Nostalgia Creeps

As a child during the mass-marketing power trip of the late '90s, there was really not much I wouldn't fall for. Nickelodeon was my TV haven as a kid, and what they sold on the commercials, I wanted. I remember watching shows like The Amanda Show and seeing commercials for cheesy pop albums. One for a young British girl named Billie was one I fell for, and I vaguely remember buying her album at maybe Amoeba Records, or some other California record store of the type. My sister and I would always jam to what became a feminist anthem used for the 1999 Women's World Cup, "Because We Want To". I forgot about it years later and it would pop up occasionally as just a fun memory.

Thanks to the latest issues of The New Yorker and Radar (respectively for each picture), I have realized that I have had both pictured people under my nose for weeks.

Get this.

On Monday I started watching a British import series I thoroughly enjoyed, called Secret Diary of a Call Girl. I NEVER would've realized that the woman with the familiar name who plays Belle, Billie Piper, was someone whose album I possessed almost a decade ago in the height of pre-teenage naivete if it weren't for The New Yorker saying so.

Over the past year, a little indie drama called The Wackness, about a young drug dealer who trades weed for therapy, has been gathering hype to lead up to its limited July release. I myself have been watching the hype arise and getting pretty into it. I've been reading articles about the movie's star, a newcomer, Josh Peck, who also had a familiar name.

He's the kid pictured above, AND the left. He used to be on shows on Nickelodeon all the time. And now, he's hot. Smoking hot. NEVER saw any of this coming in ALL my days. And he seems like he's not affected by the hype at all.
I'm absolutely fucking wowed at all this. Maybe I'm the only one.

It's totally true how your past creeps up on you. I have been sneak-attacked by childhood... and it's fun.