At the Saturday midnight showing (of Stop Making Sense at the Brattle, I was thinking that midnight showings make for very late evenings. More importantly, it struck me that I may actually have been a reasonably cool kid.¹ Yeah, I tried way too hard and carried the typical "no one understands me" complex², but at least I can say that I had developed an aesthetic that doesn't embarrass me now in my advanced years. Of course, then I hit the weird-for-weirdness-sake period³ while at university.

There was one more thing that was odd⁴ about the showing, though. We were in the theater early, and this permitted a fair amount of time to watch the crowd as they came in and were seated. With the exception of one slightly balding gentleman who arrived in a tropical weight suit complete with panama hat and pastel tie, I think most everyone in the audience was born after the film was originally released. This includes the boys seated in front of us with their crazy head-bobbing action⁵ and the kid who assembled his very own Big Suit and danced across the stage near the end of "Girlfriend Is Better." There was even a "Wooo" guy.

Clearly, they got it on some level, but the whole thing was out of time and a little disjointed. I won't go so far as to call them poseurs, but this seemed like something other than visceral experience. Instead, it almost like they were ritualistically invoking a previous era just for a taste of it. The interposing twenty-two years served as a shield of sorts.

~*~
¹Depending on his remembrances, usagijer is in the unique position to support this theory... or utterly cut it down. Be honest, but gentle. ^_^
²Oh, teenage martyrdom!
³All bets are off if we talk about BC. All of 'em.
⁴Yes, thinking that I wasn't a complete f#@k-up in high school is odd.
⁵It's the Indie-Rock dance of choice.