Trade Show Guru

I was going to title this post, “A Lack of Appreciation“, but I decided that sounds too crotchety and negative, so I’ll go with “Remember When“. This post is really just a funny video, with a few introductory comments from yours truly. I’ve never heard of the comedian in this clip, and I’ve never watched the Conan O’Brian show, but the comedian is very funny and the video clip is well worth watching.

The comedian is Louis CK, I believe, and the video clip is titled, “Everything is amazing… and nobody’s happy“. The point he is making is that maybe there is a silver lining in our current economic “downturn.” He speculates that maybe we take things too much for granted these days. We want everything right now. We don’t appreciate what we have. Maybe a bit of “hard times” will make us appreciate a little more how incredibly lucky we are, and how well off even the “poorest” of us are, at least in this country and in the first world. Anyway, I enjoyed his comments, and I too remember when I had to walk into a bank to get money to use for shopping and buying stuff. I remember when ATMs first came out… I didn’t really trust them. I remember when phones were plugged into walls… and there were no answering machines. If someone wasn’t home, the phone just rang and rang. And there was no way to call them at the store to remind them to get some peanut butter. I remember when the “radar range” (microwave oven) first came out and we got one. We were amazed when we put marshmallows in it and they puffed up (and made delicious s’mores). I remember typewriters. I remember Walkmans and cassette tapes (my friend even had an 8-track player). I remember when kids went trick or treating. Those were the good old days. And I remember when I had to walk ten miles to school, through five feet of snow in the blazing summer heat with no water, uphill both ways… well, I’m getting carried away. But maybe we should pause and think about just how lucky we are…

So here’s the video, “Everything is amazing… and nobody’s happy”. I hope you laugh.

And I’ll ask you, what do you remember when…