Mr. Seth Parker has just graciously let us out of College Writing early, so I figured the least I could do was to actually write one of these things. Since nothing interesting has happened yet today, I'll write about something that's been floating around my brain for the past couple of days.
Everyone upholds icons from the past with nostalgia. For example The Brady Bunch. Whenever someone criticizes modern entertainment, this show seems to come up. True, the show was successful at being both wholesome and popular, but it's hardly something to which to base the entire decline of culture against. I mean, behind the scenes Greg and Marcia were banging each other all the time. Nostalgia is bullshit. Now we see Peter Brady eating whipped cream off the winner of America's Next Top Model on VH1 and I can't help but wonder if this is symbolic. Are our icons of the past conforming to the oversexed and commercialized media of today? Or have they always been oversexed and commercialized, and now just have an appropriate forum in which to be themselves? I have no answer for these questions, but I will state again, nostalgia is bullshit. Earlier this week, I found myself missing high school and reminiscing about last year. This is bullshit. I hated most of high school. I spent at least half of it wishing I was in college. But somehow I have become able to convince myself that it was the greatest years of my life. Dear God, I hope this is not the case. If so, my life will be an utter sham. The truth is, you always need something to miss, you always need someone to be away from, you always need something to be nostalgic about. I remember being in the car with my friend and his father a couple months ago, and we were talking about memories that we both had from the past. After we had gone through sharing our recollections of middle school, his father turned around. "Nostalgia," he said, "it's just not what it used to be."