90's Fashion

People in the 90's didn't know how to dress themselves.

Exhibit A:

Okay, these guys are obviously rock stars or pimps with guitars or something, so they aren't a good example.

Try this:


So far, we can deduce two things: People from the 90's needed to take more showers, and of course, they needed to stop trying to blind me with day-glow. The assault on the senses, considering that in addition to sight and smell they bombarded everyone with their crappy music, is enough to drive someone batshit crazy, explaining this:


We have seen some pretty terrible and horrifying stuff from the 90's, but nothing compares even closely to.... ZUBAZ!!!



Ok kids, I know you won't believe me, but in the early 90's these pants were popular. This guy up here is a good example of the average Zubaz owner: He is blind. Either he always was or his eyes melted off his face when he first saw those pants. Secondly, he is stupid, because what is a blind guy going to do with a football? I feel bad for whoever he was playing catch with.

Given what we have learned today, if an anthropologist from the future were to look back at our favorite decade, he could conclude a few things from the clothing these people left behind: They had obviously been exposed to some sort of horrific nuclear disaster that caused their clothes to glow bright neon colors, caused mass blindness, and somehow destroyed every shower so nobody could bathe.

Boy Bands

The Backstreet Boys, 98°, or even dare we mention… N.K.O.T.B… doesn’t matter the specific band, you didn’t live a year of the 90s without being absolutely bombarded by at least one boy band and their rapture bringing music. Let’s face it, boy bands did not play their own instruments, boy bands did not write their own lyrics, boy bands probably didn’t even perform inappropriate acts with their own 14 year old groupies. In the 90s, no one better represented the lowest point in popular music history than the boy bands. You can call yourself a, “Male vocal group” or even a “Man Band” but once MTV attempts to parody you and only succeeds in making yet another Boy Band you have to know there can’t be much of a secret to the genre. Let us take a moment to look back and examine the upstanding members of society who began their careers in boy bands:

Nick Carter: Former Band: The Backstreet Boys, Current Standing: d-bag, photo above is a mugshot from a drunk driving arrest, has also publicly acknowledged drug addiction and alcoholism.

Donnie Wahlberg: Former Band: New Kids on the Block, Current Standing: d-bag, the photo above is also a mugshot, this time from an arrest for arson. Take a second... did you see that too? Look at what sits upon his right shoulder. Whether you would call it a pony tail, rat tail, or Jedi Braid, it surely places the d-bag stamp firmly across his forehead. Not only did he decide to grow and maintain said rat tail but he went out of his way to make it visible in his mug shot. We are talking about the kind of d-bag who is only attracted to women, or men, currently in a relationship with other men.

Boy bands can't even get into trouble like real musicians. Who hasn't envisioned growing up to be a rock start and throwing a TV through a window and watching it fall 15 stories into the pool, or turning your hard top Rolls-Royce into a convertible with a hacksaw on a whim. Instead boy bands grow up and produce drunk drivers, one of the most selfish and easily avoidable crimes. Whalberg being arrested for arson sounds as though it may have promise, however he was arrested for setting part of a carpet on fire (probably after he dropped his crack pipe), then goes to court and pleads guilty to a reduced charge of criminal mischief. Never before in history has a group had literally no redeeming qualities (Screen Actors Guild nearly edges out Al Gore for second place here).

To boy bands everywhere: We hope never to see you again unless on 2am reruns of Celebrity Death Match

Jock Jams

Imagine yourself at a Vancouver Grizzlies game. Things are going great, right?! It's 1995, Brad Pitt has just won Sexiest Man of the year (you're hoping he'll win again), a company with an exclamation for a name was founded, and Jacques Chirac is France's new Prez! Things are going your way. The only thing missing is the Magic Eye book you accidently left at home on the coffee table and music from the best band EVER - House of Pain. Thankfully, the NBA has you covered.

Jump Around and throw the jock jams my way. I can't get enough of these awesome beats! Whenever I hear them my mind is soothed by the finer things in life - wood floors covered in sweat, overly-mobile team mascots, and a guy named Mickey. You know my CD changer is stocked with all six ESPN manufactured Jock Jam compilation albums. The second of which peaked at number 10 on the Billboard charts, I'll have you know. That was 1996, sadly the pinnacle of the Jock Jams craze (and by sadly, I mean, I'm disappointed that Will Smith has a family and no longer gets jiggy wit' it).

The only thing that satiates me now is popping in the VHS tape of our fandom's pride and joy - Space Jam. There's no denying that this is possibly the best 1/2 animated, 1/2 live-action, 1/2 Michael Jordan film ever made. Yes, I said it. Aside from the magnificence that is the character depth of the Monstars, Wayne Knight and Bill Murray are really the ones who make this movie what it is. Genius. Without Wayne's type casting and Bill's cameo, how else would you inspire the creation of lunchboxes and pinball machines off your film venture?

My love for these, admittedly shallow, musical endeavors is immortalized here in the title of this blog. We owe it all to you Tag Team. But just so your ego doesn't begin to surpass that of Robert Van Winkle, it was almost called, "Ode to the Nacho Man."

Monica Lewinsky

Because she told.

Now I know you're saying "But Isaac, I remember this ordeal very well as I was entirely lucid and sober for the entire decade, and it was Linda Tripp who made this a big deal."

Valid point reader. You're fairly intelligent. Well you must be if you're reading this blog.

So yes, Linda Tripp is the one who made this a big deal. That is an irrefutable fact concerning this investigation, but the fault is still with Monica. No, not because she went down on the Prez. That was an act of patriotism, helping the President to relax and get away from the stresses of the most difficult job in America. Monica is to blame because when she thought to herself "I have to tell someone about this even though I know it could potentially ruin the country", she turned to this woman:

Does this look like a trustworthy face? No. This looks like a woman distraught because McDonald's removed the McRib from its menu. Monica shouldn't have told period, but she definitely shouldn't have told this bitch.

Not to accuse Linda Tripp of having the ability to conceive of a plan (unless of course it involved a family-size bucket of fried chicken from KFC, sweatpants, and an all night marathon of the Fresh-Prince), she knew this was big news. She turned to her confidant and friend Lucianne Goldberg who looks like this:

Lucianne, who obviously hadn't removed her horse make-up from the last renaissance fair she attended, told Linda to save all the evidence and make a case against the President. She then helped make tape-recordings to incriminate the President and used one of her three penises and magical witch powers to make a stain on a dress that contained the President's DNA. Then one thing led to another and Monica Lewinsky, the innocent White House intern who had literally worked on her hands and knees to serve her country, had caused the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, this nation's hottest President. All because she entrusted her secret with a couple of cave trolls with nothing better to do.

What does this teach us?

The 90's sucked, and so did Monica Lewinsky.

Furbies

My biggest beef with the furby is its appearance. Can we just take a minute and look at this thing? Whoever thought it would be a good idea to combine a "robot" with your Grandmother's Pomeranian was on some sort of mind-altering drug at the time and should consider giving A&E a call to set up an intervention.

Admittedly, Tiger Co. made enough money during the 1998 holiday season off parents in a desperate attempt to keep up with their whining kids' desire for the latest tech-gadget toy (see the Tamagotchi) to sustain them until they were bought out again. We have to hand it to them that they sold a product whose main attraction was that it blinked and spoke "furbish."

For everyone (except those who chose to add the toys to their collection of collections among novelty plates, porcelain child figurines, and beanie babies) the excitement of these things wore off in approximately 17 seconds. Even 3rd graders realized that their classmates with a furby on January 6th were the losers who would later become the kid you just wanted to shut up in sophomore year English class.

The furby was there when we were teetering on boredom with matchbox cars in our Happy Meals and longing for an encore of Howie Mandel's brilliance in Gremlins.

Now how do I get it to shut off?

Pagers

So you just walked out of the latest New Kids on the Block [Pearl Jam, Will Smith, Alanis Morrissette…] concert, mabey sucking down some tang, rushing home to try to catch that last episode of Baywatch, when all of a sudden the car is filled with a piercing screech. No nothing is wrong with the car, turns out; the coolest kid not on TRL just got a page.

That’s right, the Jeopardy of electronic devices, spitting out a phone number you must call. Or, if you were unlucky enough to have an alpha-numeric pager (latin for too gay to function) you may have even gotten some coded message only someone with an advanced degree in cryptology can decipher. If only you were in the 5 square feet that the somehow less practical car phone worked you could call the number on that. Now however you have to pull over, find a payphone, and return said call. What’s more, the number sent to you nine times out of ten fell into one of two categories:

a) A wrong number was dialed somewhere along the way, because let’s be honest, these new non-rotary phones are just so hard to use. More often than not this results in two to three calls to the wrong number trying to confirm if you were given a wrong number or dialed a wrong number and about $6 in payphone charges. Or,

b) A kind friend, knowing you have little else to do aside from wear a little box on your belt all day and wait for people to waste your time, has paged you with the number to the Chinese food restaurant 2 states away making sure you spend a good 30 minutes and as many quarters, dimes and, nickels on the phone trying to figure out why you were paged by someone who only seems to care if you want General Tso’s Chicken or Mongolian Beef.

Either way you’re a loser.

Pogs

Seriously? What the hell do you do with Pogs? Why was the Guatemalan lady in the food court willing to sell me 8,000 of them for the price of 50 cents?

Whoever came up with the idea was a genius. "Hey, let's print pictures of shit on some cardboard circles and sell them to kids. Money!"

It's not even like you could collect them like Pokemon cards. (Never thought I would be extolling the value of a Pokemon card). With those at least you could run around making your friends feel like shit because you got a Charizard and the best they had was a Weedle. Imagine taking a break from Blitz on your N64 and saying to your buddies "Dudes, I got that Pog with the purple guy with the one eye that is bigger than the other. Wanna see?" The only correct response to that would be a punch in the face and the door slamming as your friends went to make a new friend who wasn't fucking lame.

But, of course, I still have my Pogs in the bottom of some drawer. You know, in case they are ever cool again.