Song of the Day: “I’m on a Boat” by The Lonely Island feat. T-Pain

Novelty, parody, and sketch songs have never been a major interest of mine. And most of my reviews would sound the same. So this week, instead of writing about the song, I’m going to pick one of its intriguing quirks or a related topic to spotlight.

Spotlight: Things that make me feel old

When I looked up “I’m on a Boat” and saw that it came out almost ten years ago, I did a double-, then triple-, take. No way that’s right! It came out not too long before I graduated college….. oh.

I’m old.

At the risk of going all BuzzFeed on you, here are ten specific realizations I’ve had — other than “I’m on a Boat” being ineligible for “best song of the 2010s” — that have really rubbed in the passage of time.

We are as close to 1990 as 1990 is to the JFK assassination. I was two years old in 1990, and the early ’60s seemed like ancient history, so I guess I, too, am ancient history.
I have heard Max Martin songs on classic rock radio. (“It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi)
The Office, i.e. the first TV show that was meaningful to me in a non-childhood context, turns 15 this year.
Pluto was stripped of its status as a planet just one year before Justin Bieber became the first meaningful YouTube crossover star. If a baby was born the day the former occurred, she would be in 7th grade right now, almost a teenager.
Trayvon Martin was killed more than 5 years ago.
R. Kelly is 50. Kanye West is 40. Troy Bolton from High School Musical is 30 and probably an accountant. The little sister from Modern Family is 20. Taylor Swift’s first top-ten hit is 10 (not even from her first album!).
I last posted to my LiveJournal nine years ago, the same year… gulp… this site launched.
My wife and I have dated or been married in 14 different years.
I first appeared in an episode of Count Gauntly’s Horrors from the Public Domain five years ago.

It’s going to be hilarious to come back to this every year, and laugh that I thought I felt old then, and trigger an existential crisis, and weep, and wish I was back in my 20’s and my daughter was still a baby and my back hurt less. Hilarious.