Monday, June 16, 2008

Down memory lane

My misspent childhood is coming back to haunt me. The Osmonds are here on a reunion tour this week and so are The Wynners. The Osmonds everybody knows. And even if they did sell out Wembley in an hour, I'm not rushing for tickets to their concert, I'm just too embarrassed. I'd rather forget about my Donny Osmond purple socks era. I plead juvenile ignorance, I was about 10 years old then. I still remember bolting through dinner on Saturday evenings so that I could beat my mother to the TV and could tune in to the Donny and Marie Show instead of her Chinese drama serials. And rushing to the music shop round the corner from my school when word went round that there's a new Donny and Marie album. And buying Fanfare magazine when Donny was the pin-up.

The Wynners are only a vague memory. They were a Hong Kong pop group that a cousin was into. I listened for a bit, maybe even bought a cassette (yes, those things) or two. My uncle used to take the mickey by calling them The Whiners instead of The Winners. I could name the members of the group once but not now. Same like how I've forgotten the names of the rest of the Osmond brothers. Funnily enough, the Osmonds names and songs came back quite readily when I saw them on Oprah.

And now, Get Smart has been made into a movie. I'm as enthusiastic about it as the Osmonds in concert. It just feels so wrong to sit through a movie-length version and in colour. It's just not Get Smart if Max doesn't walk down a long corridor of doors closing on him, uses his shoe phone and the whole thing isn't black & white (look, I'm not that old; when I started watching Get Smart, it was in afternoon off-peak reruns).

This lack of enthusiasm must mean that I'm old and jaded.

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