It's Akilah, Obviously!

One of my most vivid early childhood memories is being woken up before dawn by my mother. She would always turn on the 13” tv at the foot of our bunkbed to Woody Woodpecker. After that cartoon, Garfield and Friends (and that show about the farm animals? The one with the duck with the floaty that looked like that same duck and had the same facial expressions? And there was an egg with feet?…. Anyone?) would come on. 

For those of you that got flashed Men in Black-style/those of you who aren’t getting my awesome 90s references, Garfield is an orange cat that is fat, lazy, loveless, and happily so. His day-to-day life included binge eating pasta while simultaneously being bothered by his borderline sociopathic owner, John Arbuckle, a seriously infatuated grey cat named Nermal, and Odie, the only animal character that I’m positive was an animal.

One month (years after my interest peaked in Garfield and Friends), I was chosen as student of the month. What in hindsight seems to be nothing more than a school’s way to fill up an extra bulletin board with construction paper, student of the month was a huge source of pride for young Akilah. The survey questions for my profile might as well have been an exclusive interview with Vanity Fair.

When I reached the portion of the Qs that asked what my favorite hobbies were, I had a dilemma: Do I just write down “Barbie car-washes and Snick” or do I go with the Garfield answer, “Eating. Sleeping. And Watching TV?”

Like any reasonable child, I just put down both, requiring that my student of the month sheet be 2 pages rather than the typically allotted 1. 

As an adult in the 2000s, I guess my more accurate hobbies list would include:

-Eating

-Regretting Eating

-Going to the Gym to Counteract Eating

-Oversleeping

-Coming Up with Good Convincing Excuses for Oversleeping

-and Watching Netflix or Hulu Plus

I’m not sure that Garfield didn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy for me, but I do think there is a part of every 20-something that relates to different aspects of the show. Like perhaps Garfield’s “lasagna habit” which I’m now realizing was just a thinly veiled metaphor for being an alcoholic. Or maybe the simple truth that cats do not want you to have a successful love-life. Regardless, I’m just pointing out similarities where I see them.

xoxo,

(Source: itsakilahobviously.com)

I need to update all of you on what I did for Election Night in its entirety, but the most profound thing happened to me that Tuesday night and I just have to tell you all about it!

Do you remember the show Darkwing Duck? What if tomorrow you were walking down the street and someone was wearing a Darkwing Duck shirt? Wouldn’t you sort of be overwhelmed by the 90s serendipity taking place? Wouldn’t it completely blow your mind that these relics of a more innocent age just came back into your life completely unprovoked? What if it was Darkwing Duck, but he had grown up and was like a doctor or something else respectable? Am I too crunk about Darkwing Duck, or do you understand what I’m getting at?

Well all at once, my childhood came back to me. I saw Mara Wilson at the PIT. Yes, that Mara Wilson. No, Ms. Honey wasn’t there. Yes she still looked like herself, but yes, she was impressively grown up and completely shrugged off the child-star image. 

There’s something about Lindsay Lohan child-stars that tends not to resonate with their audience as we age. Too often they come back into our lives incorrectly (through commercials or really bad appearances on Law & Order SVU) and we can’t stop seeing them as who they were 10-15-20 years ago! Mary Kate and Ashley are still trying to be seen as adults in the eyes of their fans(zoom in on Mary Kate’s uncomfortable relationship with that 40-something guy), and it definitely isn’t easy. Mara Wilson has made the transition, y’all. Not just a little bit, but completely.

She has a super rad blog where she posts her personal, resonant, hilarious stories—and the reading she did about a terrible boy she once dated brought the house down. I completely forgot she was in Miracle on 34th Street because the girl standing in front of us was comfortably multi-talented. She wasn’t relying on her child-stardom at all. She was exposing a side of herself that was unlike anything you would have predicted from seeing an 8 year old on screen, and I wanted to read more and more and more of her work. 

Seeing Mara gave me hope. We can all be more than the hobbies we had as children, but more importantly, when we’re true to who we are now rather than being who other people want us to be, we can and will be accepted.

Okay, I’m off the soap-box. Back to your regularly scheduled lives…

(Source: itsakilahobviously.com)

But Whitney Houston hit especially hard. She represented so much of my childhood!  Burger King crowns, the Bodyguard Soundtrack, and my sister, Lanie. Disbelief.

Ahhhh! It’s already time for the second installment of Tunesday Tuesday! I almost completely forgot until this very moment (read: 7:41 EST). In honor of my finally getting a car again, I’m sporting an oldy, but goody:

Why were the 90s so terribly awesome? Everything was literally terrible and awesome.