I'll be your blonde tonight if that's what you like

I got an iMac G3 from 1998, Ashley Tisdale's sleep mask, "I'll Do It" 💘

Jan 23, 2025

My energy this week:

There were nights when the wind was so cold 😒 🥶 🧣

In today’s edition, you will find out:
🖥 My most epic Physical Media Renaissance™ find
🤸🏻‍♀️ What I’m crossing off my 2025 Bingo card
📢 What a thrifter unexpectedly found in an Imogen Heap CD case
🌀 Which celebrity memoir I’m most excited about reading next
🕊 Who is Pamela Anderson’s favorite psychoanalyst
👩🏼‍⚕️ Which pop sub-genre Heidi Montag’s “I’ll Do It” ripened for resurgence
🧆 Where all Parker Posey’s Party Girl outfits are from
🎟 Why Ashley Tisdale wore a sleep mask on her head to a red carpet premiere
🐭 Who is Chuck E. Cheese’s latest unlikely influencer
🎰 What the Black Eyed Peas’s fanbase is called
🌊 Which 2000s singer 98 Degrees is still in touch with 25 years later
🪆 Who holds the world record for having the most troll memorabilia
🕶 What is the most iconic Barbie of 2025 thus far
💍 Which perhaps unlikely celebrity couple celebrated their 10-year anniversary
🎥 Which on-screen sisters and off-screen biology classmates reunited this week

Huge thank you to Nicstalgia supporters who I will love forever: Janine, Marie, Liv, Mitra, CY, Chet, and Jack! 💐💐💐

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🖥 For you are mine, at last

Since 2022, I’ve been actively collecting physical media and obsolete electronics for my Physical Media Renaissance™ project. I’m particularly passionate about the liminal space between post-obsolescence and pre-resurgence, and I enjoy exploring how innovation, aesthetics, nostalgia, cultural memory, economics, sociopolitical systems, and trend cycles intersect.

My collection of tchotchkes, knick knacks, thingamabobs, chincaglierie, ninnoli, trinkets, or whatever you wanna call them has developed quite nicely. Some of my favorite items are exact things I had as a kid – a transparent icy blue Memorex CD boombox, iZone camera, vintage Polly Pocket compact, and October 2001 issue of YM Magazine with Britney Spears on the cover. But there was one transparent blue electronic that I was missing: a vintage iMac G3 desktop computer. (Tbh the tangerine color would’ve worked too.) This fun, instantly recognizable computer represented an optimistic Y2K-era outlook on the future of technology, media, and mass communications. I’ve always thought these computers were so cool, and one of my favorite entertainment genres is 2000s Comedies with Prominent iMac G3 Placement. I also have an obsession with Starring The Computer, a website which details computers in movies and television and rates their appearance by importance, realism, and visibility.

My favorite 2000s Comedies with Prominent iMac G3 Placement include: Coyote Ugly, The Princess Diaries, FRIENDS, Legally Blonde, Sex and The City, Mean Girls, Coupling, The Family Stone, and Stella. Apparently it’s in Thirteen too, but I need to pop in the DVD to screenshot that one.

I searched eBay and Facebook Marketplace for what seemed like an eternity before I simply let it go. My parameters of $100 all-in and local pickup seemed like too much to ask. But you know what they say: If you love it, set it free, if it comes back it’s meant to be. And meant to be, it was. I’d deactivated my Facebook account since Phase I of My Digital Archiving Project and really never intended to go on it again. However, my sister sent me a listing for a $100 iMac in New Jersey, and I found myself down the rabbit hole once again. Turns out, there was one for $50 in Connecticut for sale by the nicest man with Girl Dad Energy named Todd. The computer was Todd’s daughter’s, as was the gigantic bag of over a dozen The Sims games he threw in for free. Shoutout to Todd!! I’m excited to announce that I am now the proud owner of a Bondi Blue iMac G3 computer from 1998!

I’m a fitness instructor and (I think) a pretty strong person, but I had to scurry at full speed in order to not drop my new, precious, 38-pound baby. Arm day! When I got the computer inside, I turned it on. It was so nostalgic seeing what I just found out is called moire – when the pixel grid of a camera sensor doesn’t align with the pixel grid of a computer screen and it makes weird lines across it. I changed the date to 2025, though I think it was already in the 2000s as opposed to the 1900s. Then I tried to play some CDs on the computer. The display worked, but the sound didn’t for whatever reason. Next, I tried to run The Sims. Turns out, all the games I have are either too new for the OS 9 software or they’re PC-only games. (Only the original Sims will work on this computer. I’m sure I’ll find one thrifting soon.) Determined to make something work, I fired up Microsoft Word. The keyboard buttons were a little stuck but functional. I typed out the first paragraph I could think of:

This computer now has a rightful place in my living room, and its mere presence makes me absolutely delighted every single day. I will definitely incorporate this electronic device into some kind of digital art project in the future, and at the very least, I can experience the rush of using the “motherlode” cheat code once again. The Bondi Blue iMac G3 is definitely my most epic Physical Media Renaissance™ find!

🤸🏻‍♀️ Childhood Delusions Film Festival

Excited to share that my home video will be included in the Childhood Delusions Film Festival!!! CDFF is happening at the Kent Theatre in Brooklyn on Saturday, February 8th. Crossing ‘Receive Film Festival Laurels’ off my 2025 Bingo card!

pophive

A post shared by @pophive

📲 I’m just a simple girl in a high-tech digital world

Imagine going to thrift Imogen Heap’s Speak for Yourself album (wow) and opening it to find The Sims CD ROM (wow). Speaking of Imogen Heap, whom I adore, “Headlock” went viral and made its Billboard Hot 100 debut 25 years after its release. Not sure how these people are just finding out about it now but okay!

Speaking of people I adore, Rick Astley’s autobiography is now available in the United States! It’s called Never, as in, when he’s gonna give you up, let you down, run around and hurt you, make you cry, say goodbye, tell a lie and desert you. There’s also a Never Spotify playlist that includes music mentioned in the book as well as a Never EP, including songs such as “Never Gonna Give You Up”, “Never Knew Love”, “Never Gonna Stop”, “I’ll Never Let You Down”, and “I’ll Never Set You Free”. He really stays on brand and I love that. It also includes “Whenever You Need Somebody”, which you may recognize from my Gilly Hicks playlist. (There may or may not be a Rickroll in this newsletter…)

Pamela Anderson talking about how Carl Jung reminds her of her grandfather and helped her understand art and her mind, imagination, and dreams is so healing. In the wise words of one commenter, “it’s amazing how many layers of humanity and beauty we loose when we objectify women.” Pamela and her powerful, rightful redemption arc restores my faith in humanity.

Spencer Pratt urged fans to stream Heidi Montag’s Superficial album (2010) after they sadly lost their home in the Palisades fire, and it went to number one on iTunes. A Corporate Fetish-themed music video [paging

Emily Sundberg

!] was released this week for the recently-viral song “I’ll Do It”. Heidi was right, people weren’t ready for “I’ll Do It” in 2010. Though for a variety of sociopolitical reasons, it’s clear to me that the excessive vapidity of (what I call) the Literal Trash sub-genre of pop music is exactly what we’re ready for in 2025.

Things I need, in no particular order: a Casio ring watch, an iPod Nano mirror, an aesthetically pleasing Rubik’s Cube, and every single outfit that Parker Posey wore in Party Girl (1995). (And also a a falafel with hot sauce, a side order of baba ganoush, and a seltzer for good measure.)

Ashley Tisdale explains her red carpet outfits! The people needed context! She was wearing the sleep mask to go with The Princess Diaries 2’s iconique slumber party theme. (One of the best sequels of all time IMHO.)

After filing and emerging from bankruptcy in 2020, Chuck E. Cheese majorly restructured. They’ve since rebranded and rolled out a membership with over 100k members. (They got rid of the singing animatronic animals but now have trampolines.) I was incredibly intrigued that one of their recent visitors was none other than Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins.

The news isn’t that the Black Eyed Peas canceled their Las Vegas residency tour due to ‘Current Circumstances’, the news is that BEP’s fandom is called the Peabodies.

98 Degrees posed in the same pose as a picture from them 25 years ago, reminding the internet that yes, they are still a band, and yes, they are still making music. The most important comment is not the one saying Thanks to global warming they are now 100 degrees or even 98 degrees are now 98 years..., but rather Samantha Mumba’s enthusiastic 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 hands up emojis.

Guinness World Record collector Sherry Groom’s The Troll Hole museum now claims the largest collection of troll memorabilia in the world – over 28,000 pieces! Now this is the only kind of troll I’m interested in.

More than a woman! Aaliyah Barbie is impeccably styled, released last week on what would have been the late R&B superstar’s 46th birthday.

Twin pop punk rocker Benji Madden and The Sweetest Thing actress Cameron Diaz celebrated their 10-year anniversary this month. (They’re one of my favorite examples of what I like to call the Power Punk dynamic.) In Benji’s words – what a beautiful life!

10 Things I Hate About You sisters Julia Stiles and Larisa Oleynik reunited at the premiere of Julia’s directorial debut, Wish You Were Here. Julia also reunited with Vanessa Carlton, who scored the movie and was also in Julia’s ninth grade biology class.