As the Winter semester comes to a close, the class of 2022 is getting ready to graduate. Some will take a gap year to travel or to work, whilst others may be heading to graduate school. The options are endless—but what’s certain is that graduation marks both the end of[Read More…]
Tag: Nostalgia
The unspoken harm of digital hoarding
Toward the end of my winter break, I flipped open my copy of the New York Times to find a dying Seneca, scantily clad with arms outstretched as if to spread the last vestiges of his sagacity to his surrounding party. He was trapped in the chassis of an article[Read More…]
When Christmas isn’t how it used to be
Upon entering my go-to cafe last week, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. Christmas music was playing and a familiar thought crept back into my mind: Christmas has not felt like Christmas to me for a while now. When familiar tunes about reindeers and Santa Claus chime from[Read More…]
Maybe I was always playing myself
In elementary school, I spent most of my Saturdays attending Young People’s Concerts at the New York Philharmonic. My memories of those days are scattered and somewhat fleeting—I was far more enthralled by post-concert trips for hotdogs at Grey’s Papaya and Revson Fountain’s extravagant water jets than the actual performances.[Read More…]
‘He’s All That’ is a hollow ode to ’90s teen nostalgia
As if by mass psychosis, filmmakers have been scrambling to rehash ‘90s movies in all their zany glory. Case in point: He’s All That, a gender-swapped revamp of 1999’s She’s All That. On the surface, the remake has all the trappings of a potential Netflix hit: Lucrative source material that[Read More…]
The role of analog media in an online world
Last Friday, I listened to Prince by Prince on vinyl while I handwrote a letter to a friend, wandered the streets taking videos on my handheld camcorder, and watched my favourite John Cusack film High Fidelity on VHS. It is 2021, and yet I find that my days are consumed[Read More…]
The Royalmount Drive-In offers a nostalgic escape during uncertain times
It’s a familiar scene in popular culture: Groups of teenagers and families packed in their cars, radio dials tuned to FM signals, billowing cigarette smoke forming clouds in the projector light. Such was the magic of the drive-in cinema, with its eclectic blend of innocence and rebellion, sociability and privacy.[Read More…]
One-tweet wonder
The thought of achieving any form of popularity had always seemed light-years away for someone like myself who is accustomed to mediocrity. I had never found the prospect of widespread admiration particularly attractive to begin with. As cliché as it sounds, external validation has always seemed a little shallow to[Read More…]
A tribute to the best toys of the ’90s and 2000s
Any McGill student can argue that everything was better in the ‘90s. Toys “R” Us was still in business, and Britney—not Kendall—was the queen of Pepsi. In terms of toys, the best have come from that decade and the early 2000s, when Bop It, Mr. Potato Head, and those strange[Read More…]
In appreciation of home—sweet, unremarkable home
“You’re not in Kansas anymore!” In the limited introductions I’ve made since the start of this semester, I’ve elicited this response four times. Mind you, I can’t blame anyone for failing to think of anything better. The most distinctive piece of trivia about my hometown, Kansas City, is that most[Read More…]