Children of the 90s is Proud to Present...

I have a terrible confession to make. Despite all of my wonderful blog friends being gracious and kind enough to bestow generous blog awards on me, I have been as of late somewhat of a selfish award-taker. That is to say, I have done a terrible job of passing along these awards because I tend to have trouble fitting in the meme-ishness into my daily posting schedule.

Then suddenly, it hit me. I conceived of a brilliant and generous plan/scheme a la Zach Morris. Here's my moment to freeze the action and speak directly to the camera in pure defiance of the fourth wall.

I could make my own award.

Someone has to start these things, right? What if I, Children of the 90s, created my own award?

There were criteria, of course, for creating this award. For one, it needed to fully encapsulate and represent 90s cheesiness. Also, it needed some sort of horrible, cringe-worthy pun. If I was going to create it, well, then, it had better reflect all my god-awful punnery.

So, after innumerable focus groups and endless market research, I am proud to present the Children of the 90s award for excellence:

The Write Stuff.



I know, I know...this song was most popular in 1989. New Kids on the Block were legitimately an 80s-90s enterprise, and I stand by my decision to use their cheesy likeness in my award...mainly because it works with the best pun I thought up. You don't want to see the list of rejects.

Yep, I totally made that and there's no taking it back now. Display it on your profiles with pride. Oh, and I suppose it should come with some rules, so here you go:

Give it to whomever you'd like! Alright, we're good on this, yes? Without further ado, several bloggers who most certainly have the write stuff:


Fever Formerly Jakezilla, Lora's blog is truly one of the funniest out there. She covers a full gamut of topics and speaks her mind in a way that always cracks me up.


Well Okay, Sassy Britches! Love her blog, and don't miss her hilarious Birdcage-esque profile description--it's what drew me in in the first place :) Oh, and she'll teach you all about culverts.


Muppet Soul Muppet's was one of the first blogs I got into, she tells a great story and is always very funny.


Couture Carrie A fabulous fashion blog, for all of you who are into that kind of thing. I know I am.


Teasingly Diverse Just an all around great blog, check her out!


Get a Pencil and Your Casebook Thank you, Sadako, for starting this amazing blog. It's new (she also writes Dibbly Fresh) and features some of my favorites, namely Ghostwriter and Are You Afraid of the Dark?


Wild ARS Chase He had me sold not only on his abundant 90s knowledge, but first on his Snuggie photo spread. Brilliant. He's already 'fessed up his iTunes embarrassments, so hopefully the NKOTB picture won't throw him too much.

Insomniac Lolita Andhari just wrote about NKOTB today, how appropriate! She also does amazing hip hop of her own, and writes an all-around great blog.


Would now be a totally inappropriate time for some shameless self promotion? I'm leaning toward yes, absolutely, but what the heck, I'll go for the plug:

Did you know you can be a fan of Children of the Nineties on Facebook? I know, I know, control your excitement. It's tough to keep it all inside, but don't go all Jessie-Spano-on-caffeine-pills on me just yet. You're so excited, you're so excited, you're so...scared? I hope not. I know the whole Facebook fanmanship has gotten out of control, what with our news feeds crammed to the brim with useless declarations of people being fans of Sleep, Hot Showers, or Not Being on Fire. Again, that's Children of the Nineties on Facebook. Have I exhausted the number of times I'm allowed to post that link? Looks great on newsfeeds!

Oh, and you can also vote for Children of the 90s in the 2009 Blogger's Choice Awards. You know, if you ever felt the urge. No pressure.

Okay, that's probably enough of that. The real story here is go check out those blogs, they are wonderful! For all of you lurkers out there, stop by and say hi. You probably have the Write Stuff and I don't even know it yet. Thank you and good night!

All That (Part 1)

What ,you think I could fit a childhood's worth of All That sketch memories in a single post? Well, think again. SNICK was a cornerstone of Saturday night juvenile television programming, and for many years (that is, until I outgrew it) All That was its anchor.

You know a network sees potential in a show when they commission a big name music act to create a custom-made theme song. Nickelodeon asked TLC to perform the All That theme song, which in most of our recollections consisted of a vaguely unmemorable rap and the words "all that" repeated numerous times throughout. The song was catchy though, or at least enough so to keep preview audiences watching the first episode in its entirety in 1994.

All That took the successful format of grown up sketch comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live and MAD TV and translated it (read: dumbed it down) for pre-adolescent audiences . They maintained the general outline of a cold open, some sketches, and a live musical guest. For a kid's show, All That actually managed to pull some big names. Legitimate (well, in terms of popularity, that is) musical names such as Usher and Boyz II Men performed on the show. It had all the ingredients of a veritable children's television enterprise.

But was it funny? At the time, most of us thought it was hysterical. I suppose humor is in the ear of the behearer, because thumbing through some of the jokes now makes me seriously question my sanity as a child. This probably indicates that the All That producers got what separates adult humor from children's humor; there's a reason reviewers remark with disdain that gross-out or overly simplistic comedies are "juvenile". To actual juveniles, the show was a real laugh riot.





Like I said, the show had countless memorable sketches, so let's take a look at a few notables and I promise to get back to the rest later:

Good Burger
Arguably one of the most recognizable All That sketches, most prominently because it was later adapted into a movie. How or why movie executives saw fit to morph this three minute non-sequitor into a two-hour full length feature is beyond our grasp as viewers. In the sketch, Kel Mitchell played a dim-witted and literal-minded fast food counter worker, beginning every customer interaction with the phrase, "Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, can I take your order?"

It usually went a little something like this:



Kel certainly had some skill in the way of deadpan, and it's easy to see what drew kids to this mode of humor. Children by nature are not abstract, and hence respond best to literal jokes. That's why kids like things that other people think are stupid. Like Good Burger.

The subsequent film received incredibly negative feedback from adult reviewers. I would say, to its credit as a franchise, that you'd be hard pressed to find someone between the ages of 18 and 30 who didn't recognize Kel's opening Good Burger spiel.


Ishboo
Ah, the 90s trope of vaguely foreign exchange students. Like Nadia from American Pie Ishboo had no discernable connection to any actual country, nor did his accent particularly reflect a specific heritage. Ishboo's schtick was mainly that he did stupid things (claiming they were native customs) and everyone felt compelled to copy him to make him feel comfortable and at home:



In typical TV stereotyping fashion, apparently being overweight makes you ageless. If I were Lori Beth Denberg, I probably wouldn't be too pleased to be paired up with ol' male patterned baldy over here. Either way, Ishboo was funny to kids because he wears a skirt and makes people bang their heads on the wall. It's a bit shocking to think its star, Kenan Thompson, was the only one who went on to have a future in sketch comedy. Then again, based on the current ratings of Saturday Night Live, perhaps it's not such a stretch.


Ask Ashley
I'll say this for Amanda Bynes: she was certainly cute as a child. Amanda's spinoff show and subsequent longevity in show business points to her actually being a skilled entertainer. As a child, I always loved her Ask Ashley sketch on All That. The basic premise was that young viewers wrote Ashley with questions seeking advice in the manner of Dear Abby. Ashley appeared the picture of sweetness and innocence, and would begin reading every letter, "Dear Ashley....thaaaaaaat's meee!" It was certainly endearing, but from there things seemed to take a turn:

I apologize for the absolutely atrocious quality of this video, less-than-ingeniusly videotaped from a TV screen. It was the best I could do.

Watching now as an adult, I'm mainly just impressed that she manages to go so crazy on these people without using a single curse word. Bravo, Ask Ashley. Bravo.


Ear Boy
"He's Ear Boy, Ear Boy, his ears are really big!" If that title sequence music doesn't reaffirm the fact that children adore simple humor, I don't know what does. That was essentially the whole gag; Josh Server was Ear Boy, whose ears were indeed really big. For some reason I never quite understood (and perhaps this was due to my limited political knowledge as a child), his nemesis was Ross Perot.

The sketch poked fun at common playground nicknames used to mock people with acne, braces, or glasses by building Ear Boy a gang of cronies named Pizza Face (literally, pizza for a face), Tinsel Teeth (Christmas ornaments in mouth), and Four Eyes (she had four).



I'm tempted to judge this further and increasingly without mercy, until I stumbled upon this more recent photo of Ear Boy Josh Server.


I might just leave it at that.



Vital Information
This was one of the more frequent bits on All That, featuring Lori Beth Denberg as the initial supplier of this Vital Information for your Everyday Life (to be later replaced by a washed up Little Pete and some other kid after the show's Golden Age). Vital Information for your Everyday Life was filled with, well, Vital Information for your Everyday Life. Sort of.



These were sort of one-liners, except they usually made no sense at all. They were completely pointless, which I suppose was the point, the humor being that these items were not Vital Information at all. Her bits of wisdom included gems like

If you flush your friend down the toilet, you either got a huuuge toilet or a teenie little friend.

Well said, Lori Beth. I've got to get me some smaller friends. Or a bigger toilet.


While it may not stand the test of time, it's nostalgia factor is pretty high on the fond memory scale. If it's not making you giggle, set a couple of 9 year olds in front of the reruns for a few episodes and watch them delight in it. Sure, it will make you feel old, but it's better than having to watch the whole Good Burger movie to reaffirm your faith in old-school juvenile comedy.

Memorable Commercials from 90's Children's Television Timeslots

Don't even get me started on 90's commercials. Okay, feel free to offer some rough prompts, but be prepared for no foreseeable ending to this downright deluge of cheesy wonderfulness. In order to best serve you, the reader, and to prevent 10,000 word-posts, I've conveniently narrowed the categorical content of this particular topic.

There are countless memorable commercials from the 1990s. White and khaki-clad swing dancers urged us to shop at the Gap, beer promoters coined the frequently quoted "WHAZZUP?!", and soda drinking spokesmen asked us to Make 7 Up (Y)ours. What in particular interests me, however, are those commercials that seemed to play on endless loop during child-geared programming. Whether it was Nickelodeon or Saturday morning cartoons, these ads were shown again and again and again until we could recite the voice-overs right along with them.

This repeated airing, of course, was not without its consequences. It seems (and rather unfortunately, at that) that most of my mind has been crammed so full of 90s song lyrics and television advertisements that I can no longer accurately absorb current information. Someone gives me verbal directions of how to get somewhere and I immediately go blank, but I can sing Bone Thugs N Harmony's "Crossroads" in its entirety without blinking an eye. (By the way, if anyone would like to stop me at any point on this stroll down memory lane, you can meet me at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)).

90s-crammed brain aside, let's take a look at some of the absurdly hackneyed advertising that aired during our favorite programs:



Muzzy



It was years before I actually took French and could translate the wondrously useless phrases uttered by the Muzzyites. For the longest time, I was certain that "Je suis la jeune fille" was the dazzlingly appropriate response to any French inquiry. Only later did I learn that litserally translated, my all-purpose French meant "I am the young girl." I was right! Perfect in any situation!

"Excuse me, where is the metro?" "I am the young girl."
"Could you direct me to the cafe?" "I am the young girl."
"Which way to the Eiffel Tower?" "I am the young girl."

Foolproof, I tell you. That gorilla-type thing always scared the bejeezus out of me also. I liked the idea of dancing cartoons teaching me languages, but I certainly would have preferred the cute and dainty to the hulking and clunky.




Better Blocks


I'm not quite sure what it was about these things that were so enticing. It was incredibly unlikely that I or any child I knew would ever have the patience to sit down and labor tirelessly over a bunch of crappy second-rate plastic blocks. I never actually saw the things in person, but I imagine the effort that went into making the once-coveted butterfly was in no way compatible with my attention span as a child.

I've usually found the jumpy excitement of the voice-over to be inversely related to the actual fun of the toy: if it were really all that great, it would sell itself. I did desperately want the glow-in-the-dark version, though. When they turned off that light and spun that glowing blockful carousel, my little heart fluttered.



Topsy Tail


My sister and I actually shared one of these, and I can tell you for certain that it was never used. The ease with which tails are topsied in the commercial? It's in no way related to the actual ease of real-life topsying. I'm sure any male readers were and continue to be generally befuddled by female fascination with these types of tools, but take my word for it when I say we get this sort of bad-hairstying-aid trance. Those ponytails are butt-fugly, but dammit, if those girls could turn their ponytails inside out, well, then so would I.

The first time I saw that god-awful Bump-It! commercial on TV, I immediately thought of my now begotten Topsy Tail. It's good to know that the trend of useless overpriced hair styling aids still has a veritable market of consumers.


Hooked on Phonics



Curse you, retro-centric YouTubers, how could you ignore this gem of a 90s ad? You've uploaded everything else. Sure, I like a good Susan Boyle performance or panda sneeze as much as the next person, but where's my Hooked on Phonics commercial? In case you are curious or need a little refresher course in how and for whom Hooked on Phonics could work, look no further than the above advertisement compilation, from :30 to :60. You're welcome.

The Hooked on Phonics tagline, "Hooked on Phonics worked for me!" was repeatedly mocked throughout the 90s. Parody after parody was churned out in response to the cheesy slogan. It wasn't just in the wording, but in the execution. It was more like, "Hooked on Phonics....worked for me!" Sure, I love literacy and all, but calm yourselves, spokespeople.


Malt-O-Meal


Wow, that guy must have outstandingly powerful quadriceps. His squatty walk takes a lot more lower body strength than you'd think. This commercial was certainly memorable on ridiculousness alone, but probably also struck a painful chord with the kids whose parents were saving "a whole dollar!" by avoiding brand-name sugar cereals. These oft-maligned knockoffs certainly weren't buying any of us the necessary currency of playground clout and credibility. I understand that there are no fundamental differences between Lucky Charms and Marshmallow Mateys, but I would prefer if my cereal didn't come in an industrial-size feedbag.



Hopefully this has also helped all of you realize why your short term memory has been on the fritz: it's crammed to the brim with bagged cereal commercial choreography and dreams of bendable blocks.