nostalgia | The Smart Set

Me and Bobby Miller

Angela Townsend — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 11:30:00 +0000

Everybody needs an oldies station. WKBJ was equal parts doo-wop and PG hijinks, faceless friend to commuters from Saugerties to Secaucus. It was the late ’90s, when Neil Diamond and the Beach Boys jostled for room in the nostalgia car. Bobby Miller was the manic maestro behind the wheel. Favored by parents and Earth Science […]

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For Dad, On His Day

Michael Laser — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 11:30:00 +0000

It’s been 20 years since my father died. Over the past few months, I’ve been writing down stories: what I know about his life and what I remember most vividly, the good and the bad.  A newspaper published a profile of him just after World War II, but that was a flattering human interest story […]

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On Saudade

Alex Viviano — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 11:30:00 +0000

“Saudade, saudade. Nothing more that I can say says it in a better way.” The artist Maro sang these lyrics while representing Portugal in the annual Eurovision song contest in 2022. These lyrics in particular acknowledge the difficulty of making a concept with a high degree of cultural connotations from the artist’s home country accessible […]

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Indie, From Afar

Carter Vance — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 13:29:47 +0000

It may be a cliché to say that there is a surreal feeling to watching one’s youthful icons get the historical prestige treatment. Perhaps it is simply the inevitable headspace shift of realizing you are now one of the old fogies that complain movies, TV, and music were simply better in some abstract sense in […]

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Van Life

Sadie Scotch — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 16:27:18 +0000

As I drove down the canyon and out of Sequoia National Park towards a town called Three Rivers in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, I saw what looked like a painted wall of mountains that nearly brought me and my van over the cliff’s edge. I wanted to reach out and stroke my fingers […]

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We Interrupt This Program

Rachel Carlson — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 12:30:00 +0000

“Wanda, you’re not at all worried that the audience might just see through this little charade?” “Well, that’s the whole point. In a real magic act, everything is fake.” The TV show WandaVision begins as Wanda Maximoff and her android-husband Vision move to the 50s-esque suburban New Jersey town, Westview. Audience members familiar with the […]

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My Mother’s Letter

John Skoyles — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 15:28:05 +0000

My mother, Olga, who died in 2015 at age 95, was a great talker and storyteller. I recall waiting for my father with her as a small child in a double-parked car under the elevated train on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights while she invented names for each person entering a candy store. A woman with a bouffant hairdo was dubbed, “Madame Poof!” She was also a great reader. She […]

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The French Toast Wars

Dana Robbins — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:30:47 +0000

Whatever I might say about my family, the food was always delicious. My father, Seymour Robbins, “Sim,” grew up in his parents’ Jewish deli in Stamford, Connecticut. They cooked all their own meats; corned beef, pastrami, and tongue, and all the side dishes; kugels, knishes, and salads. In the Army, during WWII, Sim was assigned […]

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In Full Flood

Matt Hanson — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 11:30:00 +0000

They Might Be Giants’ (TMBG) third record, Flood, begins with some regal-sounding horns and a choir of voices rhetorically asking Why is the world in love again?Why are we marching hand in hand?Why are the ocean levels rising up?It’s a brand new record for 1990 They Might Be Giants’ brand new album Flood. The ironic little overture, with nods to utopian harmony and […]

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Dead Room

Eleanor Windman — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 12:30:00 +0000

“There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover tomorrow, just you wait and see.” It is 1944, I am seven-years-old, and I want these words to be true. Last night, there was an air raid, and I was sure this time it was the real thing. I shivered under the covers, waiting to die. […]

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