You are totally right about that. I was so sure it was '94 because it didn't shatter my sheltered little world until late in '94. And what 14 year old doesn't think he's experiencing everything for the first time ever?

Out in skate park suburbia…
we were feeding our angsty young souls with:

e)
the fact that I lack the coercive power to impel Willie to sing Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain at my place of work.

@Meredith Blake, Call it "Great Expectations." And hit me up if you get it rolling. I have all kinds bilious, pent-up literary hate to spew.

Agreed. Though I want to see Lonesome Crowded West in 1997 when it officially came out, if only to hold it up next to Ok Computer and Life After Death. Amazing year.

Topics for another time
Please make the first installment of the A.V. Club's uncharacteristically mean-spirited series"Books we know we're supposed to like but irritate us to no end" Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed. Her whiny, pedantic slumming totally undermined any authority she should have had for an otherwise…