Thoughts : Everything is better when you’re twelve

Originally published at One man. One year. One million words. Like these : . Please leave any comments there.

Just when I’ve been musing on nostalgia extra hard today, I come across this Tom the Dancing Bug gem :

I remember this comic being funnier before

The truths related in the comic are not unique to it, of course. In fact, this seems to be the exact moment in history when said truths are becoming well known as they spread through the zeitgeist. Perhaps it took this long because me and my fellow Gen-X types had to reach the right age for our relentless self-mocking autosatirical analysis to have enough information to draw the conclusion.

Nevertheless, the “when you’re 12″ effect is a real thing. A lot of absolutely serious, completely earnest people will tell you that the things they liked as kids and teenagers were, objective, simply absolutely superior to everything that came before or could possibly come after. All art, culture, music, television, and other mass culture just happen to have attained the pinnacle of perfection exactly as they came of age. What a lucky break, huh? Man, imagine if you’d been born just five years later, you would have grown up liking stuff that sucks! How lame would that be?

Now I have no problem with people retaining a fondness for the things they loved as a kid or a teen. That’s natural and normal and healthy and fine. It’s when they insist, despite all the chaqun son gout and there’s no accounting for taste in the world, that there is solid, incontrovertible objective reality to their love of Astro Boy above all other cartoons ever that I start having a problem with it, especially when they shit all over everything new, or worse, everything ELSE, in the process.

It’s like insisting that everyone agree with you that your first love was, objectively, the most beautiful girl in the world, without the slightest shade of doubt, and anyone who doesn’t agree with you is a liar and an idiot and has no taste in women.

I know it’s hard for people to admit to and recognize their own subjectivity, but you’re not going to get anywhere with that kind of “my love is objective and true” attitude. It just leads to a lot of pointless arguing and people getting vastly bent out of shape and angry over things which do not warrant it. No matter whether you’re right about Scooby Doo being way better than any stupid Transformers cartoon ever was, and this asshole arguing with you is WRONG WRONG WRONG and is a stupid head butt face fart monkey too, when you both leave the party you’re going to go home and watch the DVDs that make you, personally, happy and that will be the end of it, forever. Neither of you stand a chance of winning the argument, because you are arguing over something that can’t be argued. De gustibus non disputatum est, there’s no arguing with taste. Different people like different things, and what might be right for you, might not be right for some. It takes… DIFFERENT STROKES TO MOVE THE WORLD, yes it does, it takes…

…ahem. Sorry. Had a moment of my own nostalgia there. Where was I? Oh right.

Myself, I don’t really feel the effect. I’ve mostly just observed it in others. I don’t know whether that’s primarily due to my being scrupulously objective, fair, realistic, broad-minded, and understanding, or whether it’s more that I have always been an isolated, bookish nerd who rarely liked anything, new or old, and who always experienced things out of sequence with time anyhow. Probably a lot of both.

But I’ve always had a very open mind when it comes to appreciating things regardless of time period. I really find it hard to grasp the idea of a book or movie being “too old” to like. That just doesn’t enter into my thinking. There’s good art, and bad, and that’s the only criterion that matters. Anything might be good or might be bad. I’ll make up my mind when I get there.

Still, let’s set the wayback machine to when I was 12, 1985, and see what was big back then.

Well, music-wise, according to this site, the following songs hit number one on the charts :

Madonna - Like a Virgin
Foreigner - I Want to Know What Love Is
Wham! - Careless Whisper
REO Speedwagon - Can't Fight This Feeling
Phil Collins - One More Night
USA for Africa - We Are the World
Madonna - Crazy for You
Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)
Wham! - Everything She Wants
Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Bryan Adams - Heaven
Phil Collins - Sussudio
Duran Duran - A View to a Kill
Paul Young - Everytime You Go Away
Tears for Fears - Shout
Huey Lewis and The News - The Power of Love
John Parr - St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)
Dire Straits - Money for Nothing
Ready For The World - Oh Sheila
a-ha - Take on Me
Whitney Houston - Saving All My Love for You
Stevie Wonder - Part-Time Lover
Jan Hammer - Miami Vice Theme
Starship - We Built This City
Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin - Separate Lives
Mr. Mister - Broken Wings
Lionel Richie - Say You, Say Me


I have to admit, I still like most of those songs. Some of them I don’t recognize at all (Phil Collins and who now? Oh Sheila? Not ringing a bell. ), and a few I never liked (Careless Whisper is creepy and Like A Virgin was just so blatant and cheesy, ick) but for the most part, I like all these songs. In fact, to be honest, I have a lot of the in my mp3 collection. Dunno if that proves anything, but there it is.

Over in the world of the movies, the Oscar winners for 1985 don’t have much that appeals to me. I was WAY too young to see Kiss Of The Spider Woman, Out Of Africa was boring except when there were lions on the screen, I’ve never seen The Color Purple, Prizzi’s Honor, or The Trip To Bountiful, and Cocoon was okay. Not fantastic, but okay.

Well, to round it out, let’s do television. What television shows were hot in 1985?

The Cosby Show
Family Ties
Murder, She Wrote
60 Minutes
Cheers
Dallas
(tie) Dynasty
(tie) The Golden Girls
Miami Vice
Who’s the Boss?
Night Court
CBS Sunday Night Movie
Highway to Heaven
Kate & Allie
NFL Monday Night Football
Newhart
(tie) Knots Landing
(tie) Growing Pains
You Again?
227

Holy crap, that was the golden age of the sitcom. No wonder I grew up loving the sitcom so much. Half of the top shows that year were sitcoms, and by gum, I think I watched all over them. Even 227, although I never liked it that much.

And I certainly remember all the shows. Except for You Again?, which Wikipedia tells me was also a sitcom, starring Jack Klugman. Made the top 20 but I never heard of it before now. Go figure.

So while the music has songs I like, but nothing that leaps out as OH MY GOD THAT WAS THE BEST EVER, and the Oscars went to nothing I care about, there are two things on the TV listings that are, to me, things which will always shine out forever as two of the best things ever :

Cheers and Night Court.

I love sitcoms, and those two shows are a big part of why. They had wit, warmth, wonder, lovable characters, hilarious situations, and most of all, big hearts. Sitcoms get a bad rap as mindless pap, and most of them deserve it.

But to me, one of the happiest periods of my life was when I could watch Cheers and Night Court back to back, one night a week.

It was like winning the lottery twice in one day, and it happened every week!

Still, I can’t say that 1985 seems like an especially wonderful year to me. I like things from all over the timescape and that’s unlikely to change. I happen to think that Night Court is one of the best anythings of any kind anywhere, but I don’t pretend that is objectively true for everyone (much).

Pop culture is a product of the times, and the things we fall in love with growing up are the best things for us, at that time. It’s depressing and hilarious to look back at some of the things I used to love like crazy as a kid now. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends is a crappy show, but I loved it SO MUCH when I was a kid, so much so that for years I had an irrational dislike of The Hulk simply because his show came on after SAHAF, and therefore him showing up meant my favorite show was over.

I don’t pretend my stuff is better than anyone else’s. I like it better, and that’s enough for me.

And it should be enough for anyone, don’t you think?