Back to Back to the Future

I am a trend setter. At least I wish I was. Recently, over this last summer, my girlfriend and I watched the entire Back to the Future trilogy. It took a while because we could only watch on DVD at a time from Netflix, and our schedules were so busy it was rare when we had time to sit down and watch it. But we finished the entire series, and I loved it. Still great movies.

Now I have noticed lately that other people have thought of the same thing as well. Everywhere I see in the media it seems like has a Back to the Future reference in it. Seriously. I have started a worldwide phenomenon! This is what I have found in the last month:

Editors Note: I am not a fan of Owl City. I do not listen to him. I find him rather whiny/annoying. Ok, moving on now.

I'm guessing the majority of you didn't watch those all. Slackers! Those took me a while to find and put in! But it brings me to a less fun but nevertheless a deep and profound point: why do we long for those things in the past? Nostalgia is an interesting thing. The original Back to the Future came out in 1985. For those of you that need help with math, that is roughly 26 years ago. Older than my life. But why do we return to those  things? Does it stir up memories of our past and childhood, and make us feel all warm inside? A lot of movies I've seen as an adult that I thought was awesome as a kid aren't what I remembered them to be. Pinocchio is a classic example. I loved the movie growing up. Now it is creepy as hell crap.

It goes deeper than that. We long for things of the past because of the memories and feelings we attach to them. Sometimes it is rewarding and beneficial to revisit them. Those memories resurface and we leave refreshed and glad we did so. On the other hand, sometimes we discover what we thought it was to be wasn't what we remembered. Then it ruins it for us in the future. Like Duck Tales, I kind of don't want to go watch those because I'm afraid they will be, well, terrible. Maybe some things in our past are better left. alone.