Nostalgia2

"I don't like nostalgia unless it's mine"

- Lou Reed

It's true, nostalgia is lame. Of course, looking back and remembering good times here and there isn't so bad. Sure, it's nice to bask in past successes and smile softly at the thought of wacky adventures or sweet moments in time, captured now and forever in the rosy-colored, candy-coated snapshots of memory.

But be careful: live in the present and yearn for the future, or else! Before you know it you might find yourself, a proud 22-year old, watching the Breakfast Club and Saturday Night Fever three times a day, wearing a Smurf-themed one-piece pajama suit, and downing shots of Pop Rocks for breakfast with strands of Bubblicious Bubblegum Tape as a chaser.

The folks behind such nefariously successful ventures as Urban Outfitters and Nick-at-Night might try to convince you that this lifestyle is cool, calling on terms like camp, kitsch, post-modern, retro, and zeitgeist. But don't be fooled. The danger remains. Nostalgia is nice on occasion, but it's hard to control. And I can't even try to describe the hell to which you will be banished, if you are unfortunate enough to have let your nostalgic impulses reign free. (Imagine: the one and only radio station in such a fiery inferno features solely the greatest hits of Rico Suave.)

But what is one to do? How can we reap the benefits of nostalgia without exposing ourselves to its frightening risks? I suggest a solution: nostalgic nostalgia.

What? Let me try to explain: we can and ought to feel nostalgic for stuff that is itself nostalgic. In other words, by taking a step back and adding another layer to the landscape we can cherish the fleeting pleasures of a nostalgia-like experience while at the same time protecting ourselves with a soft ironic cushion of self-consciousness. It's beautiful. With that added ever-present measure of yes-I-know-what-I'm-doing personal awareness, we can once again relish the joys of what once was.

So, why obsess over 1986's Ferris Beuller's Day Off and find yourself ceaselessly crooning "When Cameron was in Egypt's land...?" Instead, focus your reflections on reruns of Parker Louis Can't Lose, an unabashedly cheese-drenched early-'90s sitcom that was itself nostalgic for the Broderick-bolstered original. Give it a try and you'll find yourself feeling much healthier, happier, and hipper. I promise. Consider:

The Wonder Years

In retrospect, when we watched it the first time, the dramatic comedy was pitiful. The canned, caricatured recreation of '60s suburbia presented through the middle-American adventures and wizened voiceover of Fred Savage's Kevin Arnold, was strictly TV-by-numbers, playing successfully on the bittersweet sentiments of a baby-boomer generation just turning 40.

But now, look again. We can notice that sugary sweet corniness and acknowledge its presence. We slowly immunize ourselves against its dirty tear-jerking paws. We can watch and laugh and say things like "Dammit Winnie Cooper, why are you so annoying?" even if we are still secretly entranced by her shy eyelash-batting ways. Nostalgia exists, but not for the '60s, as the show intended during its 1988 debut. Rather, we prefer to wax maudlin simply about the remembered joys of watching the show itself.

Fiddler on the Roof

When my parents brought me to see the musical stage production somewhere around my eighth birthday, it was because they were proud of their eastern European Jewish heritage. It was also because the show's hero Tevye and his family surely reminded by parents of their own grandparents: yiddish-speaking folk who, as depicted in the play, came to New York from a cruel czarist Russia. As I look back and consider the show itself, it seems pretty darned silly. Oy, with those corny lyrics and flashy dance numbers seemingly more appropriate for a Carousel ride or trip to the South Pacific than a story of desperation and alienation from the wind swept steppe of Anatevka. What shmaltz - the Lotts swallowed it whole.

And yet, when I happened upon the Oscar-nominated 1971 film on TV this weekend, I did not gag. I swooned. My joy was not of cherishing a touching dramatic work of art depicting the memories of generations past, but rather of recalling the joy and abandon with which my family gave in to celebrating the musical's pure goofiness. I recall my mother humming away at "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" and envision my father dancing nimbly to "If I Were A Rich Man"- yeidel, deidel, diddle, diddle, deidle. This is not simple nostalgia: it's nostalgia squared.

So go ahead and give it a try. You won't risk the pathetic regression and inevitable body odor that is always a possibility when you set your Chuck Taylor All-Stars upon the slippery slippery slope of plain old unmitigated nostalgia. Instead, you'll thrive with a newfound consciousness and find a suddenly sincere connection to all things cool and right in this world. Now, that's life. L'Chayim!