Beware the Good Olde Days

I love to bitch about the Oscars to the point where my friends (IRL) avoid me at this time of year.  If I believed in that crap, I’d say I had OCD or something, but, in actual fact, I’m just a cantankerous old fart who’s become a bore about the Academy Awards.  (FYI, a bore is someone who won’t change his mind and refuses to change the subject.)  My problem is, I remember a time when filmmaking was an honourable profession.  However, in my defence, I’m not the first person to get trapped in the Good Olde Days without an escape hatch.

Quite honestly, if you’re over 18, chances are good that the objects in your life’s rear-view mirror are distorted.  The ice cream was creamier when you were a kid, wasn’t it?  The music was sexier, the rain sadder, the sleep softer and the love — well — who doesn’t remember their first love without tears in their eyes?  This is natural.  It’s how our soul reminds us just how cool it is to be alive.

Personally, I think the Good Olde Days were brilliant, and I play “remember when” better than most people.  I wouldn’t trade any of the tales I can tell from back in the day for even a remote understanding of the techno-tawdry world we live in.  But that isn’t the problem.  As I say, a certain amount of nostalgia is good for the soul.  The problem comes when “remember when” starts to replace Friday morning, 2016.

It happens when we get lazy and don’t actually taste the ice cream anymore or sway to the music or listen to the rain.  It happens when we fool ourselves into believing that our eyes should squint with experience when we look at autumn leaves or that first crust of frost winter gives us.  It happens when we begin to think we’ve “been there/done that” too many times.  It happens when we quit doing the things we love.

Oh yeah, that reminds me: the Oscars suck!