As my look at 1994: The Most Important Year of the Nineties continues, it’s time to take a look at the comic books. Joining me for this endeavor is Michael Bailey of Views from the Longbox (among other podcasts). In this two-parter, we’re going to talk about the comics industry of the 1990s, what the big releases were in 1994 as well as what our favorite books were that year.
You can listen here:
So it’s been twenty years since Kurt Cobain’s suicide. I suppose that I’m not the only person writing a piece about it today (although I’m definitely one of the least important people writing about it). Truth be told, if I wasn’t spending much of this year looking at 1994, I might not have even noted it beyond recognition upon seeing a Facebook post or something.
His death didn’t affect me very much–celebrity deaths rarely do. However, when I was sixteen, I wasn’t that much of a fan of Nirvana. Oh sure, I’d enjoyed the songs I’d heard off of albums like Nevermind, but I didn’t own any of them and was more into stuff like Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and Metallica. I suppose that might all have been different had I access to MTV on a daily basis but I can’t exactly write about something that wasn’t true.
What was true is that my friend Brendan called me up on April 8 and told me he saw something on MTV about Kurt Cobain having been found dead (Cobain’s autopsy would later reveal that he’d died on April 5). We made some jokes about it adn then talked about something else. It was probably hockey or school. That night, I went to a meeting for the People to People Student Ambassador group for the trip to Europe I was scheduled to take that summer. One girl, whose name I think was Tammy, was wearing a Nirvana T-shirt and I innocently asked if that was because of the news. She replied that he wasn’t dead and that wasn’t completely true about the heroin overdose. I apparently then became the person who first told her about Cobain’s suicide.
Beyond that, life went on. I listened to other bands and explored other genres. I did noticed that other people were more upset. My sister’s friend, who had a flair for the dramatic, seemed pretty insistent on proclaiming that every lyric on every Nirvana album was a clue to his suicide. There was at least one piece in the student newspaper about it. And T-shirt stops at the mall seemed to be selling a lot more Nirvana T-shirts.
As the grunge of the early 1990s gave way to the fluorescent pop of the late 1990s, I began to see the significance in his death, culturally if not personally. Cobain’s suicide is almost a dividing line between the two decades, establishing a Nirvana/Britney Spears divide between Generations X and Y (for lack of better terms, anyway). It also winds up establishing Nirvana as a near-perfect band. Okay, I’m not a fan of In Utero but the group has that Beatles-esque achievement of ending before they could really suck, whereas Pearl Jam was more like the Stones–slowly fading with diminishing returns and occasional flashes of brilliance.
Had Cobain not taken his own life, how would things have been deifferent? Would we have gotten another Nevermind or would they have been put out Binural? Would Kurt and Courtney have continued to be a trainwreck of a couple or would they look like Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani (well, before they broke up)? Would Nirvana’s continued presence prevent the rise of The Goo Goo Dolls, Marcy Playground, Third-Eye Blind, Smashmouth, Fastball, and a host of other “Where are they now?” bands from the late 1990s and early 2000s?
Such speculation is both fun and frustrating. So are overwrought odes to dead artists and pretentious think pieces. At least on a day like this, we can take the time to appreciate his contributions to music.
In my last post, I mentioned that watching all of Baseball made me feel like I was in an introductory, or “101” class on the game. As well-researched and well-crafted as Ken Burns’s documentary was, there were times where I felt like I was getting the history textbook version of the baseball story: hit the high points, go selectively in-depth, and completely skip over quite a bit.
While that’s a valid criticism, leaving it at that would be giving the work short shrift, especially since it’s a full day’s worth of a documentary. Furthermore, I spent much of that first part of my look at Baseball on summary and critique and didn’t give much of my personal “story” as it is, or at least my personal reactions while I was watching it. Which is kind of the whole purpose of this blog, right?
So that’s what I’m going to do. Inning by inning.
First Inning (“Our Game” 1850s-1900): This isn’t Baseball, this is seventh grade social studies with Mr. Kerkhof. We’re talking about the Antebellum period and … man, the 1800s are boring. But this? This isn’t so much because it’s an origin story, the kind I’m fixated on whenever we begin looking at an important event. What were the first shots fired in the Revolutionary War and how did it progress from there? Who actually founded the Roman Empire? When did the Middle Ages officially begin? Who played that first game of baseball and what was it like in what seems like the Dark Ages to me–before Ruth, Gehrig, Mays, Mantle, and every other name I know?
Second Inning (“Something Like a War” 1900-1910): I’m ten years old and my parents have given me a “Baseball’s All-Time Greats” baseball card set, the one I spotted in the Sears catalogue. There’s Ty Cobb, and there’s Honus Wagner, who has the most expensive baseball card in existence, something I learned on a feature I saw on 20/20 the previous year. I begin looking at the all-time stats for the old players and am amazed and even though many of their records have been broken, they still are in the top five for many of their most notable categories. The card set is worth original retail price (and even today it’s not worth much), but what it lacks in monetary value it more than makes up for in facts.
Third Inning (“The Faith of Fifty Million People” 1910-1920): To me, it’s not the Black Sox scandal; it’s Eight Men Out and Field of Dreams. It’s “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” and the last scene of that softball episode of Married … With Children that parodies the last scene of Eight Men Out. It’s also the idea that even something as pure as a game I play on Saturday mornings in Little League can be corrupted by outside influences (yunno, beyond the opposing team’s coach being friends with the umpire).
Fourth Inning (“A National Heirloom” 1920-1930): I’m in the fifth grade and we’re asked to take a biography out of the library for our latest book report/conference with the teacher. I grab one about Babe Ruth. He competes with Gehrig. He is supposedly “stranger than fiction,” which is what one of the chapter titles says. Despite my being an excellent reader, I have trouble getting through the entire book. I don’t know if it’s because the book’s badly written or because I don’t find the subject matter as interesting as I thought I would. In fact, I can’t remember if I ever finished that book. I do know that when I had my conference with Mr. Schafer about it, I did fine.
Fifth Inning (“Shadow Ball” 1930-1940): I have no personal context for this. In fact, if there is any episode that I found myself glued to, it’s this one. Growing up, my knowledge of the struggle of African-Americans was limited to slavery, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, and Martin Luther King Jr. I was not exactly a scholar. I knew the Negro Leagues existed but I don’t think that what little I read about them in books clued me in to what extent. If anything, I’m grateful for what I gained from this episode.
Sixth Inning (“The National Pastime” 1940-1950): It’s 2012 and I’m in a used bookstore on the Downtown Mall. I’m looking for a copy of As You Like It but am also perusing the small graphic novel section. On my way to the counter, I pass sports and Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer. It sits on my shelf until the start of the 2013 season rolls around. While Kahn’s biographical retelling of his time becoming a sportswriter is interesting, it’s his visits with former Dodger greats and the retelling of Jackie Robinson’s history that pulls me in. For years, I knew three things about Robinson: he played for the Dodgers, he broke the color barrier, and he stole home once in the World Series. This tells me so much more.
Seventh Inning (“The Capital of Baseball” 1950-1960): I’m twelve years old and my family is throwing one of those big barbecues where everyone–from my mom’s side and dad’s side–is there. My Uncle Brian, a die-hard Yankees fan, spends a good hour talking to Grandpa Panarese about baseball in the 1950’s. They talk about the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers. I don’t interject; I just listen. It’s one of the best memories I have of these two men and one of the most informative conversations upon which I ever eavesdrop.
Eighth Inning (“A Whole New Ballgame” 1960-1970): To me, this is where baseball begins; specifically, in 1962, when the New York Mets go 40-120 and set an all-time single-season loss record that still stands. I cut my baseball history teeth on An Amazin’ Era in 1986 and to me, “baseball history” has always involved Seaver, Koosman, Swoboda, Clendenon, Agee, Grote, Garrett, and McGraw. Yes, there are more important figures in baseball history and more important events. But it’s the lovable losers’ transformation into the Miracle Mets that I always remember.
Ninth Inning (“Home” 1970-1993): It’s fascinating to see Bob Costas tell the story of being in the Red Sox locker room during the Buckner play and watching the champagne get wheeled out as quickly as possible. It’s also fascinating to see testimony from Red Sox fans who were wounded by the play. After all, I rooted for “the enemy” in 1986. My nine-year-old dreams came true when Jesse Orosco threw the last pitch to Marty Barrett (I have a poster on the wall of my classroom), so it never occurred to me that someone might be upset by that night’s events. Beyond that, there are so many recognizable faces here and I wish he was taking more time on them; I wish he was reminiscing with me the way he was reminiscing with my parents through the seventh inning.
When it ends with a talk about how baseball endures I realize that this isn’t a documentary; it’s a eulogy. The season was cancelled due to a strike the month before the first episode aired and it doesn’t seem like we’ll get the game back. Furthermore, it’s hard to pick a side because everyone seems greedy; everyone seems like a villain. And here, at the funeral, we’re all trying to remember why we came.
Tenth Inning (1994-2010): I was there. I remember that. I watched that.
I will never tire of watching Barry Bonds fail to throw out Sid Bream. I always loved how much fun Ken Griffey Jr. seemed to be having–and always wished I had that swing. I was cheering for McGwire the whole time and have to admit I was disappointed when the PED charges came to light. I never cheered for Bonds unless he struck out looking. I want to buy Steve Bartman a beer and talk baseball with the guy–not that game, just baseball. No, the 2004 ALCS is not overrated and yes, I’ll watch the Yankees choke like that any time, day or night. My heart was in my throat when Endy Chavez made that catch, only to have the Cardinals rip it out and crush it a few innings later. You’re really using that Springsteen song, Ken? Don’t you realize it’s about looking back and realizing how middle-aged you are?
“But then time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days.”
You know what? That’s exactly what this is, isn’t it? Good job, sir.
1994: The Most Important Year of the Nineties continues with one of the most Nineties of Nineties movies, Reality Bites. I take a look at the Winona Ryder/Ben Stiller/Ethan Hawke classic and also talk about its place in popular culture as well as talk about why it failed at the box office as did so many other attempts ot market to “Generation X.”
You can listen here:
Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page
Here are some links to some recent pieces about the movie …
20 Years Later: An Oral History of Reality Bites
Hit Fix interviews the principal players from the movie’s cast and production and they talk about what it was like to make it in 1993-1994.
I Watched Reality Bites and it’s Bascially a Manual for Shitheads
A very funny Jezebel piece that waxes nostalgic about the film … with some perspective.
Here’s also a link to two previous posts about the movie …
This post, actually my first column from my high school newspaper in the fall of 1994, is my seventeen-year-old self trying to make sense of my generation, especially after I watched Reality Bites on video.
In this post, I take a look at Reality Bites nearly two decades later and discover how much I identify with Ben Stiller’s character, Michael Grates, the yuppie In Your Face TV executive who competes with Troy Dyer’s (Ethan Hawke) for Lelaina’s (Winona Ryder) affection.
Do you have the time to listen to me whine? No? Well, do you have the time to listen to me talk about Green Day’s Dookie, which was released twenty years ago and is one of the most important albums I ever purchased? You do? Great! I’ll give some history on the album, go through it track by track and then explain exactly why, when I was 17 years old, this punk classic changed my life.
You can listen here:
Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page
As a bonus, here is the CD cover …
Here is the orignal version of the CD’s back cover …
And here are links to articles and books mentioned the episode …
“Young, Loud, and Snotty” (1994 Spin article)
Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azzerad (Amazon.com)
Bill Clinton plays the sax (“we’re Animaniacs”) on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992, probably the most iconic moment in the show’s history.
While this will date this entry years hence, I guess it should be noted that I’m writing it the same week that Jimmy Fallon starts hosting NBC’s long-running late-night talk show, The Tonight Show. In the last few weeks there have been all sorts of farewells to both him on Late Night (which is being taken over by SNL alum Seth Meyers) and Jay Leno. Leno, in 1993, received his first stint as permanent host of The Tonight Show after the retirement of Johnny Carson and the fights behind the camera as well as resulting late night ratings wars between Leno and Letterman (who would go on to do his own show after being passed over for Carson’s) would be one of the more well-known (and notorious) television stories of the 1990s.
One of the biggest casualties of the late night wars of 1993 was The Arsenio Hall Show. Since its debut in 1989, the syndicated talk show had garnered respectable ratings and was very popular among younger audiences, but when three other late-night shows debuted during that year and many of the CBS affiliates that were carrying Hall’s show picked up Letterman’s instead, the ratings started to take a turn for the worst. On May 27, 1994, the final episode of the show aired.
Now, when Arsenio was at his height of popularity, I wasn’t a regular viewer of his show. Staying up that late on a school night was not an option for me in those years, and while I was allowed much later nights in the summer, those were usually spent watching a baseball game. But if I happened to be up and not watching a random movie and had a desire to watch a late night talk show, I would tune in to Arsenio because like a lot of people who were watching his show, I found Carson to be … old.
And that sounds so pedantic, especially considering that Johnny Carson was such a huge legend in comedy and also considering that I would occasionally tape Late Night With David Letterman and Letterman was Carson’s heir apparent. But Hall was cool–he must have been since he hosted the VMAs four times in a row (still a record to this date)–and he had guests that I was familiar with. Granted, I knew who most of the guests on your average Carson episode were, but people I actually might have a chance of watching/listening to with more frequency were on Arsenio.
When Hall’s show went off the air on May 27, I wasn’t watching. However, I had a good reason not to: Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals between the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils (“MATTEAU! MATTEAU!” … oh, sorry … that’ll be another post).
I found the final episode of the show on YouTube and while I’m not sure if it’s the entire show (it’s in three parts and a couple of things do seem to be missing), it’s enough to get a feel for what Arsenio was about for its brief life. In what I’ve seen, the episode’s format is what you’d expect from a talk show–a monologue and guests (Arsenio wasn’t really one for comedic bits). The two guests mentioned are Whoopi Goldberg and James Brown. You don’t see much of Brown–I have a feeling that whomever posted the video missed his performance or it was trimmed down in the original broadcast–and Whoopi’s conversation with Arsenio is about how his show was successful and the cultural impact he had. Being a horribly naive 17-year-old white kid from the suburbs in 1994, I wouldn’t have been able to say word one about the cultural impact of a talk show hosted by an African-American but with twenty years of life experience and perspective now behind me, I completely understand what she’s talking about. Hall was not only the first but he was also successful. No, he didn’t have the long runs that Carson and Letterman had, but five years in syndication and holding on to an oft-fickle youth audience is something to be commended.
I am sure that Mr. Blutarsky’s purity test score was in the negative numbers.
The Internet is full of memes–lists, gifs, videos, and other things that often go viral–and that’s been the case since, well, since the Internet was invented. A couple of weeks ago while cleaning out some old files, I found a few things and decided to spend a few weeks talking about memes that I first encountered in 1995.
My final entry is about The Purity Test.
A college dorm is some sort of primordial hormone soup, especially when you’re a freshmen. Whereas you may have “hooked up” from time to time in high school, it was never to the extent that you do, or at least try to do, during your first year of college. Okay, I should say “other” people do because when I started college I was at the first serious girlfriend stage that most guys are when they are freshmen in high school. But my track record as a terribly late bloomer aside, it did seem like conversations about love and sex were everywhere and completely unavoidable. In fact, sometimes they got intellectual, like the time a few people from one of my survey classes and I spent a Saturday night in a dorm room having our own version of Plato’s Symposium. And that’s not a double entendre; we actually had an intellectual and philosophical discussion about love and sex … at least until it got interrupted by our gawking at the fire in Gardens A across the street.
Anyway, the quickest way to discussion about sex with the purity test. Forwarded around at about the same time as the rest of the forwards I’ve looked at (for some reason, by spring semester and then in subsequent years, forwards would become less common, probably because the novelty wore off), this 100-question test was meme as group activity. I remember printing copies out and taking it in a group of about ten people then comparing scores. I think you were supposed to shoot for somewhere in the middle–a high score got you ridiculed as a virgin while a low score got you derided as a slut–although I don’t know why any score was ever a mark of distinction. It’s not like “Hey, let’s lower that purity test score” was ever a successful pickup line, and there was more distinction in successfully completing the acrobatics necessary to have sex in an extra-long twin bed than a score on a test.
I haven’t looked at this list of questions in a good decade and a half, so I have no idea what my score would be (or honestly what it was at the time). If you’re curious, you can take it yourself.
The Purity Test (more…)
My freshman dorm, Wynnewood Towers of Loyola College in Maryland. The building is now Newman Towers and the school is now Loyola University Maryland.
The Internet is full of memes–lists, gifs, videos, and other things that often go viral–and that’s been the case since, well, since the Internet was invented. A couple of weeks ago while cleaning out some old files, I found a few things and decided to spend a few weeks talking about memes that I first encountered in 1995.
This time around, it’s instant sentimentality and nostalgia for a few weeks gone by with “Going to College is Easier Than It Looks”
Your first semester of college is more thank likely one of the strangest three months of your life. After all, if you’re like me, you go from living with mom and dad and having your own room to being shoved into what was once a one-bedroom apartment with four other guys who all have their own eating, sleeping, hygienic, and recreational drug habits. Plus, unless you have a carry-over from high school to college (like friends or a girlfriend who came with you), you’re more or less figuring out both the social and academic landscape by yourself. This is why those months–heck, the first few weeks–of college seem much longer than they actually are.
There was a point in mid-October where we were about a week away from my fall break and I had some sort of “you’ve changed” fight with my girlfriend. Had I? I’d been gone for all of five weeks and it’s not like I had dropped off the face of the earth for five years. But at the same time, as I calculated the amount of stuff that had happened in those five weeks, I thought maybe I had. A forward that landed in my inbox around the same time confirmed this. Unlike the roommate lists, finals funnies, and other stupid crap we’d been passing around, this was especially popular among the girls and “romantic sensitive” doofuses like myself.
For years, the author of this particular piece was unknown. But in digging around on the internet for it, I found a version attributed to Ashley Wilson of Carnegie Mellon University. I don’t know how true that is, but it may have been a newspaper column or essay that got picked up and sent around, her name being dropped at one point or another along the way.
“Going to College is Easier Than it Looks”
By Ashley Wilson
Carnegie Mellon University (more…)
The Internet is full of memes–lists, gifs, videos, and other things that often go viral–and that’s been the case since, well, since the Internet was invented. A couple of weeks ago while cleaning out some old files, I found a few things and decided to spend a few weeks talking about memes that I first encountered in 1995.
Here, I take a look at a favorite of ours, which is several ways to mess with your roommate.
It sounds weirdly sentimental, but when looking at memes like the ones I have dug up for this series of posts, I can picture the dank room in Wynnewood Towers and smell whatever lingered in the air for most of my freshman year–a combination of pot smoke, stale beer, rancid pizza, and b.o. It’s a memory that amazes me with its staying power, especially since to this day I’m amazed none of my roommates and I died inadvertently at the hands of our habits (or each other, for that matter).
This was one of the first email forwards that went around in the fall of 1995. I think at that point I was getting along with my roommates, although some of their habits were starting to work my nerves, but that’s partially because I wasn’t used to sharing a bedroom with someone for an entire school year and I hadn’t made that clean break from back home, so I was kind of stuck in two worlds in a sense.
So it was almost a relief that lists about ways to mess with your roommate landed our collective inboxes in the fall. And I think that since the novelty of email and forward lists hadn’t worn off, we found ways to bond over them, as absurd as they could be. There were several versions of this that floated around with different numbers of things to do and at one point I took all of them and put them into one huge master list which had about 250 items. Unfortunately, I lost that list years ago and had to hunt this one down on the Internet. I found this on an old, not-yet-deleted Angelfire site that was probably from the late 1990s or early 2000s, and though I would love to give credit to the original author, his or her identity remains a mystery.
100 Ways to Mess With Your Roommate (more…)
Final exams at Ridgemont High, circa 1983.
The Internet is full of memes–lists, gifs, videos, and other things that often go viral–and that’s been the case since, well, since the Internet was invented. A couple of weeks ago while cleaning out some old files, I found a few things and decided to spend a few weeks talking about memes that I first encountered in 1995.
This one is about 50 Fun Things to do in a Final That Does Not Matter
My academic record during my freshman year of college was less than stellar. My first semester was a nightmare, as I earned a 2.5 GPA, the highlight of which was a D+ in Calculus II. My second semester was significantly better, as I earned the 3.5 GPA needed to maintain the 3.0 for my academic scholarship.
I had two amusing moments happen during finals that year. One was in the spring when I overslept my Politics in Literature final by 45 minutes. I remember waking up, looking at the clock, and then jumping out of bed and grabbing whatever clothes and writing implements were available, all the while saying, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” I ran across campus, was admitted to my exam and was riding such an adrenaline high (I probably smelled horrible too) that I was the first one done. It paid off, though–I got an A- in the class.
The other happened during the fall semester. As I said, I wound up with a D+ in Calculus II. Why was someone who would go on to major in writing taking Calculus II? Well, I had scored a 3 on the AP Calculus exam in my senior year of high school and Loyola had told me that if I took Calculus II I would also get four credits for Calculus I. Not having the wherewithal to see that I didn’t need this and also not having the common sense to drop the class the minute things got tough (especially since I knew it had nothing to do with my major), I toughed it out and flirted with academic disaster through December.
That final exam was the hardest test I would ever take in my life. I knew this going in and did what I could to get help from my roommate, Rich, who was studying chemistry and understood this way more than I did. I then holed myself up in a study lounge. That is, until I ran into him during one of my study breaks and he told me that he ran the numbers and I could get a 0 on the final and pass the class. That was good enough for me and I made sure I got a good night’s sleep.
To this day I don’t know what my grade was on that final exam. That I passed the class was enough and I never took math again. In honor of that final, I give you another popular forward from the fall of 1995. The author is unknown but I wish I had followed his or her advice.
50 Fun Things to do in a Final that Does Not Matter
(i.e. you are going to fail the class completely no matter what you get on the final exam) (more…)
Pop Culture Affidavit 