Friday, January 25, 2008

where were you...

alicia just read, and i have recently started reading, a book called "whatever love means." it was given to me by a certain english acquaintance of mine. i don't remember what i thought at first, but the other day when alicia picked it up to read, i read the back. when i saw "blah blah blah, vic started sleeping with emma the day princess diana died..." i thought, oh jeez.

turns out, the book is pretty good. it's not exactly the sun also rises or anything, but it's pretty well written and it's entertaining. but it got me wondering, is princess diana's death one of those "where were you?" moments in the lives of most british people? like a 9/11 or JFK assassination to an american?

i remember it happening, but i have no idea where i was. i know i was 13 years old. i remember feeling bad for princes harry and william, and thinking prince william was hot. reading the book has got me racking my brain to remember anything i can about my life when that happened, but i can't. i even tried to remember other details about the summer when i was 13, but i had no success with that, either. one of the lines in the book mentions that (in GB, anyway) that the hot summer weather didn't really arrive until august. i tried to remember the weather patterns of summer 1997 and got nowhere.

i guess in the long run it doesn't matter if july 1997 was extremely hot or only average in temperature, but its a little disturbing that for the most part, entire years of my life will be forgotten unless attached to some significant event. i remember where i was on 9/11 - in fact, my most vivid memory is that that evening i went to the eye doctor. i can't think of anything else noteworthy about 2001. or 1997. or many other years.

so my new gameplan is to try to get very invested in national events so that i can always "remember where i was." that way, every day i'll have a moment that will signify to my brain to remember every little detail. that way, i'll never forget. also, i'll have lots of great opening lines for parties.

where were you when they passed the 27th amendment?
where were you when anna nicole smith's baby was born?
where were you when jordin sparks won american idol?
where were you when barack obama won the iowa primary?

the fun never ends.

so, to begin, where were you when heath ledger died?*




*when exactly did it happen again?

1 comment:

something to make fun of myself for later said...

I remember where I was when Heath Ledger died…or rather, when I heard the news that Heath Ledger died. I was in the secluded Jizerske Mountains huddled around my laptop with Matt Ostrowski and you. Matt asked who Heath Ledger was and so we ran through a list of his movies. When we mentioned “A Knight’s Tale,” Matt asked if that was the one with Eddie Murphy where they traveled back in time. At that point, we gave up on trying to explain who Heath Ledger was because he was never in an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode, as far as I know.

What better cartography for our own boring lives than comparing and mapping it alongside those of the always vastly more entertaining celebs, right? Something sad about the fact that the only shared emotional commonground in our national consciousness is that of celebrity drama.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is I sympathize with Vic on this whole issue, which I guess dooms me to a life of loneliness and dramatically finding out I have AIDS during a quasi-hostage situation after I’ve been knocked out, kidnapped to a secret lab, and blood tested by my own best friend. Shit, bum luck.


How about when he smashed that guitar?? But the harp WASN’T THERE! What symbolism!