March 01, 2006

• Oh, and yah, I know this is a totally fluff post.
• 90's clothes 90's slang 90's movies 90's overview
• what do you mean 'how much do we remember of the 90s?' because we're too young or too drug-addled? I remember all of the 90s perfectly, I didnt start drinking to the point of passing out until the 21st century. the 80s were better....
• Good point Medusa. I was passed out for a lot of the 90's and can still remember most of it. After all it was barely half a decade ago. Damn 90's revival parties are happening already? This revival trend thing is out of hand... before you know it you'll be going to the dry cleaners to pick up last weeks cleaning and they'll be calling it a "revival"... winks at Mel
• Yeah, the 80s were better.
• Yeah I know it's lame. I'm not a real "revival" kind of guy -- the mooovie just happened to make me think of it is all. I started thinking "was that movie really as good as I remember? or was I just really baked."
• You need to dress up like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.
• no way stomper, this is fun and I like fluff personally. The movie is good and the 90s had some redeeming qualities. Radiohead comes to mind....
• "How much of the 90s do you remember?" Only too much, my friend, only too much. I wasn't drinking yet. I've since fixed that. Luckily, I'm erasing more and more of that Unpleasantness ev-er-y day.
• If you can remember the Nineties, you weren't there, man! probably regret most of it.
• Or what the good Captain Said. Side Note: If you want to get into the first half of the nineties, rent (Or buy!) some Kids in the Hall DVDs. They nailed the craptastic zeigeist perfectly.
• I was about to say 'what medusa said'. Shows you that my plan of destroying all my synapses is well-underway. Just keep me off the Gatorade.
• I you remember the 80's, you won't bother remembering the 90's.
• As soon as I posted that comment I realized that age may have a lot to do with how cool/memorable a decade was. At my age (I turn 41 today!) the 80's were my peak years of 15-25, full of drunkenness and debauchery, whereas the 90's consisted of getting married, having kids, paying bills, and building a career. For someone ten years younger than I, the 90's may have been a blast.
• Nope. Dullsville. At least, out here in the burbs. Sure, the occasional kegger in the bush -- our attempts to get in on that whole 'rave' thing -- but for the most part, it was lameness all 'round. ICONIC 90s MOMENT FOR THE CAPT.: After weeks and weeks of suicide watch, finally hearing that Kurt Cobain offed himself, and feeling somewhat gleeful, as a) Nirvana killed off a lot of neat 80s music just as it was getting interesting, and b) I had an Iconic Moment to share with Karen F. in the next quad, meaning that she would have to remember me for the rest of her life. Yesssss..!
• no rocket, you just got boring young. KIDDING!! I will be 38 in about 3 weeks and altho I greatly enjoyed the 80s I was underage for most of them, not to mention broke and having of low self-esteem. so I personally had more fun in the 90s, but not because of any cultural trappings of said decade, just because I became less of a loser.
• (And if there's any 90s movie I identify with -- rather than identify as 90s (such as the soundtracks for Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting being played at every goddamn party it's this one. Seeing it, after having moved to the Big City, I had to cringe in recognition. This was my life. These were my friends. Kill me now.)
• no rocket, you just got boring young. Soon after the 90's ended I got divorced, and the drunkenness and debauchery resumed with full force.
• I stand by my previous (self-linky) statement.
• The film Singles (directed by Cameron Crowe) sums up the ninties for me. I still wear ripped jeans with thermals under them and doc martins so I guess I'm stuck in the past. Has a band better than the Screaming Trees come out yet?
• The 90s were a soulless decade. A CGI decade - it looked real, until you looked close, and then you realized it was all computer-generated, all Lawnmower Man, all software-driven. Look at your screen: colors, lights, power, arcana! Look at what it's contained in: beige metal box. That's the 90s.
• Rocket glad to hear it, I know that my own 90s were NOTHING in comparison to the debauched sinscapade of the double-oughts. w00t! (and Felonius Drunk, as possessor of perhaps the BEST USER NAME E.V.A.R. you can dress however ya likes!)
• Happy birthday, rocket41!
• Ah! THat explains why he sometimes rubs me up the wrong way - I don't get along with other Pisces men very much, but get on spectacularly well with Pisces women.
• Holee shit! Sorry, I read that, and it didn't even register! Happy birthday, rocketman!
• The 90s were a soulless decade. A CGI decade I'd say that started in full force in the late 80s... only then it was satire, dystopic fantasies, and the 90s found us all too digital-drunk to care and notice just what we were getting into. Oh, yes, I have some better memories of the 80s. First impacts are harder to forget. The 90s literally passed me by in a blur. And now, we're already past the half of the 00s? Gosh, I feel old.
• Have a good one, rocketman!
• Happy Birthday to Rocket! Happy Birthday to Me(dusa)! (almost...) get on spectacularly well with Pisces women *bats long Piscean mermaid eyelashes at Chyren*
• awful awful AWFUL pop culture. Grunge, tarantino, "reality bites" and the henious "slacker" craze- simply the worst stuff in recent memory, if not ever.
• Happy B Day, ya big projectile!
• You know, it's interesting. I really didn't know what to expect of this thread, but it has highlighted a trend whereby every decade since the 60's "sucks" in retrospect. 70's: paranoid, the "angry" decade, "malaise", wear a sweater 80's: plastic, Reagan, synth pop, plastic pants 90's: [see above posts] 00's: ???? Iraq, big brother, cheeney the big game hunter, etc. I know, by filling in the blanks for the 00's I'm more or less doing exactly what Wendell was writing about. I'm just extrapolating to make a point. As an aside, for me the first half of the 90's were a total blast. I dropped out of college, found the USian equaivalent of the travellers, smoked only the finest dope, and hung out on the front porch of the coop. Read poetry, watched "smart" movies, and of course drank red wine. Met my first wife (haven't met the next one but who's looking, right?), with whom I'm still great friends.
• The 90's are totally overrated. Too blah to even remember. If I'm recalling correctly.
• Actually, as I typed that I realized why I hated the 90's. I entered my 20's that decade, and attained the realization that the future (and all the fun) now belonged to another younger generation. My generation was on its way to growing up. Blah.
• May, I please wrap up the overriding thread sentiment: Hey, I just drove past a dog! Now that it's behind me, that dog sucks, this new dog is here is starting to look pretty cool. Rinse, lather, repeat every ten years. For a nineties party you have to make sure you all think the eighties suck, at least for the night. Pretend you are all philosophers and that everything is deep and that every rock band that became successful "sold out" and every hip-hop band that became successful is "keeping it real." Then dwell on dressing like the "different people" who all dressed pretty uniformly. If any of this reminds you of any other decade, defer your conversations to designer drug use and die young like everyone else that didn't get to "suck" with old age. Hopefully, at some point someone will bring up the difference between the early nineties and the late nineties and everyone's head will be blown by the non-quantum leap that the gradient of time follows. Then you can divide the decades like this: 55-65-75-85-95-05. At this point someone should yell "so fuckin' whut?" in retroactive James Dean style to again blow peoples minds. Share your mushrooms and buck the trend, cochise.
• 90's: Art school, LSD, Mushrooms, cheap weed, free shows at Emos, DIY, Indy, Sun City Girls, Beat Happening, sleeping on couches, hangovers, 7"vinyl, 'zines, irony, flannel, paint on my ripped jeans... Had fun. Glad it's over. Hippy Pappy Bithtuthday Rocket88 & Medusa.
• Ah yes, the nineties. Such jolly times, such gay adventures. Why I remember my Australian friend Pineapple Dan and I would carouse the neon streets till all hours, laughing and talking and sleeping with cheap, filthy whores and then finally stumbling home to install Nirvana-themed cardboard furniture upside down on the ceiling, thanks to a relic nail gun he'd inherited from such rich uncle who'd frittered his health away on Canadian real estate schemes... Indeed, that was how I met my first wife, nailing cardboard to the ceiling, it seems the nails were overlong and one actually penetrated the ceiling, which in those far off days were made of nothing more substantial than balsa and rare was the day our portly upstairs neighbor didn't come plummeting downward into our bathroom, usually managing to land square in the center of the clawfoot tub, which we kept filled to the brim with lime jello for just such an occaision... Such a racket!
• Nickdanger, I was not portly, and if I remember correctly, the jello was cherry flavor. Otherwise, spot on.
• For me, the 90s is all about the movies Reality Bites, Singles, and Pulp Fiction. I moved to the Houston neighborhood where Reality Bites was set right after the movie came out, and we spent waaaay too much time talking about what the movie got wrong. (Houston doesn't have newsstands or 7-11s! Ethan Hawke is icky! Etc.) I later found out that Singles was a similar experience for the kids I knew from Seattle. My best friend in college and I skipped our English class every Friday for a while to go sit through Pulp Fiction (again) for a while. Our prof didn't care, and it seemed like a really good idea at the time. These movies all marked the transition from high school to college for me, and that was only a good thing. I started feeling less like a loser (to paraphrase Medusa, and more like myself. That said, I've had even more fun in the '00s.
• Here's the close parentheses I forgot: )
• houston totally has 7-11's.
• Happy birthday, rocket (and medusa, in a few weeks!). I remember the 90s with fondness. My college years were right in the middle of the decade and I seem to remember having alot of fun, but then I was drunk or stoned most of the time. My 00s are so boring in comparison.
• Yah, the birthday thing to youse guys. WHAT 90s? Hey, if you lived through the 60s and early 70s, you don't need any other decade.
• KURT COBAIN WAS MURDERED BY HIS WIFE PEOPLE Does her CURRENT CONDUCT demonstrate character that WOULDN'T do that????/
• I dunno if it's been long enough for me to put the 90's in perspective. I had a lot of surgery. Broke 6 bones. Learned to love my hair the way it is, without bangs or perms. Went vegetarian. Sang along to every Paula Abdul song.
• Happy Birthday, fellow Pisces! Mine is March 9th and I expect a very loud shout-out from someone........anyone. *also bats eyelashes at Chy The 90's.....hmm. Got married for a second time, was stoned for most of that. Developed many good, interesting relationships, started a career, got divorced and later married for a third time, lot's of weird, crazy experiences. Yep, the 90's helped me to figure out what not to do. All in all, the 80's were waaay more fun.....in every possible way. /off-topic Jesus, I can't believe I saw U2 almost 25 years ago at the Paramount in Seattle. Wow. I miss the early 80's.
• I was 13-23 in the 90s. Reality Bites came out near the end of my senior year of high school. We did not live in a city, nor did we live in Texas. So we thought it was really smart and funny and true, though we could not ferret out the word "ontological" from Troy's answering machine message, and thought he was saying "unillogical" (and we were "gifted"). We also liked Singles. *shame* I don't think the 90s are really memorable, aside from a few fashion things mentioned in gomichild's comment. This might be because, in the early part of the decade, I was slowly becoming less and less interested in mainstream culture, and then in the later part of the decade, I was right out of it, purple hair and all.
• Hmmm the 90s ... better for me than the 80s in many ways ... but as a decade probably less interesting than the 80s. I've been trying to read The 90s, When surface was depth for ages now, but, like the decade the fucking book's so prententious I've got nowhere! I've been having 90s flashbacks for the last few weeks: Me and Mrs Dotcom are renting a flat for a few weeks very close to the part of London I lived in when I moved here in 1995. We had a night out recently with friends I made then, in a pub and then a restaurant I used to go to then ... and came home and switched the TV on and Sliding Doors was on ... The 90s were crap. We didn't have broadband!
• The 90s? Sex, drugs, art college, nightclubs, more drugs, shitty jobs, more sex, more drugs. I like to refer to them as my Lost Years. Fucking aces they were too.
• I've been trying to read The 90s, When surface was depth for ages now, but, like the decade the fucking book's so prententious I've got nowhere! Man, this is so much the story of my week.
• i think the 90s holds its own musically. quite diverse but with some genuinely talented bands/performers. noteworthy from my point of view, but in no particular order: primal scream, blur, massive attack, everything but the girl, pulp, oasis, fatboy slim, the cardigans, beck, chemical brothers, fun lovin' criminals, deftones, soundgarden, the prodigy, stone temple pilots, cake, rage against the machine, godspeed you! black emperor, bentley rhythm ace, ace of base, wonder stuff, belle & sebastian, the fugees, disposable heroes of hiphoprisy, house of pain, fsol, klf, soul coughing, catatonia, apollo 440.
• Dude! Sliding Doors! DUUUUUUUUDE! Zara Turner from McCallum! John Hannah! From McCallum! Yessssss! *two thumbs up*
• I tried singing Ace of Base at karaoke last weekend and realized I don't actually remember anything about the melody of "The Sign" other than the part that repeats constantly. Things about the 90's I heart truly, madly, deeply: Whit Stillman's bourgeoisie trilogy (or whatever it's called) The Spice Girls The rebirth of slightly flare-legged pants (before they went all low-rider) and the death of pleats When McSweeney's was fun and new The 90s began with my leaving catholic school for a wacky arts high school where I could regress to high levels of nerditude, then 4 years of studying chemistry at a wacky liberal arts college in the corn(alfalfa?)fields of Ohio, and ended in Wisconsin with me drinking a lot of local beer, eating far to much cheese and far too many brauts, and spending my days working with human specimens (ok fine, mostly urine) in a research lab. And I remember all of it, damn it.
• houston totally has 7-11's. It does? When I was there all of the 7-11's had just closed, and there were only Stop and Gos (or Stop and Robs, as we called them) as far as the eye could see. We were stranded without Slurpees and Big Gulps.
• > We were stranded without Slurpees and Big Gulps. ahh, the story of most of my teenage years* *or, why the 80s didn't suck, but in a bad way
• I don't remember the 90s. I was too angry and depressed to pay attention. Did I miss anything?
• Probably a "part of houston" thing. We were in the south east, or as we called it in those days, The Kingdom of Nutrias, and sunny-delight from 7-11 was our only source of vitamin c.
• It's about the music.
• Aw, Technotronic. I made a total, absolute fool of myself once, with 'Get up' as the soundtrack. Ah well. Sheez, and I'd do it again, oh yes.
• "So, Grampa, what did you listen to back in the last century?" "Oh, all kinds of music..."
• mandyman: When McSweeney's was fun and new Pre-McSwys 90s fun: I own the copy of MIGHT magazine where they fake Adam Rich's death... Dave Eggers devotes an entire chapter to it in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. (Ah, MIGHT... now there's an obscure 90s reference for you!)
• I spent the first half of the 90s publishing 'zines and raging against machines. Then when everyone else jumped on that bandwagon, I sold out and went corporate. (Right around '95 when I got out of college and found that there were jobs to be had for anyone even remotely computer savvy.) The quintessential movies? (for me, anyway) Singles, Hackers, Scream, Trainspotting, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Grosse Point Blank, Pulp Fiction, The Rock, Speed, ID4 and what I call the three "millenium movies" set right in the middle of the decade when everyone was all "oooh 2000 is coming!": Strange Days, Virtuosity and, of course, Until the End of the World. Music? For a long time, I thought any music made after 1988 sucked. The few standouts were, Nine Inch Nails, Screaming Trees, Early Smashing Pumpkins, a lot of electronica, (Underworld, Photek, pretty much every artist on the WipeoutXL soundtrack) Harvey Danger's first disc Now, I'm raging again. The 00s quickly turned into the early 90s again. Maybe it's the name of the president. (Though I'd take the first over the 2nd in a heartbeat)
• Its scary how fondly nostalgic one can wax for BushCo Chapter 1. I can barely remember how much I hated him at the time, cause I too would take him over Shrub in a flash!