Partying Like It's 1999

Okay, you thought that Pop Culture commentary only appeared on Bonnie's blog, but once in a great awhile, I snap out of my pop-culture-dummy fog and actually know about something before reading it on her blog or hearing it about it in staff meeting from someone whose oldest child is only six years my junior.

On Monday, MTV's one-time hit show, TRL was on the air for a celebrity reunion finale after a 10-year run. It's funny that the article caught my attention. I haven't purposely watched MTV since Real World Seattle aired 10ish years ago. However, I was a TRL junkie by default during the show's early days when Britney was still an "innocent" teen pop star, Justin Timberlake was better known as part of a boy band, Eminem was still married to Kim the first time, Beyonce was a child of destiny and no one dreamed of being an American idol.

My junkie-as-an-innocent-bystander status was short-lived, but nonetheless very impactful. During the late summer of 1999, my 18-year-old freshman roommate from Arizona* would come home from class every day and turn the TV to Carson Daly and thousands of screaming fans in Midtown.

In fact, it was so critical to her educational and moral development that she (or rather daddy dearest) paid the entire cable bill, just so she could have MTV. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how we even got it. I didn't think the school in Happy Valley let their approved housing have MTV, but we did (shhh - don't tell - we probably committed other horrible atrocities as well!).

I remember sitting on the couch working on my physics homework (it had to be physics - I had physics homework every day for the eight straight weeks of summer term) with "Baby One More Time" in the background and her drooling over Eminem. Every. Single. Day. I have her to thank for the fact that I actually know who Carson Daly is, though I would be hard-pressed to pick him out of a lineup. (Only slightly related sidenote: I also read a story of a woman unable to identify anyone's voice - even her own daughter's - except for Sean Connery's. Long live the sexy Scottish burr!)

TRL was a storied part of that almost-final semester of college. It unwittingly played a small role in my education that summer. In fact, other than the tornado that hit The Frontier and the sudden death of JFK Jr., watching my roommate watch TRL would have a fighting chance as my most significant memory of that moment in lfie.**

Farewell, TRL. Thanks for the memories.

*Said roommate drove me up the wall. However, I now realize it could not have been much fun living with a grad student and a college senior who both had "get me out of here now" attitudes that were probably not well disguised.

**I was stuck in a weird East Coast v. Happy Valley time warp for those eight weeks. I don't remember much of anything, which is probably why what I DO remember is so ridiculously insignificant.