Then and Now: Will Smith

Will Smith, then:



Will Smith, now:


Aside from the earrings, that first picture could have been taken yesterday for all I know.

What's that you say? It was taken 20 years ago? Well in that case, I'll have what he's having.

Would You Rather: 90s Edition

As children, we were constantly yearning for independence from our parents. Sure, they fed us, clothed us, and put a roof over our head, but what did they really ever do for us? Movies featuring kids on their own became a sort of illicit fantasy of autonomy, a state of unlikely non-supervision to which we could eventually aspire.

So, the question is,


Would you rather:

Experience the zany madcap robber-evading adventures of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone


or

Enjoy weeks of non-stop childlike debauchery in a remote setting while assembling an elaborate parent-fooling scheme a la Camp Nowhere?


Explain your reasoning.

Children of the Nineties is on vacation! For the time being, enjoy the notably briefer scheduled posts in lieu of the usual lengthy 90s diatribes.

In case you were wondering, CotN is currently at Sea World...

...doing extensive research to bring you the highest quality future post on Free Willy.

Happy long weekend, everyone!

Vanilla Ice

I've always had a lurking urge to burst Kool-Aid man style through the door of a boardroom in the midst of heated negotiations and shout, "Stop! Collaborate and listen!" Unfortunately, some dreams will never be realized, and this action would likely brand me as clinically insane. For Robert Van Winkle, though, these words were his ticket to inexplicable 90s musical fame.

You may think that breakdancing with a side of big hair is not a major marketable skill, but perhaps its a matter of timing. That is, if someone happens to catch you breakdancing wearing your big hair at just the right moment, well who knows, maybe you can make a career of it. Throw in some alleged "rapping", and you've got yourself a brand.

Before Eminem, before 303, the original white rapper ("vanilla"-hued, if you will) was Vanilla Ice. In the late 80s and early 90s, hip hop was just emerging as a credible musical genre. It was still primarily a black phenomenon, as most cool things are before they are hijacked and subsequently beaten into boring submission by stuffy white people. Hip hop was new and edgy and indicative of all thing youth culture related, but it had yet to be fully packaged by music executives. At this point, notoriety and street cred were the major forces guiding the emerging hip hop culture. While Vanilla Ice was a serviceable* rapper, music moguls saw him as an outsider on the fringe of hip hop who could be sufficiently packaged for consumer enjoyment and their own rising stock.

Vanilla Ice was commodifiable, and music execs fully recognized the potential of breaking into the hip hop business. He even managed to unintentionally earn himself some notoriety by means of a scuffle with some of Suge Knight's associates, one of whom claimed to have written Ice, Ice, Baby. We all can see that the "Ice, Ice" in Ice, Ice baby refers to Mr. Vanilla himself, so it seems unlikely this would have been penned by anyone else. To be honest, take a good hard look at the lyrics and you'll see immediately that money could be the only possible explanation for the boldfaced lie; this wasn't exactly poetry we were dealing with here. Let's take a quick peek at what would become the first hip hop single to top the Billboard charts:

Yo, Vanilla, kick it one time Boy
Yo, VIP, Let's kick it!
Ice Ice Baby, Ice Ice Baby

Okay, off to a good start. Well, the use of that "yo" is questionable, but I'm going to let it slide.

All right stop, Collaborate and listen
Ice is back with my brand new invention

Who said rap isn't innovative? Before I heard this song, I had no clue whatsoever that the words "listen" and "invention" rhymed.

Something grabs a hold of me tightly
Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly

I'll concede this is a more respectable rhyme, but how many raps do you know of that reference harpoons? And/or their (that is, the harpoons') flowing tendencies? Is that some sort of misplaced weapon reference to build street credibility?

Will it ever stop? Yo! I don't know
Turn off the lights and I'll glow
To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal
Light up a stage and watch me jump like a candle.

As the owner of many jumping candles, I particularly enjoyed this imagery. Later I was disappointed to learn that, like the Mexican jumping beans, this movement was a mere farce. At least I could always watch Vanilla Ice and his graffiti stylings on a nearby sound-enhancement device.

Dance, go rush the speaker that booms
I'm killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom
Deadly, when I play a dope melody
Anything less than the best is a felony

I didn't realize how much I yearned for someone's ABAB rhyme scheme to kill my brain until Vanilla kindly illuminated the point. I imagine that lame "felony" reference is an attempt to badassify his lyrics.

Love it or leave it, You better gain way
You better hit bull's eye, The kid don't play
If there was a problem, Yo, I'll solve it
Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it

This doesn't make that much sense, but at least in this case it does rhyme. Also, the hook he refers to was sampled from earlier favorites such a David Bowie and Queen. So yes, Vanilla, I will check it out. I appreciate the suggestion.

Vanilla Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice Ice Baby
Vanilla Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice Ice Baby

This was when the best breakdancing took place, just in case you're considering choreographing your own version.

Now that the party is jumping
With the bass kicked in and the Vegas are pumpin'
Quick to the point, to the point no faking
Cooking MCs like a pound of bacon

Nothing says "street" like referencing a good old fashioned home cooked breakfast.

Burnin' 'em if you aint quick and nimble
I go crazy when I hear a cymbal
And a hi hat with a souped up tempo
I'm on a roll, it's time to go solo
Rollin' in my 5.0
With my rag top down so my hair can blow
The girlies on standby, Waving just to say Hi
Did you stop? No -- I just drove by
Kept on pursuing to the next stop
I busted a left and I'm heading to the next block
That block was dead

Thank, Vanil, for the play by play. I, too, go crazy when I hear a cymbal. Traumatic wind-up monkey incident as a child. It's still tough to talk about.

Yo -- so I continued to A1A Beachfront Avenue
Girls were hot wearing less than bikinis

Less than bikinis...could we be a little more descriptive? That's like saying, they were wearing more than nothing. I'm a visual learner, dammit, give me some adequate cues here.

Rockman lovers driving Lamborghinis
Jealous 'cause I'm out getting mine
Shay with a gauge and Vanilla with a nine
Ready for the chumps on the wall
The chumps acting I'll because they're full of Eight Balls
Gunshots ranged out like a bell
I grabbed my nine -- All I heard were shells
Falling on the concrete real fast
Jumped in my car, slammed on the gas
Bumper to bumper the avenue's packed
I'm trying to get away before the jackers jack
Police on the scene, You know what I mean
They passed me up, for runnin' on the dope beans
If there was a problem, Yo, I'll solve it
Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it

Okay, so here's the drive-by part. What I'm wondering though is why police came to the scene? Didn't you hear? If there was a problem, Vanilla would solve it.

Vanilla Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice Ice Baby
Vanilla Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice Ice Baby

Take heed, 'cause I'm a lyrical poet
Miami's on the scene just in case you didn't know it
My town, that created all the bass sound
Enough to shake and kick holes in the ground
'Cause my style's like a chemical spill
Feasible rhymes that you can vision and feel

I often brag about my best traits by illustrating their close likeness to chemical spills. It's a major selling point. Try it at your next interview.

Conducted and formed, This is a hell of a concept
We make it hype and you want to step with this
Shay plays on the fade, slice like a ninja
Cut like a razor blade so fast, Other DJs say, "damn"
If my rhyme was a drug, I'd sell it by the gram
Keep my composure when it's time to get loose
Magnetized by the mic while I kick my juice
If there was a problem, Yo -- I'll solve it!
Check out the hook while DJ revolves it.

I'm a bit concerned about being magnetized by the mic. After all, I had this recorded off the radio on cassette tape, a magnetic force of that magnitude would straight up erase it.

Vanilla Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice Ice Baby
Vanilla Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice Ice Baby Vanilla Ice

Yo man -- Let's get out of here! Word to your mother!

AHA! So that's where we got that. Touché, Vanilla.

Ice Ice Baby Too cold, Ice Ice Baby Too cold Too cold
Ice Ice Baby Too cold Too cold, Ice Ice Baby Too cold Too cold

I do like the inclusion of the informative temperature gauge here. It really speaks to my inner meteorologist.

For your viewing pleasure, Ice, Ice, Baby:

Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby [Kobra]
Uploaded by Tanegashima

He still had a few good years before fading into obscurity, putting out records no one's ever heard of and appearing in shame-inducing reality shows. There was also Cool as Ice, a movie that was sort of like Rebel without a Cause only distinctly more terrible. If its any indication of complete lack of quality, the movie's score on composite review site Rotten Tomatoes is a whopping 8%. It was posthumously (I use that word largely in reference to the death of Vanilla's career) disowned by the director, which isn't quite the positive retrospection one could hope for. If nothing else, the movie did leave us with an outstanding pickup line:

"Drop that zero, and get with a hero!"

Of course, this is a gross oversimplification. Vanilla Ice did a lot more than just sing "Ice, Ice, Baby" and appear in a god-awful film people will someday with disdain unfairly refer to as a "period piece". He's 41 years old, certainly he's put out something else we would have heard of.

Oh, yeah. This:





*For the time, people. Standards have changed.

Baywatch

Let's be honest here: lifeguards are heroes. They're out there every day, protecting vulnerable swimmers from all manners of ill-fated ocean encounters. Their watchful eye allows us to enjoy our carefree time at the beach, knowing we are safe under their care.

Also, they sometimes run in slow motion.

I don't know about you, but while that initial job description is nice, I doubt 1.1 billion people would tune in to watch it on television. The slow motion thing, though, well, there you've got yourself a series.


Baywatch taught us all sorts of valuable life lessons, namely that beautiful women are largely interchangeable when dressed in the same signature red swimsuit. Men, on the other hand, are our true mainstays. We learned that if you were a woman who appeared on a plotless show mainly as eye candy, you could later land some lucrative Playboy covers or release sex tapes. If you were a man, you could eventually serve as a judge on America's Got Talent and battle rampant public alcoholism. Of course, if you weren't lucky enough to meet any of these grand fates, you could feel free to fade into the general obscurity that comes with people's waning interest in slow-motion footage of you in swimwear.

Remarkably, Baywatch is the most-watched show of all time. I'm not quite sure that you caught that, but either way it bears repeating. The most-watched show of all time. Lifeguards. On a beach. Limited, repetitive plotlines. Knight Rider running down the beachfront at bottom speed (is that the opposite of top speed? One can only assume.) Really, truly, how much drama can these lifeguards face on a weekly basis? The show's producers (Hasselhoff included) would contend that the answer was indeed quite a lot.

The Hoff made it happen

How many times have you been at beach anywhere, ever, and seen someone in a truly risky near-drowning situation? For most, the answer is rarely or never, but for the ol' Baywatch gang it was just a constant drownfest of careless parents and vicious undertows. Sharks encircled swimmers close to shore, bomb threats loomed like a dark shadow over the beach, and murderers roamed the premises on a regular basis. I'm not saying TV has to be just like real life, but at least make some effort to calibrate the premise to the plot lines. If we were dealing with marine biologists, CIA officials, or police detectives, then sure, these story lines could seamlessly integrate into the character's everyday encounters. However, these people are lifeguards. Lifeguards. They hold a giant red piece of foam and sit in a crappy makeshift elevated chair.

To be honest, I never watched the show in much detail, but it didn't take a dedicated viewer to pinpoint the improbability of these plots. While certainly the interpersonal drama between the male and female characters was substantial and there is certainly action off the beachfront, a great deal of the show relied on increasingly repetitive and formulaic scenarios. Have you ever wondered how many possible ways people could encounter danger in the water? Unless you get really creative (read: insane) with it, there are not too many permutations. Thankfully, the Baywatch writers were imaginative, though not necessarily in a positive way.

The show's initial run lacked sufficient financial backing, and was canceled after a single season. Lucky for those among us who appreciate a good slow-motion beach run sequence, the show was down but not out. David Hasselhoff, the male lead, believed in the show enough to come on as a producer and keep it afloat (sorry, I didn't even see that pun coming.) I guess the 80s German pop music scene was pretty lucrative, putting him in a fair position to make waves with Baywatch (that one was unfortunately intentional).

Repackaged and rebranded with a catchier theme song, the show quickly established itself in the ratings.



Little things other shows valued such as character development, consistency, and story variation seemed obsolete as Baywatch snowballed to success. It was camp TV at its best. It was cheesy, montage-rich, and often segued aimlessly into tangential melancholy music video-esque segments a la Ace of Base's Don't Turn Around.

The show had no shame, but it also had no pretension. Audiences accepted the fact that a steady stream of beautiful women (including Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth, Carmen Electra, and Gena Lee Nolin) had nothing better to do than get crappy jobs with the Los Angeles County Lifeguards. No one would call the show deep or insightful by any stretch of the imagination, but it did present a pleasingly idyllic form of escapism. Sometimes, after a bad day, watching scantily-clad attractive people bounce around in slow motion is just what the doctor ordered*.

It was, in short, a guilty pleasure. Many people did not want to admit that they were captivated by this cheesefest, but the ratings didn't lie. Baywatch was at the time recorded as the most-watched TV show of all time. Unfortunately, it couldn't hold its audiences forever.

As with many long-running series, the show dragged on and lost many of its original characters. The shark-jumping in this case was not only literal, but became more frequent and shameless. The early-90s dramatics evolved into late-90s near-comedy. It was that sad sort of premise that wasn't supposed to be funny, but it was unintentionally gut-bustingly hilarious. Acting fell completely by the wayside, as the equivalent of cardboard cutouts of female models chattered their lines with all the expression of reading the dictionary. The show managed to stay on the air and slide by on its purported reputation, but the magic of those Hasselhoff music video moments had dissipated.

Despite its wane in quality and popularity, its notoriety remained intact. It may not have been the smartest show or contain the most substance, but it was pure fun. They must have been doing something right, as we can only hope 1.1 billion viewers can't be wrong. The show may have been an easy target, but it generally seemed to posses redeeming qualities as well.

At the very least, a whole generation of young boys aspired to be lifeguards.



*What, your doctor never prescribed this?

Tetris

As you came to on your living room couch, your panicked mind frantically tried to recollect the events of the past day. These blackouts were becoming increasingly frequent, and more and more time was passing unaccounted for. You were concerned over these lapses in memory, seemingly jolted back to reality in a cold sweat and wondering what exactly had happened over the last several hours. You held some vague recollections, but on the whole it seemed pretty fuzzy. Ashamed to admit your addiction to your friends and family, you began to try hide your usage and downplay its increasingly prominent role in your everyday life.

No, your problem wasn't drugs or alcohol. It was Tetris.

In a distant time before lifelike 3D video games and their complicated nuances, we could sit intently for hours on end, eyes glazed over at the innumerable self-directed rotations of the confounding tetrominoes that lay before us. Over and over, we orchestrated our little shapelets into interlocking patterns. Left, clockwise, down. Right, right, counterclockwise, down. Right, Right, down. Left, counterclockwise, down. The interlocking pieces fixed together in a satisfying manner, all while playing their trademark siren song:




Even just hearing the song catapults my mind back to its scheming, strategizing, anxious Tetris-engaged state.

Regardless of whether or not you personally lay claim to an original Game Boy, it's likely at some point you were exposed to the addictive contagion of Tetris. When you woke up in the morning, there was Tetris. When you daydreamed aimlessly during lectures about Tuck Everlasting or prime numbers, there was Tetris. When you lay down to sleep at night, there was Tetris. Try as you might to deter Tetris from infecting your brain, your mind began to morph into a singularly Tetris-strategizing way of thinking. Every problem or dilemma you encountered suddenly broke down in your head into "L-shape. Square. Squat "T". Line. Square-edged S. Square-edged Z." These were your tools now, and they overtook your mind like a robotic-music-soundtracked parasite. Though some may have tried to fight it, resistance was inevitably futile. Eventually, we would all come to worship at the great shrine of Tetris.

The original video game was released in 1985, but it really gathered steam with the release of the original Game Boy. First of all, let it be known that Game Boys may now seem fairly pedestrian and unimpressive, but upon their launch these things seemed relatively remarkable. I mean, imagine, parents now had a way to keep their children occupied and could now combat whininess with quiet personal gaming. While other handheld system had been available previously, none reached the cult of video game personality that surrounded Game Boy.


When one purchased the almighty Game Boy, it contained a cartridge of the game Tetris. "Tetris," you may have thought to yourself. "Why, I've never heard of it. Perhaps I should give it a go."

And suddenly, without warning, 12 hours had passed.

The game seemed simple enough, but it truly lured you unsuspecting into a series of mental aerobics. At first glance, Tetris was deceptively benign. Seven different shapes (tetraminoes, for anyone out there who would like to one day drop this word casually in conversation at a cocktail party and alienate friends with their undeniable geekiness) descended slowly down the screen. Your mission, should you have chosen to accept it, was to maneuver these shapes by rotating them in 90 degree increments to fit together and avoid gaps between shapes on the bottom of the screen. When you succeeded in creating a solid line without gaps, the line disappeared and the stacked tetraminoes shifted downward.

If you have never played Tetris, you may be thinking, "So? That doesn't sound so captivating. It actually sounds mind-numbingly boring."

Au contraire, my Tetris virgin friends. The true hook of the game was the progressive expedience of the falling shapes. They began slowly, lulling you into a sense of false security. "I'm mastering this!" You would marvel. You reckoned yourself a sort of Tetris savant, wondering what all the fuss was about. Why, this wasn't tricky at all!

But then.

Shapes began falling faster and faster, both efffectively obliterating your game and crushing your can-do spirit. "Well," you thought. "That wasn't much fun at all. Maybe if I just try it one more time..."

And so it went. You could never play "just one more time". For many, Tetris became a way of life, counting down the minutes until you could get your next fix. Games would replay continuously in your head, as you mentally shifted and manipulated the shapes into an interlocking configuration. You could so easily see where you'd been drawn astray; how could you have thought the L-shape should lay downwards and horizontal? That should have been vertical, dammit.



In my household, it was only my mother who owned a Gameboy. She would sit long nights on the den couch, with the glow of the sidetable lamp illuminating her glassed-over eyes and quick-moving fingers. She also liked to play the music (rather than selecting the more polite you're-in-a-shared-space-for-God's-sake mute option), and I believe she had a strong preference for Melody B. My mom was actually a pretty ace Tetris player*, but she was totally stingy about it. Ocassionally on road trips when she tired of it. we were allowed to have a go. Soon both my sister and I were hooked, and the nightly bickering over our one measly Game Boy led to the institution of a scheduled rotation. It was that important to us. Really, it was. I treasured my time with that game, down to the last second. We all boastfully recounted our high scores, and delighted in our autonomy at selecting our own music track. And if we made it into the hall of fame, well, that was just the cherry on top.

I never did get my own Game Boy, but I did get a graphing calculator. In middle school I was briefly able to resume my Tetris dependency during alleged learning time in class until I was outed by a fellow classmate when I failed to pay attention during a class discussion. I had been called on by the teacher, but I was justifiably immersed in my record high score, thank you very much. Thus ended my once-stellar Tetris career. Just think. I could have gone pro, if it weren't for teachers questioning my perfectly legitimate use of a calculator during an English lesson.

There is, however, good news for all of us. Tetris is back and in more forms than ever before. No longer must we wait our turn for the family Game Boy. Not only is it available in numerous forms for free play online, you can now discreetly play on your phone as well. You even have this to make sure a coworker doesn't tattle on you playing at the office.

Happy playing, children of the 90s. Just don't blame me when you find yourself emerging from a Tetris-induced blackout. You've been warned.


*In case you were curious, she now highly recommends Bejeweled and Bomp Bomp Ball


Check it out:
Play Tetris Free Online (note: while checking out this site, I got roped into playing for 27 minutes. Like I said, I warned you.)
Tetris for iPhone
Tetris T-Shirt, Anyone?

Then and Now: Jennifer Grey

Sometimes, a little plastic surgery isn't such a bad thing. In fact, many of our favorite celebrities have subtly enhanced their looks and their careers lived to tell about it.

Unfortunately, Jennifer Grey was not among them.

Known for her roles in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Jennifer Grey had a unique look and was applauded for not adhering to the cookie-cutter Hollywood ideal of beauty. She wasn't afraid to wear her decidedly Semitic looks on her sleeve, or in her case, on her face. Audiences related to her as someone who appeared normal and down-to-earth.

Then:

Now:

A lesson for all of you aspiring stars out there: if you ever became famous for a distinctive look, don't undergo multiple rhinoplasties to forever doom your chances of being recognized by your once-adoring fans. I can understand going incognito, but this is just a tad over the edge.

Backed into a corner of media scrutiny, Jennifer Grey suffered major career losses and faded into semi-obscurity.

That's right, I said it. Somebody put Baby in a corner.*


*I'm sorry. It was just too easy. I'll understand if you feel the need to cringe/groan inwardly re: taking cheap shots. Just be glad I didn't couple it with a "she had the time of her life" reference. Well, now I sort of did. Please accept my condolences.

Thanks to Sadako for the "Then and Now" topic suggestion!

Dinosaurs

The 90s saw an explosion in cheesy formulaic family sitcoms. Audiences couldn't seem to get enough of allegedly normal people interacting with their loved ones; it was certainly a lot easier than being forced to interact with our own. One after another, these shows appeared, featuring a basic nuclear family and following them through their (again, allegedly) humorous daily interactions. Step by Step, Full House, Family Matters; these shows all followed a pretty standard set of story lines. Even the purportedly edgy Married with Children relied to some extent on sturdy stereotypes of a blue collar family.

It took a magical mind like Jim Henson's (which I imagine to have been full of abandoned ET design prototypes and colorful Fraggle Rock wardrobe changes) to conceive of a more original model for such a tired premise.

Why not make them dinosaurs?

Wait, wait? As in carnivorous prehistoric creatures with a penchant for carnage and general non-camaraderie? What could they possibly have in common with the white bread families of typical 90s sitcom fame?

Nothing. This was the whole point. Why not create a show that follows the family sitcom formula to a T, but with characters who inherently have nothing in common with this type of familial situation? It was a fairly innovative approach, though it did borrow heavily from Flintstones and Simpsons conventions. The situation and the characters were inherently out of sync, infusing some freshness into the stale model of a home-based situation comedy. And though the idea came to fruition a year after Henson's death, the seed he had planted grew into the Dinosaurs in 1991:



The character molds were all recognizable, but with a delightful prehistoric twist. Let's meet the Dinosaurs:


Earl Sinclair: Our hero, the mighty megalosaurus. Who knew dinosaurs looked so great in flannel? Considering this was the 90s, I'm fairly certain I owned that shirt. He could be a tad on the Al Bundy oafish side, but was determined to keep his family happy and fed. In the first episode we find that he opted to take this purportedly new family route rather than killing and eating his mate and young, which apparently was a pretty novel idea. He worked at WESAYSO as a tree-pusher, which likely explained the lumberjack getup.



Fran Sinclair: Dinosaur housewife extraordinaire. Her skills included chasing furry future dinners around the kitchen, nagging, and wearing aprons. She inexplicably birthed offspring of varying dinosaur species. Fran initially roped Earl by means of her natural feminine scent, in her case, New Car Smell.



Charlene Sinclair: 13-year old daughter, fashion-driven and materialistic a la Quinn Mordgendorfer. We do, however, find that she exhibited some signs of intelligence by managing to prove the world is round and thus changing the course of historical geographic discovery. Other than that, she was pretty vapid.



Robbie Sinclair: 15-year old son, wise beyond his years. We knew he was semi-rebellious because his best friend sports a leather jacket. In 90s sitcom conventions, a leather jacket is the only known symbol anti-authority.




Baby Sinclair: You gotta love him. Or so he says. His catchphrase, "I'm the baby, gotta love me!" was everywhere during the show's tenure. And really, I mean everywhere. It was so famous, in fact, that DTV (the fictional dinosaur TV network) allowed him to star in the following 100% ridiculous music video (please be warned that if you watch this, there is no chance of extricating this song from your brain. Attempts at detaching it from your cerebral cortex are futile. I'm still humming it 15 years later):



Baby (yes, this was his real name) also had a penchant for hitting his father on the head with a frying pan and referring to him affectionately as "Not the mama!" Cute, right?



The show premiered in the ABC TGIF lineup, appropriately sandwiched between between fellow family sitcom hits Full House and Family Matters and was fairly popular throughout the course of its 3-year run.

Beneath the surface (this would be a good place to make some sort of fossil joke that I don't have) lurked countless vaguely recognizable voices. Allow me to share with you some of the prehistoric celebrities who lent their voices to this program of puppetry:


Jessica Walter as Fran--You know, Lucille Bluth? I suppose she's also in that new 90210, but really, she is just playing Lucille Bluth all over again. You almost expect to hear the ice cubes clinking in the glass any time you hear her voice.




Sally Struthers as Charlene--Sure, she was in All in the Family, but most of us 90s kids remember her as that blonde lady constantly imploring us to get our degrees through the magically convenient means of by-mail correspondence (I was particularly partial to the veterinary technician course, if forced to choose).




Sherman Helmsley as tyrannical (insert "-asaurus Rex joke here) WESAYSO exec BP Richfield--What is this, an All in the Family reunion? Of course, he was best known from his starring role on the Jeffersons, so you could probably say in this case he was movin' on down (and yes, I recognize that was an extremely cheap attempt at humor. Just roll with it. I think Sherman would have.). For those of you that were into that kind of thing, you may also recall him as Tia and Tamara's grandfather on Sister, Sister.

Christopher Meloni as the aforementioned badass teenage friend, Spike--Most of you probably know this guy from Law and Order:SVU, but the less fear-mongering among us may recollect his performances in Oz, Harold and Kumar, or my personal favorite, Wet Hot American Summer. Also, he once played a gym teacher on Pete & Pete. What more could you want from a man?




Kevin Clash as Baby Dinosaur--You might not recognize him by face, but Kevin here voiced some of your favorite childhood characters (allow me to assume these are your favorites. Thank you for your cooperation.) Most notably, Elmo, but also Clifford the big red dog, and everyone's favorite animated rat, Splinter from TMNT. Oh, and he also played that lovable sax-playing Sesame Street owl who sang "Put Down the Ducky". Great song.


Admittedly these are not the biggest names in the biz, but they reflect the nature of the show itself. It wasn't the flashiest or the most original, but deep down it was good fun. While the show addressed a surprising number of political issues for a puppet-centric program, it was generally lighthearted and didn't take itself too seriously. At the end of the day, isn't all you want just to watch a giant puppet dinosaur get smacked on the head with a frying pan by his less-giant puppet dinosaur son? I think so.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Were you aware that Wikipedia actually has a disambiguation page entitled "anthropomorphic martial artists"? The description of the page reads, "This category contains articles about anthropomorphic animals in fiction who study martial arts." I see. As opposed to anthropomorphic animals in real life who study martial arts. Next time one of your household pets starts showing promising progress in Tae Kwon Do, feel free to create an adjacent Wikipedia page featuring the latter.

Apparently these martial arts-skilled animals are a popular phenomenon, but none more beloved than the original nonsensical backstory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. An outrageously popular franchise in the late 80s and early-to-mid 90s, TMNT served as a beacon of hope to anyone who ever conceived of a farfetched idea for children's entertainment. Sure, all comic books require some degree of suspension of disbelief, but they generally ask us only to suspend and not to abandon it completely. For Superman or Batman, their backstory at least allows you some insight into their once-normal lives before they became breakout stars in the superhero world. Well, actually, Superman was technically born on the planet Krypton, so maybe you can scratch that. Either way, it still makes more sense that the warped world of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.



Let's break this down a bit. Teenage. Mutant. Ninja. Turtles. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at this brainstorming meeting.

"Okay, so we've got these turtles. Wait, let me back up for a second. Did I mention they're mutants by means of exposure to dangerously radioactive sludge? Because that's sort of important too. Oh, and they're masters of Ninjustsu, a giant meditating rat taught them that. I'll have to fill in the blanks on that one later, but I swear, it'll all add up when I'm done with it. One last thing: I've been thinking that adult mutant ninja turtles are just not relatable enough for these kids. No, I think we better go for it and make them adolescents. So whaddaya think fellas, have we got a franchise here?"

Against all odds, they did. That story somehow managed to endear itself to children everywhere, who were miraculously convinced that it made perfect sense. The more ridiculous variables writers and marketers added to the story, the more blindly children accepted it as fact that this was just the way that adolescent mutated martial arts-practicing reptiles lived. When told the turtles were partial to pizza, children merely shrugged and asked, "So?" When confronted with the turtle's similarly ridiculous catchphrase, "Cowabunga!" these kids seemed utterly unfazed. Granted, if you explained the turtles were named after famous Renaissance-era Italian artists, you would probably receive only a blank stare in return, followed by the deep suspicion that they were being subjected to something educational against their will.

You can, however, bet that no children batted an eye while explaining the premise to adults. You have to admit, it certainly had imagination.



Wasn't that cartoon intro theme song informative? So you're telling me they're heroes in a half-shell, and they're green? Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, this seems complicated.

While TMNT had several different incarnations and story lines, I am going to keep it simple and focus mainly on the early animated TV series in this brief detailing of our colorful cast of characters:


Raphael (The Red One): Here was sort of a dark, aggressive, future wife-beater type character that any children who liked the color red would eventually aspire to emulate. Sure, he was generally a good guy, but he also was into that whole "I'm a rebellious teenage terrapin" deal. The animated show's theme song describes him as "cool but ruuuuuude", which i always found to be an unspeakably covetable way of being. I yearned for people to describe me as such, but unfortunately my coolness never quite caught up to my rudeness. Raphael was also was skilled in addressing the audience in a Ferris Bueller/Zach Morris style, earning him major cheesy 90s points in my book. He wielded a sai, which I always sort of mentally likened to Ariel's dad harpoon in The Little Mermaid. However, as I promised to gender-neutralize these posts to the best of my ability, I will concede and instead compare it to the fishing harpoons in the Amazon Trail computer game.


Donatello (The Purple One): Depicted as the industrious one, Donatello was the go-to turtle for all you handyman/vehicle-building needs. Pegged as the brain of the bunch, his ingenuity was key to extricating the turtles from many a villain-imposed sticky situation. According to the introductory song, he "does machines", which is certainly as vague a description as I've ever heard. He carried a bo staff, which is essentially an enormous wooden stick for baseball-bat-type pounding situations. I would also like to mention, if for nothing else but my own self-entertainment, that growing up I had a cat named Donatello. Well, technically, I named this cat Donatello and the rest of my family was forced to live with it. Regardless, he lived to be 20 and I credit his namesake's trademark smarts for his prolonged survival against feline odds.



Leonardo (The Blue One): Described the animated series' theme song as the group's leader, Leonardo was our fearless captain. In all truth, I always sort of found him to be edging on goody-goody territory. He's quiet, likes to read, and is generally boring in most other ways. I mean, how many times can you turn on the TV and go, "Ooh, now he's making a sandwich! Now he's being courteous to others! I think he just helped an elderly sewer rat cross the sewage stream"? They tried to spice it up in the live-action series by giving him all sorts of complexes, such as a major sibling rivalry with Raphael. Raphi essentially kicks his ass, but I'm pretty sure we were supposed to chalk it up to boys-will-be-boys grade horseplay. Leo did, however, have a pretty sweet ninja sword.



Michaelangelo (The Orange One): The Spicolli-esque slacker turtle of the bunch, Michaelangelo spent most of his time being carefree and coining annoying catch phrases. He's described in the theme song as a "Party Duuuuuude!" Mikey sat around eating pizza, reading comic books, making wisecracks, and randomly spouting nonsense words like "Cowabunga!" He was inexplicably some variety of California surfer dude, despite the fact that his brothers mostly had region-conflicting accents. I should probably be willing to let go of the stubborn nagging feeling that it's unacceptable for one brother to sound like a Brooklyn-ite and another a California beach bum; I suppose under these circumstances that's probably not the most ridiculous aspect on which to focus. Michaelangelo had a pair of traditional ninja-style nunchucks, which I always thought seemed fairly authentic in a vague interpretation of Asian martial arts culture sort of way.


Splinter (Mutant Rat): This was the guy responsible for imparting such virtuous ninja knowledge onto our ragtag group of aquatic reptilian heroes. The enormous fuzzy Splinter rat in the first live-action film is undeniably frightening, and more than likely cost me a few nights of sleep. And he was one of the good guys.

Terrifying live-action Splinter

Shredder (Evil Villian): Shredder mainly interested me because he was voiced by the dad from Fresh Prince. This guy was their requisite archenemy, though personally I was more interested in his warthog and rhino henchmen, Bebop and Rocksteady. Yes, those were really their names. Don't try to fight it. Embrace the ridiculousness.

Honorable mention: The bad guy with the talking tonsil. I will be forever indebted to anyone who can tell me what this guy's name was, because he certainly gave me a wealth of nightmares that have clearly since repressed any memory of his character's name, rank, and serial number.

This franchise was so sprawling and immense, it's impossible to cover all of its many retellings and reconfigurations. Perhaps the rest of the story is best left for another time, when I can fully explore the glory of the live-action film. I should probably leave this as a cliffhanger, to keep you wanting more TMNT until that day finally arrives.

Along those lines, here's a little teaser for your listening/viewing pleasure. Hopefully it will tide you over till the next installment. I present Vanilla Ice's borderline brilliant Ninja Rap from the first live-action TMNT film. As far as I know, he was totally serious about this song.



Extra credit to anyone who learns the dance to this.

The Wedding Singer

What's more quintessentially 90s than...the 80s? If this blog has taught you nothing, I hope that at least you can take away from it the notion that decade-later nostalgia is the most enjoyable kind. The memories practically beg to be retrieved; they're just bubbling below the surface, aching for sweet boiling-over reminiscence*. It's easier to laugh at ourselves when we're not quite so far removed, and not yet old and crotchety enough to scorn our former idealistic selves. In this particular case, Michael Jackson red-leather-jacket-and-one-glove-combo-wearing selves.

Sure, a 90s movie set in the 80s is chock full of jokes that practically script themselves. What's that? A lacy Madonna glove on the ingenue's comic foil hot friend**? A Flock of Seagulls haircut on an airport employee? Billy Idol? In minor retrospect, these things are hilarious for no reason other than that it's shameful that people sought to emulate these wardrobe-misguided people. However, the heart of the movie is not in its cheap shots at a decade crying out to be mocked relentlessly, it's in, well, its heart.

In the mid-90s, many of us knew Adam Sandler from Saturday Night Live*** or as the goofy overblown yell-prone star of his eponymous title character films Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. This was most certainly before his Jim Carrey-esque "look-at-me-I'm-sort-of-artsy" phase (Punch-Drunk Love, Reign Over Me) but represented a shift away from the one-dimensional character caricatures, veering into I-can-make-a-joke-without-being-a-joke territory. Don't get me wrong, Sandler as Robbie Hart in The Wedding Singer was still prone to occasional bursts of humorous rage, but he also had a tad more in the humanity department.

So 90s children, spray on some Aquanet and hold onto your linebacker-esque shoulder pads; prepare to be spun right round.

(Be forewarned, YouTube was very generous on the Wedding Singer front, so I apologize for the clip-heavy post to those of you stuck at work.)



Robbie Hart was nebbish incarnate. As a former spandex-donning hair band front man, he has since fallen into a bout of suburban steady paychecks by means of his burgeoning career as a wedding singer. All is well in quiet Richland as Robbie is charming and professional, most notably when sidestepping the awkward drunken debauchery of Steve Buscemi. Really, is there anything he's not in? This guy is everywhere.



We get the the set up that Robbie is a kind and gentle soul from his fair exchange rate of old lady singing lessons for meatballs. Sounds fair to me. Who doesn't like meatballs? And deposited directly from stove-top to hand? Sign me up! Oh, and did I mention there's this hot chick who works as a waitress at these events? Because that comes in later too. Am I getting ahead of myself yet? This movie is more complicated than I remember. This is probably because I was 12 when I first saw it.

In typical melodramatic movie fashion, Robbie is tragically left at the altar by his personality-void fiancee, vapid Vicky. As most people did in the 80s when faced with a bout of unquenchable depression, Robbie turned to a strict music diet of The Cure. Dark, n'est-ce pas? He makes the fatal wedding singer mistake of playing "Love Stinks" at a wedding and is promptly booted out. All the people seated at the function's reject table certainly get a kick out of it, though.



During all this, Robbie bonds with the aforementioned catering waitress, Julia (Drew Barrymore) and promises to help her with her wedding despite all of the obvious and easily avoidable pain it may cause him. Otherwise seeking to dodge contact with nuptials, Robbie's struggling to make it work with bar mitzvah gigs.

For those of you not well-versed in Hebrew or Yiddish, I promise he says nothing in this song outside of "Mazel Tov!" and "L'Chaim!". The rest of them are largely just Semitic sounds. Aren't guttural language humorous? Ḥa ḥa ḥa ḥa!****



Julia eggs on Robbie to play her some of his new stuff (from the aforementioned Cure-rocking phase) and we are introduced to the following brilliant little ditty. Isn't is charming?



So, Julia. Yeah. Her fiancee is a Miami Vice-worshiping junk bonds trader named Glenn, I'm not sure you can get more 80s than that. He's also kind of a jerk. Okay, so he's a complete jerk and cheats on Julia all the time. And then he tells Robbie about it, which is a totally smooth move because Robbie and Julia are practically sporting broken half-heart BFF necklaces. Oh yes, and Glenn's last name is Goolia. Julia is to be Julia Goolia. Oh my god, rhyming! Language can be so humorous.

To avoid an incredibly lengthy post, I'll skip to the good parts. Imagine me as your helpful 90s VHS fast-forwarder, bringing you only things of value and weeding out the dreck. Blah, blah, blah, things go awry, hilarious kooky mishaps, misguided romantic escapades, yada yada yada....

Oh, and a rapping granny totally happens:



I love that lady, not just for this or her work in Wedding Crashers, but mainly because she was once on Golden Girls and thus deserves eternal unwavering reverence. It's in the Children of the 90s bylaws. Look it up.

So, the granny raps, and Julia decides to elope with her tool of a fiancee to Vegas to avoid any sort of confrontation with Robbie. With the help of Billy Idol (because really, who wouldn't welcome the help of Billy Idol in the face of a romantic scheme?) Robbie manages to accost her aisleside and serenade her:



All together now: awww. Wasn't that just obscenely heartwarming? Guys, if you're reading this, let me give you a hint. Cheesy moments from 90s movies have forever warped the expectations of any of your potential future mates. You better start brainstorming now some type of completely unrealistic over-the-top grand romantic gesture, because this is the way we've been told it's done.

The Wedding Singer is on TV every 12 minutes or so (I'm pretty sure they're using it calibrate satellite clocks) so its familiarity is comfortable like an old friend. Sure, it's not everyone's can of Tab, but even the harshest of critics have to warm at least slightly to its endearingness. It's everything a romantic comedy should be: watchable by both genders, is actually comical, and still has room for quiet blubbering toward the end. In step with good ol' simplified 90s sexism, if it can give a girl a good cry and a guy a good laugh, it's a winner.



*Sorry, I'm making tea, so maybe I'm mixing metaphors a tad here. I found this Mara brand tea and had to try it. Oh, products that indulge my narcissistic nature, how warm and comforting and sweet you are...okay, we're back at the tea metaphors here. I should probably put a lid on it. Alright, I swear, that was last one. Now I'm just mugging it for the footnote readers. Okay, okay. Teapot/teacup/tea references have subsided, and we can all go on with our days. Whew! I realize this humor isn't exactly everyone's cup of tea.
**You may know Christine Taylor as Ben Stiller's wife, but she'll always be Melody from Hey Dude to me.
***SNL Gap Girls, anyone?
****Please take a moment to appreciate that Ḥ is the Hebrew hard "ch" sound and it took me almost 10 minutes to locate that symbol by googling "h with a dot under it". You're welcome. These jokes don't come easy, folks.

Lisa Frank

I feel a compelling need to apologize to my male readers for starting this week off in such an exceptionally girly manner. I promise that when the mood strikes, I will write about something fist-poundingly masculine, but for now, I have a serious urge to document the adorable way a kitten looks when trapped in a high-top sneaker. So for the moment, please bear with me; just understand that this bear will be a painting panda wearing overalls.

It's a pretty well-known fact that young girls will ooh and ahh over adorable animals unprompted. Actually, as an adult I must admit I occasionally indulge this need as well, but the appeal of psychedelic coloring has faded significantly. To a child, however, aesthetics are key. In many ways, children are naturally materialistic and superficial because their brains have yet to develop to their full potential in the critical thinking/empathy departments. They need no explanation for why something has value, and they have an aching need to make their peers jealous. In short, they're a marketer's dream.

If you were at least vaguely femininely inclined and desired any sort of non-shunning in your elementary school years, you knew that stickers were the key to your social survival. As long as you owned them and traded them fairly, you were in. But God help you if you even considered unsticking it from its original backing for any purpose outside of regulation-grade sticker-booking it. That was the height of sticker sacrilege, and your status on the sticker social circuit would undoubtedly plummet from such amateur sticker collecting behavior.

Lisa Frank was so much more than stickers, though. It was, if such a thing could possibly exist, a school supplies empire. I'd like to find out which ad agency they used, because truthfully their marketing bordered on transcendent. Although these acid-trip colored animal splattered folders and pencils could essentially sell themselves on visual merit alone, they managed to convince us that we wanted, nay, needed, the entire collection. Just watching this commercial brings me back to a time when my determination to collect every available piece of Lisa Frank merchandise was unquenchable. Also, I owned the spokesgirl's hat in both denim and black velvet.




Collect them all, indeed. Let us briefly explore the products of the warped minded designers whose drug-induced color scheme choices and whimsical animal worlds captivated children everywhere:

Ballerina Bunnies. Graceful, garlanded rabbits who appear to be performing complicated on pointe ballet in a meadow. I will concede that this is probably their natural habitat, but I want to know for whom they are performing at dusk in the wilderness in full costume.


Painter Panda. For some reason, the people at Lisa Frank insisted time and time again that motor skill-deficient cuddly critters possessed some great capacity for artistic expression. Or maybe one of the designers was just especially skilled at rendering paintbrushes.


Hip Hop Bears. I could not actually ascertain their official LF names, but this substitution will certainly suffice. May I just say that those are certainly some hardcore musical ursedaens. I especially like the way that one on the left in the sweet piano shades is rocking the one-strap-on-one-strap-off overall look that so many of us were so fond of. And of course, we all know the true emblem of being legitimately hip hop is emblazoning the phrase on any available patch of fabric.


Roary and Friends. In this drug-addled designer's tripped-out mind, polar bears and puffins frolic together on the candy glaciers in the psychedelic- sparkly rainbow night sky. The puffins seem pretty ambivalent to the relationship, but Roary is giving us a mix between "get-me-out-here"and bedroom eyes.


Love-expressing penguins. Children of the 90s didn't need Morgan Freeman's soulful deep-voiced documentary narration to learn about penguin monogamy. We learned the virtue of penguin love from our trapper-keeper covers, thank you very much.



Hunter. That's a pretty bad-ass name for such a lovable log-hugging little cuddlepuff superimposed over a sparkly/traumatic LSD-experience background.


Hollywood bear. Enough glitter to make a disco ball blush. He seems to be conducting something, as Hollywood-based bears are wont to do.


I have also recently discovered that unbeknownst to me, I am a Lisa Frank character. I curse the people at Lisa Frank for not granting me this type of playground leverage as a child, but also applaud them for recognizing that my parents did not just make up my name as many people have rudely suggested.

Screenshot via LisaFrank.com

Looking at Mara, the Lisa Frank character, is like looking in a mirror. Well, a very poorly tinted fun house mirror if the 1970s and 80s had thrown up on my body and hair respectively. And look, she dislikes bad vibes! My god, it's like they can read my mind. Actually, it looks like she can, as apparently she is slightly psychic.

While I may not have been able to bask in the glory of an eponymous Lisa Frank folder-gracing character, I was pretty content to settle for my hugging penguins and house-painting pandas. If they could hypercolor it and slap the image on a pencil or a party hat, by God, we would be there. And if you could somehow procure the largest and best character-featuring stickers, well then, you just about owned recess.


Check it out:
Lisa Frank Online
Lisa Frank MySpace Skin, for those of you who are into that kind of thing
Buy Lisa Frank Stickers Online