Living In The Past

Today I was sitting my room listening to "Interstate Love Song," by the Stone Temple Pilots, and I was reminded of childhood. I instantly got the feeling like I was five years old traveling to Brookfield Square with mom, and my days consisted of simplicities of childhood and the time before the "real" Internet. It got me thinking about the importance and danger of being nostalgic. It is important to reflect on the past, and hold on to things from the past, but there is a danger to never moving on. You find yourself thinking that when you see the fifty-some year old guy at the mall in his Grateful Dead t-shirt and Birkenstocks; you just want to come up to him and say, "Dude, the sixties have been over for like almost forty years now." So why do people cling on the things that define their generation? It is for safety? Maybe. For me that is part of the reason. I think every time I hear the opening to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, I feel the comfort of something familiar and also the comfort of something from my "youth." The other reason is that people just have a hard time identifying with new trends. I, someone who is only eighteen, already does not understand the whole "emo" movement at all...and I don't care to. Some things are just are to shake too. Yes, I still say "tape" and "VCR," and the Internet/cell phones still seem new to me. I just hope to God I won't be the fifty some year old woman in a Sublime t-shirt and baggy jeans. But that's just my opinion I could be wrong...

The Carroll Plague

Last week I was hit with maybe one of the worst flu's I have had in years. It was one of those illnesses where you acquire a Woody Allen level of paranoia about your health. You lie in bed at night wondering if you should start willing out your possessions, and have 9-1 dialed in case this flu is your untimely demise. Thankfully, I have started feeling better basically after like an entire week of being sick. However, I noticed while I was sick, how unacceptable being sick is nowadays. It seems as though teachers, employers, and friends expect you to be better in a matter of hours, like there's nothing an Advil can't cure. Maybe this is because of how technology makes everyone so accessible, that it feels like you can't be left alone, when you really just want to lay in your bed and stop throwing up. It makes you wonder if people would complain less about flu season if they would just take themselves out of commission for at least a day and try to get better. I know I probably got sick in the first place from one of those die-hard attendance award winners, who just couldn't bring themselves to stay home when they were sick. Life is too short to waste a week being sick, please do everyone a favor and waste a day. That's just my opinion I could be wrong...

Feel good music?

At any given time of day on the fourth floor of the Swarthout complex at Carroll, you are almost guaranteed to hear Disney's "High School Musical" soundtrack to come blaring out of some one's room. Worst yet, sometimes you hear such bubble-gum pop bygones like the Spice Girls or the Backstreet Boys. Of course if you ask any of these girls about this, and of course you get a response like "it's funny," or "I don't know I just like it, it's cute." We are at least eighteen years old, right? I understand the novelty quality that that these things hold, but with the frequency in which they are played it makes you wonder if they think they are "just funny," or it this is what they actually listen to. Well, if you look at the recent iTunes charts they seem to reflect the ladder. It is a fact that High School Musical 2 had one the biggest television debuts of all time and that soundtrack went to number one on the iTunes albums charts (and currently resides at #3). It makes you wonder what has happened to music, something that used to really thrive on college campuses. It seems we may have taken a step backwards from the "college rock" movement of the 1990's. No longer do artists start out gaining popularity among America's young; if they are lucky they gain a following on myspace. Does this mean that there isn't 'good" music out there? Absolutely not. However, it seems that a vast collection of my peers are more into music geared at the eight to twelve crowd than their own age group. It's been a long time since there has truly been a breakthrough movement in music in this country. It seems as though we hit a lull after Grunge. Rarely now do you find artists that inspire a whole new genre, or even try to create a new sound. I'm not saying that I haven't heard a good album since Nevermind, I'm just saying that I don't believe albums that top the charts now, such as High School Musical 2, will have as much as a profound effect on music or my generation. That's just my opinion I could be wrong...