Old things new again

The other night I watched the new Melrose Place. I was a huge fan of the show back in the 90's when it originally aired. When Chris and I moved in together, they had just started showing the original Melrose on Soap Network, and we DVR'ed them and watched them every night. He was pretty skeptical at first, he'd never watched the show and thought it sounded pretty awful. My response was, awfully fantastic! Watching all the old ones again, I loved it just as much, it was just as cheesy, just as ridiculous, and just as awesome. Anyway, by the time we watched the whole series, he grudgingly admitted that it was not only highly addictive and entertaining, but so trashy it made you want to shower after watching it. Now, that's what I call great t.v. Anyway, I'm digressing. As I was watching this new Melrose, I was thinking about all the other things that keep coming back that we're trying to improve. Is that always a good thing? Can you improve on an original?

For instance, leg warmers. I rocked the leg warmers back in the day. My favorite ones were white with red cats on them. I wore them with black stirrup leggings, a baggy hot pink shirt, pulled low on one side so my shoulder and sports bra showed, and about 12 belts over the shirt. And as much as I was on the cutting edge of fashion in the 80's, I was horrified this week when I saw that not only leg warmers, which really was bad enough, but ARM warmers were in fashion. Arm warmers? Seriously? That's not an improvement on the orginal, that's just stupid. People wear them with t-shirts and tank tops. Dude, if your arms are cold, wear a long-sleeved shirt.

Sometimes making old things new again is a good thing, like when you find a great vintage bag, or you bring back a killer retro t-shirt. Some things are better left in the past, like jelly shoes, acid washed jeans and yes, leg warmers. And sometimes, when you try to improve on a good thing, you get a big pile of steaming crap. We'll see how the whole Melrose 2.0 fares, let's hope it doesn't turn out to be an arm warmer debacle.