I saw the director's cut of Blood Simple Friday night, and couldn't figure out if the reason I didn't like it as much was because of the changes that them Coens made, or if it's because I'm remembering who I was when I was twenty and I'm not that person anymore.

What have you seen or read or watched that you don't like as much as you used to? Why do you think that's so?

-- Kymm Zuckert (hedgehog@hedgehog.net), August 14, 2000

Answers

Somewhere in Time. I used to think that movie was so terribly romantic, but I watched it again a few weeks ago. . . and it was creepy. Christopher Reeve's character was so stalkerly, and Jane Seymour didn't seem to so much like him as have no choice but to be around him. So much for romance, she shoulda gotten a restraining order!

-- Saundra (headspace@anywherebeyond.com), August 15, 2000.

It can be quite unsettling when this happens. You carry a memory of an experience around with you, cherish it, take it out every now and then to give it a quick polish, and you show it off to friends and acquaintances. To an extent, you use it to define yourself. It's part of the way you represent yourself to others, and in the case of a very personal text, it becomes something that represents you to you - like a mirror.

Then, horrors, you revisit and find yourself disappointed, as much as you want to enjoy it.

Maybe the fact that you want SO MUCH to enjoy it, means that we stretch these memories so that the object that inspired them no longer fits, elevate them over time to a plane so rarified that nothing could possibly live there.

More often I think it's the case that the context has changed - you're a different person leading a different life.

Either way, it ends up making you think about yourself.

The last time it happened to me was with 'Other Voices, Other Rooms', by Truman Capote. First time round I found it lyrical, beautiful, haunting. Last time round I found it narcissistic and cold.

Does that make me less romantic? Or more mature?

-- Pale Blue (paleblue@darkblue.2ndmail.com), August 15, 2000.

I went through a huge Rob Lowe period when I was 9-10, when my favorite movies were Class and Oxford Blues. I guess it wasn't that much of a shock to me when I watched them again as an adult and realized how shitty they are, but it was bizarre to imagine myself at a point where I thought they were great and meaningful art.

There's also my 2nd grade obsession with The Dukes of Hazzard. I remember lying in my bed thinking, "I will always, always be in love with John Schneider." Thank god that one's changed.

Luckily, important things like Harriet the Spy and the Betsy-Tacy books all hold up.

It makes me wonder if I'll look back at 25 and think, "God, Aimee Mann? Hal Hartley? What was I thinking?"

-- anne (annegrrl@chickmail.com), August 15, 2000.

Anne, you are not the only one who was in love with John Schneider. In fact, one of my diaries from elementary school has endless pages signed "Mrs. John Schneider." (I think I was copying that episode of The Brady Bunch when Marcia was obsessed with Davy Jones. I dreamt that one day Bo Duke would come to my house and plant one on me so I could say dreamily, "I'll never wash this cheek again!")

Anyway, sometimes I am flipping the channels and I see Bo and Luke yee-hawing their way through the windows of the General Lee and I have to fight the urge to rip those childhood diaries to shreds.

That said, I often re-read some of my favorite children's books and find that they now frankly suck ass. And everytime I watch Footloose or a John Hughes movie or any of my other favorite teen angst flicks, I worry that I will have outgrown them. Luckily, that hasn't happened yet. I'm not sure I'll be able to deal with the trauma if suddenly Jake Ryan is no longer cute, if Valley Girl is no longer funny, or if I stop yearning to marry Lloyd Dobler.

-- dora (dora_525@yahoo.com), August 15, 2000.

Most Marx Bros. movies. They used to slay me, now I find there are long tedious stretches (and not just the harp solos either) between laughs.

Jack Kerouac. I used to want to be him with every fiber of my youthful being. Now he seems like a selfish whiner, an insensitive white boy romanticizing people of color, utterly irresponsible toward women, and *not that good a writer*--first thought isn't best thought, not really, at least not always.

-- john burke (john.burke@mindspring.com), August 16, 2000.

The movie "Dead Again". When I was 11, that shit was scary as hell and made me want to hide under the covers. Fast forward 8 years or so and there's me watching it with my two best friends and their parents. Not scary - freaking hilarious. Especially the bit with the scissors at the end.

My biggest scare was realizing, little by little, that what my parents say isn't always the right and best thing. That they're human. I know, we've all been through it. It sucks, tho.

-- Emily (mildew@dork.com), August 23, 2000.