27 April 2012

Save your preach, cop. I reject everything, man

"You must have been born before 21 Jump Street went off the air to drink in this establishment."


Shhh... the ghost of John Ritter can't hurt you anymore

"Happy 21st birthday, kids conceived after a date involving the movie Problem Child!"


"I'm guessing life's been mirthless and confusing, so let's just keep getting you a refill of that jet fuel on the rocks until the cold indifference of the universe starts to seem comic."

... nope, not playing a clip.  I do recall the Beach Boys song from the soundtrack being somewhat listenable, though, so here's that.


25 April 2012

Not the mama!

"You must be older than Dinosaurs to drink in this establishment."


"Now when I say Sonic the Hedgehog's in my pocket, it's not---well, it's still kinda creepy"

"You must be older than Sega Game Gear to drink in this establishment."


I missed the Game Boy rollout; that was in the Summer of '89.  (Hey, where's that Bryan Adams knockoff, Weird Al?  "Got my first real hand-held / At the end of summer vacation / Played it 'til my thumbs got swollen / Was the first year of the first President Bush's administraaaaay-tion!")

21 April 2012

"You must have been born before the last This Mortal Coil record to drink in this establishment."



Famously name-checked on Patton Oswalt's KFC sketch, but all the youtube clips have a Pink Floyd reference instead.

20 April 2012

No one can save me but you

"You must be older than the Chris Isaak era[fn1] to drink in this establishment."

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fn1:  This is another one where precise dating is an issue.  Isaak's career began much earlier to critical acclaim but commercial shrugs, and it wasn't for several years that he would garner any attention from the consuming public.  There's another date, in 1990, I could have used for this, but I'm saving it for an associated movie (hint hint!).  I would have liked to have found the release date for the video---that was of course the introduction most people got to him---but couldn't find it.  What I could find, that is, what I could find that had a precise date on it, was the linked article, which is hardly authoritative.  But if you're coming here in search of authoritative sources, um, perhaps this Internet thing isn't quite for you.
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And happy birthday, Val!

Permit me this geekery

Happy 21st birthday, last kids conceived in the William Brennan Era!


As noted, I'm geeking out a bit with this one, but bear with me.  A familiar hero to lawyers on the left, the man left a thumbprint on American history of the 20th century so deep that many of his innovations probably feel too fundamental to be so recent.  The concept of "one person, one vote"---although commonly misquoted, Brennan knew even in the 1960s better than to phrase it "one man one vote"---comes from his opinion in Baker v. Carr.  The notion that pornography can enjoy First Amendment protection stems from Roth v. U.S., when Brennan articulated the (I believe current?) standard but upheld the appealed conviction anyway.  The much-misused concept of an unconstitutional "chilling effect" is Brennan's coinage.  And he wrote the majority opinion in New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark case striking down an Alabama slander lawsuit against the Times for daring to allege that Alabama police officials---Bull Connor was not a party for reasons I can't recall---just might be persecuting Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists.  You probably have to be a lawyer to know the phrase "actual malice," but that one comes to us courtesy Justice Brennan, too.

Like I said, an awful lot of the history written by this man feels too fundamental to be of such recent vintage, but that's how it happened.  Tellingly, all the history to his credit is from that slice of the Twentieth Century when history became more decent, more humane.

16 April 2012

"You must be older than 'Mea Culpa' by Enigma to drink in this establishment."


No, you're not forgetting:  The one you're thinking of is "Sadeness" (spelled thus in original), but the release date had passed by the time this thing started, and anyway it seems a bit hard to nail down.  Their sophomore effort was far less successful, but still enough for them to persist in being a "thing."

15 April 2012

Going hungry

"You must be older than Temple of the Dog to drink in this establishment."


Older than Ten or Nevermind, which as many times as I look at it, still doesn't seem right to me.  Roxette, Janet Jackson, and the New Kids were still topping charts twenty-one years ago, but man, were things about to get for-one-brief-shining-moment good.

12 April 2012

Chinese, black, green, purple or Jew, you have the right to listen to whoever you want to

"Happy 21st birthday, last kids sure they weren't possibly conceived to Banned in the USA by 2 Live Crew!"


If you'll indulge the mawkishness, as well as the paraphrase of Mtv's Kurt Loder (back before he convinced himself ending federal taxation was totally rock 'n' roll):  the referenced court case, Skyywalker Records, Inc. v. Navarro[fn1], marked the first time in American history it was against the law to sing a song.  


But still, the followup wasn't that great.  Probably... you know.  Better to be entirely sure your dad wasn't humming that to himself, at the time.  
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fn1:  739 F.Supp. 578.

11 April 2012

"Humpty dumpty on the wall, I got like a leather jacket so do me already, knowhutaymsayin?"

"Happy 21st birthday, kid conceived after a date involving The Adventures of Ford Fairlane!"


I actually do kind of love Gottfried in this movie.  Anyway, this is what sold then.  If it's your birthday, yeah.  This is what your parents probably thought was cool.  This, or something like it.  It doesn't make you a bad person, it just... means you started out from a ... rather mediocre place.

But, you know.  Abraham Lincoln was conceived when the most popular song in the land was jingle from the "Old Scrimpy Butter-Based Jaundice Salve" campaign, and look at him.  Nothing says you can't manage a perfectly nice car wash when you finally figure things out.

10 April 2012

My friends

"Happy 21st birthday, first kids conceived in the Rush Limbaugh era."


On the timing, he was around for several years at this point, including as a failure of a rock deejay, but it's hard to pinpoint precisely when he made the move to superstar of the conservative movement.  This elevation by Pat Robertson seems about as good a time as any.

... well, using the word "good" rather loosely, there.

09 April 2012

"You must be older than Sin City[fn1] to drink in this establishment."
----
fn1:  Actual date is approximate.  But there's little enough of comics material from this time, so I am reluctant to let it pass.

08 April 2012

One for my French friends

Mylène Farmer's L'Autre turns old enough to drink in America at midnight.


It's probably to my discredit, but I didn't actually know anything about her.  But judging by the Wiki link and the size of the crowd in the video above, she was evidently quite a big deal.

... I mean, not Jerry Lewis big, but still.
"You must be older than 'Power of Love' to drink in this establishment."


06 April 2012

For my British readers

"You must have been born before Prime Suspect to drink in this establishment."



"If this establishment is following American law, that is, as applies to the drinking age.  Which makes the reference to British programming seem somehow out of place.  As does the clipped Cockney accent I imagine myself having when I read this in my own head.  Quite a mystery, oll 'at."

05 April 2012

"You must be older than the phrase 'recording artist Alanis Morissette' to drink in this establishment."


Told you she was irritating for whole other reasons....
"Happy 21st birthday, children of the Katie Couric era.  You won't believe this, but there was a time on this planet when you could go days, weeks, even a year, without being confronted by this insistent grin."


(What, you thought I was going to go with a colonoscopy joke?  Please.  We try to maintain a little class here. And you know what they say:  you can't spell "class" without uhuhuhuh...)

03 April 2012

Another potpourri post

... 'cause there really ain't nothing that stands out with today's relevant date.  But here we go:

"You gotta have been born before Senator John Heinz died, a tragedy that paved the way for the later, greater tragedy of John Kerry's presidential run, to drink here."

"Happy 21st birthday, first kid likely conceived to a Harry Connick Jr. vocal song.  I say 'likely' because it wasn't until his follow-up to the Harry Met Sally soundtrack that he reached anywhere on the charts, but We Are in Love certainly did it."



"You gotta be older than... jeebuz, the junior Britney Spears.  I guess that doesn't make me feel too old, but still.  Anyway, I'm guessing you want something that tastes like watermelon."




I warned you they'd be reaches.

01 April 2012

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't until he changed his original stage name---Leonard P. Kravitz, CPA---that he really found fame

"You must be older than 'It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over' Mama Said to drink in this establishment."[fn1]


I would have loved to date this one "older than Lenny Kravitz's" career, but it's actually his second album.  His first, Let Love Rule, predates this by a couple of years, although it didn't crack the top 40 and doesn't seem to have gotten much commercial attention until interest was sparked by his sophomore effort (eventually made gold, in '95).
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fn1:  Whoops, the single and the album have different dates.