Proustian Years in Review: Part 6: 1999

After re-seeing Kathryn Bigelow's film Strange Days (which takes place around New Year's Eve 1999) last night, I got to remembering what that resonant fin du siecle year had been like for me.

So, as always, let's revisit my madeleines.

For me, 1999 was:

• tuna sandwiches on crusty rolls and strong coffee, bought from a deli every afternoon on a week-long trip to Germany I made in March.
• the soundtrack to Bertrand Tavernier's film Round Midnight, a former favorite LP on vinyl, which I replaced in my music collection as a CD in summer.
• Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, read in paperback over the holidays.
• Sam Shepard's play Seduced; I played the lead role in a graduate school production in December.
• my old Gateway 2000 laptop, which proved to be Y2K compliant.
• Tiger Stadium, which I visited for the last time in September, with my family.

And what, may I ask, was 1999 for you?

Proustian Years in Review: Part 5: 1987

For me, 1987 was:

• a white sweatshirt bearing an image of Bill the Cat, which I wore to a football game on Saturday, 3 October, the day before the Tigers clinched the AL East pennant against the hated Toronto Blue Jays.
• copies of The Beatles' Abbey Road and The Beatles [aka "the White Album"] that I bought in summer with earnings from my paper route.
• a yellow hardcover journal that I bought at the drug store in the neighborhood, and which began the long string of diaries I continue to keep to this day.
• a pair of oxblood penny loafers that I wore with my school uniform each day, and with jeans on weekends.
• paperback copies of Animal Farm, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and The Catcher in the Rye, read on the couch in the basement or curled up under the blankets in my bedroom.
• chocolate cream sandwich cookies and turkey sandwiches made on croissants and consumed with big cold glasses of milk.
• my beloved beat-up Tiger cap.

And what, may I ask, was 1987 for you?

Proustian Years in Review: Part 4: 1981

For me, 1981:

• my first ever taste of chapati, experienced while visiting the Indian family who lived across the street.
• a handheld General Electric tape recorder that I got for Christmas and which I used to record top hits off the living room stereo, by holding the microphone up to the speaker. (Songs I recorded included Kim Carnes's "Bette Davis Eyes" and Olivia Newton-John's "Physical.")
• the confetti I helped clean up off my grandmother's rec room carpet, the night that my aunt got married.
• the communion wafer I swallowed to tick another Catholic sacrament off my checklist.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark, viewed with my father at a theater downtown.
• being introduced to Mad magazine by my best friend.
• die-cast metal "dinky" cars kept in a blue plastic case.

And what, may I ask, was 1981 for you?