Trends

I remember 11 years ago (am I that old), asking a friend of mine who was into the indie music scene if he had heard of a band called the Hives. He indicated that he had and used to like them until they got onto MTV and became mainstream. I didn't understand the logic used to no longer enjoy this song or the fun video.

Fast forward to last week. I asked a friend about the Mumford & Sons "hiatus". He indicated that he didn't follow that band anymore or the Lumineers because their sound had been copied across a wide assortment of genres and musical acts. I didn't understand that logic either.

I like what I like and don't really care what you like. I like Jesus, my family, my friends, the Tennessee Vols, Atlanta Braves, Dale Earnhardt Sr., Moutain Dew, classic rock, classic country music, 90s rock, 90s country, The Office, Scrubs, Life is Beautiful, The Natural, hot wings, fried food, summer, and running shoes. My guilty pleasures include professional wrestling (not just the WWE, I follow promotions that operate in high school gyms and draw 200 people), Creed, Daria, and the Great Plains. I don't care what you think about my likes no more than I care that you enjoy cutting grass, watching So You Think You Can Dance?, or listening to Barry Manilow. What difference does it make what I like and what you like? If you look at pictures of me from high school, my fashion sense hasn't changed. I still like t-shirt of my favorite sports teams, I still wear running shoes 90% of the time, and I still don't prefer polo shirts. What's that you say? You only wear polo shirts? Cool. I don't care.

As The Skillet once told me, "You do you, and I'll do me." When I first heard this, I thought it was a thinly veiled masturbation statement before I realized it meant "Let's both mind our own business." Agreed. Like what you want, and forget what people around you are doing.

Nostalgia

Who likes reminiscing about the old days? I do too. I was recently cleaning out a closet and found my old CD collection. I soon found myself listening to "Dolphin's Cry" by Live in my living room. Though the doors were locked and the windows close, I'm sure all my neighbors heard my jam session. I probably listened to this song six times. This song was released when I was in middle school and when I heard it Live quickly became one of my favorite bands. "Lakini's Juice", "Selling the Drama", "I Alone", "Lightning Crashes" all world-rocking songs to 14 year old Jubal Foster. Later in the same day I found this video on the YouTube. I probably have watched this video 10 times in the past month and have only listened to Creed on my iPhone since. (This is a lie, I downloaded "As Tears Go By" last week. Wow, beautiful song.) What a great WWF highlight video. The early 2000s was the best era for the WWF. Such talent, great stories. If professional wrestling isn't enough of a guilty pleasure, my wife and I binge watched Dawson's Creek this summer. I love that show, always have. This wasn't my first foray into Capeside, I originally watched this show every weekday morning on TBS the summer before my senior year. I still got infuriated with Dawson for not making a move on Joey. I watched to punch Pacey with the same vigor as I did a decade ago when he made moves on Joey.

Anything that harkens back to the mid 90s to mid 00s, I eat it up. Friends, Seinfeld, ER? Definitely. I still watch the horrible NBC Thursday night lineup out of a misappropriated fealty. This song? Downloaded. Memorized. Most watched show on my Amazon VOD account? Daria. I have it bad. While I think the "Only 90s kids will remember" posts on Facebook are vapid, I identify with all of them.

Why do we look away to old times? And we definitely do look back to old times. Films like Dazed and Confused will always capture our attention and we will always identify with them. I've never been drunk, taken any illegal drugs, had sex contact outside marriage, or even played football but darn it, I see myself in Jeremy London in that film and you do too. Conventional wisdom will tell you that the old days were better times. When these claims are examined, this simply isn't true. Crime keeps falling, teen pregnancy is dropping, drugs use is falling, our air and water are the cleanest that they have ever been measured. For me, I believe that the old days are better in my mind because, in my mind they are. Let me explain. When I was 14, raw dog, hot dog, and chili dog were various ways of eating mechanically separated pork parts squeezed into a synthetic case not sex acts. I knew nothing of the Rape of Nanking, the Wounded Knee Massacre, the Darfur Crisis. I had never dumped a girlfriend nor been dumped by a girlfriend. In short, I wasn't jaded. Life wasn't hard, everything was good. I was becoming a man and passions were being awakened without the adulthood threats of employment, financial responsibility, or personal status. Appropriately (for this post) Creed's "Never Die" tackles this issue. We abandon our youth because we forget how to be a child. I cannot go back an unlearn what female genital mutilation is. I can't unsee Baghdadi children born with horrifying birth defects. I can't unhear Steve Winget mentioning beastiality in chapel my sophomore year of high school and frankly, I don't want to forget it, that was one of the truly funny moments of my life. Thanks for hitting the tough issues that 2002's teens are facing Mr. Winget.

The only moral you should ever take away from my porch time banter is to buy my white lightning by the jugful but if I could make one suggestion, guard your eyes and thoughts. The older I get, the more I can oblige someone when they say "You don't want to know." We'll never be kids again, but we should try.