Y2K nostalgia has gripped the youth. We are seeing all the hallmarks: layers and layers of lace camis down to mid-thigh, low-rise jeans (with far higher inseams than their 20-year-old counterparts), a resurgence of old tech (with digital camera photos posted on Instagram) and in some cases, bafflingly, that combo of animal print and hot pink that adorned the bedrooms of girls who had an allowance.
And this nostalgia makes sense: things are feeling a bit 2003. We’re in a war in the Middle East conducted by people who are both evil and incompetent, gas is $5 per gallon and people are in the streets protesting the racist and destructive ideas of the current administration. Like then, it feels like the end of something. In the early 2000’s, it was the end of the idea that we had progressed to our final governmental form (Western liberal democracy had won, if you believed Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man”). Now, it kind of feels like the end of the world, or at least the American empire.
This is not coming from a place of “Everything was bad then too, so everything is just normal bad” or even “Oh, I was a teenager in 2005 and the kids don’t get it.” As to the first, sure, things suck in ways that have been seen before, but also in a way more concentrated and overlapping than I’ve seen. As to the second, I am (brag) too young for that. I was freshly 7 years old at the start of the new millennium. Instead, in the spirit of solidarity, I want to add to your knowledge of the time from someone who was there, though a child (and had really cool older cousins).
READ
“Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey,” by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton
Before you come at me for suggesting a long, non-fiction book off the jump, just be glad that I’m not recommending Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland” (the 1,000-page patient zero of my Nixon fascination that I read for silent sustained reading in the fifth grade). No one wants that (unless you do, in which case, this is my backdoor recommendation).
This 1999 tome does what it says on the tin. “Last Night” documents the then-almost 100-year history of the disc jockey and how DJs’ evangelism brought music to the masses. It weaves through genres (reggae, disco, hip-hop, garage, house, techno), places (New York, London, Paris, Chicago, Wigan) and communities. All of them lead to people dancing in a dark, sweaty room somewhere. As the book quotes The Oregonian in 1932, “Opium? No! Cocaine? No! The Great American Brain Killer is Dance Music!”
Some things have aged like 30-year-old milk, such as the insistence on referring to the proverbial DJ with he/him pronouns (“because 98 percent of DJs have a penis”) with only a short section on women DJs, a less-than-modern depiction of the Stonewall Riot, and worst, a quite complimentary section on Jimmy Savile, who was publicly outed as a horrific abuser following his death in 2011.
But alongside these 1999-accurate shortcomings, the book gives deserved credit to Black and queer communities without whom deejaying would not exist. It doesn’t cover up their contributions in order to credit one of the white guys who stole their ideas — and that is something.
It may seem like a history of deejaying is a stretch when it comes to Y2K culture, but this book isn’t just a presentation of historical fact. It’s also a reflection of culture in 1999 (or 2000, if you have the revised version). There is no concept of the zenith of digitization we would reach, the diminished club and live music culture, or the influencer DJ. At the turn of the millennium, none of us could even think that the internet, a thing you use to AOL instant message your crush or receive chain emails, could revolutionize music and also destroy most people’s ability to make any money from it (unless you’re a record executive, an early Spotify investor or the thorn in everyone’s side: Ticketmaster). Repeatedly, the authors mention how lucrative the music industry is at that moment and it’s a reminder that things (primarily, music, but also society as a whole) haven’t always been this way. They acknowledge that the DJ has been commercialized, advertised and capitalized upon, but as the reader, you know there is no frame of reference for the reality we face 27 years later. At the time of writing, the book reflects an excess and an optimism that is hard to conceive of.
But within what now may feel a bit naive, I also feel hope. Generations of people have built community through being in a space enjoying something with other people, and the window of opportunity for that is still open to us. We just have to go out and find it.
WATCH
“Josie and the Pussycats” (2001)
Basically, in my generation of my family, any era-appropriate comedy with Alan Cumming as a supporting character was good watching. Especially “Spice World” (1997). But “Josie and the Pussycats” has a special place in my heart.
Based on the characters from the “Archie” comics (which I also read a lot of, purchased from the gone-but-not-forgotten Cameron’s Books), “Josie and the Pussycats” does something different with its source material than a lot of the other corporate intellectual property-based films.
This film follows the aforementioned band of girls, Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook), Val (Rosario Dawson) and Mel (Tara Reid), as they seek stardom with some rocking tunes (shoutout to Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo for the iconic lead vocals).
The band is discovered on the street by Wyatt Frame (Cumming) of MegaRecords, following an orchestrated plane crash that kills boyband DuJour. And if you can believe it, it gets more wild from there. While the Pussycats are navigating a suspiciously fast rise to number one, we see Wyatt and his fabulous and fabulously unhinged boss, Fiona (played to perfection by Parker Posey), constructing their nefarious plot with world leaders to control the youth of America through subliminal messaging in pop music.
There’s also a romance subplot between Josie and the unfortunately blonde and goateed Alan M., her hometown crush who also is an acoustic musician who follows the Pussycats on their big city journey for plot reasons. He gives off real “no thoughts, head empty” vibes and also wears flip-flops with jeans, which much like this subplot, is slightly offensive to my sensibilities but definitely period-accurate.
This movie does get a little stuck between its unsubtle anti-hypercapitalist message and clear corporate sponsorship, but it’s definitely an essential watch, even if you are young enough to not know who “Mr. Moviefone” is.
Check out Mila Tequila
Thanks to youtuber Mila Tequila, I can proudly say that I have never watched “Jersey Shore,” but I have watched a two-part, four-and-a-half-hour recap. Which I have also been told is a little unhinged. But it was fun.
Interestingly enough, Mila is not a millennial, so this is more of an academic pursuit than nostalgia. She has studied aspects of culture of the 2000s with a care that is actually heartwarming. Her videos run through the careers and scandals of 2000s icons like Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton and Amanda Bynes, and reexamine how we treated them. You can get the drama and come away with more context and empathy than a lot of adults had in 2003.
Like many late millennials, I love a video essay and these are a pretty great example of the genre. Check them out and learn about the “Bimbo Summit” or the entire history of the MTV reality show “The Hills.”
Go see a Portland Fire game
As loath as I am to direct you towards any event at the Moda Center (We should not be paying for renovations to a sports arena when we are cutting homelessness services and public transit. Just my hot take.), the Portland Fire are back and it’s fantastic to see (and this time around, they’re not owned by the Blazers).
The WNBA first graced Portland with a women’s basketball team in 2000. And we only lasted three seasons, but they were glorious … vibes wise. When it came to winning, we were the only WNBA franchise to never make it to the playoffs. Our team’s lifespan was tied for the shortest lifespan with the financially troubled Miami Sol.
But I was at a lot of games. My dad took me (and not my sister, who was funnily enough the person who got me back into the WNBA as an adult) to the Rose Garden and for $5, we got to sit amongst hundreds of fans. It was exhilarating for me as an-eight-year-old who was obsessed with women athletes. And I loved Jackie Stiles (Portland Fire alum and 2001 WNBA Rookie of the Year) just as much as Mia Hamm and Michelle Kwan.
I held the Fire in my heart for nearly 25 years and I went to their first pre-season game at the Moda Center and actually cried. The stadium was nearly full and the energy was electric. We lost that night to the LA Sparks, but we actually win a lot. And as my favorite thrifted and confusingly worded game-day shirt says, finally it feels like “Portland is Women’s Basketball.”
PICKY BITS
A list of things so varied but popular at the time (or to me) that you might as well call it “Now! That’s What I Call Music.” Or “Now! That’s What I Call a Shaky and Tired Joke Premise.” It’s your choice.
I will die on the hill that Jennifer Lopez’s career peaked with 2001’s “J. Lo.” Between hits like “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,” “I’m Real” (controversial, but the murder remix doesn’t hold up) and the forever jam “Play”, it’s iconic. It may be a weird hill to die on, but at least I’m dead.
Interpol may have a new album on the way, but I am still listening to “NYC.” If you don’t know what I am talking about, take a listen to the New York-based indie rock band, not the international body that will prosecute you for video piracy. You can’t go wrong with their 2001 album “Turn on the Bright Lights,” or 2004’s “Antics.” Both are clean and moody and just the right amount of whiny. And if none of that does it for you, listen to that bass line in “Evil.” It’s a universal classic.
“D.E.B.S.” may not be for everyone, but it sure is for some of us. This very 2000’s, lesbian spy comedy is a little problematic (in a way that also is very 2000’s), but so fun. I can’t conceive of a person who doesn’t love the idea of women being recruited into a paramilitary academy through a secret test inside the S.A.T. and then one of the top recruits falling in love with a supercriminal played by Jordana Brewster. But maybe I am just not imaginative enough.
I am what the kids call “Arts and Crafts-pilled.” The Canadian record label captured my heart (via my dad’s influence) as the promoters of almost every one of my indie darlings. Stars, Broken Social Scene (founder Kevin Drew’s band), Los Campensinos! (in North America only), they all are repped by this iconic label. Listen to Broken Social Scene’s “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)” or Stars’ “Heart” and tell me I’m wrong to love this label’s output with the same ardor I have for 20 years.
Niko Stratus’ “The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman” explores one woman’s relationship to her father, music and herself. Stratus delves into the presumed masculinity she was expected to grow into and how the men around her, and the men making the music she loved, formed her. “Dad Rock” provides a progression of music in the 1990s and 2000s filtered through a quiet and introverted child, an angry and lost adult and the woman who emerged from that.
It surprises no one that I, a person with depression and an unending love for The Cure, was an emo kid. Shout out to my dad for chaperoning me at too many shows, making me wear earplugs and saving me from getting hurt in mosh pits at the Roseland. But if you only know it as the admittedly questionable fashion (I refuse to feel shame for my sartorial choices. I was thirteen and am still learning how to not wear black all the time) or from its most popular outputs (MCR forever, FOB sometimes), give it another try. Taking Back Sunday still hits and statistically speaking, every American between the ages of 15-35 loves Paramore.
In the spirit of getting personal, I want to take a moment to talk about those icons of 2000’s country music, the Chicks. They were right about George Bush and the Iraq War and they made the definitive bop about murdering your abusive husband with your best friend (which feels kind of sapphic, but that’s beside the point). Listen to “There’s Your Trouble” and try not to enjoy yourself.