The Earnest Era Ends

When we lost Glen Hansard last week, his work still fresh and lively, it was a reminder that the world has changed more than we think it has.A few months ago, when I was walking around a mall on a ninety-something-degree day. I made a claim to my wife that I thought profound, but she kind of saw through pretty quickly.“If you walked through a mall 20 years ago, everyone would basically look the same,” I said, noting that fashion has barely shifted since the mid-2000s. She called bullshit, noting that folks simply wearing T-shirts and jeans and khakis wasn’t enough to say we still dress the same.But when we caught Nirvanna the Band The Show the Movie recently, I felt some modest vindication. The entire time-travel plot of the movie only really works because of this point I highlighted. If the characters found themselves in 1995, the fashions would be dramatically different; but in 2008, little would change, minus the kinds of phones in their hands.However, it’s clear that something did…