Heaven’s Gate

I just Hale-Bopped myself back to the nineties, hooker.

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Reminiscing on my childhood and adolescence is in itself a reminiscence of the things I loved about the 1990’s.  There are too many to list, but some stand out in my mind more than others.  I’d love to hear from my many thousands of readers what they loved about that glorious decade. Well, glorious for this American white girl. It may have sucked for some of you out there. Sorry about that.

Listening to Public Enemy while playing basketball with my brothers in our driveway

Sometimes I beat my older brother at 21, and then he’d claim to have let me win, which we all know was a fucking lie. Then, something (it was different every day) would make my little brother melt down into a whiney crying mess, and he’d stomp inside. And then we’d resume playing basketball. I was maybe one of the few 13-year-old white girls who knew who Flava Flav was at the time.

Pagers

I didn’t have one, but they’re still funny.

Discman fanny-packs

I had this huge-ass fanny-pack for my discman when I was working out. Gigantor. Thank God that’s not necessary anymore. I don’t know if it would fit over this post-prego gunt-belly. Or maybe it would sit on top of it awkardly. In short, it wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors.

Cloning sheep

Remember when Dolly the sheep was cloned?  I remember hearing the news, because you might as well have told me a leprachaun just traveled back in time from the future, and poored me a bowl of Lucky Charms, consisting solely of the good marshmallow pieces. I was stunned— it seemed impossible.  To this day, the controversey remains around the possibility and ethics of cloning human beings. Fuck you, I’m cloning myself given the first opportunity. Future generations need to meet this cracka.

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, the debut album by Outkast

The album went platinum by ’95.  I think this was my older brother’s theme song? Either way, I listened to it about a jillion times in his car, and it made this geeky little 13-year-old girl feel like a baller.

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Comet Hale-Bopp

“Comet Hale–Bopp was perhaps the most widely observed comet of the 20th century, and one of the brightest seen for many decades. It was visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months, twice as long as the previous record holder, the Great Comet of 1811.” (Wikipedia)

But even more fascinating than the comet, were those Heaven’s Gate mutherfuckers!  You see, little grasshoppers, the leaders were humans possessed by alien souls (who were also castrated in Mexico, for good measure).  And clearly, the earth was about to be “recycled”, or wiped clean. Obviously, they had to leave the earth so they wouldn’t be destroyed along with it. So they killed their bodies (they committed suicide by eating poisoned pudding, washed down with a swig of vodka– Genius!!), so that their souls could hitch a ride on the alien spaceship that was closely following Comet Hale-Bopp.  Luckily, the group purchased Alien Abduction insurance… in case the spaceship didn’t arrive?? I don’t fuckin’ know.

Rio DiAngelo, one of the Heaven’s Gate members, did not kill himself, because he was charged with spreading the word via videos and literature to future generations.  Tell us, Rio, how’s that working out for you?  Do you feel left behind by those alien assholes?  Do you have a whole new flock of Heaven’s Gate followers, patiently awaiting the next spaceship, so that you can also commit cult suicide? How have the last 15 years been?

Sidekick hoochies

You know, the kind that appeared in relation to Warrant’s “Cherry Pie“– blonde hair, red lipstick… Puff Daddy had the best. They’re the hot women who appear on the arm (or lap) of celebrity male pop stars, but we don’t know their names or anything. They are simply body parts for teen boys to make happiness to in their bedrooms.  The sidekick hoochies of the 90’s paved the way for those that appeared in the video for Sisqo’s “Thong Song”, a highlight of my freshman year of college.

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Kick the can

Me and my little brother, along with our two best friends, used to play kick the can nonstop throughout the summer. I suppose this game isn’t isolated to the 90’s, but it happened in the 90’s for me, so it’s relevant. We’d play a lot of capture the flag, baseball, “homeless Barbie marries sugardaddy troll”, and make home movies of ourselves doing obscenely weird shit. Like anti-domestic abuse commercials, or talkshows where one of us was inevitably mentally disabled. We were kids, so what can I say? Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.

Swimming in money

Hey, remember how great the economy was in the 90’s? Yeah, me too.

Fresh Prince of Bel Air

Why did I take Will Smith more seriously during the 90’s than I do now? Was it because he was living with his rich uncle in L.A. and attending a prep school? Am I that classist?  Maybe I become less interested in people when they start handing their kids Hollywood careers.  Regardless, this show was so good that it was exported all over the world. I wonder if that happened to Men in Black…  If I could change one thing, it would be to erase the image from my mind of all the guys I knew in junior high who would dance the “Carlton.”

“Love me some trashy 90’s TV.”

When I asked my girl, K-Money, to weigh in on this topic, this is what she had to say:

Jerry Springer. I am cheating on you with your transvestite brother/sister (?) who is a proud member of the ku klux klan and I am not sure if her black baby is mine. Wait, is that Maury who figures that out?

Smoking cigarettes in diners

I asked my girlfriend Holly, who was a stage of life ahead of me at the time, what she remembers about the nineties. She immediately squeaked out

“Smoking cigarettes in restaurants oh-my-god those were the days, holy shit I loved that so much.”

No really, I witnessed her having an orgasm as she reminisced on the memories of smoking in diners, where there was simply an invisible line separating the smokers from the non-smoking section.  I don’t know about you, but here in the arctic circle, it is now illegal to smoke cigarettes in restaurants at all.  This is where her passion is coming from. Sheer deprivation.

When it comes to me and smoking in the nineties, it equates to me and K-Money skipping class in high school, and driving over to the local gas station, buying some wood-tipped Swisher Sweets, and smoking them in her car. I managed to smoke my first “real” cigar, a Cuban, in Canada. What happened directly after that will go down in history as the moment I became one with nature, meaning, going number two in a field in the middle of nowhere, right next to a train track, because apparently Canada doesn’t have gas stations every half-mile like they do in the States. Stupid Canadians. I poo’d on your land, Canadians!

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