This originally appeared in my Broke-Ass City column for the SF Examiner. There’s a scene in the movie “Empire Records,” where all the record store employees hold a funeral for Deb, even though she’s still alive. Earlier in the movie, Deb had tried to kill herself. So her friends and

As an impressionable young person growing up in the suburbs with a younger sister and two totally squaresville parents, figuring out what adolescence was supposed to look required that I look elsewhere for guidance. My best friend had two older sisters, the eldest of whom used to babysit for me.

It wasn’t until about 2005 or so, deep in the throes of the SECOND Bush  administrations warmongering and muckery that “The 90s” began to have a discernible feel and quality.  We had gotten enough of a distance away from living in them that we could see them from a subjectively