Word: couches
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Sears' announcement last week that its 1993 catalog, all 1,556 pages of it, would be the last probably didn't mean much to couch potatoes cradling their Touch-Tone phones while watching the Home Shopping Network on cable. But for most people over a certain age -- say 35, maybe 40 -- the news was slightly unnerving. Even those who hadn't seen the big book since their childhood recognized a loss, not necessarily of a shopping aid but of an innocence and optimism and simplicity of desire that the catalog both thrived...
...Last week he had an embrace for everyone, and not just the stars. This huggy-bear President needs to feel the electromagnetism of approval -- but in a New Age way. His seeming candor is an amalgam of born- * again witnessing and self-help testifying, of the church and the couch; you half expect his budget package to be a 12-step program. "I used to play my saxophone a lot, sometimes when I was angry but usually when I was lonely," Clinton told Mister Rogers during the Salute to Children. "I could play for hours and hours and hours...
...working with a small space in the basement of Leverett E, but manage to transform it into several different sites with an economical use of props. The directors have also made skillful use of the cramped space in their stage direction. Maxine and Jim's exchanges occur on a couch in their apartment, and their placement becomes significant: when the power balance between them shifts, they switch places on the couch...
...there hasn't been a serious life-style trend since the couch potato was sighted, in about '86, on one of its rare forays to the video store. Cocooning remains a significant mass enterprise, encouraged by the availability of 500 new cable channels and microwavable popcorn. But if you want an outdoor trend, one that demands emulation and is inspired by zest rather than a fear of human interaction and bizarre weather events, then there is nothing at all. The only trend worth mentioning is trendlessness...
...Presidents with brown-tinted hair and programs distilled from focus groups. Or perhaps cocooning was by its nature the ultimate and final trend, after which no more are biologically possible: like the dodo snuggling into its nest, we have found our evolutionary niche, which turns out to be the couch...