Nostalgia BS

It is a universal truth that one of the rights we as Americans assume upon ourselves is to bitch and moan that the current Saturday Night Live cast sucks, and older cats were way cooler/edgier/dangerous/funny etc. It never matters what year it is, it's the exact same shit.

I'm not saying today's SNL is good or not. Actually, it's the same it's always been: hit or miss. Some is great, some's okay, some's terrible. But it's funny to see people on social media indignant that any such cast could stain the legacy of prior casts...none of which they themselves wtched on a regular basis, other than highlight clips. I challenge any person on Facebook who bitches that the cast isn't as good as the older ones to try and get through an episode from the firt season...NO WAY THEY CAN DO IT! Because, after all, watching SNL has become like being in high school - you think YOUR class is lame and totally sucks, and that every class that came a few years before you was the absolute coolest, drinking beer in class and having three-ways with teachers. It's all about my 2011 universal truth of nostalgia:

I would add that I've always thought that we feel "nostalgic" for those moments juuuuust before we were fully aware of being able to revel in them. For example, I romanticize the Amerindie/Minneapolis early-mid 80s scene, and harken back for those glory days, but in reality I was JUST too young to really be a part of it, or to enjoy it in real time. Meanwhile, I feel no real longing or nostalgia for the Grunge Era, and yet any cultural historian would point to it as being the defining musical genre of my particular segment of a generation. I think we tend to kind of pooh-pooh the moments we actually live through, and romanticize the ones we've just missed.

So give SNL a break; 5 years from now, people will be yammering on about how nobody was ever cooler than Colin Jost. Yawn.

Tho to be fair, I still wish I'd been in Minneapolis in 1985. :)