Striking writers

So Hollywood’s writers have gone on strike for the first time since 1988. That gives me the perfect excuse to think about what I was doing in 1988 (since this blog is All About Me, of course). That was the spring I was stuck at home before I went (back) to college, when I was slogging through a year of community college. I watched Letterman religiously back then, back when he was the funniest thing on TV. (For the record, though, I hate Chris Elliot.) I had not yet decided to watch Star Trek: TNG, which was probably a good thing because it pretty much sucked until the third season.

Of course, that was an election year, and the inevitable end of Reagan’s presidency was finally on deck. I was still too young to vote, and things didn’t exactly turn out the way I wanted, but at least Bloom County’s National Radical Meadow Party was still holding raucous caucuses. And we all have fond memories of Bentsen’s “You’re no Jack Kennedy” moment.

In the realm of music, I was just getting into Crowded House with the foolish impression that I was finally getting into a band fairly early on in the game. Then I found out about Split Enz, whoops. I think that was also during the brief period when Sting was cool, which lasted up until I went to a show on his “Nothing Like the Sun” tour in August and decided he was kind of lame. That summer was also spent buying all the Genesis albums, which may cause you to wonder whether I should really consider myself an arbiter of cool.

All in all, the spring and summer of 1988 were characterized mostly by lots of sitting around waiting for my life to get its shit together. Er, is there any way I can tie that in with the writers’ strike? Too bad nobody from the Guild is around to help me out.