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Friday, May 1, 2015

Why Do You Lock Yourself Up in These Chains?

I’m being a grown-up and staying home tonight to get work done. No, not in the garage. I’m inside the actual house, although I have this whole weird haunted bottle thing going on, and I’m choosing to find it charming.

Tonight’s work involves Wilson Phillips’ 1990 hit “Hold On,” the video for which I had actually not seen, because I have odd gaps in my pop culture experience. So I kicked off my efforts with actually watching the video. Here it is, in case you also had not seen it before.



Isn’t it uplifting? Like, just so thoroughly uplifting?

That was my take-away as I watched it on my laptop in my otherwise darkened house alone on a Friday night. I’m not bitching — like, I made a responsible decision to get work done, so fucking what? — but I just need you to picture how overwhelmingly sad this scene would have looked to anyone who may have passed by one the sidewalk (and yes, someone did in fact pass by on the sidewalk): a single man, alone at his kitchen table on a Friday night, watching the most inspirational hit of 1990 at a considerable volume, ostensibly because he needs the combined powers of Carnie Wilson, Wendy Wilson and Chynna Phillips to find the courage to make it through another day. That’s slightly less sad than, say, trying not to cry as you sing happy birthday to yourself in an empty living room while looking at a picture of a cake you cut out of a magazine when you were a kid, but not by much.

I just wanted to share this, because I thought it was funny how it might look, even if it’s totally not the case at all and I’m doing fine.



Also, if I’m being honest, I’m currently once again wearing a bathing suit in lieu of shorts because I did not have clean underwear. The passers-by maybe didn’t notice this, but you know now!

But I’m fine. FINE.

Fun bonus question: “Hold On” may not have been the most inspirational song of 1990. While nominated for Song of the Year at the 1991 Grammys, it was actually Bette Midler’s “From a Distance” that won. That doesn’t seem right, does it?

Second fun bonus question: Why do I read the band members’ fashion as “lesbionic”? Did it read that way back then? Or did some lesbians just seize on what was current in 1990 and subsequently never evolve?

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