Jaquandor, who I believe is actually a bit younger than myself, said the following in passing earlier today:

Scary thought: E.T. is older now than Casablanca was when I was born.

Thinking to myself, “nah, that can’t be right,” I did a little googling followed by a little calculating, and indeed, it is so. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was released in 1982, 29 years ago this summer, whereas in the year I was born, 1969, the Bogart-Bergman classic — released in 1942 — was a mere 27 years old.

I’ve had a lot of similar thoughts lately, comparing the now-current ages of my own life’s pop-cultural landmarks to things that I thought of as “old” when I was a kid. Star Wars is now as old — 34 years — as Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman was in the year Star Wars came out. Miami Vice is now as old — more or less — as Dragnet (the TV version; the radio serial was even older) was when Vice premiered. Christopher Reeve’s Superman: The Movie is currently seven years older than George Reeves’ Adventures of Superman TV series was when “modern” special effects first made me believe a man could fly. Most sobering of all is that movies that screened during my career as a multiplex usher and later projectionist — which really does feel like yesterday to me — are now as ancient (and probably as dated in appearance and subject matter) as Easy Rider was when I started at Movies 7.

Of course, the peculiar thing about me is that I always liked old movies and TV. It’s never made much difference to me if something was in black-and-white or if its cast had strange haircuts and clothes. I wonder if there are any kids of the current generation who feel the same? Probably not… they’re all too spoiled by photorealistic CGI and the spastic-rabbit style of editing to tolerate older films.

I don’t really have a point here, I guess, except to note how strange it feels when I realize that things I still like, that still matter to me, that still feel relatively recent to me, are, well, old. Not just out of fashion or no longer current but downright old. Strange… and depressing. And it’s happening more and more often, too…