Random Things I Miss from Childhood and Teenagerhood
- The Pizza Hut Book-It! program
- Birthday parties where the whole class was invited and we got goodie bags of cheap and amazing trinkets
- Holding birthday parties at the University Inn where we’d get a poolside room (and I’d get to give out goodie bags of cheap and amazing trinkets)
- My dad’s condo
- Going to my dad’s on the weekend (except for going to church, haha, and only after about age 13)
- Going to my dad’s after school during junior high and being an absolute nuisance in the Yahoo! chatrooms
- Pre-2006 internet
- Trolling the hell out of people on Yahoo! Chat
- Fruitopia
- Opening presents at my mom’s on Christmas Eve and opening presents at my dad’s on Christmas
- Doing all my dumb artsy “films” with my mom’s camcorder
Chicken Ran
I hate how much nostalgia bait is being used for my generation. I hate how everyone from musicians to filmmakers to…well, every corporation, basically…has decided to use nostalgia to get money from Millennials.
I know we’re not uniquely targeted by this tactic, but the tail end of Gen X and us Millennials seem to be the ones who are most highly targeted by the “hey, remember [insert thing here] from your childhood? Well, it’s back! NOW GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY!” ploy.
And I hate even more how so many people seem oblivious to it and blindly play into the manipulative game.
I mean, it’s like all those damn Disney remakes. “Hey, you! Yes, you in that generation that’s either got young kids or is in the process of crapping out spawn! Remember The Lion King? Remember how much you loved that as a child? Well, here it is again, except with all the CGI and none of the emotion or heart! You’d better buy $60 movie tickets for the family so that your spawn can have the same warm fuzzies that you associate with the original!”
And so many people shell out for it without giving it a critical thought!
Sequels are just as bad, too. We did not need Toy Story 4. WE CERTAINLY DO NOT NEED TOY STORY 5.
UGH. Stop feeding the nostalgia-baiters money, you fools!
Anyway.
This whole rant was inspired by this:
Chicken Run is a fantastic movie. Does it need a sequel TWENTY YEARS LATER? I don’t think so. Though I have more faith in Aardman than I do in, say, Disney when it comes to quality control.
But still.
Nostalgia!
We’re getting into temperatures where I need to bring my radio on my runs because my on-ear headphones keep my ears from freezing.
The radio station I listen to, C97.7, does a “90s at Nine” every day at 9 AM. This involves the playing of three songs that have something in common. Often it’s a word in the song title or a genre or an artist.
This morning, the theme was “Disney songs” and the first song up was “A Whole New World” from Aladdin.
I cannot express the MASSIVE nostalgia hit I took when that song started. I hadn’t heard it in so long and it instantly took me back to when my mom and I would watch Aladdin back when I was in elementary school and we lived in our old house in Troy.
It just…it felt good.
Nostalgia Music
So Nate and I were discussing music that was super nostalgic to us the other day. Surprisingly, I didn’t really get too much into music until the end of high school (probably because CDs were way too expensive for me to ever buy and I didn’t have the incredibly enabling device that is the iPod just yet). But a lot of the albums I did buy are ones that hold a high level of nostalgia. Any time I hear a song on any of these albums, it brings me right back to the time in my life when I’d play said album on repeat on my little portable CD player.
Let’s recall a few, shall we?
Good Charlotte – The Young And The Hopeless
I bought this album at Hastings because I LOVED “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” and then realized I liked all the other songs on it as well. I played this a lot in my junior and senior years in high school, and probably a little bit before that as well. “Girls & Boys” is underrated for how good it is.
Black Eyed Peas – Monkey Business
Senior year of high school. I would start this CD EVERY TIME I drove to school in the morning. I lived close enough to the high school that it only ever got through “Don’t Phunk With My Heart,” haha, but that and “Pump It” immediately make me think of those early morning drives to school.
Ashlee Simpson – Autobiography
Another one I bought because I loved one of the songs after hearing it on the radio (“Pieces of Me”). This was mostly my first and second years of college, I think. “Better Off” is such a sweet song.
Weezer – Make Believe
The summer in between high school and college. I listened to this album SO MUCH, yo. I bought it for “Beverly Hills,” but “Perfect Situation” might be my favorite.
Green Day – American Idiot
Another one I listened to incessantly during that summer between high school and college. I also remember listening to “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” back when I was in my bike-riding phase, but that was a few years earlier, I think.
An Experiment:
So I want y’all to listen to this song (especially if you don’t spend a lot – or any – time on TikTok:
Done?
What emotion or general feeling did that evoke for you?
Was it XTREME NOSTALGIA?
I’m just curious, because currently there are a lot of videos going around on TikTok where this song is being used as the background sound and the video is just a slideshow of pictures of late 80s, 90s, early 2000s stuff.
I’m curious if the nostalgia trigger is the music itself or if it just triggers nostalgia because I associate it with those slideshows.
Nostalgia Trip 2019
It was like 400 degrees in Moscow today (slight exaggeration), so I decided to walk around the city instead of go on the Moscow/Pullman trail (since there’s no shade and no water and a lot of heat and sun out there).
[Side note: it is quite difficult to walk 15 miles in Moscow. I did have to go on the trail for about three miles because I ran out of places to walk in the city. I could have stayed within city limits, yes, but it would have involved a lot more looping.]
After I’d wandered around the east side of town for a bit (why the hell is Mountain View still lacking a sidewalk that goes all the way from the highway to the pool? MADNESS), I decided to walk through campus. I haven’t walked through campus in quite a while, since any time I walk in Moscow, it’s either on the trail or in the UI rec center (which is still the best rec center at any university, fight me).
I was getting a nice, warm nostalgia bath as I wandered around amongst the buildings I’d spent so much time around/in. But then I went into the Ag Sci building and was hit with the mother of all nostalgia waves.
Lemme ‘splain. Both of my parents worked in the Ag Sci building for the majority of my life. When I was in elementary school and we had a day off for religious reasons or what have you, my mom would bring me into campus and I’d hang out in Ag Sci. I think I sat in on my dad’s classes a few times, too (just coloring in the back of the room, haha).
Once I started going to school at UI, my dorm was literally across the street from the Ag Sci building, so I’d always go visit my parents (particularly my mom) when I was done with classes and headed back to the dorm. I also used the Ag Sci computer lab all the time before they finally shut it down. Heck, I taught statistics in that big auditorium room (the same one my dad always taught in).
In short: I spent a lot of time in that building.
So walking through it today for the first time in quite a while (at least three years, maybe longer) was a super nostalgia trip. Even just walking down a flight of stairs – holy crap.
Sorry, this blog has absolutely no purpose. I just wanted to mention the nostalgia. I know nobody cares.
Nostalgia Party Throwback 2K17
So I still feel like about 27 different layers of garbage, so I’m going to post stuff that reminds me of random nonsense from ye random olden days.
- I played a lot of this. I still suck at basic math.
- This one, too.
- This song and music video will always remind me of 10th grade, since we’d always turn on MTV during Sports Med (yes, I took Sports Med. I have no idea why) and this was a popular vid back then.
- This show was always on late at night when I was a kid and spent Friday and Saturday night at my dad’s condo. Does anyone else remember this?
- Space Ghost: Coast to Coast was always a late night thing, too. I did not understand that show as a kid.
- Oh, Cartoon Network. I miss the way you used to be.
FICTURE IT
Do you sometimes really miss parts of your past for no real reason? Not, like, particular events or days or anything like that, but routines or schedules that you remember you used to have at various points in life that you don’t have anymore.
I miss my past sometimes.
I don’t know why I felt like saying that. It’s not like my present is bad or anything—it’s the opposite, in fact!—but I just every once and awhile really, really miss the way things used to be.
Yeah. Sorry. Don’t have much to say today.
Brain Spaz
GOD these last two weeks have been like one long nostalgia trip. My brain is very, very confused.
As a somewhat related component, this SMBC comic speaks to me in particular, ‘cause this is kind of how I see things. And it’s kind of what I’m doing with going back to school.
Another life.
Eigenblogger 