Today, my heart swings

Tonight, I watched the first two episodes of Regular Show: The Lost Tapes. The jokes were perfectly silly and felt classic. How lucky are we that Pops was able to plunder that VHS facility and find a bunch of new stuff!!? Also it felt more like purgatory than heaven if your VHS tape can break and everyone you turn to says “oh well,” with a complacent shoulder shrug. Anyway…

Watching these two episodes hit me in a surprising way. It was the first show in a long time that made me put down my phone and watch it intently. Suddenly, I was 14 again, being sent to the office for wearing a shirt that had Skips’ nipples on it. I was 14 again, begging my parents to let me name the new cat Trash Boat (who has now passed 💙💔). And I was 14 again, excitedly pacing at 7:52 on Thursday nights, and then eventually Monday nights, waiting for the new episode to finally. AIR. AFTER. ADVENTURE TIME. COME ON DUDE, GET ON WITH IT ALREADY.

I loved the show that I watched tonight because it breathed that same hilarious absurdity that I knew from the older seasons, and not the outer space arc from the last few. Not to mention: the 80s music.

However, I can’t help but feel oddly alone when viewing it. Regular Show became a weekly fixture on Tumblr for me and many others. We live-blogged, found each other through the RS tag, made art for one another, and connected with storyboard artists. This was the show that taught me how to storyboard by studying the boards they shared on Scribd, and I screamed internally whenever Toby Jones or Cal Wong liked one of my peers or my own posts.

Now, there is no one.

Through some way or another, things fell apart, interests diverged, and people drifted as they do. Life goes on. It’s crazy to think that I am now 4 years older than Mordecai and Rigby. And my gut reaction when I heard that Hall and Oates song in the second episode was ugh, because I’ve now held several jobs where they blast that song and several other greatest hits of the ‘80s. It makes me miss the fandom and what it used to be. It’s weird because RS was based around a kind of 80s nostalgia and now it’s taken on a new one with this iteration.

Still…one thing has not changed: Benson was NEVER entitled to those grilled cheese deluxe sandwiches. THAT’S THE ONLY CORRECT ANSWER

Thanks for reading. Hmm hmm.