Outside the Beltway

Olsen Twins Turn 18

James Joyner · Sunday, June 13, 2004 · 5 comments

Having literally watched them develop from infancy in public, the widespread fascination with the Olsen twins eludes me. They seem nice enough, have managed to sustain their appeal into adulthood, and they’ve grown into pretty young girls, but apparently they are something of an obsession for some people a wee bit old to be fixated on teenagers:

E! Online — Mary-Kate & Ashley: Jailbait No More

As of this Sunday, June 13, wonder twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are legal adults. The girls will be able to vote and buy cigarettes. Their 18th birthdays also mark the end of an era for the Olsen Twins Countdown Clocks, the Internet sites devoted to tracking the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds until the former Full House-rs come of age.

The countdown clock fad began when the twins hit their mid-teens and transformed from tween phenoms to legitimately hot celebrity babes.

Deejays Lex & Terry, a morning drive-time team based out of Jacksonville, Florida, have been using the twins’, uh, flowering as a “running gag” for four years, and have been running an online Olsen Twins Countdown Clock for three. After yakking about the twins–who graduated from the Campbell Hall School in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley just days ago–for so long, Lex & Terry are celebrating Mary-Kate and Ashley’s 18th birthdays in Las Vegas.

So far as I know, they aren’t going to celebrate the day by jumping from a perfectly good airplane while in flight.

Hat tip: Dodd Harris