Re: A Slight Case of Oversharing

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More of the same but a different complexion, indeed.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:35 AM
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Shit. A slight case of under "of"-ing.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:35 AM
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I still think that we should drive stakes through their hears, except for Becks.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:36 AM
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Dammit! LB and I simultaneously posted. Had I known she was breaking the excruciating silence, this information may have stayed locked away in the recesses of my memory where it belongs.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:39 AM
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And their hearts, too.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:39 AM
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This post inspired me to see if google knew of photographic reproductions of either of the two hot goth girls I knew in college. Answer: no, but one of them has become the managing editor of Modern Philology.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:39 AM
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I have a lovely goth niece, who for precisely the reasons described in the article has a much better chance (IMO) of transcending her somewhat difficult family background (no money at all) than her more conventional sisters do. Most of my high school friends were at least moderately gothy, although I don't think the word came into use until the 90s. I would have said arty punk, rather than goth.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:41 AM
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LB and I simultaneously posted.

This seems to happen a lot -- two or three of us will post simultaneously. Mine's another abortion screed, though, so having something we're no all burned out on to talk about is good.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:43 AM
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although I don't think the word came into use until the 90s

Early 80s, or even as early as 1979 if you count "gothic" as an acceptable precursor.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:43 AM
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I had a group of friends in high school who called ourselves the Dungeon Babes because we ate in the dark A-building stairwell instead of in the park with the preppies (or what passed for the preppies in my damn un-preppy town). That's pretty geeky. Do you feel better? (We didn't wear makeup, though.)


Posted by: Tia | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:45 AM
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Not in my high school, which was, of course, the center of the universe.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:45 AM
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So is this a permanent subculture, or an available historical style reference for someone who is 16 today?

My daughter is, at a selective urban high school. She refers to individuals as having affected a goth style, but it doesn't seem to be a group which hangs together, at least at school.


Posted by: John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:47 AM
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A guy who lived a few doors down from me my first year in college used to remonstrate with me because, he said, I hadn't made up my mind whether I was goth or not.

But he was Nigerian, so what did he know? The right-thinking among us knew I was just far too lazy to wear colored clothes.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:49 AM
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It's going to depend on the school. In a school where the social rules about how to dress or behave are fairly lax, it'll be a style -- gothy kids will hang out with anyone else. Someplace where you get a hard time for being a weirdo, it'll be more of a subculture. Your daughter's school sounds as if it's on the more relaxed end.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:50 AM
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Did that whole New Orleans goth scene revolve around Trent Reznor and Anne Rice?

I had a gothy good friend in high school, who made pilgrimages to their homes.


Posted by: Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:51 AM
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Striking though is that it can be an individual style, not related to group norms. The very idea would have seemed a contradiction once. What might the individual style be communicating?


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:53 AM
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16 me, if tangled syntax isn't enough sign for you.


Posted by: John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:54 AM
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The very idea would have seemed a contradiction once. What might the individual style be communicating?

'I'm different from the rest of you cheerleading/football playing losers, and express that difference through wearing black eyeliner, hanging around graveyards, and exuding an air of intellectual superiority.'

It communicates pretty much the same thing whether individually or in packs.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:57 AM
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available historical style reference

Two other options:

1. Ostrogoths (or Visigoths). Just run around school putting up mosaics and when someone asks you why tell them you do the bidding of Theodoric.

2. Use the term "flying buttresses" euphemistically.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:57 AM
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And denying that Christ is of either the same substance as, or like substance to, God the Father.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 11:58 AM
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Goths always remind me of a Charles Barkley line that went something like "White people control the world and now they think they have the right to act depressed?" I think he was talking about grunge music but my memory is hazy.


Posted by: JP | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:00 PM
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I listened to Bauhaus but never could get the art of dressing stylishly or cutting/combing my hair. And only wore makeup on a lark. I wore a trenchcoat for about a year but could not really carry it off properly.


Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:01 PM
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Wouldn't you be more apt to use "flying buttress" in its technical sense?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:01 PM
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In 1964 I knew a very pale college freshwoman whose hobby was making rubbings of tombstones. There was also a very pale guy in 1966 who affected many of the mannerisms of Dracula. Over a decade ahead of their time.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:02 PM
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The actual cathedrals of the actual Goths were romanesque, as I've explained far too often. Gothic cathedrals are Frankish or German or Norman or Anglo-Norman or maybe Lombard, but not Gothic.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:05 PM
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Maybe they got into it through Edward Gorey fandom.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:05 PM
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We had goths at school, but we mocked them. My people were grunge, with ripped jeans, old T-shirts, and Salvation Army flannel. Oh, mid-90's!


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:06 PM
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hell Becks, at least you stayed in high school. If goth is as misguided as you got.....


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:10 PM
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23: I wouldn't know. I was never goth. I did wear a cloak to school on a few occasions. I had friends from junior high who went to another high school and got into medieval-type things - I think eventually they may have joined SCA - who had cloaks and I thought, just for the hell of it, what if someone just started wearing a cloak to school.

So I wore it a couple of times (with black clothing underneath) and another friend of mine thought it was so cool he got his own cloak and wore it every day for at least a month. He became known, far more than I did, as the guy who wears a cloak. He wasn't goth either.

I don't think either of us continued the whole cloak thing beyond sophomore year. I may still have it somewhere; it's not a bad halloween costume.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:10 PM
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Resolved: that the official single of Unfogged is "Bela Lugosi's Dead" b/w "It's Chico Time."


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:11 PM
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I was a lazy goth. Mostly it was just black clothing and a general 'tude. I only bothered with makeup when going out to clubs. The lowly goths in NOLA were all about Rice and Reznor and worshiping them from afar but those of us who were awesome went to invitation-only parties that were a cross between a nightclub and the Algonquin round table. Or at least we liked to think so. In actuality, it was probably more like Unfogged.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:11 PM
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The goths I know can be divided roughly into two categories:

The extraordinarily intelligent artistic romantic type, probably reading sad stories in French or Russian or painting or making movies or interested in medieval folklore.

The wannabe artistic romantic type, who writes awful doggerel that's justified by being 'deep', and thinks depression is a parlor trick or merit badge.

Second category brings out the urge to smack people around. I might have made a decent goth of either type (and would have smacked myself around) but the look was something that I could never pull off.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:12 PM
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Also, my personality was slightly bipolar - half my time in HS was spent as Disaffected Goth Girl and half was spent as Perky But Bad Influence Camp Counselor.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:14 PM
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I've decided to de-lurk, finally. You guys have been entertaining me for weeks now, and I thank you.

Anyways, there were a number of goths in my h.s., most of whom wore capes and gathered in the downstairs breakroom to play Magic. There was one goth girl who wore gorgeous, ruffly, all-black, pseudo-victorian ensembles every single day of the year, except Halloween--when she wore all white. She seemed to be one of those "perky goths," who hung out with the non-all-black-clad, and didn't mind being profiled in the local paper.

This was mid-90s, when i was busy being grunge/hippie, or hippie/grunge, not sure which.


Posted by: sw | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:14 PM
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sw's comment makes me realize: we're in the era, now, when there will be commenters who have never known ogged (PBUH).


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:17 PM
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7- Hmm, I guess Julie Eisenberg &c. were moderately gothy, though it's true, that never occurred to me as a category at the time. I thought of them as the arty black-&-Docs-wearing, punk/ska-listening, Mallarmé-quoting, thrift-store-shopping, into-fights-at-CBGB's-getting, lead-singer-of-the-Toasters-dating alternative crowd.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:17 PM
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Well, I've been lurking at apostropher's for about a year now (whom I found via Norbizness, to give you the full backstory), and I'm pretty sure I've stopped at Unfogged briefly before settling into the full-on Lurk, so I'm familiar with Mr. Ogged. Also: that's what archives are for! Whee!


Posted by: sw | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:19 PM
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25: That's why there were two options in 19.

10: I'm trying to remember who generally ate lunch in the park and I think a fair amount of the people were not actually preppy. I generally ate off campus but I'm not really sure where, actually. I remember having a lot of pizza and cheap chinese food, but I don't think my friends and I ever settled on a place. Four years of midday wandering.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:28 PM
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An occasional commentor is a self-professed goth, if a cheery one.

(Following the links will reveal a way to discover more comments.)


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:33 PM
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He became known, far more than I did, as the guy who wears a cloak.

Have you ever read A Question of Upbringing? It is, in part, the story of a boy and his legendary overcoat.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:35 PM
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27: grunge was odd for me to watch happening, because it was as if an entire continent picked up on our (general geographic sence) middle/high school clothing and music thing, but 8-10 years later. Your mid 90's was my mid 80's, iow.


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:39 PM
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More evidence of the New Regime: Unfogged is now a friend to the "pale friendless virgin" crowd. Which is all to the good.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:40 PM
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But Becks, while pale, is hardly friendless...


Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:42 PM
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Uh, people who used to be pale friendless virgins.


Posted by: John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:42 PM
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42: pale, sure, but friendless virgins? not that it was ever my crowd, but you sure met different goths than i have.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:43 PM
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42: So, this is different from the prior 'swarthy friendless virgin' regime?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:44 PM
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Perhaps I should have said sex-with-lead-singer-of-Toasters-having.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:45 PM
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48

I have completely forgotten this -- can you give me a googleproofed hint as to who you're talking about?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:46 PM
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"pale friendless virgin"

Hey now...


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:47 PM
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48 -- she means the Modesto kid, of course


Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:47 PM
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Swarth doth seem a challenge for would-be goths; a lot of foundation, I guess, making them look like people made up for early tv. Maybe Nixon's real motive in 1960 wasn't a misplaced machismo, but an aversion to goths.


Posted by: John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:47 PM
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48- I thought it was everyone.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:48 PM
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I mostly like the phrase "pale friendless virgins," which I stole from "News Radio."


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:48 PM
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40: I have not.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:49 PM
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I remember that he favored "pink condoms from Edinburgh."


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:49 PM
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"just like"


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:49 PM
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51: I once saw an negative-image-goth, at a goth party. Very dark south indian guy dressed in white.


Posted by: soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:51 PM
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Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.

Posted by: b franklin | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:53 PM
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55 in quotes because that is, I assure you, hearsay.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 12:53 PM
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That was fun.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 1:22 PM
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I thought I killed it.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 1:23 PM
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I thought I killed it.

Aha! so you're the culprit...


Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 2:25 PM
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Well, me or the pink condoms. They were notoriously unreliable.


Posted by: ac | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 3:23 PM
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a friend to the "pale friendless virgin" crowd

I'll refrain from pointing out the flaw in the logic of calling us a friend to the friendless.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 3:31 PM
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Becks angry! Becks smash! (It was a joke that sprung to mind because you wrote "pale"; that's all.)


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 3:43 PM
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I'm not angry. Just couldn't let that one slide...


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 4:01 PM
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Sorry. Saw the two responses, and I thought I might have unintentionally and unexpectedly tripped over some nerve. But since not...I was totally talking about you.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 4:04 PM
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On preview, I just realized you said "I thought I might have unintentionally and unexpectedly tripped over some nerve" and not "I thought you might have unintentionally and unexpectedly tripped over some nerve", sparing your life.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 4:07 PM
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What would the second sentence mean? And you actually read what others have written during preview?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 4:10 PM
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I thought you meant I finally stumbled across enough nerve to chew you out.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 4:11 PM
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Ah....Now I'm feeling worried. The implication seems to be that you believe that I had good reason to expect you to justly chew me out at some earlier point.

Not helping, Becks. Not helping at a'tall.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 4:38 PM
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I was never a goth and I never liked the music but I did, right out of high school, play guitar in a 'glam' rock type bar band [think mid-80s Motley Crue/Poison/Guns'N'Roses type stuff] so I spent a year or so affecting many of the goth tropes -- being skinny, teh androgynous, make-up, very long hair, etc. Only without the monochrome colour scheme.

Given the lack of available venues the rock scene and the goth scene pretty much overlapped. The goths -- the guys especially -- generally seemed to have a lot less fun. A lot of the girls seemed to get into that look for the opportunity to dress up and play with looking wierd and had some fun with it, but the guys seemed to be coming from somewhere a lot more socially alienated.

Affecting the goth look is one thing when you are 17, but I see a fair number of people still rocking that look right into their 30s. Indeed, I know a few people who still do, which is a little sad.


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 6:28 PM
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Ach mein Gott! Are any of you American Idol fans listening to this utter travesty of a "Walk the Line" performance?!!


Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 6:37 PM
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About 1985 my ex-wife thought that my street-personish way of dressing was blighting my son's life. Then grunge arrived and I was cool for the second time in my life. By 1995 I was meeting semi-grunge medical students.

If I live long enough, I'm sure that I'll be cool again.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 7:33 PM
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Flannel always comes back.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-21-06 7:34 PM
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Well, like Emerson I'm too old for Goth (although I used to do lunch with Alaric back in the day). But only an MSM journalist could have deluded themselves that Brit Goth had ever gone away. Mind you, Brit Goth is the most milquetoast apology for a subculture I've ever come across, so I fully expect to see a cabinet minister with black eyeliner before I die.


Posted by: chris | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 3:10 AM
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No one is like Emerson; as with the Highlander, there can be only one.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 6:30 AM
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But people can certainly share attributes of the Highlander or of Emerson.


Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 6:32 AM
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I've been lurking at apostropher's for about a year now

Hello!


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 6:38 AM
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Awwww. I'll bet Becks was such a cute Goth ....

27: I had the same wardrobe, but it was the late '70s. Not a fashion statement so much as low-maintenance and stuff I could pull on w/o opening my eyes.


Posted by: Lex | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 7:17 AM
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Affecting the goth look is one thing when you are 17, but I see a fair number of people still rocking that look right into their 30s.

Wish you'd studied mortuary science instead of law? Now there's corpgoth, for Goths who want to take their style to work.

And speaking of the New Orleans Goth scene--wasn't there a Goth club at the end of Market St. ca. 1990? I remember going to such a place once or twice at the time and being entertained and twaumatized by all the leather-wearing creatures of the night. (No, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a bear bar--there were women there, too. That is, I think they were women ...)


Posted by: Paul | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 8:41 AM
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Now there's corpgoth, for Goths who want to take their style to work.

At my first-ever programming job, there was a guy who dressed all in black and had long, very stylish, jet black hair. Man he was cool. I never had the nerve to approach him -- he was not however a goth or former goth by any definition I would recognize as this took place in 1993 and he was at least mid-30s.

At the same workplace I often shared the elevator with these two guys, one quite portly and the other gaunt, who dressed in matching grey suits with red suspenders. And maybe bow ties, can't remember.


Posted by: The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 8:46 AM
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I've been trying to think of what club you're thinking of, Paul, but I can't recall. Not saying there wasn't one, just that my brain isn't all that it used to be.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 10:51 AM
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It's been a long time. But as I recall, the club was a few blocks on past Molly's at the Market, almost down to the docks. You walked down stairs into the club. But I could be totally misremembering things. Or maybe it was just an ordinary (for New Orleans) club and I hit it on Goth night or something.


Posted by: Paul | Link to this comment | 03-22-06 11:10 AM
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