It doesn't feel like 1999, and good

Donald Fagen once said that Abbie Hoffman once said that nostalgia is a mild form of depression, a concept I've always considered pure, it drives much of my writing. It's good to feel slightly sad and growing old no matter what age we are, it reminds us that we spend most of our lives not feeling that way, rather saucy and spirited and with a seat facing forward.

We in this moment are also among the rare group allowed to straddle the culture of two different centuries, and it is fun to point to a previous century. The last time I was in the previous century, "the previous century" was the 19th one. With steampunk, Kevin Kline looking confused with the script, Will Smith slaps a spider, Burger King advertising its rodeo burger, their take on the taste of the last century. Now the rodeo burger is actually the taste of the last century.

Please tell this thing about the burger to anyone who thinks things were better in the 1990s. The decade stank of corporate culture and the cheapest product a company could stand to sell us.

Outside of sophomoric pursuits, a Barry Sonnenfeld movie that I never saw (I don't know if Fresh Prince actually slapped or even fought the dang spider) inexplicably starring Kenneth Branagh is my freshest memory from the time. If anyone asks you to recall fondly of the year 1999, remind them it was as tawdry and icky and disappointing as any of our last ten years, although a lot of that was the French golfer showing us his gross feet while blowing the 1999 British Open.