Tag Archives: nostalgia

Where Are They Now: Every Kid From Your Second Grade Class

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My oldest nephews, who were born in February 2007, finished second grade this week. That is absolutely astonishing to me. It’s hard to grasp that people who didn’t exist until 2007 can walk and talk, let alone read chapter books and multiply two-digit numbers.

Looking at these big kids (up to my shoulders!), I’m reminded of the Up Series.  In the early ’60s, British filmmakers interviewed seven-year-olds from different backgrounds and social classes. The premise: “to get a glimpse of England in the year 2000. The shop steward and the executive of the year 2000 are now seven years old.” They were testing the Jesuit maxim “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” The filmmakers have followed up with the participants every seven years; they are now approaching 60 years old.

There are other Up series filmed throughout the world. The first installment of the American version was released in 1991, so when I watch it I’m seeing kids grow up in the same time I did. The really amazing thing is that in many cases, the child at seven does tell you a lot about the adult they’ll become.

So how about those kids we all seemed to have in our second grade classes? Do you think we can accurately predict where they are now? Maybe not – but it’s fun to try.

The Nose Picker

Also known as the Gross Kid. As a child, I lived in fear that I was the Gross Kid even though I was hygienic. And as an adult, I sometimes still feel like a grown-up version of the Gross Kid.

But you know who doesn’t feel like that? The actual grown-up version of the Gross Kid. Because the hallmark of the Nose Picker/ Gross Kid/ Smelly Kid was that they were utterly oblivious to their own filth. This kid has not become an appealing adult. He has become that guy at your office with the rumpled shirt who is always faintly smelly, or the sticky guy who you hope doesn’t chose the elliptical next to you. She’s that person whose apartment may be surface-clean, but the sink always has a layer of grime.

If the Nose Picker was an unappealing kid because his parents just didn’t care, though, not because the kid was oblivious, then he is probably very tidy and fastidious now.

The Dinosaur Kid

How about that one child who knew everything about dinosaurs (or fighter jets, or bugs, etc)? Chances are this kid is the expert in some super-specific field, but has left the dino t-shirts behind. But if you go see Jurassic World with a former Dinosaur Kid this summer, be prepared for a tirade on the inaccurate skin folds of the velociraptors, because once you amass that much knowledge about a subject it doesn’t go away, it just gets locked up for a while.

That One Kid Who Showed Up Halfway Through The Year

Remember how one kid would show up halfway through the year, introduced by the principal, and then they’d be gone at the start of the next school year? That kid made friends fast – in part because everyone was so taken with the novelty of an unfamiliar kid, and in part because if you switched schools a lot, you sort of had to know how to make friends quickly. So it would come as no surprise that That One Kid Who Showed Up Halfway Through The Year is now a person who instantly gets involved in a new workplace or neighborhood.

The Kid With The Healthy Lunches

Well, they’re probably thin, but good God, at what cost?

Actually, I take that back. The kid with the aggressively healthy lunches raided his friends’ Dunkaroos and Pop Tart Bites every time he went over to to play – I should know, my friend had the good junk food and I did the same. By high school, they probably developed a Claudia Kishi complex and snuck unhealthy snacks. This kid is now an adult who buys lunch from a vending machine at work.

The Kid With The Good Lunches

You know how some children were destined to a life of Lunchables and Handi-Snacks when your lot in life was bologna sandwiches and lukewarm yogurt? Those Good Lunch Kids had 20 minutes of joy in the middle of every school day. I like to think they still create happiness with little things, like as adults they have a living room with one really unexpected piece of art, or they’ll wear a normal weekend outfit with a punchy pair of shoes.

Or, childhood Type II diabetes. One of those.

The Kid With The Statement Piece

It always seemed cool when a child had one thing they always had with them. Think Harriet the Spy with the tomato sandwiches. Or the boy with the purple socks, also from Harriet The Spy. Or Punky Brewster’s mismatched shoes, or Blossom’s hats. By now, this person has outgrown their statement piece. The boy who always wore suspenders is not still wearing suspenders. But they still like to get noticed right away, so look for a gregarious personality or some chunky jewelry. In second grade, the kid with the statement piece knew his own mind, so now they’re adults who have to have their house, car and workspace just the way they want it.

These are the people who have customized license plates.

Dress Girl

I went to Catholic school, where every girl was Dress Girl. However, I still knew some of those girls who even in their free time insisted on wearing dresses. All dresses, only dresses, every day. Sometimes it was a religious thing but usually it was just a preference. Dress girl is not someone who works in fashion. Dress girl just chilled out at some point and realized that pants are useful for things like exercising, or windy days. But she’s mostly just someone who wears a lot of dresses, still. Sorry.

That Kid With A Ton Of Siblings


Your eyes don’t deceive you, that’s Jamal Lyon and Jess Merriweather in the best show nobody seems to remember.

If the Kid With A Ton Of Siblings was the oldest – or one of the oldest – in their giant family, there’s an excellent chance that this person is now an Adult With No Children, enjoying the blissful sounds of silence and sharing their wardrobe with nobody. In the immortal words of Kevin McAllister, when these kids grow up and get married, they’re living alone.

The Two Kids Who Look Alike But ARE NOT SIBLINGS

They never talked to each other again. But one has a spouse who looks like them. When they have kids, nobody can say “he looks just like his dad” or “that’s his mom’s nose!” Instead it’s like “yeah… that’s the only face those two faces could have created.”

Any other ginger kids out there? Then you know the very real struggle of being asked if you’re twins if there’s another random ginger in the class.

The “Half Hour Of PBS” Kid

Often a crossover with the Healthy Lunch Kid, remember that one kid who was allowed a single half-hour of public television once a week? Yeah, she spent a lot of time playing outdoors, developing an imagination, and getting acquainted with her local library, but she never knew what the heck was going on on TGIF. And like the Healthy Lunch Kid, this child binged on SNICK and Tiny Toons as soon as a play date began.

This could have gone one of two ways. Either this kid is now a TV blogger, or she’s one of those people who manages to drop the fact that she doesn’t own a TV into every conversation, relevant or not.

He Had A Rat Tail

He doesn’t, now.

The Kid God Forgot To Color In

Me, ’90s, skiing cow sweater, you’re welcome internet.

Oh, bless. That kid with pasty skin and pink-rimmed eyes is now an adult with slightly less pasty skin. For some reason, this child eventually ended up allergic to everything, as well. The quote from Community comes to mind – it’s like God spilled a person. The pasty child is now a grownup who doesn’t leave home without sunscreen, Zyrtec, eye drops, an inhaler, and maybe an epipen. And tissues, because for some reason frequent nosebleeds go along with this whole setup.

And yes, this kid is me. Now excuse me as I fish my flonase out of my purse.

The Girl Who Knows Everything

Nobody in the world knows more than a seven-year-old girl. Especially THIS seven-year-old girl. Unfortunately, knowing everything is not the best way to ingratiate yourself with your peers.

The Girl Who Knows Everything probably forgot that she knows everything for a few years there – junior high or high school – but her Hermione Granger tendencies won out and now she’s in an upper-level position in the Ministry of Magic got a pretty good job.

The Kid Who Wants Everyone To think He’s Rich


God bless typecasting. I feel like our child-selves should have been friends.

What’s more insufferable than a rich kid? A kid who wants everyone to KNOW that he’s a rich kid. This is the girl who told everyone that she got her Halloween costume from the deluxe tier, or the boy who referred to his pool as an “olympic-sized swimming pool.” I’m not saying that this kid is rich now, but they probably have a subprime mortgage on a flashy McMansion and lease a nice car that’s beyond their means to own.

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Pocahontas: ’90s Fashion Goes 17th Century

Posted in Entertainment, Outfit Girl by

Can you believe that tomorrow it will have been 20 years since Pocahontas? Pocahontas the movie, that is: Pocahontas the human died in like 1617. It has been two whole decades since Disney released its historically fuzzy account of a spirited Powhatan girl who gets White Man’s Burdened by a dude in that one haircut all the cute boys had in the mid-90s. Disney does a ton of research for each of their movies, but ultimately chose a ’90s-friendly interpretation of 17th Century style. So how do the 1600s look through a ’90s lens?

John Smith’s ‘Cute Boy In The ’90s’ Haircut

In 1994, all of the cute boys called a secret meeting and vowed to get That One Haircut. If you were a Tiger Beat reader or cherished your J.T.T. is H-O-T issue of Nickelodeon Magazine, you know exactly which one I’m talking about. It was center parted and layered back on the sides, so that all of the cute boys could brush it out of their eyes all of the time. Which was the haircut’s fatal flaw, I’d wager. It was always in the way. And it was in the way of EVERYONE, from Rider Strong to Christian Bale to… well, to John  Smith, who must have painstakingly layered his locks in his berth below deck of that old-fashioned wooden boat. Smith has the longer, more mulletty version of the cut, favored by your more outdoorsy Cute Boys In The ’90s.

Nakoma’s Sassy Bangs

In 1995, those late ’80s/early ’90s mall bangs were fading into history. Instead, your bangs were probably either a blunt-cut fringe or wispy and curled under with a round brush. I think my right forearm is still slightly more muscular than the left because of all that time I spent scrupulously curling my bangs under into a see-through hair dome. The curled-under bangs were innocent and girly, but the blunt Betty Page fringe was the trademark of a true sass factory. That’s why Disney gave them to the movie’s requisite Sassy Best Friend.

Pocahontas’s Ink

Remember “tribal tattoos?” And how if the only tribe you were in was the National Association Of College Bros, you probably shouldn’t have gotten one? There was a time when the tribal armband circled the bicep of every college dude in the land – it was the undercut haircut and waistcoat of 1995. Now those armbands are sported by 40-something dad types who only reunite with the “tribe” on alumni weekend.

By the way, those of us who were eight years old in 1995 had the Poor Man’s Tribal Tattoo, the stretchy band from Claire’s Boutique that always ended up on your wrist if you had skinny arms.

Pocahontas and Nakoma’s Girl Band Outfits

I get that buckskin was the only fabric option or whatever. But I still love how Pocahontas and her girl Nakoma have coordinating outfits. It’s like TLC or En Vogue or Salt n Pepa, where they’d each have a slightly different outfit but made of the same material. And at least one girl always had the crop top version. We’ve established that Nakoma was the resident sassafras, so naturally it was her.

Pocahontas’s Cher Horowitz Hair Flip

 

The crispy permed look was dead or dying in the mid-90s. Instead, everyone wanted the perfect voluminous blowout. It was several years before we all started flat-ironing our hair into brittle sheets, and health and movement were the hair goals. Pocahontas had, hands down, the best blow-out of the era, rivaled only by Cher Horowitz herself. I know Pocahontas didn’t have an animated blowdryer or anything, but I feel like she was always standing in the wind on a cliff with multicolored leaves swirling around her and stuff, so I guess that did the trick.

That Turquoise Necklace

Here’s where Disney was phoning it in (on a land line or one of those brick cell phones, because again, 1995). They were just like “oh, Native Americans LOVE turquoise!” because that whole Southwestern decorating thing was going on. But the key there is Southwest, I mean how would Pocahontas have ended up with it in Virginia? However, teal and turquoise were oddly popular at the time, so I think it was more a matter of picking a look that would help sell licensed Halloween costumes that year.

Thomas’s Center-Parted Bowl Cut

I think if you weren’t cute enough for the Cute Boy In The 90s Haircut, they made you get the center-parted bowl cut instead.

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Bootcuts And Bucket Hats: Already-Dated Fashion Of Gilmore Girls

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Just about every week in the early 2000s, I’d catch the latest episode of Gilmore Girls on the WB and swoon over the latest fashions. When I rewatched the series this year, I found myself cringing instead – over my own sartorial past. It’s not that the clothes in Gilmore Girls were exceptionally bad. Actually, a surprising number of looks hold up, a real testament to the costume department. It’s just that the show aired a long time ago. Let’s put it this way. When Gilmore Girls premiered, we were one year younger than Rory. Now we’re, like, a few years younger than Season One Lorelai.  We’ve already written a post on Mid-2000s fashion, but now let’s take a look at how those trends played out in Stars Hollow.

 

Message Tees

Whether it was a sassy slogan a la Seth Cohen, or a bowling alley that you’ve never been to because it doesn’t exist, we were all about the message tees back at the turn of the millennium. It seemed like a way to let people know something about you without even having to say a word — but from the shores of 2015, I wonder why I really cared that people knew that I found reading sexy. Even if it is.

Really proud I never rocked one of these. See also: Jesus Is My Homeboy.

The tiny blazer – bootcut – t-shirt trifecta

I wore this look a lot in college (2004 – 2008), and so did Rory. You felt a little more put-together than if you were just wearing a t-shirt. What Not To Wear was big at the time, and I think we all thought that this was supposed to “balance our proportions” – but it kind of did! Bonus points if you remember why Rory’s not wearing a shoe in this scene.

Skinny Scarfs

You live in Connecticut. Connecticut is cold. Why so little scarf? We all had these and we all looked like we were wearing evidence of a knitting accident.

Bucket Hats

A couple years ago I joked that I’d know people were taking the ’90s revival too far when bucket hats came back. That’s because I couldn’t fathom a world in which bucket hats came back. That’s because I’m an idiot. And in the late 90s and early 2000s, we were all idiots, wearing headgear like a sassy fishmonger.

By the way, the bucket hat did come back, and I feel the urge to whisper “you’ll have regrets” whenever I see a teen in one. But whatever, I’ll let them have their youth.

“Bowling” shoes or whatever

Not a great picture. But remember in 2003 or so, when we realized that you could replace those giant puffy sneakers with a sleeker… bowling shoe, basically?

Lane’s “punk” look

We hit on this in the playlist post, too. The modern hipster look didn’t get big until around 2008, and before that if you wanted to show people you were a little different you’d opt for this Avril Lavigne-y, pop-punk aesthetic. Lots of hot pink, stars, and items that could be purchased at Hot Topic.

Full, knee-length skirt + long, fitted top + cropped sweater

That sounds like a really specific look, but it was widespread and was absolutely, 100% my jam circa 2005. I wouldn’t call this “dated” it just isn’t as big as it was for a while there. Full disclosure: I think this might be a dress, but I couldn’t find the outfit I was remembering.

Short sleeve shirts over long sleeved shirts

If you needed a little extra warmth – but not like, sweater-level warmth – and you wanted to be cool, and it was 2004, you’d do this. People have always layered t-shirts under other clothing, but in the early 2000s we decided to really let those gray Hanes t-shirts shine.

Two-colored tie dye shirts 

Granted, it was laundry day. But remember these two-tone tye-die numbers that always made you look like a pert camp counselor? This is pretty inoffensive as far as “ran out of clothes” clothes go, but I haven’t seen one of these little numbers for years. Granted, I haven’t been hanging around any summer camps, either.

That one kind of leather jacket that ladies used to wear

No, but you know what I mean. It’s not as though leather jackets, as a category, will ever go away, but that one kind of leather jacket was all over the place way back when. I remember going with my friend to Wilson’s – remember Wilson’s? – so she could buy one. I blame Lorelai Gilmore and Buffy Summers. The WB in general, really – may it rest in peace.

 I think we told ourselves this was “harajuku” inspired

Let’s be real, Japan never asked us to do this. There’s just so much mixing of patterns and collars. I don’t think you understand. You could buy these at stores 15 years ago.

Triangle hair bandanas

Something weird happened with these. Triangle bandanas were super popular in the early 2000s, and you could even buy them pre-cut into a triangle shape with strings in the back. We thought it was sporty and cute. To wear rags. On our heads. Like washerwomen. I wore one, even though it made me look like my Irish peasant ancestors even more than usual. Then, after they faded with fashion, they held on for a few years — but only with super Christian girls. Girls who got those special Christian teen magazines and listened to Newsboys? LOVED these triangle hair bandannas.

Jean Skirts + wacky tights + blazer + scarf

I’m no mathematician, but I’m pretty sure that was the formula for fashion success around 2007.

Peasant Dress + Boots

Peasant skirt + boots was also an acceptable combo. Lindsay Lohan and Sookie St. James were in accord on that one.

“Going out” tops

In our Mid-2000s Fashion post we discussed going out tops, and Lorelai owned many. These were lacey, satin-y, or otherwise frilly tops you’d pair with your boot-cuts to transition easily from dinner at your parents’ to some sort of club.

Is it a slip? Is it a dress? Neither. It’s a mistake.

In the late ’90s and early 2000s – maybe as a reaction to the over-the-top foof of the ’80s and early ’90s – we all loved the simplicity of a slip dress. But slips belong under a dress for a reason. For the record, a lot of the “going out tops” of the day also looked like fancy lingerie. You might be fooled because Alexis Bledel and Lauren Graham both look nice here – but on common folk, close-fitting, clingy satin is a surefire way to look like you’re made of weird flesh lumps.

Christmas sweaters

Okay, it was just that one time.

 

 

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It’s 1995: Let’s All Decorate With Pastel Southwestern Stuff

Posted in GSOY (Gratuitous Story of Yourself), Miscellany by

Welcome to another edition of Let’s All Decorate!, where we explore the baffling interior design trends of days past! Today we look into a craze that swept the nation in the 1980s and 1990s, when pastels reigned supreme and appropriation was king. Long before we were all wearing “tribal print” shorts and flats, our parents were decorating in “Southwestern” style. Today, my friends, our walk down memory lane is lined with cacti.

It’s 1995. You’re a mom shopping out of the J.C. Penney catalogue, and you’re looking to revamp your home’s current look. All of those geese in bonnets and powder blue gingham are so 1890 1990. It’s 1995, Clinton is in office, TLC is on the radio, and “Navajo” motifs are all over page 178 of the fall Sears catalogue. You are modern, you are edgy, you are worldly, and now you own peach and seafoam lamps based on Native American vases. You are my mother. Hi, mom.

I think there were a few months when ducks in bonnets and “Southwestern” lamps lived in harmony in my childhood home. That’s before the Southwestern lamps killed themselves. One day one of my brothers knocked over one of the lamps. It was made of powdery terra cotta, and it shattered. The lamp was quickly replaced. Months later, we broke another one. My mom declared that the next person to break one of those lamps was going to pay for it themselves. Not a week later, she knocked one over dusting. Elizabeth Bishop had it right: “so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.” Those lamps were freaking ugly, and eventually, they lost the will to exist.

It wasn’t just my family: plenty of middle-class Americans – some from the Southwest, but just as many from the Northeast like us – wanted to paint our living rooms with all the Colors of the Wind. Possibly in Benjamin Moore’s Blue Corn Moon.

This living room from Ugly House Photos is peak Department Store Southwest. Note the pastel teal, the Native American porcelain doll, and what appears to be a Horn Of Plenty on the side table:

And how about this bedroom? America: where we will take your sacred land and build a strip mall on it, then fill the strip mall with a Pottery Barn that sells knockoffs of your art and furniture. I do really appreciate how they incorporated both a canopy bed and tiny rodent pelts.

 

Faux painting was a 90s decorating trend I’d rather forget. We all remember sponge painting and marbling, but this home, featuring faux primitive cave etchings, really takes the cake.

Is this a set from the smash tv hit Hey Dude? No, it’s a house with dehydrated cow skulls. If it looks like clip art scenery from Oregon Trail, maybe it doesn’t belong in your house. Or maybe it does.

 

I believe the following look combines the 90s penchant for Southwestern motifs with our brief love affair with Magic Eye paintings:

 

Falling under the category of “well, at least it’s less bad than the trail of tears, but then again so is just about everything:”

 

You don’t see Southwestern interior decorating much anymore, at least not outside of the bona fide Southwest or actual Native American homes. In those cases, it’s great! But I like to think that in white, northeastern homes, all of these teal and peach monstrosities made like my mom’s J.C. Penney lamps and offed themselves while they could.

The Frappuccino, And Other 20-Year-Old Foods

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Happy birthday, Frappuccino! Starbucks’ premier beverage – proof that a milkshake by any other name really would taste as sweet – just turned 20. That means that this year’s incoming college freshmen never even lived in a world without the frap. Good for them. Who would want to?

Okay, I’m not actually a hardcore frappuccino enthusiast. However, I can remember what a big deal they were when they first came out, during a time when “iced  coffee” was spoken in such a tone that you could actually hear the quotation marks around the phrase. The frap brought coffee and espresso beverages to a whole new season (summer) and a whole new demographic (children). I felt super grown-up ordering a Venti Mocha Frappuccino with Whip at Barnes and Noble in 6th grade while perusing James Cameron’s Titanic book for the third time because that shit costs $19.99 and my gift card is only for 15 dollars, and this became my gateway drug into the world of caffeinated drinks. Starbucks, at least in me, you have created a monster.

The mid-90s were actually a big, weird time in processed food history. While you’re sipping your signature Birthday Cake Frappuccino today, raise your glass to these other treats that turn the big 2-0 this year.

Stuffed Crust Pizza – Pizza Hut

Two of my childhood obsessions – pizza and mozzarella sticks – combined into one food? Pizza Hut, you shouldn’t have. I can still remember my excitement when my friend Patty’s mom ordered the stuffed crust pizza at a sleepover. There was a marinara dipping sauce, and despite the resemblance to mozzarella sticks, her mom didn’t remind me not to choke and die like my mom always did. [There was, like, one well-publicized news story about a kid choking on mozzarella sticks, and I’m pretty sure it was a baby, but moms grabbed onto that information and wouldn’t let go.] The commercials said that you would want to eat your pizza “crust first” but that’s not true. You’d save the best part for last. Stuffed crust pizza was at once entirely unnecessary and seriously so necessary.

DiGiorno Rising Crust Pizza

What about when it’s NOT delivery? In those cases, it’s probably DiGiorno. In 1995, the rising crust pizza burst onto the scene and while I wouldn’t say I ever confused it for delivery, it was a hell of a lot better than Boboli. Remember Boboli? Anyway, the main pitfall of the frozen pizza – the flat, crispy crust – faded into the past, and suddenly it seemed a lot more respectable to dish out the frozen pizza at a slumber party. Just not AS respectable as Stuffed Crust*.

*Don’t worry, the future is now and you can currently buy DiGiorno stuffed crust.

Blue M&Ms

Next time you pour a handful of M&Ms, take a good look at the color selection. Then imagine if all of the blue M&Ms were tan instead. Yes, tan. Prior to 1995, M&Ms were significantly less colorful, like the first part of the Wizard of Oz, but after a popular mid-90s contest, the candies brightened up, like the second part of the Wizard of Oz. There was a big, pre-social media campaign to name the new M&M color, but the other entries – purple and pink – were obviously not as M&M appropriate. I voted blue and was thrilled to see the Empire State Building lit up blue after the winner was announced (we’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the 90s were weird).

Here’s a curveball. Shortly after the contest, my mom noticed that the M&M-sponsored worksheet she’d been using in her classroom for years referred to “blue M&Ms.” So, did they know it was going to be blue all along? Had the worksheet guy time-slipped into the future? And why was my mother using an M&Ms handout to teach fourth grade?

Fruitopia

Fruitopia celebrated two decades in 2014, or it would have if the bev hadn’t died with pogs and sunflower hats. It’s hard to believe that they could bottle so much 90s into one little drink. It had psychadelic branding, “natural” juice that … wasn’t, Gen X-y marketing, and Peace And Love(TM) product names. Remember begging at the gas station for a bottle of Strawberry Passion Awareness, The Grape Beyond, or Fruit Integration? Those NAMES, oy. Coca Cola retired the Fruitopia brand in 2003, folding some surviving flavors into their Minute Maid flagship. Yeah, although Fruitopia was for awesome skaters who hung out under wall tapestries and Minute Maid was for moms who make the bed by billowing a crisp, white sheet into the air near an open window, they were basically the same thing.

Twizzler Pull n’ Peel

The mid-90s was all about taking time-honored junk food and doing weird stuff to it. Enter the Twizzler Pull n Peel. I have to say, I was never a huge fan of Twizzlers, but something about breaking the hard, flat rope into a twisted mass of smaller, softer round ropes was absolutely delicious. You could savor a single Pull ‘n Peel twist for ages, or you could bite through the whole thing for a whole mouthful of Twizzler. These bad boys are twenty years old and show no signs of slowing down.

French Toast Crunch

French Toast Crunch was just one of many high-concept, dessert-y cereals, like Oreo Os or Cookie Crisp. If the idea of toast and syrup condensed into cereal-sized nuggets and doused in milk doesn’t appeal to you, that isn’t surprising. For nearly a decade – from 2006 until the recent past – the product was off the shelves.  But it’s back now, so if you want to relive the 90s head to your nearest grocery store. Be warned: this crap had some sharp corners.

Arch Deluxe – McDonald’s

Looking a bit ahead, next year we will be celebrating the 20th birthday of the most adult burger of all time. Do you remember this? McDonald’s marketing concept was to bill this as a “grown-up” menu item, even though it was just a regular burger with bacon and some sort of sauce on it. It worked, I guess, because I was so offended that McDonald’s thought kids would hate the Arch Deluxe that I begged to try it. It was okay, not great, but at twice the price and twice the calories of a traditional cheeseburger, it didn’t last long.

Pop Tarts Crunch

Like I said: the mid-90s saw a lot of tinkering with junk foods to create Franken-junkfoods. Pop Tarts were already so unhealthy that I was only allowed to eat them for breakfast after I’d had an acceptable breakfast. I think this was actually worse than just letting me eat them for breakfast, since not only was I eating PopTarts, I was also eating two breakfasts. But I digress. What if you couldn’t choose between pop tarts and cereal? For a brief, shining moment from 1994- 1995, that’s not a question you ever had to answer. Pop Tarts Crunch cereal combined all the sugary unhealthiness of Pop Tarts with all of the sugary unhealthiness of kids’ cereals. What a time it was.

Doritos Tacos – Taco Bell

Wait, aren’t these new? Yes. And no. Taco Bell launched the Doritos taco shell a few years ago, but the shell was invented by advertising interns in 1995. I am not at all surprised. Doritos were THE Food in 1995, and we were obsessed with morphing our snacks into other snacks. Plus Taco Bell was super cool at the time – just not cool enough to incorporate Doritos into their fake Mexican experience.

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MTV’s Spring Break: Expectations Vs. Reality

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First things first: before you ask “but Molly, isn’t Spring Break just a trash-cation for college-aged garbage people?” Yes. Yes it is. I should know – I used to be a college-aged garbage person.

But before I was a college-aged garbage person, I was an impressionable tween learning about my world through MTV. I have no idea if MTV is still considered cool or relevant to today’s teenagers. I just know that when I was 12, MTV was “all that.” My parents didn’t love it, but I was like “guys, they’re marketing to ME! Now, can you please buy me some Clean & Clear and a Seventeen Magazine subscription? I’m told I want both.”

Late 90s, early 2000s MTV is where I learned about the American rite of passage known as Spring Break. This, coupled with watching P.C.U. on cable, formed my basis of what college was like in the 1990s. Imagine my surprise during my 2008 trip to Panama City Beach, when I learned that Spring Break is nothing like I was led to believe.

Expectation: When you go on Spring Break MTV will be there, filming everything.

Reality: A tenth-level MTV affiliate, like MTV-Z or MTV-X, will be there. But creepy old men will also be there filming everything. Yeah, the internet gets pretty weird in the 2000s.

Expectation: You won’t just dance to awesome party jams, you’ll BE the awesome party jams on Say What Karaoke. By the way, Say What Karaoke is where I learned the lyrics to “Too Close” when I was just old enough to know what it meant.

Reality: Say What Karaoke goes the way of the dinosaur by the time you’re in college. However, your first night in Panama you will find a seedy karaoke dive bar with cheap drinks, and you’ll go there every night. The troll-looking bouncer becomes obsessed with one of your friends and for some reason, you find this not just okay but hilarious. But seriously, college kids: if it still exists, you should go to the cheap karaoke bar in Panama. It’s a blast. It’s just not Say What Karaoke-level glamorous.

Expectation: You will spend the weekend in the sand and sun, surrounded at all times by a crowd of fun-loving drunk college kids.

Reality: No, that’s all true. But all of those things are awful.

Expectation: You’ll make friends with college kids from around the nation and maybe the world!

Reality: Here is a rundown of “friends” we made on spring break:

  •  The kids from Ohio who taught us all the OH-IO cheer. Actually, they were cool but it only goes downhill from here.
  • That troll-looking Karaoke Bar guy.
  • These guys we met the first night at the karaoke bar after a 24-hour sleepless bus ride. They were from the South and took us to a diner for grits. Then they took us to see the high-rise the one kid’s dad owned; they were staying in the penthouse. Then they were like oops, that driver we said would take you home just left and it’s 5am, guess you all have to stay! TL;DR I got kidnapped.
  • The girls from our college’s most vicious sorority, whose room was next to ours. When my friend accidentally went into their room and fell asleep like Drunk Goldilocks, she woke up to one of the girls saying “If I were you, I would kill myself.” My friend responded “If I were you, I wouldn’t be such a bitch.”
  • The Christians in a white van who offer free rides to people.
  • The DJ who was from the same super-tiny town as my friend, which gave us a pass to request See You Again by Miley Cyrus more times than was even okay in 2008.

Expectation: You’ll probably run into Jesse Camp!

Reality:  Nah. You’ll run into a lot of people talking like Jesse Camp. That’s because they’re all wasted. The one that stands out in my mind is a girl in our hotel lobby raving about the Baconator she just bought. I congratulated her without any irony, because she was really proud of that Baconator.

Expectation: You will observe and take part in all kinds of wacky contests and win fabulous prizes!

Reality: The contests all involve things like mud and jello, and the grand prize is an extra-large giveaway t-shirt that for some reason people will go apeshit for.

Expectation: College spring break is the best you’ll ever look in your life, just like those girls on Fashionably Loud.

Reality: Let me break it down for you:

After an hour of pre-trip bathing suit shopping, my friends and I were so miserable that we decided we must have low blood sugar. We bought some Auntie Anne’s pretzels, signed up for department store credit cards that we should NOT have signed up for in order to get a 20% discount, then wore our bathing suits occasionally at our house to get used to them. This is probably not an advisable bikini-body plan.

I was also day-glo pale the whole time, because even in Florida, even on Spring Break, I’m still a freckly redhead. And I had giant bags under my eyes because bars closed at 4 A.M. and the free band on the beach started playing at 8 A.M.

Finally, the week before Spring Break I decided I wanted my hair to be more manageable. Do you see where this is going? I went to the bargain salon chain in our small college town for something between chin and shoulder length. This was the second of three times in my life when “between chin and shoulder length” ended up being ear length. I don’t know if it’s my hair type or if all of these hairdressers went to some weird anatomy class where your ear is located somewhere after your face. Then I had to go back the next day and get it cut even shorter because the right side was two inches shorter than the left.

Anyway, I looked sort of appealing, in the same way Dorothy Hamill did and also with the same haircut. It was the haircut every mother hopes her daughter will get right before Spring Break.

So yeah. I did not, in fact, belong on Fashionably Loud, even from far away in one of the crowd scenes.

Expectation:  You will be so pumped for SPRING BREAK! that you’ll have energy for days.

Reality: After a full day on a bus, which kicked off with you scurrying down a gully on a bathroom stop to get shots at an Applebee’s, you will still be shouting “SPRING BREAK!” That’s because you’ll have energy drinks for days. Energy DRINKS. One of my friend had a bunch of Red Bulls then totally tweaked out. He called us in a sweaty panic because his wallet was missing. His wallet was in his bed.

Expectation: One of the hottest bands of the 90s will play for free!

Reality: One of the hottest bands of the 90s WILL play for free. At 8 in the freaking morning. In 2008.

Expectation: You’ll have a crazy week full of wacky stories that you and your friends will laugh about for years to come.

Reality: That’s completely true. But you’re sort of laughing at yourself instead of with yourself, if that makes sense.

 

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It’s 1990: Let’s All Decorate With Geese In Bonnets

Posted in Miscellany by

Welcome to Let’s All Decorate, an occasional series celebrating the wacky, tasteless, and all-out amazing home decorating fads of days gone by!

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, my mom loved ducks and geese. Actually, let me rephrase that. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, my mom hated ducks and geese. When a favorite walking trail was infiltrated with Canadian Geese and their human-sized poop, she was livid. We raised baby chickens every year – she was a fourth-grade science teacher – but when a colleague hatched ducks, she didn’t understand (“too dirty”). But like so many middle-class women, my mother loved pictures of ducks and geese, as well as ceramic statutes, cookie jars, and wallpaper borders. It is as though at some point around 1988, all of the moms of the world got together, probably over Snackwells cakes and an episode of Oprah, and decided hey, let’s all decorate with ducks in bonnets.

When I really think about it, the bonnets were the weird part. The “put a bird on it” trend is still going strong, so obviously people like surrounding themselves with the ephemera of avian life. Fine. But those birds are living wild and free, you know, like birds do. The ducks and geese of the late ’80s and early ’90s were adorned like women from yesteryear. I have so many questions about this. Did the birds put the bonnets on themselves – too much sun on the beak, perhaps? And how would a goose make a bonnet? Did a human dress them in clothes, and if so, why? And who was the first person who thought “hey, ducks are kind of cute, but you know what would be way cuter? If they dressed like a lady from the 1800s!”

Look at this goose, dressed like she’s Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Duck Aunt:

And this freaking bird, gussied up like she’s about to go a-courtin’ with Gilbert Blythe:

Or how about this bird, wearing an apron so she doesn’t muss her feathers while feeding the chickens or whatever:

I’m almost positive my mom had these wall-geese:

This one goose has a shawl, because she’s chilly:And no kitchen was complete without this cross-stitched goose stuff, so all your goose friends would know that you welcomed them:

In 1990, it’s always Goose O’Clock (alternate slogan: “It’s Duck O’clock Somewhere?):It’s 1992. You’re thirsty. Best pour yourself an ice-cold glass of Goose Juice:

So, what social factors caused the Goose In A Bonnet fad? The trend has an almost perfect overlap with the Bush I presidency (1989 – 1993). Coming down from the go-go, Trump-and-taffeta Reagan era, were we all looking for something a little more homey, a little more rustic, a little more “waterfowl in sungear”? If so, it makes perfect sense that our interest in birds dressed like reenactors at a living history museum died just as the cynical mid-90s sprang to life; that when Gen X came into their own, they brought with them a sense of irony that had no room for geese that look like Hollie Hobbie.

Or was it the international tumult of the time –  Tiananman Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Iran-Contra, the Gulf War —  that had us all grappling for stability in the form of ducks outfitted like Strega Nona?
Friends, I think it was none of those things. I think it was pure, all-American bad taste. We talk a lot about all of the neon, day-glo nonsense that was going on 25 years ago, but let’s not forget about pastels. Bathrooms were outfitted with pastel peach and seafoam, with shadowboxes displaying shells and sand dollars. Living rooms had wallpaper borders with pictures of old-timey quilts. While most of the geese are in pale blue – a popular color during the pastel craze – you also see a bit of “dusty rose,” a dirty version of pink that people thought was a good idea.

I wonder if all of our chevron and naked birds and coral-and-teal is going to look as dumb as these Country Geese in 25 years (“Country Geese” is what they were called, and yes, it did take a long time on Google to learn this). I think the answer is maybe. But doesn’t it feel so refreshing to look back and remember a more innocent time, a time when we all said “hey, it’s 1990. The future is now. Let’s all decorate with geese in bonnets?”

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What The World Was Like Then: Zoolander Edition

Posted in Entertainment, Lists, Miscellany by

On Tuesday, Hollywood’s (no-so) best kept secret of a sequel to 2001’s cult comedy Zoolander was finally confirmed – but in a way that was totally kept secret. If you haven’t seen the video and gifs floating around, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson surprised the crowd during the Valentino show at Paris Fashion Week. They reprised their characters of Derek Zoolander and his arch nem Hansel McDonald, and went down the runway in a classic walk-off.

http://youtu.be/JLjyvzMCQaY

The stunt was brilliant and paid off, since it’s since gone viral on the internetz, including this very blog. We were in high school when Zoolander came out in 2001, and I vividly remember going to the movie theater with my friends to see it, and howling at the screen because I thought it was so funny (interestingly enough, I don’t think I would like it if I saw it for the first time now, but that’s beside the point). This scene (featuring a young Alexander Skarsgard) and the phrase “Orange mocha frappucinos” became an instant inside joke between us, and it is one of those memories that sticks out in the entirety of my 29 years of existence, for some reason.

While some will relate to Zoolander as a hilarious movie that they loved, I relate to it as a welcome and enjoyable memory from my teen years. So, it got me thinking, I can’t believe it’s been 14 years since Zoolander came out, and 2001, as we all know, was a turning point in world history, but there are a number of other things that happened in 2001 that make Lance Bass and Fred Durst’s cameos in Zoolander make much more sense if you remember the historical context around the movie. As a refresher, and while we wait for Zoolander 2 to come out next year, here are some highlights from 2001 to put you back in that Blue Steel mood.

But first – click on this medley of hits from ’01 and proceed.

  • Wikipedia goes live! I would not discover it until circa 2006.
  • George W. Bush is sworn into office (the first time)

  • Nicole Kidman realizes she’s better than this (*xenu*) and splits from Tom Cruise. Later, she goes on the world’s worst ‘date’ with Jimmy Fallon.
  • Backstreet Boys perform Larger than Life at the American Music Awards, and during the performance they’re joined on stage by ‘N Sync, marking it the only time that the boy bands performed on stage together. AND FOR SOME REASON I DON’T RECALL THIS SLASH THERE IS NO VIDEO TO PROVE IT.
  • Napster shuts down its entire network after losing the copyright case.

  • Meanwhile, Steve Jobs is on it and Apple introduces the iTunes media player.
  • Fox Family Channel is renamed ABC Family, which is why repeats of ABC shows like Life with Bonnie and Less Than Perfect aired when you got home from school.
  • Monica and Chandler finally get married – but I’m still wondering what happened to Joey’s World War II movie that was supposed to come out Memorial Day weekend 2002.
  • The first Kidz Bop CD (yes, CD) is released, including horribly covered Top 40 hits such as Smashmouth’s All Star, Bring It All To Me by Blaque ft. JC Chasez, and Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65.

http://youtu.be/cM7ts89lkrM?list=PLbb3F5Zkq8DTGYNli3zSEuctJqxjR8hL_

*Ed. Note: I didn’t realize it was kids singing in the background with adults taking lead vocals??

  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premieres and becomes the highest-grossing film of the year, and has since made $974.7 million worldwide. Other movies that made their debut in 2001:  The Fast and the Furious, Legally Blonde, On the Line, Corky Romano (which I also embarrassingly saw in the theater – it was SNL fangirl inspired), and Glitter.
  • Speaking of Glitter, July 2001 marked the ICONIC time when Mariah unexpectedly visited Carson Daly on the set of TRL, pushing an ice cream cart and then stripping off her Glitter shirt which, as I recall, was the oddest, most uncomfortable live scene in TV history. She later checks into a hospital for “extreme exhaustion”.
  • Jennifer Lopez marries her back-up dancer Cris Judd – and they divorce in 2002. Don’t worry, J Lo, you still have a lot more hearts to break in the future…
  • Lizzie McGuire premieres! Somewhere, Aaron Carter is just waiting by his AOL account waiting for an email from his agent to tell him he’s got a cameo on the show.
  • After eight years, Nickelodeon’s iconic Saturday night line-up, called SNICK is rebranded as TEENick, and my childhood officially dies.

http://youtu.be/nvNjcQ7ewXw

  • This happened at the VMAs and I’m still not over it.

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SLIMED: A ’90s Kids’ Choice Awards Retrospective

Posted in Entertainment by

The Kids’ Choice Awards air this weekend, even though it is 2015. See, the Kids’ Choice Awards – a Nickelodeon awards show where B-list celebrities get doused with green slime – were such a ’90s staple that it’s hard to imagine them continuing after our childhoods ended. It’s like visiting your old elementary school and seeing children using your old classrooms as though they’re just theirs. But time marches on, and so does cable children’s programming – but this time, there’s no Rosie O’Donnell, Jim Carey, or LL Cool J (which, when I think about it… were we children, or a bunch of middle-aged women?) As far as I’m concerned, though, the 90s were the definitive decade of the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards.

1990

The ’90s didn’t know what they wanted to be yet, so they were still acting like the ’80s. If you’re inclined to think 1990 isn’t that long ago, think again: Back To The Future Part II won Favorite Movie Actor and Actress… yes, a movie set in the “future” that is 2015. Candace Cameron hosted. Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) got slimed, and so did Internet fav Wil Wheaton.

Also, New Kids On The Block were too busy and important to accept their award, but they appeared via satellite, and to kids in 1990, it felt like the future was now.

1991

These awards were hosted by Corin Nemec, a person I hadn’t heard of until right now because I was too young to watch Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. Winners included the Simpsons – which I remember being super “edgy” at the time, so my siblings and I were allowed to watch it, but not downstairs (in case someone respectable came over? not sure) – as well as Will Smith and Keshia Knight Pulliam. Maybe it’s just because 1991 is one of the first years I can really remember any pop culture stuff from, but the rest of the winners hold up surprisingly well over time: Home Alone, Kindergarten Cop, Michael Jordan, and Pretty Woman.

1992

90s kids, now’s when you should really start paying attention: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Robin Williams in Hook. Doug. Roseanne. Sonic the Hedgehog. In my neon-tinted memories, the 1992 Kids’ Choice Awards are how I remember the early ’90s. Elsewhere in the world the Gulf War was raging, grunge was in its meteoric rise into the mainstream, and the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill saga cast a pall over the upcoming presidential election. But it was 1992, and all us kids wanted was to consume Cheeetos, Pop-Tarts and Ecto Cooler in our stirrup pants while shooting scrunchies at our siblings and watching people get slimed.

So it’s no surprise that when 1992 kids were asked to make a time capsule, it looked like this:

1993

Do you have any of those shows or movies that you remember, but nobody else really does? For me, one of those shows is Roundhouse, an ensemble sketch show that I was obsessed with. Well, the cast of Roundhouse performed at the ’93 Kids’ Choice Awards, so suck it, everyone! They really made it big! The awards were hosted by select cast members of 90210, remarkable because I didn’t know any kids in 1993 who were allowed to watch 90210.

If the 1993 Kids’ Choice Awards exemplify one thing, it’s the love affair mainstream America was having with hip hop and R&B. Fresh Prince was a TV show nominee, Ice Cube was a nominated actor, and Kris Kross won for favorite male group (other musical nominees: Boyz II Men, En Vogue, TLC and MC Hammer). We may be the first generation to grow up with computers, but we’re also the first generation to grow up with hip hop targeted specifically toward children.

The three little blonde boys from Home Improvement got slimed, including a pre-Tiger Beat JTT.

1994

Candace Cameron was BACK in 1994 – no holding Deej Tanner down! So was Joey Lawrence. 1994 was really the year that tiny North American children all turned into middle-aged women. Winners, nominees, and slime-ees included Home Improvement, Whitney Houston, Mrs. Doubtfire, Sister Act II, and Nancy Kerrigan. Michael Jordan won favorite male athlete for the millionth time, which makes me wonder if he was the only male athlete we had all heard of. I’m also pretty sure this was smack in the middle of that one time he “retired” for a minute and my brother melodramatically took down the framed Jordan poster from his wall, so it’s pretty amazing he was still a contender. I guess because he was pretending to be a baseball player at the time.

Anyway, in 1994 us kids were all what they called “normcore” in trend pieces written in mid-2014. Our favorite video game was Super Mario World and our favorite sports team was the Dallas Cowboys. We liked Tim Allen and Aerosmith. In that weird transitional era between the neon-tinged 80s-like early 90s, the grungy early-mid 90s, and the shiny Clueless phase, we were all the human version of plaid couches.

1995

Nobody believes me when I say this, but kids in the 90s were allowed to watch stuff that would never fly in 2015. I’m sure there are some permissive parents now, but even television specifically geared towards kids had nuclear spills (Alex Mack) and ghosts (Are You Afraid Of The Dark). Evidence of this: Kids’ Choice nominees in 1995 included Living Single, Roseanne, Speed, Forrest Gump, and Married…. With Children. And yet, the winner was still The Lion King, which is unsurprising to those of us who can remember the phenomenon.

This whole show is on Youtube, and if you either want to relive the mid-90s, or are a teen who was, at best, a baby at the time, you should watch it. With all respect to the 1992 Kids’ Choice time capsule, it is the ultimate 90s kids’ time capsule. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen won as favorite movie actress, but it kind of doesn’t seem fair because the two of them only added up to one actress. Tia and Tamera won favorite TV actress, so just a reminder, we were all a bit obsessed with twins back then.

1997

Was everyone’s mom secretly voting on their behalf? SPIN CITY, guys. Spin City was nominated. So was One Fine Day and The Preacher’s Wife. Our favorite song was the Fugees’ cover of Killing Me Softly, so at least we got that right.

Also, check out beautiful, innocent baby Amanda Bynes in the video clip above.

1998

If 1994 – 1996 was the era of the moms, 1998 was when youth culture took back the early evening. Titanic was our favorite movie – was there even a question? – and I’m sure I called in from my family’s wall phone to vote for it. Jonathan Taylor Thomas won his rightful place as favorite TV actor, and our favorite musical group was Hanson. I’m sure they just barely edged out Spice Girls. As it should be, Salem from Sabrina The Teenage Witch was the top animal star. By 1998, you were probably watching with your baby barrettes holding back the bangs you were growing out to look more like Rose Dewitt Bukater Dawson and taking notes with your pen with a giant feather puff on top. If you were really, really lucky, maybe you’d see an article about the Kids’ Choice Awards on the AOL homepage the next time you visited your aunt who had the internet.

This happened, and it remains the most 1998 thing I’ve ever seen:

Also, this:

1999

By 1999, we had made our full journey through the 90s, from almost-80s to grunge to normcore to the teen pop takeover. The 1999 awards were all boy bands, Delia*s-inspired fashion, and earnest optimism. Our favorite book was Chicken Soup For The Soul, for goodness sakes. Our favorite actors were Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, and all was right with the world. We couldn’t imagine a life beyond the 90s – no, literally, my memories begin around 1990, so anything else was unfathomable to me. But really, what more did we need?

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Just Say YES: 80s & 90s Kids’ Shows That Made Drugs Look Fun

Posted in Entertainment by

First things first: we would never tell children to do drugs. Children’s programs do it for us. Or did, anyway. Back when the front line of the War On Drugs was manned by a white lady named Nancy, kids’ shows told the youth of the nation to “just say no.” The problem: the drugs looked awesome. Was it because the show runners didn’t know what drugs looked like? Or were they just trying to show kids how hard it could be to resist peer pressure? Because I guarantee if these cartoons showed gross needles, or weed being smoked out of a dank Coke can, fewer kids would have wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Instead, the drugs looked awesome:

Punky Brewster

Punky’s got lessons. Don’t go all the way inside of a refrigerator. Your family is who loves you, not who abandons you in a supermarket. Someday, you’ll get a bra. And don’t do drugs, even though drugs look like the best candy in the world.

A group of girls invite Punky and Cherie into their clique, but only if they do drugs. I repeat: the girls invited Punky and Cherie to hang out in an amazing technicolor dream fort, and offered them free drugs. I’m not surprised that Punks did the right thing, I’m just confused why those girls wanted to be friends with her that hard.

Cartoon All Stars To The Rescue

This was an all-out failure of concept. When a young boy starts drinking beer and smoking dope ( I think they say “dope,” and I’m never 100% clear on what drug that’s supposed to be), his kid sis and a team of Cartoon All Stars gang up to teach him that there’s a better way.

That’s right, kids. If you do drugs, all your favorite cartoon characters will come over to hang.

In a way, though, this was the harshest punishment of all, because can you imagine being on drugs and then trying to deal with the fact that you were rolling with Alf, the Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield, the Muppet Babies – the freaking Muppet Babies – and the Ninja Turtles? While we’re at it, Ninja Turtles: the CONSTANT PIZZA? The slow, drawled out speech? Sitting around all day in a basement with your bros? Oh, come on.

Dinosaurs

I’ve seen episodes of Weeds that were less pro-drug than this. Earl and Robbie, the boy dinosaur who’s Dinosaurs’ answer to Eddie Winslow, find a plant that makes them all chill and happy, but then the next day all they can find is seeds and stems. So I guess the lesson here is that they should have had more drugs on hand. Anyway, the whole family turns amotivational and at the end, Robbie delivers an anti-drug speech. Or is it an anti-anti drug episode speech? “When one show does an anti-drug episode, other shows feel pressured to do one, too. […] [P]ut a stop to preachy sitcom endings like this one.” In sum, the writers room of Dinosaurs probably smelled like that one kid in your nighttime sociology class who always wore a Central American poncho.

Saved By The Bell

We all know and love the “I’m so excited.. I’m so scared!” scene, but it’s easy to forget how appealing that episode made drugs look to all those Type A kids out there. Like, if I do “caffeine pills,” I too can get tons of shit done? That sounds amazing. I think we can all assume that “caffeine pills” is a Saturday morning T.V. euphemism for speed or a less depressing version of meth.

Then, there was Johnny Dakota. He was a teen star who showed up to make an anti-drug P.S.A. with the kids of Bayside. The gang goes to a party at his place and learns that he does drugs himself. So, Johnny Dakota went back to his lifestyle of drug-fueled house parties and the Bayside kids went back to hanging out with their principal. Real good job there, Saved By The Bell.

Fresh Prince

Was speed really THAT big an issue for highly-motivated teenagers in the 90s? Like Spano, Carlton is a clean-cut honor roll type who falls prey to amphetamines. He gets the pills from Will, who is using them to keep up with his go-go lifestyle, and Carlton takes them thinking that they’re vitamins. I am now realizing that I took Sudafed to pull an all-nighter in law school a few times, and that I probably learned that little trick from 90s kids’ shows. I graduated Magna Cum Laude and I owe it all to what I know realize were drugs. These were either some hardcore amphetamines or Carlton had a pre-existing condition, because he got hospitalized HARD.

Captain Planet

This episode features something that I was led to believe would happen a lot more than it does: a stranger forcing me to take drugs for no real reason. Do you remember that? They’d teach you how to “just say no” if someone offers you drugs, and then your whole DARE class would get sidetracked talking about “well, what if someone MAKES you take drugs?” And not for any reason other than that they want you to be a person who is on drugs. I remember when Traci and I were in Greece, we met this weird girl on the train who told us to be careful in Athens because people would put drugs in our food. “Oh, like… for reasons?” we wondered. Nah. She said just like weed or mild hallucinogens, and I don’t know why they would waste their hard-earned drugs on people who didn’t even want them.

But I digress. Some dude puts drugs in Lenkas food not to do anything to her, but just so that she becomes a person who is on drugs. She’s pretty miserable when she’s off drugs, but when she’s on them it looks like a blast!

Now, as someone who’s blessed to share her name with a popular club drug, I’m in a unique position to critique drug names. The one in Captain Planet is called Bliss. That’s a stupid drug name.

Jem

A girl we’ve never seen before is offered drugs, and before you know it her guitar skills are through the roof! Eventually she starts experiencing side effects or something, but this will go down as the anti-drug episode that taught us kids that if you hate practicing clarinet for band, there’s probably a drug for that.

 

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