We like to think of ourselves as a well-informed society. Well, not so much in the arena of current events, geography or the fine arts…but we can all identify a photo of Snooki, which I think plays no small part in galvanizing our nation. Yes, we have become pop culture mavens, able to wax rhapsodic on the merits of The Voice versus American Idol one minute and extol the virtues of a guitar-playing dog from YouTube the next. Our appetite for entertainment news in particular has become insatiable…so much so, in fact, that it has led to headlines such as, “Where is Scott Baio of Happy Days Now?” Huh? Anyone with a peripheral knowledge of entertainment knows that he starred in Diagnosis Murder and gained fame for dating a bevy of starlets. He also starred in his own VH-1 reality show a few years back. Okay, so it’s not a resume that screams lifetime achievement award. But it’s not as if Baio died with Chachi in that explosion (or whatever happened to that Italian stallion). An even more glaring example I recently saw was the headline “See What Saved By The Bell‘s Tiffani Amber-Thiessen Is Up To Now.” Like Baio, the former Kelly Kapowski has hardly set the acting world afire since bidding adieu to Cal U in ’93 (c’mon, you didn’t think I forgot about The College Years, did you?). But she was memorable as schemer Valerie Malone on Beverly Hills, 90210 and was a mainstay of TV-movies for years. But perhaps more egregious than the case of Mr. Baio, Theissen is actually a current cast member of the series White Collar. This illustrates the absurdity of our obsession with connecting to our pop culure past: she hasn’t even had the opportunity to fade into oblivion. The Internet has made it easier to connect with our pop culture past, meaning the dead (career-wise, of course) never really stay dead. And reality television is only happy to oblige by giving them a platform. Jaleel “Urkel” White will be a contestant on the next edition of Dancing With The Stars. Bronson Pinchot has a new home restoration show on the DIY network, for Christ’s sake. Our avarice is fed by nostalgia and curiosity, a combustible mix if there ever was one. Mind you, I don’t find this trend to be entertainment Armageddon. But it is nice to leave the past in the past; sometimes it’s actually more engaging to speculate why so-and-so was never a bigger star. The Hollywood landscape can get awfully crowded when no one ever actually fades away.