Hey, dudes. I can sign autographs later. For, like, the 1 percent of you who don’t recognize me, I was a background extra on the show Good Morning, Miss Bliss. That was the original name–as every true hipster in here knows–of the show Saved by the Bell.

 

Yeah, yeah, I bet it’s all coming back to you now. You just gotta MacGuyver those memories to the front of your brain. And you know what we’re about to do, right? We gotta grab our fanny packs and head over to Wicker Park so we can EAT some AC Sliders and Lisa Turtle Milkshakes at the Max.

 

It’s gonna be a Bayside reunion, and you totally have to come!

 

You’re one of us. You know who you are. Whatever happened to predictability? It’s still here—it’s you! You’ve watched Fuller House and you’ve CUT IT OUT and HAD MERCY and HOW RUDEd with the best of them. And now, here’s your chance to Marty McFly yourself away to a better time. Back to the early 90s when you had all that potential, before you Office Spaced your life. Fuckin’ A, man, you were just a boy meeting the world, busy hanging with Mr. Feeny and hottie Shawn Hunter and even hanging with Mr. Cooper.

 

This is what 2016 is all about. It’s your moment. You millennials never got to have an adolescence of endless selfies and facebook-documented epic nights, but you still want a neverending story of your childhood, complete with your own flying luckdragon—I know, I know—blew my mind too, that neverending story thing wasn’t a dog, guys.

 

Chicago, you are a SUCKER for nostalgia! You’re even throwing a Ferris Bueller parade in May. What’s it gonna be next? Scrabbling up the windows of a downtown skyscraper to have an adventure while you’re babysitting? Arriving to town a Perfect Stranger to your cousin, Larry Appleton?

 

Yes, it definitely makes sense to have the Max diner in Chicago, especially since this city was featured in Saved by the Bell…hmmm…never. Even though there might have been some California Dreams with it in L.A., that wasn’t going to happen. And it wasn’t going to be a hit if The Max opened in the original city of the show, (does anyone know what it was?) Indianapolis. I’m not joking.

 

Chicago, it’s you—you who wanted this magical candied bacon diner meant for a man-child. Don’t worry, Dustin Diamond won’t be there to stab you, although he IS being released from his four months in Wisconsin prison right around the time The Max will open, but let’s not think about that. Thinking about that will just tarnish your memories, and you don’t want them tarnished. You still want problems that never get too big for a 21-minute episode to solve. When you screw up, you want a Kelly Kapowski to forgive you. And when things get really bad, you still want to be able to count on a Mr. Belding. You want to choose your own adventure and it’s to relive the one you already lived!

 

All of these reboots aren’t an X-File conspiracy. YOU WANT TO BELIEVE that you can go back, and you can! Come on, Sister, Sisters, take your Twin Peaks and bask in the Malibu Sands of time—and if you really wanna maintain your hipster status, wear your glitter lapel tuxedo and bring a magic trick or two so that you can throwback to when the Max was actually run by a dude named Max—bonus points for giving advice to teenagers and then punctuating that advice with a matching gag – like holding up a fish with giant bulletholes in it and saying, “Holy Mackerel!” Yes, that’s how cheesy the jokes were. You just didn’t notice because you were 12. But now you notice that Uncle Jesse’s sexual innuendos get old pretty quickly throughout the new, 13 craptacular episodes. Come on, Preppy. You think you’re too cool for all this? This past week, dinner tickets for Saved by the Max sold out in 20 minutes. You’re not fooling anybody. I know you wanna go.

 

I mean, you hate that you want to go, but you’re gonna go anyway. And once you get there, it’s gonna be like you’re trying to resuscitate a dead memory rather than making a new one, and you can’t do anything but watch it happen. That’s what happened to me every time at the Max when the whole Zack Attack posse would swagger in. I sat in the back. You hung out there too, and you didn’t say anything either, even when Zach turned to you and talked straight to you. So, you’ve gotta come to the reunion to celebrate what once was. You and I still aren’t stars, but I know we can sing the theme song like Milli Vanilli, so lemme hear it:

When I wake up in the morning

And the ‘larm gives out a warning

I don’t think I’ll ever make it on time

By the time I grab my books

And I give myself a look

I’m at the corner just in time to see the BUS FLY BY!

It’s all right, cuz I’m saved by the bell!