July / august 2006:

Hip to be square
Why I'm proud not to be included on the AJL hot list.

Essay by Marc Miller



When word hit the street that Atlanta Jewish Life magazine was putting together a hot list, I immediately contacted my hard-working publicist and demanded she get me on it. After weeks of tireless late-night lobbying (taking AJL staffers out for drinks, sending them bouquets of flowers, etc.), she was unable to convince the recalcitrant editor. After accepting defeat and nursing my wounded ego, I decided it wasn’t so bad after all. Choosing to turn beets into borscht, I embraced my inner unhipness and decided to enumerate why I am proud not to have made the AJL hot list.

It may seem strange that a Yiddish professor needs to explain why neither he, nor much of what he likes, made it on to this year’s list. But hear me out. I am 36-years-old, young for an academic, but a little too old to be surfing MySpace or Napster for new, cutting-edge music. So what do I do? Instead of suffering through this limbo which I could probably bluff my way through for the next four of five years (at best), I have decided to accept my disconnection to what the kids are watching and listening to and embrace my budding old fart status. Instead of getting depressed that so much new music and so many new movies seem to be produced by self-serving kids who were born after I was already bar-mitzvahed, I search through their reject piles for the treasures they scoff. Why do I need to race to Blockbuster as soon as it opens, and rummage through the recently returned discs for copies of brand-new, hot releases, when I can stroll casually and undisturbed through the empty “Comedy” sections snagging dusty copies of Say Anything, Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, or any John Cusack movie I please (yes, even Serendipity. I’m sorry, but the man can do no wrong.)

I also win when it comes to music. I am not interested in the whiny, top-shelf material. Whenever I enter a record store (are they still called record stores?), I head straight for the bargain table (alas, there are no more bins) and jump for joy when I find Beggars Banquet, The Last Waltz, or Sweet Baby James, all digitally remastered, and none setting me back more than $9.99. I sometimes stop and wonder whether the world has gone mad, but a trip to the DVD section (which leads to the $7.99 snagging of Fiddler on the Roof and a paltry $17.99 for the entire first season of Taxi) shakes off my nascent confusion and sends me home with a warm feeling of victory.

So yes, I and my aging cohorts are the reason The Cosby Show is still on at least twice a day in syndication, why the 1980s fails to be relegated to history, and why there are online petitions begging Judd Apatow and Paul Feig to please, please, please bring back Freaks and Geeks, a DVD whose entire 18-episode run is never checked out at Blockbuster.

There is plenty of hipness in retro things (okay, maybe except for my mom’s 1973 maroon Dodge Dart which will never be considered hip), and I know that eventually the things I like will be transferred from the bargain basement to the garbage heap and I will be completely detached from pop culture. But I suppose that’s okay. So I didn’t make the hot list this year. That’s how life works. At least I will always have Yiddish.


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