Movies and Shows
I grew up at the tail end of the Saturday Morning Cartoons era. For me it was Disney channel reruns in the AM, but they would still show the old commercials that my mom remembers. I remember all the cartoons that I grew up watching, like The Brave Little Toaster and Land Before Time, also literally all the Disney classics, including the Disney Channel originals. I used to park it in front of the TV after school to watch SpongeBob Squarepants, and that’s something that me and my closest friends can still bond over as adults. I believe that a SpongeBob quote a day keeps the responsibilities away. And I don’t trust many people who don’t at least quote SpongeBob once a day.
Somehow I got hooked on The Wonder Years, Growing Pains, Saved by the Bell, and Full House too, probably my mom and grandma’s doing. I also liked Keenan and Kell and Zoey 101, and all the music videos they used to show in between shows on Teen Nick. But once my cousin and I got hooked on Avatar: The Last Airbender, it was over. We were always there when a new episode came out, and I remember where I was those nights when the four part series finale came out. I think I still have my old notebook somewhere, where all my worst Avatar drawings still exist, and even a bonus Sokka monologue that me and my cousin made up on our own.
Another one of those things that I remember where I was when it happened was the Beijing Olympics in 2008. My cousin and I were in love with Michael Phelps, and that’s still an understatement. We were very much obsessed. We ordered an array of pins off of Ebay, split them between us and decorated our backpacks for school. We even made a PowerPoint presentation with slide transitions and music for the men’s team. I’m pretty sure I put “The Boys are Back in Town” on there. The night of an important swim final, we cracked open a root beer and cheers-ed to our guy. And we won. I kept that bottle for a long time.
I lightly touched on my Twilight obsession in my Books and Nostalgia post, but I will say that this sparked my Vampire Diaries obsession soon after. This was the first show that I got my mom hooked on that we actually watched together religiously. It was the best. Before that she finally let me watch The OC with her in high school and I loved that too. I never got into other shows that people were into, like Criminal Minds or Lost. I still remember an FFA trip where my friends binge watched Criminal Minds on the way to our seedy Red Roof Inn and they were scared the whole time. I still didn’t understand the obsession.
In college when everyone was watching True Blood and American Horror Story (I did watch some, but I only ever watched the Freakshow season all the way through), I was watching Gilmore Girls and Friends all the way through for the millionth time. Those two shows changed my life when I was living away from home, all homesick and cramped in a tiny private dorm room with another roommate without a wall between us. Good times. I remember the passive aggressive TV Volume Wars we would have when one of us was studying and the other wasn’t. I can smile about it now.
I used to be more obsessed with movies and shows I think, because now I get overwhelmed at the amount of things I miss out on in the world of infinite streaming services and subscriptions. I simply can’t have them all, and the FOMO has calmed down a great deal as I’ve realized this reality. But some good shows from my adult life would have to be Brooklyn Nine-Nine, How I Met Your Mother, Game of Thrones, The Boys, Stranger Things, The Crown, Vox Machina, and Rings of Power . The top of my movie list would definitely be La La Land, and some others below that are probably Anyone But You, Crazy Rich Asians, The Creator, Monkey Man, Twister and Twisters, and Top Gun (old and new). I’m not really sure what compelled me to go into more depth on these subjects, seeing as I shared a whole massive list of all my favorite things on my About Me page, but here it is anyway.