A Top Ten Memoir: 1998 - "And I feel...like I just got home..."
In January of 1998 I began teaching a couple of new film courses. Like my Hitchcock class, I wanted to focus my second one at College of Du Page (COD) on one of my favorite directors: Woody Allen. He had seemed, at the time, to have overcome the scandal with Mia Farrow and her adopted daughter Soon Yi Previn by getting several Oscar nominations in the 90s and Oscar wins for actresses Dianne Wiest and Mira Sorvino. Still a much-respected filmmaker, the course I developed on his work filled immediately.
Later in the year I created another course on Oscar-winning films which also attracted a full class of students. I remember showing Allen’s film Annie Hall in that latter course and hearing one young female student say, “He kind of scares me…” I let it go for he was still one of my cinematic heroes. I was just waiting for him to win a fourth Oscar (which did happen many years later.) Frank and I still had yearly Oscar parties and I had become pretty obsessed with who was nominated and who was winning Hollywood’s biggest awards. I was living the dream with this great opportunity to teach courses on subjects I was completely passionate about.
I also began teaching Film Appreciation at Moraine Valley Community College which allowed me to show and discuss some of my favorite films, such as Ordinary People and Swingers. I found out rather quickly that the films I found so great were not always the films my students loved. There was a clear passion for all things Star Wars, a film series I had had little attachment to: I’d only seen the first one in the original trilogy by that time. Still it was a great learning experience as I attempted to adapt concepts and ideas from my graduate program to a new generation of community college students. I was quite happy doing it. That Fall I remember listening to Madonna’s Ray of Light as I commuted to Moraine. I would scream out with the pop superstar: “And I feel, like I just got home!” I really felt that I had found not only my professional calling but also colleges that let me do what I wanted with very little interference and lots of respect. The video for this song is one of my all-time favorites:
My Top Ten of 1998:
1. Leave Me Alone – Natalie Imbruglia
2. Believe – Cher
3. Ray of Light – Madonna
4. Debbie – The B-52s
5. My Favorite Mistake – Sheryl Crow
6. Push It – Garbage
7. I Think I’m Paranoid – Garbage
8. Jackie’s Strength – Tori Amos
9. Heaven – Jai
10. The Way - Fastball
Frank and I continued to enjoy our travels, such as to Montreal, New York, and seasonal trips to Galena, IL.
People would comment on our travels with envy and jealousy. We were grabbing hold of opportunities, running with them, and really having a good time. Fastball’s The Way seemed to reflect this:
“Anyone could see
The road that they walk on is paved in gold
And its always summer, they'll never get cold
They'll never get hungry
They'll never get old and gray.”
Frank’s graduate school friends even referred to us as the “Boys of Summer.” With my UIC college group we would rent big houses in Galena and eat, laugh, and dance as if we were on the 1960s show Hullabalu! Karaoke was also a big part of our ’98 trip.
The B-52s released a couple of new tracks in ’98, including Debbie, a tribute of sorts to Blondie lead singer, Debbie Harry and performed a memorable show in Tinley Park, IL that summer. The band was always a reflection good times and exuberant, wild dancing.
The annual New York trip was becoming the usual big highlight of the year though. In ’98 we saw future Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh’s first big Broadway smash, The Beauty Queen of Leenane – a very dark, very funny comedy. My UIC friend Pat joined us on the trip which helped make it an even greater experience. Though we’d all known him for more than fifteen years, Pat was months away at that point from coming out of the closet. When he first told us, Frank and I assumed it was a joke! Everyone always thought Pat was asexual. He had been telling us he was meeting women but those turned out to be men once he came out. This would have a huge impact on our social life, but that wasn’t until 1999.
In the meantime, we enjoyed our experiences in New York. I once again had conflicting feelings about Brian. It felt like he was only interested in Brian. That year, Natalie Imbruglia had a major radio hit with the song Torn. While I thought it was a bit overplayed, I enjoyed her album and in particular the lush cut Leave Me Alone. It was a very dark and moody song:
“You like me to stroke you
Careful I don't choke you, did you read my mind?
You say don't be blue
Is that the best you can do?
I've lost my patience now
Oh leave me alone”
I remember a moment I played this song while at Brian’s apartment. When that first line was sung by Imbruglia, I saw Brian’s eyes look up a bit startled. Of course, he was probably reacting to the “stroke you” line but I was letting the “did you read my mind” line play into my own passive aggressive stance on Brian’s self-focus.
Still, I did like Brian I just wanted the friendship to be a bit more reciprocal. Did I really mean anything to him as a friend or was he just tolerant of me and wanted a connection to Frank (who ultimately had the connection to Tom, who Brian was clearly attracted to whether Tom was married or not.) In my own inner world, I felt rejected by Brian so when Sheryl Crow released My Favorite Mistake, it gave me somewhere to go with my emotions.
Like a lot of these songs, I never took the words literally in relation to most people and situations. It was the emotion and my own inner life they fulfilled. Perhaps it was my expectation that Brian, like so many others, wasn’t able to fill whatever emotional holes I still had in my life. A song like My Favorite Mistake let the fantasy go further than it ever would in real life. Crow’s vocal delivery got me every time with this song. It was so heartfelt and the music beautifully accompanied the charged emotion. Ultimately, that’s what most songs have done for me: capture some feeling that can be tied into a number of life’s great and not so great moments.
That’s probably where songs from Garbage hit me. Push It had a great groove that allowed whatever spirit that lived inside of me to dance. I Think I’m Paranoid provided yet another connection to something inside:
“Bend me, break me
Anyway you need me
All I want is you
Bend me, break me
Breaking down is easy
All I want is you”
Hadn’t I always felt this way? The fantasies! Frank and his friend Sharman discovered British neo soul singer Jai (he now uses his full name Jason Rowe) on a trip to St. Louis.
His song Heaven, like a lot of the emotionally-laden songs on his 1998 album, also asked:
“Could it be heaven, or is it something on my mind?”
How much of what I felt was real and how much was fantasy? During quieter moments, I veered again toward the introspective music of Tori Amos. Jackie’s Strength was an homage to Jackie Kennedy as she questioned her ability to make a marriage happen: “I pray for Jackie’s strength.” Wasn’t it always necessary to have strength to get through life’s trial and tribulations? While I wasn’t one who prayed anymore, I certainly wanted to be as strong as I could be.
Of course, the one person who asked us all to Believe was Cher. It had been a decade since she had made my Top Ten when she released the album Believe late in the year. Because her music career had fallen in recent years, she went out and made in store appearances to help sell not only the new album but a book she had just written. In December of ’98, I headed into the city to a Virgin Mega store on Michigan Avenue where Cher was autographing both products.
This was to be the thrill of a lifetime for me! Remember, I was in love with Cher from the early Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour days, already 25 years in the past. I stood in a long line with some very fun people, most likely gay, who were grooving to the store’s continued play of the new album. Finally, my moment was coming! I was ready to take a photo and tell Cher how much she’d meant to me over the years. Just before I went up, an announcement was made that there would be no more photos with Cher. I was bummed but it didn’t get me down! I asked one of the guys in line to take a photo of me with her from the other side of the room. I then went up to her and said, “Hi Cher!” (What a moment that was! Never did I think I would utter those words!) I said, “Your new album really sounds great!” She said, “Yeah, people seem to really be responding to it.”
With that, my time with Cher was done. I not only had a couple autographs but also a photo in the same room with her! The title track Believe quickly became not only one of my favorite songs but apparently, everyone else’s. (It would go on to be Billboard’s Number One song of 1999.) This was only the beginning of my relationship with the entire Believe album. It would go on to define my 1999.
Links to my Top Ten of 1998:
Other favorites from 1998:
The Sea - Morcheeba, The Power - Cher, Swim - Madonna, Don’t Drink the Water - Dave Matthews Band, Goin’ Out of My Head - Queen Latifah, Bitter Sweet Symphony- The Verve, Flying - Chris Isaak, Out of My Head - Fastball, The Trick is to Keep Breathing - Garbage, The Difficult Kind - Sheryl Crow, Hotel - Tori Amos
What are some of your favorites from ‘98? Any stories to go along with them?
It's interesting that out of those songs, "The Way" seems to be the one played the most on the radio stations I encounter. Would never have expected that.
That Natalie Imbruglia album is all-around good. "Smoke" is probably my standout track, but the whole thing is burned into my brain.
I remember playing "Debbie" all the time and being bummed out that it wasn't another hit for them. Great series btw! 😀