the time, I wasn't doing a lot of body glitter, but now would you can. There's a really good white two Instagram filter that I posted I found on that just gives you like a flip phone and

some some face jewels. I think, I think the thing that makes me feel and it has less to deal with big like large scale pop culture, but more to do with kind of the early Internet, which is another thing we talked about here on here a lot, and we talked about with um with Claire Evans when she was on talking about her great book Broadband, which you should still read. It's great. It's got a lot of

good white take why two K content in it. But like I guess, I guess when I think of these aesthetics, a lot of it just comes back to like the aesthetic that was being built built for the early Internet, and that feels really optimistic to me, and like you know the before everything just became ad driven, uh where the internet did feel like it just a place where you could figure out how to be a different kind of person. For sure, we were going to make the

techno utopia. Yeah, and and so they all the kind of the look and feel of that digital world, I guess is more what I'm talking about than like hype Williams videos and necessarily even though I love all that stuff, but like, um, I guess that's and and like you know, just like art, like like shitty art that people were making for their websites and stuff like that. Well, I love Molly Soda, that artist Molly Soda makes a lot of great work about sort of that angel fire aesthetic.

But we will have plenty of time to continue addressing the Y two K aesthetic. Dennis Rodman and Sports from Night Calling the Future. UM, thanks for listening today. We'll be back next. Can you please send us all your thoughts on Y two K. You can email us at Nightcall Podcast at gmail dot com. You can call us at too four oh four six night. You can also send us your thoughts via social media. We are Nightcall

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