It’s a strange experience to be nostalgic about
commercialized nostalgia. That’s what
happened yesterday when I happened upon I Love the 2000’s on VH1. For most of middle school and the first few
years of high school I was fascinated with the I Love… series. Like many young people struggling to find an
identity I thought simple awareness of pop culture would suffice. For me, I Love… was less about nostalgia
and more about building a collection of references to make later on down the
road. Now that I’m a little older, I
have more than enough references in my utility belt. For instance, did you know that Batman*
exists? I was also alive and mostly
conscious for the past 14 years, so when I saw that an I Love the 2000’s marathon
was on and in its final hours I watched not out of desire to learn, but
out of that weird nostalgia, and in the process learned a few things about myself and my
generation anyway.
There is still no
good name for the previous decade
I am usually the first to defend millennials, but this may
be our greatest failure. We’re nearly
halfway through the teens and yet we still have no consensus on what to call
the decade that came before them. What
am I to do if a child asks me about my old flip phone? Call it a relic from “roughly ten years ago?” “Sit on my knee and I’ll tell you about the
strange era known as ‘the first decade of the current millennium?’” That doesn’t have any of the mystique and
flair that was present when I asked about my parents’ vinyl records and they
told me about the 80’s. What am I to do
if I want to host a theme party with everyone dressed in Crocs and Hannah
Montana* wigs, with Guitar Hero* controllers strapped to their backs? What do I call that theme?
Michael Ian Black’s
career is going really well
Michael Ian Black is a really good comedian. I didn’t know that at the time when I first
started watching I Love… so for a long time it was what I knew him best
for. The first time I saw him out of
that context was on a stand-up show, and the only thing I remember from it is
that he acknowledged that he was best known for talking about the Rubik’s Cube*
on VH1. In retrospect I can see that the
series isn’t very good and Black probably isn’t very proud of his involvement
in it, so it was kind of nice in a Good
Will Hunting* kind of way to not see him in I Love the 2000’s. I’m not really sure what he’s up to now
besides having faux feuds with people I follow on Twitter, but it seems like it’s
going well enough that he doesn’t have to share airtime with the pubic lice
that have gained sentience and now control the part of Bret Michaels’ brain* that is responsible for his appearance.
Insert joke about your mom here.
Whatever it is will be better than what
Bret Michaels inserted into your mom.
My poker phase was
actually part of a fad
I knew a lot of people played poker, but I thought it was
something that had been going on for generations, and I just happened to get
into it at a random point in time.
Still, it’s nice to know that I have something in common with Jennifer
Tilly*.
Harry Potter may have
contributed to Boy Meets World’s longevity
Or perhaps it was the other way around. All I know is that the two seem to be related:
Boy Meets World went off the air just as the Harry Potter franchise was
beginning, and they’re both very important to millennials. They also have some very similar
characters. They both center on a trio
of friends made up of a dark haired, middle class protagonist, his best friend who
grew up in poverty, and a bushy haired girl with a weird name who was at the top of her
class and is passionate about social issues. They are joined by a wise, grey
haired mentor who is in charge of their school, a smug blonde nemesis, a cool
teacher who plays father to one of the boys, and the next generation stars in
an epilogue that is pretty disappointing.
I’m not the only one who has noticed the parallels, but no one seems to
be able to decide how Eric fits into the HP universe. I don’t know either, but keep an eye out for
Will Friedle to be a major player when I compare My Date with the President’s
Daughter* to Tommy Boy*.
*It’s good to be the king.
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