1999

Dry-aged for a quarter century

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. Consider this a soft launch, a test kitchen, the first day of culinary school. Apologies to your tastebuds.

Ingredient List

🎵 : “Need 2” by Pinegrove, “Mayonaise” by The Smashing Pumpkins, “Pink Moon” by Nick Drake, “Let Down” by Radiohead, “Dreams” by The Cranberries

🎥 : Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (really enjoyable, highly recommend)

Course 1

A Word of Gratitude

I’ve invited a handful of friends along on this journey and can only hope I build some new relationships along the way. Some have been with me since I started putting words to paper. Notebooks filled with truly horrific poetry and prose, mostly about how fake everyone was. What can I say, Radiohead and The Catcher in the Rye really did a number on my psyche. I mean, I named my firstborn son after the latter, so it really must have stuck. In any case, thank you for being a part of my life. I probably miss you and hope to see you soon. But even if I don’t, ever again, know that I probably think about you more than you know.

Course 2

Appetizer

Still one of the greatest commercials ever made, the Volkswagen Cabrio night drive overlaid with Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” captured youth in all its simplicity. I was the exact same age as the kids in the commercial, my first three cars were Volkswagens, and, starved of pop culture for most of my childhood, I was listening to every kind of music I could get my hands on. Cue my Nick Drake period.

To this day, I think it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of short film ever created, and it’s not surprising that it came from the same directors as The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” music video, who would later go on and create “Little Miss Sunshine.” No words, no in-your-face horsepower specs or hard sells of safety features and handling capabilities. Just that time-in-a-bottle feeling of youthful freedom before cell phones and the complexities of adulthood, when we drove back roads to listen to music and look at stars, hoping the girl on the passenger side would fall in love with us.

I love that 3 out of the 4 cars in this accident were Volkswagens.

Course 3

The Main

Way back when I was 17 years old, I had an email newsletter, called “Dr. Robbe’s Metaphysical Notations.” I was of course, not a doctor. I was barely a Robbe, having invented that combination of Rob/Robbie at some point in the prior year. I most certainly had no idea what the word “metaphysical” meant; I only knew that it looked cool.

Once a week, this email would go out. To my high school classmates, my youth group crew, and adults who had the misfortune of emailing me once and were now somehow getting a grab bag of life advice from someone who thought The Mod Squad starring Claire Danes and Giovanni Ribisi was worthwhile cinema.

At its peak, it had a couple hundred subscribers. Blind copy didn’t even exist yet (in my world, anyway), so if you were on that email list while trying to build a leg in your multi-level marketing side hustle– boy, did you have a head start on things. I loved that weekly email. It was the first time I felt like I could be myself to a wider audience. And I think people liked it too. Luckily, high school seniors have tastes that don’t define them. Especially in 1999. It was okay to like Weird Al and Wu Tang Clan at the same time. 

At my freshman orientation at Geneva College, the admissions counselor singled me out to the crowd gathered and gave me praise for my admissions essay (I can assure you it was filled with mediocre musings and cringey philosophies on life). But what meant the most to me was that he also mentioned my email newsletter. I had made it. What I didn’t know is that I had a blog before there was a blog, a Substack before a Substack, and a pretty great outlet where I could be myself in all its weirdness. Once my freshman year of college started, I kept it going a little bit longer, and then… I don’t know, it just ended. 

Maybe I was busy, maybe I had new interests, or maybe I thought my opinions and viewpoints weren’t worth hearing. Probably I just wasn’t disciplined. Whatever it was, I stopped doing something I loved. And there was part of me that always regretted it. That said, I probably had some terrible opinions from 1999 until present, so in some ways I’m kind of glad they’re not out there. 

But here I am today. Though not an accomplished writer by any means, I’ve had some personal pieces published for wider audiences. I’ve had a wide range of life experiences, from touring the country in an indie band in my twenties (drunkest job ever) to cleaning boats on the Chesapeake Bay (hardest job ever) to working for the United States Coast Guard as a government contractor (easiest job ever) to writing some of the most widely read running shoe reviews on the internet and co-hosting one of the top running podcasts in America (most surreal job ever).

I’ve learned some things along the way, have had some great periods of progress and some extended periods of pause. But I’ve always tried to move forward.

I’m still not a doctor and I’m vaguely aware of how to use “metaphysical” in a sentence. But I still go by Robbe, for better or for worse. I’m still that kid, somewhere. I think he was always a bit sad that I never took what he gave me and ran with it. So a quarter century later, here I am, hoping people will listen. 

Because I have to tell you about how Giovanni Ribisi is the most underrated actor of our generation and was robbed of an Oscar for his searing portrayal of a disaffected youth-turned-undercover-cop in the 1999 theatrical adaptation of The Mod Squad.

That’s just the start.

Course 4

Dessert

Since I got a trial subscription (which will surely turn into a two-year billing cycle) to Paramount Plus so my kids could watch TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, I thought I’d get my money’s worth with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Not only was I not disappointed, I was surprisingly enthralled. It was an absolutely fantastic action movie. The plot was a little thin, but who needs a cohesive story when you have nonstop Tom Cruise running sequences and well-executed stunts through the back streets of Europe? Seriously, shoot that into my veins.

A good M:I movie is not something I take lightly. In 1999, the first film in the franchise was my my favorite movie to date. The only time I ever skipped school was in May of 2000 to see Mission: Impossible 2 in the theaters. The soundtrack for the first film was actually the first album I ever bought on cassette, a testament to the lack of culture in my household. I still remember buying the tape at The Wall at the Colonial Park Mall, then coming home to my bedroom on a Friday night and hearing “Dreams” by The Cranberries for the first time. I never knew music could be so beautiful and it hit my teenage heart with the straightest shot. I was so excited to share it that I woke up my mom and made her listen to it. That’s certainly one way to ruin a person’s dreams.

And while the most recent Mission: Impossible is certainly great, I’m still waiting on explosive gum the way everyone else is waiting on hoverboards. I know you’re saving it to bust out of the aquarium tank of Scientology, Tom, but share some with the rest of us.

Nothing beats a Mentos like an M-80 to the mouth.

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