I thought they would have had a better career...

Another early-1990s rocker: Matthew Sweet. Sold debut, great second album ("Girlfriend") with a couple radio hits. Then ...

 

You're right.

But my stupid teenage/college-aged brain thought those bands could take over the world.

 

Another problem with these bands (Matthew Sweet, Wilco, KOL) that you guys are naming is that in about 1992 or '93, it became hard to be Fleetwood Mac or Guns 'n' Roses and have the adoration of the entire rock community anymore. So you just couldn't become that big and beloved any more. If you liked "Dookie" you were a fucking pussy who didn't understand what was authentic. If you didn't like "Dookie," you were a fucking poser who can't admit to enjoying something popular. Kids from the affluent suburbs arguing about shit like this. To this day. Who you choose to listen to is such a fraught choice.

 

Carlos Baerga seemed destined for Cooperstown in about 1995.

 

No disagreement here. In fact, Sen. Chuck Percy, another Illinois Republican star from that era whose national ambitions went unrealized, fell into the same category.

Thompson certainly wasn't a social-issues guy -- he came to my high school for a Q&A and someone asked him about abortion rights, and I recall he did a fabulous job of not answering the question.

 

When A Perfect Storm came out, Junger was touted as the next Hemingway...obviously extreme - and I thought Restrepo was great - I guess I was expecting more just in terms of output.
I've always figured USC players disappoint in the pros because the talent is evenly distributed in the NFL. At SC, the fourth stringer at most spots would be starting elsewhere in the Pac12.

 

Most dominant junior player I ever saw live, a man against boys. Also saw him play in the 1991 Canada Cup, before he had ever played an NHL game, looked like a guy who would dominate the game for years.

 

Interesting. At my school, the kids who really liked Green Day were the forerunners of hipsters, the ones who could tell you about every musical influence Green Day ever had and explain how Green Day was innovating and changing punk music, while the kids who hated Green Day were too into Bush and wearing Coed Naked shirts and white baseball caps with a fraternity or college name on them to have time for the guys wearing eyeliner.

 

I remember when Timothy Hutton started getting some buzz with some good TV-movie roles and then blew up with his role in "Ordinary People." At the time, it looked like he was going to be one of the industry's standout actors in the coming years. He's had a solid career, but not quite the one that people thought.

A year after "OP," he got top billing in the movie "Taps," as the head cadet, who leads a takeover of a military school that was to be shut down. There was also his second-in-command and best bud, played by a guy named Sean Penn. There was also a lesser role of a gung-ho military kid who plays a huge part of the movie's climax, played by some guy named Tom Cruise.

Watching that movie back then (1981-82), I don't think too many people would have guessed, out of those three, that Cruise would have been one of the world's biggest box-office stars. If you were told that one of the other two would be winning two Best Actor Oscars, I'd guess the vast majority of people would have figured it would be Hutton instead of Penn.

 

How old are you?

I did an hour punk show for the college radio station. This was in 1996 or '97. I had to stop playing Green Day because the punks who listened would get shitty about it.

 

38. Dookie was released my freshman year of high school.

 

OK, you're two years younger than me. I'm not sure how big of a difference than makes, but it might make some. My brother is 37 and is also oblivious to any Green Day backlash. He was too young to have gone through the first alternative wave between "Nevermind" and "Dookie" to have developed the kind of loyalties people in the class of '94, '95 and probably '96 did.