A Blogaversary Treat: Children of the 90s Favorite Analytics Search Terms

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Thankfully, I am the almighty arbiter in ascertaining what exactly constitutes a treat--whether you like it or not. The real question on my mind is, how do all of you get here? I didn't issue any personal handwritten invitations (at least not lately, you see, my calligraphy ink well has run dry), so many of you travel here through the magic of Google. I get about 400 daily visitors who stop by here via Google search, and through the magic of Google Analytics tracking data, I've learned a great deal about what exactly brings people here.

In honor of the blogaversary I totally forgot about yesterday, I thought I'd share with you just a few of the many, many hilarious search terms I've seen in the past few weeks. Apparently the answer to how some of you got here involves some truly bizarre Googling. Don't worry, though, I'm not here to judge. Actually, that was a boldfaced lie. My major purpose is to judge. All in good fun, and all that, but some of these just can't go unsnarked. It would be a disservice to the public to let them go without a brief mocking. Please enjoy the following output of total and utter ridiculousness. All in the spirit of the blogaversary celebration, obviously.



compare contrast essay 90's tv show mash and fresh prince of bell air
Geez, you Googlers sure are philosophical. Whenever I spot a search term like this, I've got to wonder about the motivation behind it. Sheer curiosity? Bizarre academic assignment? Either way, it's sort of an odd pairing.


warner brothers stinky and the brain
You may need a little remedial nostalgia work. Last time I checked, no one named "Stinky" ever plotted to take over the world. I could be wrong.


is 2010 going to be like the 90's
You've got to love these type of questions. I feel like the internet is both a blessing and a curse; it's given us constantly at-our-fingertips access to all sorts of pertinent information, but we can't rely on it for everything. Just ask anyone who's ever cited Wikipedia as a source for a paper. This isn't a crystal ball here, people. What are you expecting? Results found: 1. 1st result: Yes. Happy?


what is self concept of britney spears
I'm not sure, why don't you ask her? Much as I'd like it, my blog has not yet advanced to the stage of setting up shop in celebrities' minds. Ms. Spears has yet to approach me with hopes of sharing her innermost desires and ideals.


children of the nineties official website
Ah, music to my ears. Well, eyes. Whatever the equivalent of eye music is. You know, like visual art. Anyway, these people think I'm official. Not too shabby.


is lisa frank dead?
No?

mr and mrs romero are having triplets. suppose the chance of each child being a boy is 50% and of being a girl is 50%. find each probability.
I spy a cheater. I only wish we'd had the internet and could solve simple word problems by the process of Googlage. What this person thought he'd find at Children of the 90s is beyond me, but I hope he got it figured out eventually.


90s catch phrases no _________ for you
Soup! Soup! It's soup. What do I win?


swallowed a whole role of bubble tape
SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION. Or possibly psychiatric care. Decide quickly, please. Time is likely of the essence.

why did crystal pepsi failed?
I'm not sure, but I think the executives disbanded to address the more pressing issue of widespread grammar abuse.


a children's book about a skunk who makes bread from the 1980s
Why anyone would want to make bread from the 1980s is beyond me. It seems much fresher to bake more up-to-date bread. Then again, if you're a skunk freshness may not be your highest priority. Ah, the wonders of misplaced modifiers.


did carmen san diego ever existed?
I think this one must refer to Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? How else would you explain all the jumbled tenses?

poop french toast crunch scandal
WHAT??? I've eaten that cereal. For the life of me, I hope this is some type of misinformed urban legend.

cabbage patch kids coming to life and strangling owner
Again...I'm at a loss.

who's that actor whos blond and always plays a douche from the 90s
At least you're getting straight to the point. I suppose Google could care less about your tact.


encino man drinking games
Ooh, if you know any, please share. That sounds awesome. I'd be willing to take a shot every time Pauly Shore referred to "chillage". It would probably enhance the movie watching experience considerably.


how to make a slip and slide on cement
Really? What part of this seems like a viably injury-proof idea. I hope you all wore helmets.



good things about cheese handisnacks
Finding an answer in this case will probably take some pretty serious searching. Especially if you're referring to the nutritional value.



is mrs doubtfire based on a true story?
I probably shouldn't even dignify this with a response. Who saw that movie and left the theater believing it was a ripped from the headlines story? I'm actually a bit concerned.


video of cats vomitting whoomp
HOW did this bring you here? Please explain. 300 words or fewer. Due Friday.


gigapet depression
Do any of you know? Is this an actual phenomenon? I'm tempted to say yes, just because those things are so damn time-consuming and needy. Mine probably suffered from separation anxiety. Thank goodness I dropped it behind a bookshelf and it eventually starved to death.


are those michael jackson's biological children in space jam?
There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to start.


how to remove gak from hair
What exactly were you doing? I'm actually sort of curious. I'd say peanut butter, but you can't quote me on that.


write an introduction on the topic saved by the bell
No. I do what I want.


Remember when aol had all the chatrooms?
Yes.


What do blue m&ms mean?
Oh, so now each of our candy color varieties needs a backstory? What kind of an answer are you seeking, exactly? Some sort of fortune telling-esque omen? They come from the factory like the rest of the colors. That's pretty much all there is to it.


khaki wishes and cookie dreams definition/meaning
I've gotten an inordinate amount of searches like this one. What do you mean what does it mean? It's just a Robin Leach cameo line from Troop Beverly Hills. It doesn't mean anything. I wouldn't overanalyze that movie.


at what part of the song do you start doing the macarena?
I love imagining the kind of person who's too self-conscious to just go with it. They've got to search the internet for answers to their outmoded potential dancing faux pas. It's sort of endearing, if not completely embarrassing.


10 things i hate about you is the one of 90s movie teeny bopper i actually enjoyed
I appreciate your willingness to share.


what's that little redheaded brat in that one 90s movie?
Oh right...her.


lisa frank backpacks children
She DOES? We should stage a boycott.


how to make an aggro crag replica
Let me know if you figure this one out. It sounds awesome. I'll totally come race you on it through the glitter dust snow. Only if I can be purple, though.


how come after i eat warheads my tongue is weird
Just a guess, but that highly artificial tastebud-burning chemical might play a role. I can't say for sure..


90s show that kids traveled into the internet through power lines to battle evil
Was this a real thing? I'd love to watch it.


aren't pushpops also good?
Yes.


use the expression you go girl in a sentence
You just did. Well, almost.


sometimes i tape my thumbs together and pretend I'm a dinosaur
I actually had to look into this one, it's just so ridiculous. I found out it's a variation on a weird Google search autocomplete. Still. Weird. And how exactly did it bring this person here? Some mysterious are probably better left unsolved.


how do i become the next lisa frank
This. Is. Awesome. I really hope someone out there had an answer for you, kid. I'd say a legal name change might put you on the right track, although I can't guarantee you'll be the next. Someone might beat you to it. You better run, not walk, to file that court order.



Well, 90s children, that's about all the fun-poking I've got for you today. Join us again next time for your regularly scheduled installment of Children of the 90s. Oh, and if any of you were the mysterious Googlers in question, 'fess up. I've got so many things I need to ask you...

90s TV Switcheroos: Characters Played by More than One Actor

Oh my gosh, as I was posting this it suddenly hit me--today is my blogaversary! That's right, one year ago today Children of the 90s was born. That's a whole lotta 90s. Lucky for all of you, I won't go the way of this post and suddenly replace myself with a cheap imitation, less credible 90s chronicler...looks like you're stuck with me. Thanks for reading! :)


How many Beckys does it take to complete a series of Roseanne? The answer may surprise you

It's the old Darrin Stevens switcharoo. For one reason or another, the original TV actor exits stage left and is immediately replaced by the next available understudy standing in the wings. Unlike at the theater, though, where they give you the benefit of announcing the replacement, on TV they tend to just proceed with business as usual as if nothing had happened. Never mind the fact that one of our major players was one person one day and someone else the next. All of the other actors simply treat the replacement as if they were the old standard and we're supposed to be immediately convinced that this new actor embodies the character we once knew and loved as another person.

Sometimes there's some brief wink-wink nudge-nudge type of acknowledgment, but for the most part they leave us to fend for ourselves in digesting the adjustment. Imagine if someone in your inner circle of friends came to dinner one night, only it was another person entirely. All of your other friends continue to call the newcomer by the first friend's name and reminisce with him as if he were there all along. The way they're acting, it's enough to make the rest of us have to wonder if we're the crazy ones for not going along with this charade.

The tactic happens more than you might think; sometimes you don't even notice it until you're watching the show in syndication many years later. Whether it's a minor character or a principal player, it definitely requires more than your average level of TV-grade suspension of disbelief. The following are among the most grievous offenders:


Fresh Prince: Vivian Banks


Here is an instance of the most blatant kind of switcheroo: one that occurs with a character who appears in virtually every episode of the series. Vivian (Will's aunt) was initially played by Janet Hubert-Whitten, but she found herself in breach of series contract when she became pregnant. While they wrote the pregnancy into Vivian Banks's storyline, Hubert-Whitten left soon thereafter to stay home with her child. She was replaced by Daphne Maxwell Reid, which might have been fine had the producers possessed the common sense to maintain linearity with the character.

Instead, the new Vivian was starkly different than the original. While Hubert-Whitten's Vivian was career-driven and outspoken, Reid's was a more soft-spoken homemaker. The writers gave a couple of on-screen tongue-in-cheek acknowledgments of the switch ("You know, Mrs. Banks, ever since you had that baby, there's something different about you...") but for the most part the change went unmentioned.



Boy Meets World: Morgan Matthews


The first Morgan Matthews was cute-relief kid sister played by Lily Nicksay. After regular appearances in the first and second seasons, she never appears in the third season, only to reappear in the fourth season played by Lindsay Ridgeway. She was still blonde, but the similarities pretty much ended there. They sought to ease the transition by having her joke, "That was the longest time-out I've ever had!" I guess that time-out made her pretty bitter, because Morgan emerged several times more sarcastic then she had been in the second season.



Friends: Ross's Ex-Wife Carol


Anita Barone was the original Carol, though she appeared in just one episode. All installments of the Ross/Carol saga thereafter played out with Jane Sibbett. Because Barone only appeared in one episode, this switcheroo was able to slip by far more quietly than some of the more blatant offenders.



Roseanne: Becky Connor-Healy


Here's an interesting bait-and-switch tactic: bring in one actress for a fair number of seasons, replace her with a new actor, bring her back, and then finish the series out with the second actress. Talk about confusing. Alicia Goranson was the original Becky, playing Roseanne and Dan's oldest child for the first five seasons. She left to attend college, so the writers started phasing her out in the fifth season based on her decision.

The story, of course, doesn't end there. For some reasons, the writers find it necessary to revive Becky as a series regular, bringing in Sarah Chalke for Becky reinforcement purposes. It's a passable though certainly not entirely excusable switch until Goranson decided she should come back to the show for the eighth season, which she believed would be the final installment. Goranson was not able to fully commit to the role and during the eighth season and she Chalke alternated in the part, leaving the writers grasping at straws writing awkward in-jokes for the obvious switch back and forth. In the ninth and final season, Chalke again took full command of the role and the switch was finally left unmentioned by the cast.



Seinfeld: Frank Costanza, Morty Seinfeld


At least these producers seemed vaguely conscious of the switch: they actually re-filmed some of the Frank Costanza scenes with Jerry Stiller for the syndicated reruns to replace the old shots of John Randolph. At least they're covering their tracks on that one.

The Morty Seinfeld flip-flop was handled differently, as by the time of the switch so many seasons had gone by that Barney Martin was too old to believably fill the role originally cast with Phil Bruns. In the greater context of the Seinfeld universe though, this type of thing was more acceptable. The focus on the minutiae of life left a pretty general disregard for the broader picture, so it wasn't quite the earth-shattering switch we saw in some of the other shows.



Ghostwriter: Gaby



Gaby Fernandez is Alex's little sister, a character whose traits are largely based on the stereotypical kid sister persona. Unfortunately for original Gaby Mayteana Morales, her onset of puberty quickly made her an unlikely fill-in for the tag-along kid sister. The scripts were adapted to portray Gaby as a more mature character, but she was replaced in the midst of the third season by a younger-looking Melissa Gonzalez. The writers clearly breathed a collective sigh of relief that they didn't have to send Gaby out on dates and give her serious adult aspirations, and the new Gaby reverted to the original character mold.


Clueless: Cher Horowitz (TV vs. film)


This one's a little different, as one actress (Alicia Silverstone) portrayed Cher in the film Clueless while another (Rachel Blanchard) took on the role for the eponymous TV series based on the movie. Blanchard wasn't the only newcomer--we also had TV fill-in replacements for the roles of Cher's father and for the character of Josh (Paul Rudd in the film).

All switcheroos considered, perhaps the most offensive were the plot and character changes that ensued in the shift from movie to television adaptation. Plus, everyone's outfits were significantly less cool in the series. Then again, the budget (especially during the UPN years) was probably to blame on that front.



The Golden Girls: Everybody

These ladies are lucky they're hilarious...otherwise all of the discrepancies would be wholly unforgivable

Had any newbie GG writers ever even seen an episode of the Golden Girls? I'm tempted to venture "no" based on the incredibly blatant inconsistencies in the storylines. The biggest offenders were usually the Girls' respective children, who were not only played by different actors but also frequently were suddenly different ages and had totally different physical traits (see: Michael Zbornak, age 29 vs. 23, or Rebecca Devereux fat and then suddenly inexplicably thin).

The other great Goldren Girls' mystery was why they had the same actor play two different roles, sometimes within the same season. Clearly the writers' and casting agents' faith in the viewership was pretty low, meaning that Harold Gould played two of Rose's boyfriends and Paul Dooley played Rose's blind date Isaac Newton and the doctor next door in the Empty Nest set-up...in the same season.


Whatever the reasoning, mid-series replacements generally left us with an uneasy feeling. We trusted these people; we considered them our friends and invited them into our lives in half-hour weekly installments. There was some sense of betrayal when the show we'd so trusted pulled the ol' Darrin Stevens on us and replaced one of its actors with a newcomer. Luckily, we were all pretty adaptable in our budding couch-potato state. In some cases, we forgot there was ever another actor in the first place. So long as they kept us entertained, we'd keep eating up whatever it was they were feeding us: believable or not

90s Compilation CDs

Once upon a time, in a primitively technological world lightyears from today, we couldn't just pick and choose the songs on our albums as we pleased. There was no logging onto iTunes for .99 cents a song with the goal assembling the ultimate playlist. We did have the positively prehistoric predecessor of the mixtape, but it was a far more complex affair. To create your dream compilation required a great deal of finger dexterity to press the record and stop buttons at just the right time as they came on the radio. If you were lucky enough to own a dual cassette player, you could sometimes record from one to another, but the whole process was a bit of an ordeal.

In the time set squarely between the age of the Mix tape and the era of burnable CDs, the music industry offered us an attractive option. For the allegedly low low price of just $19.99 plus shipping and handling, we could be the proud owner of a compilation CD guaranteed to satisfy our urge for a varied playlist within a set theme. Especially before we held the power to create our our own CDs, we relied heavily on these As Seen on TV products for mix tape-style musical entertainment.



NOW! That's What I Call Music


They'd been churning these babies out for years in the UK, but we in the US weren't treated to their compilation glory until 1998. How can you say no to a product whose name is a full sentence? Well, a one-word exclamation followed by a sentence fragment. Either way, it's pretty specific.

English Virgin Records executives conceived these compilation albums as a means of squeezing further revenue out of songs already released on full albums. By reissuing a track, they could continue to make money off of already-released songs. Sounds easy enough, and the formula clearly stuck--in the UK they've reached something like NOW! 438293, though we are lagging a bit behind in the US at a mere 32 albums.

The first US album is chock-full of solid 90s pop hits, which is good or bad depending on your tolerance for cheesy, repetitive music. In my case, this was a mix tape-style gold mine. The first US NOW! featured tracks like Aqua's "Barbie Girl", KC & Jojo's "All my Life", and Hanson's "MMMBop". All in all, a pretty decent pop spread. The franchise has been pumping out album after album, year after year, each time reissuing the season's most-played pop music tracks. The commercials are irritating, sure, but seeing one now gets me a little nostalgic for the NOW!s of years gone by. Buying one featuring songs like Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" just isn't the same experience.



Pure Moods



Watching this commercial is like taking a brief stroll into the depths of my childhood subconscious. I knew it was hiding there somewhere, but it takes that "Ahhhh ay wa oh wa ay waaaah" at the beginning of that commercial to bring it to the surface. This commercial played incessantly during the 90s, though you'd be hard pressed to find someone who actually admitted to owning it. The commercial aired frequently during children and tween-directed programming, though I doubt any of our parents shelled out the $15.99 via check or money order to bring these pure, unfiltered moods to our doorstep via the United States Postal Service.

The best part is how seriously this commercial takes its product. That deep, thoughtful voice-over implies that we simply do not know how to feel if we don't kick back at the stereo with Tubular Bells Part 1 and the X-Files Theme. The only pure mood the X-Files theme ever elicited from me was fear over those freaky aliens, but this montage implies that I'll feel a nirvana-esque New Age level of contentment. I still can't go within 50 feet of an Enya song without immediately being transported back to watching the commercial in my childhood living room, waiting impatiently for Stick Stickly to return for Nick in the Afternoon. It's just that kind of powerful.



Jock Jams



In the 90s we were all about megamixing songs, and the above video is a classic example. Apparently mixing was so 80s by this time; it was all about the mega-mixing. Jock Jams captured the essence of the peppy, active nature of the 90s by giving us a bunch of beat-addled club hits conveniently packaged in a single cheerleader-splattered album. The first volume featured 90s favorite fare like C&C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)", 69 Boyz "Tootsee Roll", and Tag Team's "Whoomp! There it is". It also had some more retro but equally toe-tapping hits like the Village People's "YMCA" and Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2." All in all, not a bad spread.

Some of the songs were sports-themed or focused on competition, but others were simply popular dance songs. In case we forgot the athletic nature of the album halfway through, our ever-helpful Jock Jams cheerleaders would chime in with some sort of a rabble-rousing chant. The series was, as the album covers proclaimed, brought to us by ESPN, so perhaps they just had to keep reminding us that we were engaging in vague act of athleticism. That was the best part about these CDs--they pumped you up and made you feel a bit Sporty Spice. Who cared that you couldn't do a single pull-up in gym class? You could do a great impression of the introductory "Let's get ready to ruuuumble!"

At the time, I don't think I knew anyone who didn't own this CD. It was just like second 90s child nature to collect piles of Jock Jams compilation CDs. It's just what we did. I'm not embarrassed to admit that some of these tracks are still in common shuffling circulation on my workout playlists. Well, I'm not that embarrassed.


I still see commercials on TV for compilation CDs from time to time, but their captivation power over me just isn't the same. There was something uniquely alluring at the time about a mix tape that came on CD. I didn't have to record it off the radio, yet it still seemed to know all of my favorite songs.

Listening to the tracks now just reminds me of how easily entertained my friends and I once were. These days we're not satisfied unless we're watching TV, playing on my computer, and talking on the phone at the same time, but in the 90s we were still susceptible to be moved by the cheesiness of Pure Moods. It's enough to make you want to go buy a copy. If you can still find one, that is.