Today I saw an advertisement for the new Zac Efron movie 17 Again. I got to thinking about kids today and what’s cool to them. There’s High School Musical, Hannah Montana, iCarly, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, the Jonas Brothers, etc. I have to admit that if I were 10-13 I would probably love all of those things too.

All you have to do to appeal to the youth of America is find a teenager whose good looking, mostly innocent, and seems like they could be easily corrupted. BAM. You’ve a got a star that every teenager can love. Think back to the people who graced the cover of those magazines when you were younger. Don’t they fit that description? For me it was Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Devon Sawa, Danielle Fischel, Britney Spears, Hanson, Backstreet Boys, NSync, etc. All of them fit that description. SO similar to the young Hollywood of today, eh?

This train of thought led me to my own childhood. There are three things that not too many people know about me.

1. When I was in elementary school I would buy Bop, Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, and BB magazines. I would tear out all of the posters, put them in Lisa Frank folders, take them to school with me, and sell them. The small, one page posters were a quarter, the two page posters were fifty cents, and the centerfolds were a dollar. That’s how I paid for my ice creams every day. And I always made a profit.
2. The poster-selling phase happened about the same time as the picture-signing phase. I would take pictures of myself, have them developed, and then sign them. I just knew that when I was famous someday those pictures would be worth a ton of mollah!
3. I still have a huge box full of those Bop, Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, and BB magazines from the 90s. I know that it’s stupid to keep them, but I don’t want to get rid of them. I think that my daughter (should I have one) might get a kick out of looking through them some day.

Don’t you just love the good ol’ days?