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The End of the 00s: All of The End of the 00s 2010-01-04
We are both in awe of and profound debt to everyone who contributed to our End of the 00s series. I know how much you love it when I get earnest, so I'll just keep it brief and say that we were overwhelmed by both the willingness of so many people to provide these pieces and the quality of the material they gave to us. Anyway, because of the vagaries of the holiday weekends and our brilliant idea to switch servers in the middle of a gigantic, ongoing project, it's a pretty fair bet that you missed at least one of the 49 essays in the series. Here's a list of every single one of them, which we encourage you to dip into at your leisure; there is almost certainly something here for everyone. Enjoy. (READ MORE) 23
The End of the 00s: New Year's Eve and the Rise of the Machines, by Richard Lawson 2009-12-31
I have a friend who just moved to Valparaiso, Chile—a beautifully-situated stutter of city teeming with feral dogs and nefarious purse snatchers. It's sad for me that this friend, a Best Friend if ever there was one, will be spending the last glimmering twitches of this decade in a place so thief-ridden and faraway, because we spent the first early ticks of it together, freezing and sick in the Boston Common. It was actually the night that we first became real friends, not just two kids working on a play together, not just two people who occasionally passed each other in the same lazy social orbit. We bonded that night, felt a first giddy fear and excitement together. It was New Year's Eve 1999, that heady night when it felt like the world could maybe, just maybe, end entirely. Because of some glitch—something to do with nothing more mundane or simple but oddly poetic as the changing numbers of the date—all the computers in the world could explode and we'd be tossed into darkness, forced to reignite primordial fires and warily navigate a reset world. (READ MORE) 40
The End of the 00s: Down Under the George Washington Bridge Overpass, by Matthew Gallaway 2009-12-31
It was one of those late November days for which the decade will perhaps be remembered, a day that should have been cold but was not. Stephen and I decided to take a walk to the Hudson River, and though the air felt good —the way it does in late spring, when you put away your jacket for the season —I could not shake a sense that there was something unhealthy about it, as if I had mistakenly wandered onto the grounds of a hospital. (READ MORE) 2
The End of the 00s: Personal Statements, by Luke Mazur 2009-12-31
I have anxiety about not living in a place with food trucks. Their eclectic menus and their varied proprietors, for me, represent a sophisticated and cultured world. A diverse one. Buffalo, of course, has a few hot dog carts stationed downtown and a few more Mister Softee trucks circling neighborhoods during the summer months. When I see how people line up at taco trucks in Los Angeles or pickle carts in New York, I become envious. Back in the 1990s, Hannibal Lecter explained that we covet what we see every day. And in this decade, it seems that every day I read a story about food trucks. So I covet them. (READ MORE) 10
The End of the 00s: The Life of the Party, by Doree Shafrir 2009-12-31
It was 2004. We lived in Philadelphia. I'd bought a house in June on South 13th Street, in a neighborhood that had at one time been nearly all Italian but was now a mix of Mexicans, gays, Vietnamese, and Urban Outfitters employees. Real estate was cheap. I had an adjustable-rate mortgage. I rented out the downstairs apartment to a costume designer with bad credit and Moe moved into my second bedroom upstairs. I worked at an alt-weekly and rode a bike. (READ MORE) 11
The End of the 00s: The Experience of Dishonorable Debates, by Seth Colter Walls 2009-12-31
"'The world is my idea:'—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness."
—Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study, too, and that's how things will sort out."
—Anonymous Bush 43 aide, to Ron Suskind (READ MORE) 9
The End of the 00s: Is Three Still A Trend?, by Josh Wimmer 2009-12-31
This was going to be about how September 11* served as eerie metaphorical foreshadowing for the decade that followed. Basically: In the 00s, we saw loosely organized nodes of ordinary people (al-Qaeda, bloggers, file sharers) wreak havoc on behemoth institutions that should've totally outclassed them in terms of resources and experience (America, the news industry, the music industry). Deep, right? But— (READ MORE) 14
The End of the 00s: The Debt Regret Matrix, by Jessanne Collins 2009-12-31
There's something sort of patriotic about the fact that I'll be memorializing the aughts well into this brave new year with a sizable debt to Bank of America. Like our great nation, I spent the last ten years getting stung and overcompensating, acting indecisive and entitled, living way beyond my means. And now I am paying. With interest! My credit card statements are so textbook "Don't" they deserve a reality show: a trip to Japan for the wedding of a couple I'd never met; $500 worth of phone calls from what was supposed to be a budget trip to the Dominican Republic; shitty new Ikea furniture to replace shitty broken Ikea furniture; more late fees than I care to add up; more liquor than I care to admit. Oh hai, it's me! The girl Suze Orman warned you about. (READ MORE) 5
The End of the 00s: Bad for Humanity, but Great for Horror, by Melissa Lafsky 2009-12-31
I'm skeptical about this whole "decade from hell" business. I mean, just because financial karma finally arrived to kick the U.S. in its bulbous consumer-driven ass, that means the entire decade is somehow linked to Satan? The last four months of 2001 were from hell—that's certainly true. And the entire summer of 2009 (when hell's photogenic spawn ruled the media with her red heels). But seems to me this ten-year span should have been dubbed "The Decade We've Been Setting Ourselves Up For During the Three Previous Decades, and Now We Act All Shocked That We're Broke and the Rest of the Developed World Wants to Lob a Shoe Up Our Ass." Anyway, fuck politics—let's talk about horror movies. (READ MORE) 8
The End of the 00s: The Hollywood Crowd, by Ken Wheaton 2009-12-31
The year was 2007. Broken-hearted after the New Orleans Saints lost to Chicago in the NFC Championship game, I flew out to Los Angeles to hang out with my best friend from college, Doug. Doug was doing grad work in marine biology at USC. A smart guy, even if he was from Jersey. But even more impressive than his brains and his fancy science trips to Antarctica and his ability to laugh off my global-warming denialism without slapping me, were his drinking and football-watching skills. Also, for a sciency, white-trash sort from New Jersey, he ran with a Hollywood crowd. (READ MORE) 6
The End of the 00s: The Ballad of That Guy From Titus Andronicus (As Told To Matthew Perpetua) 2009-12-31
My band, Titus Andronicus, has played a lot of shows since I last blogged about a gig back in late 2009, and if I'm being honest with you, a lot of them have not been fun. It seemed harmless at the time, but I now realize that it was a big mistake to agree to only play Weezer songs at that horrible Vice Halloween party last year. That set a bad precedent. I don't want to admit to how many private shows we've played throughout 2010 where we had to do other people's music instead of our own, but I'm grateful that very little evidence has surfaced online. I suppose that by mentioning this here it only gives people an excuse to go looking for it. That's the price of honesty. (READ MORE) 14
The End of the 00s: Ten Years of Best Picture Suck, by Zachary Woolfe 2009-12-30
There was no tragedy this past decade greater than the utter implosion of quality among the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Some might point to the 90s as the time our troubles began, and I admit that Dances with Wolves and Forrest Gump were bad omens. (The 90s did end with the intolerable American Beauty!) But you also had Silence of the Lambs! Shakespeare in Love! And, OK, Schindler's List, in all its retardedly black-and-white-and-oh-my-God-her-dress-is-red glory! There were glimmers of light, is what I'm saying; yes, 2007, sure;and that light of hope is shows what was missing in the awful aughts. Let me show you. (READ MORE) 74
The End of the 00s: A Party In Iran, by Kaila Hale-Stern 2009-12-30
Hadi is showing me pictures from epic-looking parties. Men and women dance, their bodies caught in ecstatic pause. The women are, for the most part, rather scantily clad: microscopic skirts dominate, and belly shirts that show a good deal of taut belly. Their faces are masterworks of make-up art: streaks of vibrant color rising to the eyebrow, glitter and blush and outlined lips. They move, the partiers, with abandon, heads tipped back, preening and laughing. The pictures are from Iran. (READ MORE) 22
The End of the 00s: Me Me Me, By the Numbers, by Logan Sachon 2009-12-30
I started this decade out as a 15-year-old kid, and now I'm a 25-year-old adult. I've gained 20 pounds and about 30 gray hairs. I've grown one bra size and two dress sizes. I've gained an unquantifiable amount of self-esteem.
I've lived in five cities, in twelve houses, and had 24 roommates. I've had nine paying jobs and three non-paying ones. I've written for free for seven publications, and been paid to write for two. I've had three cars, four bikes, and six pairs of running shoes. I've had seven cell phones, four iPods, five blogs, and eight email addresses. I've been in three car accidents, gotten one speeding ticket, and accumulated 16 parking tickets (Los Angeles). (READ MORE) 14
The End of the 00s: The Coup, by Eric Spiegelman 2009-12-30
I found a copy of the album with the original cover at Amoeba in San Francisco the following March and bought it for a friend as a birthday present. (READ MORE) 9
The End of the 00s: What I Know Now, by Abe Sauer 2009-12-30
The Awl asked everyone (so I'm not special) to look back on the last decade and submit something, anything, of substance. I thought long and hard about this project and decided that, despite many impactful first-hand experiences such as 9/11, I should write about how over the last decade I matured to understand how little I understood in the decade before, how that mirrored how little I knew in the decade before that, and if the next decade will turn out to be the same and what that means about how much I think I know now. But then I got off the toilet and decided what I really think about when I look back on this last decade is something a little different…. (READ MORE) 30
The End of the 00s: Augustine's Second Cat, by Julie Klausner 2009-12-30
I began the decade with a Kim's Video membership and an unslakable thirst for documentaries about crazy people. I'd rent their only VHS of Chicken Hawk, a doc about NAMBLA members, that featured a particularly memorable monologue from a yellow turtleneck aficionado about something he called "gentle time." (READ MORE) 48
The End of the 00s: No One Would Have Blamed Her For Changing Her Mind, by Dan Shanoff 2009-12-30
"How cheap is cheap?"
That was my instantaneous, inane response in the single most pivotal moment of my decade.
I was sitting in an internet cafe in Florence, Italy. It was early August 2001. I had been trading emails with a woman with whom I went on a blind date three weeks earlier. We had hit it off, but a few days later, I was jetting off for my first trip to Europe–three weeks of touring by myself. (READ MORE) 36
The End of the 00s: Imagined Responses to Four Emails That I Sent, To Which I Have Not Yet Received a Reply, 2000-2009, by Juli Weiner 2009-12-30
Dear Juli,
Received your query about the frozen chocolate chip cookie dough. You mentioned, quoting you here, "There were 24 cookies when I put them in the freezer last night, and now there is just one and a half-eaten bit of another." I feel somewhat responsible because I will completely admit to having two cookies. Totally and completely-that was me, those two, and believe me, I feel really gross about it. And the fact that you noticed the, again, quoting you here, "sandcastles of cookie crumbs around [my] bed" makes me feel even worse. Now of course, you'd be remiss to conflate my feelings of guilt with actual awareness about having done something wrong. It is one thing to take two cookies, for which I am so sorry, but quite another to take 22 and a half of a bit. It's disrespectful, is what it is, for someone to have eaten the remaining-okay, just, you know what? (READ MORE) 11
The End of the 00s: Made in New York, by Joel Johnson 2009-12-29
New York is a town without time, but it has a date. I moved to the city after the attacks. These are the things that made me a New Yorker. (READ MORE) 81
The End of the 00s: Everybody in His or Her Own Life Needs a Hobby, by Matt Ealer 2009-12-29
This 2000s-giving I am most grateful for Brooklyn by way of Australia by way of California art school and transplanted to Berlin but then eventually returned to America in some pitch-shifted, flame-scarred Polaroid memento of Southern Californian dreamy excess band Liars. Let me tell you why. (READ MORE) 27
The End of the 00s: Hope You Enjoyed Your Brush With Rock 'n' Roll, by Leon Neyfakh 2009-12-29
I was in 10th grade when this decade started. I learned something that year, that spring specifically, that I'm glad to say I've never forgotten.
It started, as so many things did this decade, with an IM. The IM was from my friend Bennie, a guy who lived in Milwaukee that I knew from nerd camp the summer prior. Bennie was home-schooled and wore a floppy red knit hat all the time. Bennie and I kept in touch after camp via AIM and had taken the Amtrak to visit each other a couple of times at our respective homes. He was in a band called Road Reviews, and they were about to go on tour. (READ MORE) 18
The End of the 00s: Decade of Suck, by Regina Schrambling 2009-12-29
Hate to infringe on Rudy's trademark, but of course the memory cached in my cranial sieve is from right after 9/11. I was out traipsing around the city for a Times story on how restaurants were recovering, and on that Sunday I passed the Odeon on West Broadway. Almost every sidewalk table was occupied, with shiny, happy people swigging mimosas in the sun, literally blocks from the reeking fire. The scene made my lead as a sign of hope, and the owner called to thank me for helping business, but as time's gone by, the reality has looked grim. Those blithe brunchers were ingesting incinerated human beings with their OJ. We were all breathing the same thing. The melting-plastic smell blowing in the wind even way uptown masked something worse. (READ MORE) 8
The End of the 00s: The Night We Sneaked Into the Center of the World, by Adriane Quinlan 2009-12-29
In the year leading up to the Olympics, I was working as a speed typist for the Ministry of Propaganda and I had agreed to spend the first night of Chinese New Year at the apartment of my roomate's aunt. She lived in the far North of the city and the cab that took us up there skirted the stadiums that were still being built. You could smell the construction — an awful, coppery whiff — and see the things hulking there, but that was as close as you got. Shoddy plywood fenced the park, with guard huts at various intervals illuminated to show stern-faced bao an grumbling inside. (READ MORE) 5
The End of the 00s: When the Geeks Took Over, by John Sellers 2009-12-29
"I am really glad that digital video cameras and file sharing didn't exist in 1985."
Like everybody else, this was my initial reaction the first time I watched the Star Wars Kid video, those 108 cringe-worthy seconds of 14-year-old Canadian student Ghyslain Raza wielding a golf ball retriever as though it were a double-sided lightsaber, which gets my unsolicited vote as the definitive pop-culture moment of the 2000s. (READ MORE) 15
The End of the 00s: Family Business, by Cord Jefferson 2009-12-29
For our purposes here, I suppose my father's best story is the one about the time he became Larry Flynt's lawyer. Wandering around a raucous party in Columbus, Ohio, in the early 1970s, my dad and his friends somehow found themselves in some dimly lit back room with Mr. Flynt, who at that moment was the very drunken but otherwise able-bodied purveyor of a booming chain of strip clubs. The consummate smut peddler, Mr. Flynt promptly offered everyone cocaine, and my father's friends, some of Ohio's best and brightest attorneys and judges, dove in with the zeal of men with half their responsibilities. While his friends huffed and puffed, however, my father politely abstained, choosing instead to hurry his tumbler of Scotch and head home. (READ MORE) 35
The End of the 00s: Horrible Decade of Constant Terror Doesn't Officially End Until the World Does, In 2012, by Ken Layne 2009-12-29
Y2K was the thing that was going to Destroy Earth when this dumb, nameless decade began. It's hard to remember the pre-Muslim threats, but this was a big one: All the planes were going to fall out of the sky, at midnight on January 1, 2000… based on the time zone they were flying over, I guess? It was never very clear, which is why it was such an effective End of the World scenario. Also, your teevees and ATMs would stop working. Because of those rotten computer programmers! Me? I was drunk in Madrid, which had not yet been blown up by Muslims, and also airfare was incredibly cheap because nobody wanted to fly around New Year's (because of Y2K), and flying was still "fun," as in, you just showed up at the airport maybe 20 minutes before your flight, drink in hand, shoes on your feet, laptop closed and actually left at home because what was WiFi, anyway? (READ MORE) 16
The End of the 00s: Why Did We Not Appreciate 2007?, by Sara Vilkomerson 2009-12-29
Do you think moviegoers in 1967 knew they were lucky? That was a year when they got to wake up on lazy Sundays and walk outside to see Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner or The Heat of the Night for the very first time. I'm guessing no. (BTW, tickets were $1.25. And cigarettes were 30 cents. But on the other hand, there was also that whole Vietnam thing.) And neither did the 1974 audiences who were living through a year that would include Chinatown, The Conversation, Godfather II, and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (not to mention Blazing Saddles!)—or those 1980s peeps who had to choose between going to see Raging Bull or Ordinary People. You know why I know this? Because I didn't appreciate 2007 as it was happening. (READ MORE) 49
The End of the 00s: Listicle Without Commentary: The 348 Best Reality Television Shows of the 00s, In Order, by Jon Caramanica 2010-01-01
348. The Girls Next Door
347. I Want to Be A Hilton
346. Denise Richards: It's Complicated
345. Armed & Famous
344. That's Amore!
343. Joe Schmo 2
342. Homeland Security USA
341. Jockeys
340. Hit Me, Baby, One More Time
339. Fame
338. On the Lot (READ MORE) 69