I swear this is not a lazy cop-out Friday post. Depending on your definiton of lazy. Or cop out. Or really, even Friday.

Before you start singing that catchy "One of These Things is not like the Other" song from Sesame street, allow me to offer some completely valid explanations (read: excuses). I was all pumped up to do a regular daily post for all of my loyal readers, but a few life-like obstacles inconveniently dropped in my way.

First, as some of you long-time readers may now, I broke my ankle a month ago. Let's all say that together. A month. A long time, yes? Now let's say, just theoretically, that you had been on crutches for a month and were continuing to enjoy your daily life where your apartment in which you live alone is convenient located up a treacherous set of skull-crushingly solid cement steps. Just theoretically, that is.

Now, if this completely theoretical person had not only stupidly missed her doctor's appointment and x-ray the week before but after some desperate, tear-stained rescheduling was told she may be on crutches for an additional six to eight weeks, she might not be in prime posting mood. Again, this is all just hypothetical, but I'm sure you would agree.

Concurrent to this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news re:walking and living, let's imagine for a minute that the desktop computer that she so loved and defended against her pretentious laptop-toting peers came down with a terrible virus. The likes of which may allow a newer computer to recover, but for an old, desolate soul like her desktop will inevitably result in a slow, painful, RAM-eating death. After which the computer will inexplicably keep restarting in a way that can only lead her to believe that it is indeed possessed, forcing her to unplug it to void out the possibility of it growling to her in the night in the voice of Satan.

I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty awful. Sure, she's got a brand-spanking new laptop now that she can't afford, but thanks to the incredible generosity of her very kind, wonderful, endlessly deserving of superlative adjective qualifiers boyfriend, was able to not afford it slightly less. Don't fight it, those double negatives all made perfect sense.

So there you have it. After sobbing gently through this very sad hypothetical story, I'm sure you can understand why there is not a gem of 90s wisdom waiting for you today. Okay, so maybe a percentage of the above tale is true. What? 100 is a percentage. Either way, I could never let you down and thus will share with you some chain-email style observational humor that had me nodding and laughing along all the way.

This has obviously been floating around the internet, as I keep seeing tidbits pop up as people's facebook statuses, but this seems an incredibly appropriate and moderately captive audience for this kind of thing. I did not write this (I take credit for nothing!) but it did arrive in my inbox with the elusive title "Random Thoughts from People Our Age". I am sure some of you have seen it before, but it really is deserving of our attention.

Again, not written by me. Taking no credit for this. Just shamelessly re-posting something I found both humorous and poignant, for which I give you full permission to disseminate via email. As, like I said, I didn't write it. So who am I really to give you permission? But that's neither here not there*.

Random thoughts from people our age...

-I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

-More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.

-Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

-I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?

-Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

-That's enough, Nickelback.

-I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

-Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

-Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

-There is a great need for sarcasm font.

-Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the f was going on when I first saw it.

-I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.

-How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

-I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

- I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

-The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

- A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.

- Was learning cursive really necessary?

- Lol has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".

- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

- Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

- My brother's Municipal League baseball team is named the Stepdads. Seeing as none of the guys on the team are actual stepdads, I inquired about the name. He explained, "Cuz we beat you, and you hate us." Classy, bro.

- Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

- How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?

- I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

- Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies"

-What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

- While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart.

- MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

- I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

-Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

- I would like to officially coin the phrase 'catching the swine flu' to be used as a way to make fun of a friend for hooking up with an overweight woman. Example: "Dave caught the swine flu last night."

-I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

- Bad decisions make good stories

-Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!

- Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?

-If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.

-Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem....

-You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

-Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.

-There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

-I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

- "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this ever.

-I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'

-I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?

- I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

-When I meet a new girl, I'm terrified of mentioning something she hasn't already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.

-I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

-Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles...

- As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

-Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

-It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

-I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

-Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn't know what do to with it.

-Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...

-My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day "Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?" How the hell do I respond to that?

-It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

-I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

-I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

-I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

-The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.

I hope that was enough to get you your Gen Y weekend fix. Have a wonderful weekend, children of the 90s, and hopefully I'll be back to you on Monday with all sorts of exciting new tricks garnered from this shiny new laptop.



*Okay, Okay. It's there.

Lovable 90s TV Nerds

TV in the 90s was the Golden Age of stereotyped characters. Very few of our favorite shows contained particularly multi-dimensional characters. Instead, most of our televised friends could be neatly labeled and classified. Especially in high school sitcoms, our usual spectrum of characters was always there: the nerds, the jocks, the brains, and all of our other easily identifiable groupings. Sure, it was sort of a cop-out, but it was a lot easier than thinking up complex, multifaceted characters that resemble actual people in real life. I mean, really. Who wants that kind of responsibility on their shoulders?

One of the most popular TV tropes of the 90s was the nerd. Magically, these nerds usually seemed to be best friends with our too-cool everyman hero-type characters. You know, the way it never is in real life. Generally, these characters were ripe for mocking and served as a comic foil to their slicker co-stars. Regardless of their butt-of-the-joke lot in TV, they did get their fair share of funny storylines and dialogue. Sure, we were mocking them, but in an endearing way rather than with disdain. Well, usually.


Carlton Banks of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

If you're wondering who would win in a contest for the whitest black guy in the universe, look no further than preppy Republican Trekkie Carlton Banks. He made for a wonderful comic foil to cousin Will, whose cool character and smooth moves were in high contrast to Carlton's social awkwardness. He's an incredibly easy target: short, studious, old-fashioned fuddy-duddy music taste, and a penchant for tying golf sweaters around his shoulders.

Sure he's a little formal and straightlaced, but he does manage to surprise us once in awhile. Particularly with the Carlton dance. Any of you regular readers probably notice that I reference the Carlton dance frequently, but it's just so incredibly deserving of our attention. He's particularly partial to Tom Jones. If you're not yet convinced of Carlton's nerdiness, look no further than his incredibly well-timed dancing dorkiness. It's spectacular.






Samuel "Screech" Powers of Saved by the Bell

Once in our good graces as the adorably elfish nerdy kid Screech, Dustin Diamond has recently fallen from Saved by the Bell grace. After a string of embarrassing high-profile incidents (foreclosure, release of a sex tape, being a dick on Celebrity Fit club, penning a tell-all SBtB memoir), he was even left out of the People magazine coverage of the upcoming reunion. Ouch. I suppose being a desperately pathetic pseudo-celebrity clinging to your last parcels of fame is not quite enough to win over the skeptical public.

Back in the day, however, Screech was still a lovable geek who we knew from way back in his early Good Morning Miss Bliss years. He is forever getting sucked into Zack's crazy schemes and suffered all sorts of nerdy public humiliation. He plays chess, has a robot pal, and keeps science equipment in his bedroom. He has a huge thing for Lisa Turtle, but settles for dating Tori Spelling disguised with glasses and braids. Because you know, nerds wear glasess. That's how we know who they are.


I know, I know. In this video, they're all pretty enormous nerds, so it may be hard to pick him out.




Steve Urkel of Family Matters

You know a character's got staying power when they're supposed to play a one-time drop in guest and end up hogging all the remaining screen time for the duration of the series. The Winslow family's neighbor, Urkel is gratingly dorky in both voice and mannerisms. He wears oversized glasses, high water pants with suspenders, and walks in a trademark nerdy fashion. He's that annoying kid you just can't seem to shake, but he's well-meaning enough for us to feel a bit of sympathetic endearment toward him.

If you thought Carlton was the only one with trademark geeky dance moves, think again. Urkel's up for the challenge:






Comic Book Guy of The Simpsons

Comic Book Guy is one of the rare adult nerds we found on 90s TV, because presumably there are a plethora of nerds in mainstream society in our younger years who all gradually disappear as we near adulthood. Who knows, maybe they all become well-adjusted and popular somewhere along the way. Comic Book Guy is an exceptional case in that he retains his nerdiness in his tragically comic (yes, comic) adulthood.

He is the prototypical grown-up nerd, owner of Springfield's Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop. He's overweight, overly saracastic, and overconfident for his lot in life. While like most nerds he's certainly intelligent, most of his brainpower goes to feeling smug and superior to his well-liked peers by being ridiculously knowledgable in all things Lord of the Rings and Klingon. Worst. Adulthood. Ever.





Millhouse Van Houten of The Simpsons

If Comic Book Guy is the prototypical adult nerd, Millhouse is his nebbish young counterpart. He has asthma, wets the bed, sleeps with a teddy bear...all of the stuff that's guaranteed to get you beat up by cartoon bullies. He plays a very Screech-like role as Bart's sidekick, getting caught up in his crazy scheming often against his will. His unrequited love for Lisa is another running joke, as while Lisa is a brainy nerd she's not quite down to Millhouse's level of social ineptitude.






Paul Pfieffer of The Wonder Years

Paul also plays the nerdy best friend to Wonder Years hero Kevin. Sure, Kevin's not exactly Mr. Popular Suavacito himself, but he's a far cry from tragic thick-framed glasses Pauldom. He's certainly got some Millhouse in him, as he's allergic to nearly everything in a sad, sort of pity-inducing way. He's also smart and bespectacled and Jewish, which by TV standards is a near-perfect recipe for eternal geekdom. He did become a successful Harvard-educated lawyer in the epilogue, however, so I guess all's well that ends well. All smart, nerdy, bespectacled Jewish kids everywhere (and believe me, there are many) finally had a role model younger than Woody Allen.

In the late 90s, a rumor bgan circulating that Josh Saviano, the actor who played Paul, had grown up to be Marilyn Manson. This makes no sense whatsoever, but the urban legend spread like wildfire. If anything, Josh should feel touched that people believed for even a moment that he had this sort of bad-ass potential. In real life, he went to Yale and became a lawyer. I suppose The Wonder Years' producers had a lot more insight into his future than a bunch of us gullible spectators.







Kimmy Gibbler

This list is seriously lacking in the estrogen department, but female nerds weren't quite as popular TV stereotypes as male. Luckily, Full House was progressive enough to provide us with a quirky enough character to be considered moderately geeky. She wasn't your typical nerd, as she had no glasses or school smarts. She's more of an idiosyncratic airhead who's not quite cute enough to qualify as a bimbo.

Kimmy is irritating, obnoxious, loud, and exhausting, but she's nearly all we've got in the female nerd department, so I'm throwing my support behind her by defining her as such. Thank you, Kimmy, for proving that girls have just as much of a knack for being annoying neighbors. We couldn't have done this without you. Keep fighting the good fight.



Honorable mentions go to Sponge from Salute Your Shorts, Willow of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Minkus of Boy Meets World, and Mark Foster of Step by Step

Will Smith's Big Willie Style

Fear not, loyal readers. I have not forsaken you and skipped over the Fresh Prince. I know how important it is to you, and how much you'd like to watch a video of the Carlton dance on repeat. I promise it will be in a separate post, as Will Smith was sort of a 90s renaissance man. Well, a renaissance man with neon sideways hats who was partial to using words like "jiggy". Nonetheless.

Will Smith is a jack of all trades, starting his career as the Fresh Prince with DJ Jazzy Jeff in producing upbeat, clean, radio-friendly raps that included such classic titles as "Parents Just Don't Understand." This was mainstream rap at its finest, appealing to young people across the board. In the mid-90s, following his eponymous role as The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Smith released the album Big Willie Style. This was mid-to-late-90s pop rap at its finest, featuring up-tempo beats and squeaky-clean lyrics. This kind of thing would never have taken off today. I'm pretty sure today's rappers have some sort of bitch-and-hoe per verse quota.

Allow me to take you on a gloriously 90s trip back in rap time, back to an age of semi-innocence, where rapping about fighting aliens or hanging out with your kid was good enough to take the airways by storm. Yes, really. I know, I know, it sounds made up, but this was the real deal back in the day. You know. Big Willie style's all in it. Or so he claimed.

Men in Black


I will openly admit that this was the first movie (okay, fine, Gremlins too) that gave me a barrage of nightmares about frightening little burrowing creatures. Did I mention these films were comedies? I must have led a sheltered cinematic life. Men in Black featured a song by the same name performed by none other than its slick co-star Will Smith. Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were ultra-cool non-governmental agents charged with covering up and/or policing from earthbound alien action. You may think it's tough to bust out some bad-ass rhymes based on a movie based on a comic book, and you may be right. The song was definitely catchy, though, featuring incredibly literal lyrical descriptions like these:

The good guys dress in black remember that
Just in case we ever face to face and make contact
The title held by me MIB
Means what you think you saw you did not see
So don't blink be what was there is now gone
The black suits with the black ray bans on
Walk in shadow move in silence
Guard against extra terrestrial violence
But yo we ain't on no government list
We straight don't exist no names and no fingerprints
Saw somethin' strange watch your back
Cause you never quite now where the MIBs is at

Yes, that is pretty much the whole plot of the movie. Sweet synopsis, Will. For the full effect, here's the music video. You can't say you don't find those aliens a tiny bit frightening. Really? Not at all? Just me? Okay then.





Gettin' Jiggy Wit' It


Don't be fooled by all of those well-placed prematurely word-ending apostrophes--they are a well-calculated ploy to seem cool and hip while maintaining a spotlessly innocent rapping character. Well, depending on your definition of "jiggy", that is. Luckily there was no officially agreed-upon meaning to this mysterious slang term, meaning we could not ascertain the exact connotations of Smith's songs. According to Dictionary.com*, there are a few definitions of "jiggy" out there:

Here's the original:
jig⋅gy–adjective, ‑gi⋅er, ‑gi⋅est. Slang.

1.	nervous; active; excitedly energetic.

2.	wonderful and exciting, esp. because stylish.

And here are what I can only assume to be the ensuing speculations:

Main Entry: jiggy
Part of Speech: adj
Definition: excited or involved; also, to get involved with sexually
Example: Jennifer Lopez has gotten jiggy with a few men

Main Entry: jiggy
Part of Speech: adj
Definition: cool, totally cool
Example: I am jiggy with that idea

Please also direct your attention to Daria's episode "The Lost Girls", which features more than a fair smattering of use of this elusive term.



Featuring lyrics like this, I'm inclined to guess the connotations aren't so much sexual as jig-dancing. Main clues: his admission to not actually smoking cigars and the gratuitous use of pig-latin.

Everybody lookin at me
Glancin the kid
Wishin they was dancin a jig
Here with this handsome kid
Ciga-cigar right from cuba-cuba
I just bite it
Its for the look I dont light it
Illway the an-may on the ance-day oor-flay
Givin up jiggy make it feel like foreplay




Miami




This song is brilliant in its simplicity, as its only real purpose to to extol the virtues of Miami in rap-form. He does make it sound pretty good, what, with all of the bouncing in the club where the heat is on and those Dominican women with cinnamon tan. Clever rhyme, right? I thought so.

One thing I'll say for Smith: he does not disrespect women in his song. While other rappers make the women in their lyrics say all sorts of demeaning things, in "Miami" their lines are pretty straightforward, if a bit Will Smith ego-inflating. They're always being like, "Hi Will!" or telling him how much they loved his last hit, and occasionally if they've had a few maybe they'll moan "Aii Poppy." They're even a bit educational, teaching us some Spanish along the way. That's right. I can now say Buenvenidos a Miami. Thanks, Smith backup singers!






Just the Two of Us

You've got to hand it to Will--he really knows how to make the ladies say "awww". While the original Bill Withers version of "Just the Two of Us" was about romantic love, Smith went ahead and made it about his love for his son. Geez, what are you going for, an honorary uterus or something? That's just so...sensitive.

I mean, really, Will. These lyrics. Mushy. The mushiest. What happened to good old fashioned rap? If you had any doubt that the genre'd gone soft on you, here's your proof:


From the first time the doctor placed you in my arms
I knew Id meet death before Id let you meet harm
Although questions arose in my mind would I be man enough
Against wrong choose right and be standin up
From the hospital that first night
Took a hour just ta get the carseat in right
People drivin all fast got me kinda upset
Got you home safe placed you in your bassinet
That night I don't think one wink I slept
As I slipped out my bed to your crib I crept
Touched your head gently felt my heart melt
Cause I know I loved you more than life itself
Then to my knees and I begged the lord please
Let me be a good daddy all he needs
Love knowledge discipline too
I pledge my life to you






I guess it just goes to show: you don't need to be shocking to be successful. You just need to be devastatingly handsome, have your own sitcom, star in an endless string of box-office blockbusters, and become an international celebrity. Don't tell anyone I told you this, though. Who knows what could happen if this type of information gets into the wrong hands.





*The official dictionary of the lazy and internet-addicted. Also, those sample sentences? Wow.