You Can't Stand Under My Umbrella Ella...

It works better when you actually open it.

   The NE region of the country was just pummeled with insane thunderstorms that started late Saturday night and ended approximately thirty-seven seconds ago. The storms woke me up from a sound sleep ( and I never got the chance to accept Pauly D's marriage proposal) to the realization that the world was about to end. I immediately sprung to the kitchen to begin gathering canned goods for my yet to be built fall-out shelter (damn you, procrastination!) Cooler heads prevailed the next morning when we all realized that the rain was just rain and not the beginning of the Apocalypse. While there had been some pretty severe flooding in the southern-most New Jersey counties I have to admit some of my friends and I discussed the rain with somewhat disappointment. With the great recession looming over everything we do and hear as well as the world getting ready to bid us adieu in 2012 (don't buy that 2013 Mayan calendar just yet, folks) it seems only fitting that our weather should take on such an identically morose tone. The conversation with my friends took a nostalgic turn. And I'm not talking about nostalgia for our childhood in the 80's, all Transformers and Rainbow Brite lunch boxes. Or even nostalgia for the combat boot and Cross-Colour wearing 90's with the recent string of programming Nickelodeon has been running during their late night block. We're talking nostalgia for the aughts... that's right... that decade that just happened like a year ago.

Ah yes, the good old days back when Kanye was just a wannabe douchebag.

   Believe it or not, the way we live our lives now appears to be alot different from the way we lived our lives even five years ago. As nostalgia and the need to relive better times ramps up in this tough economy, you may hear more and more of your Generation Y colleagues waxing poetic about the "good old days". Days that included:

• Trips to your local amusement park or movie theatre that didn't involve having to take out a small business loan with Bank of America.

   Our parents and grandparents would love to regale us with tales of 15 cent gas and groceries that didn't put you into the poor house. I don't know those times. They sound like some scary Wild Wild West with bell bottoms. My good old days revolve around trips to the local Six Flags. I remember when you could get an entire season pass for roughly the cost of a one day visit today. One summer I can remember visiting my local Six Flags Great Adventure six times as well as the neighboring Six Flags America all for the price of one measly season pass. Today? Not so much. Sure you may catch a coupon deal for an off-peak day (nothing like going to the water park on a Tuesday afternoon. Try explaining that to your boss as a reason why they shouldn't liquidate your department) or even get one of those cool buy one get one offers on a can of Coke. But when you factor in the rising cost of gasoline, the high price of food that you are required to purchase while in the park and the fact that most of us don't have that much flex time in our busy schedules of working two jobs, getting a second degree and panhandling for gas money, things really start to tick upwards towards the impossible. That's why my latest venture into entrepreneurship involves me charging neighborhood kids a dollar to spray them with my garden hose and then bounce them on my knee a la Cliff Huxtable. Chris Hansen, I'll be waiting.

Though it looks like he may already have his hands full with this guy.

GIFSoup

   But it's not just amusement parks. I recently took my neighbor's kids out to the movies to see the Smurfs in 3D. Somewhere around the third act I began to realize that with the price of tickets (not to mention the up charge for seeing a 3d film that didn't really need to be in 3d) the drinks, the popcorn, and the petrol I spent to drive over there, I could have actually made this movie  myself for about $1 less than it cost to see it. I'm a new millennium girl and I like to go Dutch with my boyfriend sometimes but Great Caesar's Ghost... when did it stop being okay to expect change back when you purchase two matinee tickets for the movies and pay with a twenty spot?! Can I at least have a dollar back? At least!?

   Ahem... moving right along (and in an attempt to quiet the sassy black woman fires that reside within me)... other things that I am nostalgic for that are no more... remember when you could actually get away with turning off your phone (or simply ignoring it), shutting down your chat windows and falling off the face of the planet? Not no more, kiddies. Not with the invention of smartphones that tag you and bag you and make sure everyone knows where you are and why. Gone are the days when you could apologize to your great-aunt Elma for missing her annual Lifetime movie marathon tea party in the past tense after spending half the afternoon dodging her calls. Now, thanks to the invention of Facebook and the twitter and Foursquare, she knows you blew her off to go play paintball with your friends... and she is pissed. Yes, it is nice that we can all keep track of each other a whole lot better now and that's great for people you want to keep track of. But what about the people you don't want to be able to keep track of you? Do you necessarily want your friends checking you into Cee-Cee's Crazy House of Discount Condoms on your Facebook wall for all the world (and your grandfather) to see? O how I long for the days of 2001 when BRB (be right back) implied NOYB (none of your business).

Because nobody really needs to know what you do with your "me" time.

• Remember back in the day when having a college degree meant you could actually you know... get a job and keep a roof over your head? Well those days are over. I won't go into it in this blog, primarily because I am the farthest thing from an expert on it. You can read about that from someone who knows what they are talking about here. What I will say is it would be nice to know you can make a decent living and be done school and not have to face menopause at the same time.  Just saying.

   That's as far down memory lane as I care to go right now. What do you think? Has the love of nostalgia been accelerated in the new millennium. Are you already re-wearing those 7 for all mankind jeans ironically? Are we all doomed? Blast your opinion below and I'll get crackin' on that fall-out shelter for two.


---  Vanity in Peril