Letter from the Editor #20
"Love Story" on FX/Hulu has piqued my nostalgia for the 90s—when I'd sometimes cross paths with JFK Jr.; Have I mentioned I'm putting on a show next Wednesday?? (OMG, it's less than a week away!)
Readers,
In the past 24 hours many of you commented on how much you enjoyed Hal Rubenstein’s Oldster Questionnaire. I love Hal’s upbeat perspective on aging, too.
Several of you also noted how much you enjoy the whole Oldster Questionnaire series. I’m so glad. Thank’s for telling me. When I threw together those 20 questions nearly five years ago, I had no idea they’d add up to a feature that’s so well loved.
The questions were sparked by my deep curiosity about others’ experience of getting older, and I’ve learned over the years that whenever I follow my curiosity I tap into something that other people are curious about too.
If you’d like to help me continue with this exploration—and my mission to destigmatize and normalize aging by showing that it’s happening to everyone, of every age, all the time—please consider becoming a paid subscriber. 🙏
Check out the rest of this series here. P.S. Typos happen. Please forgive me if you find any!
“Love Story” on FX/Hulu has piqued my nostalgia for the 90s—when I’d sometimes cross paths with JFK Jr. …
I was pleasantly surprised when Hal reached out to tell me about his newsletter and podcast, The Happy Grownup. I used to know Hal a bit in the ‘90s, when I worked on the gossip beat for publications like WWD, W, The New York Daily News’s Rush & Molloy column, and “The 411,” an occasional column I co-wrote with three other Daily News reporters on the occasions George Rush and Joanna Molloy went on vacation.
At all the best movie premieres and parties I covered, Hal could be found too, representing early Details, or InStyle, or any of the other many other magazines he wrote for in those days.
Hearing from him had already gotten me nostalgic for the 90s. Then I started watching Love Story on FX/Hulu, and it has really transported me back to those days.
Back then I was in my late 20s and early 30s, living on my own in a tiny, run-down tenement in Manhattan’s East Village for $633 a month, flitting around the neighborhood with a string of Peter Pans, and doing a lot of party reportage.
In those days, I’d sometimes encounter JFK Jr. at events I was covering. It was always a thrill, not only because he was so incredibly dashing and magnetic, but also because he was a down-to-earth mensch who was kind to me.
If you think party coverage is easy, think again. It can be fun, but it’s a lot. After working all day in a newsroom, you have to go out all night, blending in in places where you clearly don’t belong, making conversation with people who in most cases don’t want to talk to you (both Tatum O’Neal and Paris Hilton stuck their tongues out at me). Then, first thing in the morning you have to go right back to the office to cobble together some semblance of an entertaining story with whatever sparkling quotes you managed to extract from celebrities and socialites.
JFK Jr. was the kind of celebrity who would make my job easier. He was approachable, friendly and willing to make quotable chitchat—although without giving much away. Compared to him I was nobody—just a party reporter in mismatched office duds from Strawberry over pilled tights, sporting a bad approximation of “The Rachel.” But he would lock eyes with you, and make you feel like you were somebody.
It was wild hearing his character in Love Story tell Carolyn Bessette, in Episode 1, that the eye-lock was very much intentional, something he’d learned from his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, that he’d do with everyone:
Whenever my mom is at a party or out to dinner, she always locks eyes intensely with whoever she talks to, because she says even the appearance of a recess in conversation will invite interlopers.
Right now I’m in the middle of Episode 3, and I expect to binge the rest of this nine-episode series stat. Director Ryan Murphy really captures the look and feel of the ‘90s. And the sounds, too—it has a great, period-specific soundtrack.
A woman in her 30s who I follow on social media posted the other day that the show is making her wish she could time travel to the mid-’90s, just to see what it was really like. I was there, girl, and it was very much like what you see on the screen.
***
All these years later, I’m still stunned and saddened by JFK Jr.’s passing. I can picture where I was and what I was doing on July 16th, 1999 when I learned he’d crashed the small aircraft he was flying with Bessette and her sister aboard. Kind of like how people older than me remember where they were and what they were doing when they learned of his father’s assassination on November 22nd, 1963.
Why do I care so much? I barely knew the guy. I suppose it’s in part because of the Kennedy mystique—and the family’s litany of tragedies—but maybe also in part because he made an impression on me as someone who was genuine and good, and in the circles he traveled in, that was rare.
The bigger question is why I’m nostalgic for the 90s, a time when I’m pretty sure I was miserable. I worked too hard, and had a perpetually broken heart from dating all the wrong men. It’s not the first time I’ve felt nostalgic for rotten times, though. I wonder sometimes if that has to do with hopes and dreams from the past occluding all the regrets.
What about you? Are you ever nostalgic for times in the past when you weren’t really happy? Got any thoughts to share on Love Story? A JFK Jr. story? Any other shows you’d recommend?
Just SIX DAYS until the Oldster Variety Hour at Joe’s Pub…
Have you gotten tickets for next Wednesday, March 4th’s Oldster Variety Hour at Joe’s Pub? If you want to attend, don’t sleep on grabbing your seats! It’s going to be so great, and it’s almost sold out.
If you do get shut out—or if you don’t live in or near New York City—I’ve got good news for you: I’ve found a way to make remote live streaming available. Remote streaming tickets are just $10. (And they’ve been selling! Thank you.) You can watch from anywhere, live, or on your own time for up to a week after the show.
By the by, I’ve postponed the second Joe’s Pub event until Friday, August 7th. And before that, on June 10th, there’ll be a piano karaoke event at Sid Gold’s Request Room. Stay tuned for more details…
No paywall this week…
This week I’m not putting the bottom part of my Letter from the Editor behind a paywall, as I had in prior installments. Sometimes it takes a paywall to inspire readers to support your work, but I don’t like to exclude people and am not good at being A Business Person™. If you enjoy all that I publish here, I’d love your support. Publishing Oldster takes a lot of work. 🙏
Thanks for reading, and subscribing. I appreciate it. 🙏💝
When I lived in NYC, I once saw JKF Jr. running down Columbus Avenue, doing a sort of "run of shame." He was in the process of putting on his shirt, flinging it over his naked upper torso (be still my beating heart) and buttoning it up as he ran. When we passed on the sidewalk, he nodded at me and kept running. Total boss move.
I feel like I grew up with JFK, Jr. even if all I ever had were random sightings around the City (and a mutual friend in common through Brown or NYU Law). Loving the series. I’ve been watching with one of my daughters, who loves the clothes—especially the casual ones, as she just started a new job. She is peppering me with all kinds of questions about those times. Watching the show is making me feel like a voyeur but also nostalgic. And it’s calling me back to how sad I was when their lives were cut so short on the heels of Diana’s death.