Remember The Time You Couldn't Remember What Time It Was?

Ah, the good old days. It's a phrase your parents, grandparents, and crazy Uncle Giuseppe has invoked since before you can remember. As we get older we'll start using this phrase to describe how things where better back in the early 90s before some guy named Steve Jobs ruined all of our attention spans. In reality the only reason we use that phrase is to complain about how something now isn't working that well. "Remember the good old days when pencils were made of lead and not this composite graphite and nitrous concoction which supposedly never breaks, but IT ALWAYS BREAKS."

Pencils are so 1991.

I've never been particularly fond of that phrase. I mean, we're living in the good old days. If we have to call someone we don't have to use a rotary phone where you would be pissed if someone had more than one zero in their number. Actually we don't have to call anyone anyway. We can send a text, an instant message, a blackberry message, an email; we can SEE someone on our computers. If someone told you any of this was possible when you were growing up you would have immediately called the police and have them charged with assaulting the human mind. That's provided you could find the number for the police in a 10 inch thick book that was sorted by the colors white and yellow.

It's in the yellow pages. Wait the white pages. They all look the same. Racism.

This notion of the past being awesome carries over to a lot of things, but one thing that I won't ever understand are people's romanticized views of music videos. This past week on 3 separate occasions I've been asked, "Remember when MTV played music videos." My stock response is, "Yes." Now if you're younger than 23 and reading this the answer is probably going to be no and you should immediately stop reading this blog because it will lower your IQ roughly 31 points due to various grammar mistakes and run on sentences such as the one you just read.

I can't tell you the last time I was flipping through the TV and saw a music video. And you know what? That's great. It has not affected my life in the slightest. The past 10 years I haven't been in the middle of watching Veronica Mars and thought, "You know what would be amazing right about now. Watching the music video of 'Barbie Girl by Aqua'. They were acting like Barbies! Oh, glory day, someone pass me a fruit roll up and car magazine while I get myself in the mood for this dream of moving pictures." Yet, when people talk about music videos they seem to think these things were masterpieces that only could be made by immortal creators with minds made of unicorns and rainbows.

Prettiest mind ever.

The consensus is that A-Ha's video for "Take Me On" is one of the best music videos of all time. Never will someone say that the video is a piece of trash and 100 times out of 100 they will paraphrase the quote, "best video ever." Is it really the best video ever or since it's been around for so long are we just now forced to give it the salutation of "best video ever" since so many people have said it? "Here's the best video ever Take On Me, Here's President Obama; Here's Ms Jackson, she is for real; Here's 6-time County Fair Corn Dog Champion Art Artery."

The point is that why do we care that MTV plays no videos? Why? If MTV played videos someone would inevitable be complaining that they play too many videos. But since our notion of the good old days includes music videos we think not having them on TV someone has taken away a part of our life. A great part of our childhood. Well guess what people. Not all videos were freakin' A-Ha. As exhibit 1,1A,2, 3, 4A, 10B, and 34 DD I present to you a video that was always on our TV growing up. THIS is what you're pining for?



Let's put aside the blatant political statement that this video is trying to make and that Andrew Ridgeley is actually relevant for the first time in 20 years and it's happening right here on this blog. Yes, that is George Michael acting straight. Let me say that again. HE'S ACTING STRAIGHT. George Michael didn't come out of the closet until the late 90s and was actually married...to a woman. He figured a good cover for being straight would be to wear short shorts, light everyone up in neon, and prance around the stage like Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air after 400 Red Bulls.

That video makes Nathan Lane blush

The other thing is that someone actually thought this was a good video. There is a person or, gasp, people that made this video and thought "Wow, what a masterpiece. This is going to revolutionize music videos!" I watched this yesterday and immediately wanted to see another episode of The Real World. Or 16 and Pregnant. Or True Life: I Grew Up With Hamster Wheel Hands." But this is what we're missing out since MTV isn't playing videos. A group called Wham gesturing and pointing while wearing a hat that can best be described as "unfortunate."

The good old days.

I'm ok with today.