Remember when Molotov cocktails were “in”?
I don’t either, but I’ve read enough about the era: It was the latter half of the 1960s, of course.
Molotov cocktails were so “in” 35 years ago that Jason and Barbara Epstein (“Who?”), back when they were cool, or trying to be cool, or something, earned themselves a bit of notoriety by publishing a design for the device on the cover of their still-new and not-yet-quite-so-painfully-Anglophilic magazine, the New York Review of Books.
And a good laugh -- or a self-righteous smirk, at least -- was had by all.
Well, it appears Molotov cocktails may be back in style, at least in Philadelphia.
This could be one hell of a mayoral race.
The September issue of Philadelphia magazine has a terrific Phila-phorism. (I think I’m going to trademark that phrase.)
It’s in an article by Sasha Issenberg entitled “Raising Philadelphia” [Ed.: The article is not online.]:
. . . Chestnut Street, the downscaled shopping strip which [sic] until recently was “mixed-use” only in the sense that there are both 99-cent and dollar stores.
That about sums it up.
I usually get this kind of list late in the game, so if you already have seen it 100 times, my apologies. I don’t know you wrote it so I’m posting it without attribution but with appreciation.
You know you’re living in the year 2003 when:
1. Your reason for not staying in touch with family is because they do not have e-mail.
2. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.
3. Your grandmother asks you to send her a JPEG file of your newborn so she can create a screen saver.
4. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.
5. Every commercial on television has a web site address at the bottom of the screen.
6. You buy a computer and three months later it’s out of date and sells for half the price you paid.
7. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go get it.
8. Using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase would be a hassle and take planning.
9. You just tried to enter your password on the microwave.
10. You consider second-day air delivery painfully slow.
11. Your dining room table is now your flat filing cabinet.
12. Your idea of being organized is multiple-colored Post-it ® notes.
13. You hear most of your jokes via e-mail instead of in person.
14. You get an extra phone line so you can get phone calls.
15. You disconnect from the internet and get this awful feeling, as if you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
16. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.
17. You wake up at 2 a.m. to go to the bathroom and check your e-mail on your way back to bed.
18. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. :)
19. You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.
20. Even worse; you know exactly to whom you’re going to forward this.