Awkward Commas
25/08/2011
“ What also could be happening, though—if you happen to watch this show looking for deep, spiritual meaning like I sometimes do—is a call to arms for like-minded individuals to continue creating great things. If you love Pete And Pete, let’s say, don’t just lament the loss of the show on the ’net, or say “Hey, remember Clarissa?” Watching old DVDs to try and recapture the feeling you once had the first time you saw something might be fun, but it can be a little pointless, too. Blasphemy, I know, considering that’s basically what we’re doing here—and then writing about it. Pete’s lesson—and our lesson—from this show is not just “find a song and love it,” but rather, “if you love something, go make something someone else can love.” Polaris did this for Pete when they accidentally fed him the song that he loved. The Blowholes did this when they played “Surfin’ Bum, Surfin’ Fun” for grumpy Fred Hurley. The creators of Pete And Pete deep, I know did this when they heard a Magnetic Fields song they liked or saw a Hal Hartley movie and said, “Hey, we should introduce this band or these actors to other people.” It’s a little bit of a stretch, maybe, but it makes sense all the same. Nostalgia’s a hell of a drug, especially these days. Every other Tumblr is all, “Remember so and so?” People are nostalgic for things that happened earlier this week, like the days before the East Coast earthquake. That’s fun and everything, but it’s dangerous. It puts this hazy veil over everything in the past and all the time we spend thinking about those things, we’re not making new things, pushing art and culture forward, or saying, “Hey, Pete And Pete did so much for me, so maybe it can do that for someone else, or maybe I can take those ideas and, even though I don’t make TV shows, do whatever I can with them to make someone else happy. “ If we’re stuck in the past—or in Pete’s case, stuck listening to the same song over and over again, even if it’s our very favorite song ever—we’re not moving forward. That song’ll still be there in a day or a week when we want to go back and listen to it and feel that way all over again—unlike the unreleased DVD set of The Adventures Of Pete And Pete’s third season, but that’s another story all together. „
“Hard Day’s Pete” | The Adventures Of Pete And Pete | TV Club | TV | The A.V. Club
Quote posted at 17:35
