Free My Formerly Hot Life by Stephanie Dolgoff

stayed up all on their own anyway and so didn’t need it.
    I whined about it a fair amount (on Facebook, of course, because there was no way I was going to learn how to use another social networking site) and many Formerlies agreed with me. Others accused us of being resistant to change, and told us to get over it. They weren’t wrong. I did sort of feel like I was turning into my grandparents. They’re gone now, but they used to become terribly anxious when their routines were disrupted. I kind of understood why even when I was a kid: They’d lived long enough to know what worked for them, and they didn’t relish any added challenges. When the little things, like getting in and out of your gigantic mauve aircraft carrier of a Lincoln becomes more difficult, some valet changing your radio station can be unnerving. Until you find the Perry Como station again, it feels like someone has fucked with your sense of reality just a little bit. And if the Publix runs out of your favorite brand of gluten-free dinner rolls, that can knock you flat on your ass for a good half hour, and require a therapeutic rehash (or several) with your wife of 50-plus years.
    I’m not set in my ways to the degree that my Lincoln-driving,Florida-living, gluten-free-roll-eating, Loehmann’s-shopping, Bronx-transplanted grandparents were. But I’ve got enough on my plate that when the things that are supposed to be relaxing require that I read instructions, I get cranky. It took me fully three months to not miss the “old” Facebook, and then they changed it on me again. I know I’m supposed to roll with it, but becoming a Formerly is change enough for now.

7
Formerly Famous
    A s long as there have been TV sitcoms, there has been the goofy TV dad trying to appear cool for his kids by using ridiculously dated catchphrases, or rendering current catchphrases ridiculous simply by virtue of the fact that he’s using them. The can’t-miss message is, once you’re a Formerly, you should stop saying things like “It’s da bomb,” “Fierce!” or, worse, “Talk to the hand,” because you’re only highlighting the convention center–sized gap between you and the young person you’re trying to connect with.
    I’m simply not in contact with enough cool people to even pretend to keep up. The fact that what’s cutting edge in technology and music and film and catchphrases seems to turn over much more frequently than when we were in our 20s and 30s might just be that phenomenon of time seeming to pass more quickly when you’re older, or perhaps it really is spinning that fast—black, white and red all over like a penguin in a blender.
    Still, the first time it hits you that you are on the outside of pop culture looking in, it can be startling. Here’s what happened to my friend Kathleen, who is a political consultant. Last year, Kathleen was checking out a video Nancy Pelosi’s office posted on YouTube. Right in the middle of it, the sound of a record needle scratching against vinyl could be heard, and then the unmistakable strains of ’80s pop singer Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Astley himself then made a brief appearance in acid wash doing that little side-to-side hair-floppy ’80s dance before the video faded out to a picture of the Capitol, lending the whole thing an air of official dignity and understatement.
    Kathleen sat in wonderment. Her cubemate, a man in his 20s who is fond of retro attire, smiled and said, “Shit! Pelosi’s been rickrolled!” Kathleen hadn’t the foggiest, although of course she remembered the song. “She’s been what?” He patiently explained what the term meant: that some wag manages to tape over your YouTube submission with a Rick Astley song. It’s a playful form of video vandalism utilizing a washed-up Formerly Famous pop star from the era before there was an Internet. Rickrolling is now what Rick Astley is most famous for, and all he had to do to be resurrected from the Where