Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

by Chuck Klosterman

8:06 P.M.: Okay, here’s something I failed to anticipate: it turns out VH1 Classic operates on some kind of “block system,” because they just played Tom Petty’s “So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star” (again), and now they’re playing the same Roger Waters shit I saw at 12:05. I am now going to have to spend the next eight hours rewatching the exact same videos I just spent the previous eight hours watching, in the exact same sequence. If I were a member of al Qaeda, this would be enough to make me talk. 8:28 P.M.: This is all so idiotically meta. Because this is VH1 Classic, all these videos are things I saw in the distant past. They make me think of junior high. But because I just finished watching these same exact clips eight hours ago, my window for nostalgia is much smaller. I am now nostalgic for things that just happened. So the second time I see Fine Young Cannibals’ “Good Thing,” it makes me nostalgic for 12:30, which was when I had General Tso’s chicken for lunch. Yeah, those were GTs.