Talking to the Hand

Ah, the catchphrases of the 90's. How exquisitely annoying they were. I can't even imagine what it was like for adults, being on the business end of a conversation with a member my generation back in the good old days. Always with the "not"s and "don't go there"s. I really don't know if the catch phrases each generation comes up with are as completely ridiculous as what mine did, but one thing's for sure: we must have sounded totally retarded.

Hear them for yourself, 10 years later, and imagine being on the receiving end this time:


"Talk to the Hand (because the Face don't wanna hear it)"
As far as these phrases go, this one was made pretty good sense, but that didn't make it less dumb. It also pissed off people that were trying to have a conversation with you to no end, because your broken record response kept them from getting a word in edgewise. It was actually pretty foolish, but as a kid it seemed like a damn good deterrent if you didn't like where the conversation was going. And so you, the little bastard that you were, would slap this card on the table and gloat at your friend until they went to play with someone else. The taste of victory was sweet.

Stupidity rating: 5/10


"Don't go there"
A variation of "Talk to the Hand", only you would have to say this one before the conversation steered into objectionable territory. This one seemed to be favored more by girls than boys.

Stupidity rating: 4/10


"Psyche!"/"Not!"
The namesake of the blog gracing your eyes this very moment. Apt, no?
This was the verbal equivalent of pulling your hand away before someone could give you a high five, and you are a bad person for doing it. You baited your unwitting victim with a sincere-sounding compliment or informative statement, and followed up a sufficient pause with this soul-crushing retraction. These got pretty good rotation, and were not nearly as dumb as some of the other phrases that we should be embarrassed to have uttered. It wouldn't be the worst thing if these two got picked up again.

Stupidity rating: 3/10


"Da Bomb"
The "bitchin'" of the 90's, this one was a pretty sweet phrase. It didn't make a whole Hell of a lot of sense, but it always felt good when you said it. Anything cool, awesome, sweet, it was "da bomb", and you and all your friends wanted one. And the great thing about this phrase is that what it lacked in logic it made up for in being fucking awesome.Stupidity rating: 4/10

"(If you love it so much) Why don't you marry it?"
This is where we start getting pretty deep into the realm of really damn stupid. Apparently this one got started in Pee-Wee's Playhouse, but it's retarded in any context. Your friend said something about how much they love their new Playstation, and you, ever the pithy one, would so cleverly retort with this brilliant line. I guess it got some laughs on a creepy Saturday morning cartoon, but it has no place in the real world. This one lies where it belongs: in the grave for catch phrases.

Stupidity rating: 7/10

"Oh snap!"
This one got its popularity from Tracy Morgan on Saturday Night Live, and apparently is a more White-friendly version of "Oh no they didn't!". A very clever onlooker might use this one after witnessing you burn your friend with a "psyche", "not", or "why don't you marry it?" This one was good for synergy that way. Too bad it was really fucking annoying and doesn't make any sense.

Stupidity rating: 6/10

"All that and a bag of potato chips"
It didn't get much more stupid than this. I haven't the foggiest idea where this one came from, and I'm glad it gone. Not everything from the 90's was great, and here's your proof. Supposedly, something that was "all that..." was really great, and someone who thought they were "all that..." was an arrogant prick. But the people that coined this phrase forgot something: this phrase is not cool. You should be ashamed and embarrassed.

Stupidity rating: 9/10

"Wassup?!?"
The same guys that brought you Real Men of Genius (formerly Real American Heroes) also brought you this 90's gem. It only actually got about 10 days of rotation before Y2K (see previous post), but this one's got that distinctive 90's sheen of contagious retardedness. The minds that sent this phrase out into the world must have been very interesting to say the least. The commercial that, yes, I will provide for you, kicked this phrase off (it was during a football game) lead to every kid from age 5 to...I'm not sure, what do we want to go with here, 45? 45, to greet each other with this obnoxious assault on the ears and language. Pure nonsense, inside and out. 90's pop culture at its best. Revel in it.

Stupidity rating: 11/10

True, indeed.

*For those who are interested in related blogs, here is one that I found during my research (yes, research.) for this post: Children of the 90s. Check 'em out, see WASSUP?!!?

FAIL

Grab your survival kits and a whole lot of food and water, because everything's about to get very Dark Ages up in here. Y2K's coming, and all your money is about to disappear and your electronics are going to fail like an attempt to get Lindsay Lohan's life back on track.

...Wait, what's that you say? Nothing happened on Y2K? The world didn't end in a fiery, bankrupt cataclysm? How can this be?

Well, let's look at the nature of this world-dreaded apocalypse. The reason for everyone getting all up in arms was the fact that computer systems (which were used in everything from banks to planes to refrigerators) kept date records with only 2 digits to represent the year: for example, "93" instead of "1993". The problem with this was that when the calendar hit January 1st, 2000, the ascending year count would revert back to "00", as in 1900, not 2000. And no computers or electronic records existed in 1900. People were afraid that this would cause pretty much every machine in the world to fail and planes would crash, banks would lose all monetary records, nuclear plants would destabilize and melt down, and microwaves would be unable to zap up some popcorn to watch this sucker go down.

In order to prevent the end of the world, computer experts the world over frantically set to work updating computer systems to run on a 4-digit year count so that the world could safely enter the new millennium, and not relive the last 100 years on the fiery plains of Armageddon.

Then the (Doomsday) clock stuck midnight; the ball dropped in Times Square, and shockingly, tragically, there were no headsplosions. No planes fell right out of the sky, everyone carried on drunkenly, threw up, came to 16 hours later, and were perfectly able to go to the mall and splurge their still existing money on after-Christmas stuff (marked down 70%!).

In an ironic bitchslap from reality, all of the nerdy computer scientists' hard work was rendered pretty much meaningless, since nobody in the entire world had a problem worse than the hangover they would wake up to in the morning; countries that spent vast amounts of money scrambling to update their computers experienced the same (small) number of problems that did barely anything to prevent the end of the world (Italy, Germany, and South Korea, guys, get 'em!).

This information is brought to you by the Source of all Knowledge, Wikipedia. Cthulhu fhtagn!

So yes, for all the hype, for all the fear and panic, Y2K amounted to what experts refer to as an

Mah Fellow Americans

Bill "Slik Willy" Clinton: womanizer, grammar-challenged, bullshitter. President.

I knew you'd be back. Who's your Daddy?

Also known as Slik Willy, this Sonofabitch presided over our great country from 1993 to the turn of the century, and was in office during the best economic state that our generation has seen. That mug was the face of the country during the great decade of our childhood. Take a moment to let that really sink in.

Willy's presidential career was marked by a lot of boring tax and political nonsense, as well as such awesome hilarity as fundamentally misunderstanding the mechanics of smoking, blatantly lying to the whole country, and causing an entire nation of people to collectively look up the definition of one of the shortest known words in the dictionary.* Oh, and he also instituted the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that allowed homosexuals to register in the military, and was the first president to have a White House web page, or whatever. Also, that scary lady.

*He is also endowed with an immeasurable bullshitting powers, which he often made use of both during and after his career as president.

Never has one president been so monumentally laughtastic as Willy Clinton was. Of course everyone knows about the scandalous Lewinsky affair, in which the most powerful man in the world got away with fooling around with the intern while on the job. Well, he did eventually get impeached for his actions, but throughout the whole thing he kept a cool head and told us all: "Mah Fellow Americans, I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Many teenagers saw this as an excellent loophole, since it was now demonstrated by the president of the country that oral does not count.

In further contribution to the delinquency of minors, Clinton famously and hilariously dismissed the admitted fact of his smoking pot in college by stating that he simply "Didn't inhale." The amount of implied idiocy necessary to make this statement true is astounding, and in all likelihood quantified by dividing by zero. Slik Willy got off clean, smirking and chuckling to himself about his incredible capacity to bullshit anyone he damn well pleased.

During the trial following his "alleged" affair with Monica Lewinsky, he again played the part of the incredible fool and made a statement stupid that it was almost existentially profound:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true."

Damn, I feel dumber having tried to read that. Maybe that was the genius of his plan, because holy shit, would it take a real dumbass to buy that defense. Semantics, Will, semantics...

...alright folks, I went ahead and followed suit just like everyone who watched the press coverage of Willy's infamous defense, and here's the deal:

is: from Middle English; present 3rd person singular of "be"
Brought to you by Merriam-Webster

I trust that about clears it up for everyone?

In light of your spectacular hijinks and careless lie-spinning, we salute you, Slik Willy Clinton.

Don't inhale, kids!

Pokémon

Here it is. Here's what you've been coming here for since post #3. The fad of all 90s fads. The crack-cocaine, craze-inducing rocket fuel of a fad that hijacked the little minds of the next generation to inherit the world. The parent-dreaded, school-banned, hysteria-causing, child-screaming, Japan-spawned, $200-for-a-holographic-Charizard-card POKÉMON CRAZE.

For parents, there was no hiding from this one. No hoping it would blow over. This thing grabbed ahold of your child's mind and your wallet and shook like a schoolyard bully. Who, incidentally, did the same thing to your child in order to get the rare 1st edition Gyarados card that your screaming, whining, pleading kid got you to shell out $75 for. Pokémon cards made you their bitch. Oh, the humanity of it. Kids got so crazy with trading and battling their cards that schools banned the cards so that the kids would pay attention and stop shuffling the cards around under the desks like some kind of morally questionable exchange, I can see them, dammit!
The Great Poké-Card Rage had hit schools in late '99, and by February of 2000 the cards were no longer allowed. Broken-hearted children had to wait until 3PM to trade, battle and show off their new $400 collection of Christmas-gotten cards.

But it wasn't just trading cards--oh, no--there were Pokémon clothes, folders, binders, backpacks, TV shows, episodes on VHS, sheets, posters, action figures, toys, and video games. And you wanted it all. Everybody in school had them, and you needed to fit in, because Pokémon was awesome, dammit! But that was how it went. If there was a cent that the Pokémon franchise could squeeze out of you, they'd be damned if they weren't going to get it. Gotta catch 'em all!

Oh, but he's so cute!

So, as redundant as the question may be, how many of you are guilty of participating in the Pokécraze? Is it safe to say that every one of my readers was a certifiable Pokémaniac? What game did you have? Red? Blue? Yellow? The GameBoy Pokémon TCG? Pokémon Pinball? Pokémon Stadium? Pokémon Snap? All of them? It was all of them, wasn't it?

Every one of my readers

And dare we even wonder how many hours were spent playing those games, collecting those cards, and practicing at both of them so that we could kick our friends' asses in a Pokébattle? How many hours were spent in front of the TV watching every episode that aired until we got old enough to think Pokémon wasn't cool anymore (about 9 seasons ago)?
(You're never too old for Pokémon. So what if people give you funny looks for hanging around elementary schools and asking kids if they want to check out your holographic Dewgong?)

Surely the spent hours of our lives can only be matched by the spent dollars of our parents.


So that you don't feel too lame, I'll say that I still break out my old GameBoy color and Pokémon Silver from time to time and get old school 2000 when I'm bored with the routine of my life. Don't worry, you're not too juvenile for hiding a Pikachu blanket in your closet (nerd).

So for old time's sake, go ahead and dig up your GameBoy and Pokémon game, or your huge collection of trading cards, or your old Pikachu pajamas, you know you want to. Don't try to fight it. And hey, who knows, maybe if you're lucky you can sell your old collection for some serious cash. I bet there are some nerdy kids of this generation that would be willing to hand over some dough to take them off your hands.

BLASTOISE!!!

90's Flashback!

Grunge, Pop-Punk, and Alternative: The 90s Music Triumvirate

Ask someone what comes to mind when you say "90s music", and odds are you'll get 8 or 9 "Nirvana"s for every 10 people. It's no surprise, really, since Nirvana was considered the epitome of the Grunge music movement. They were the group to open up the big old can of teenage angst. But even though Grunge was a genre unique to the 90s, we all know that there were at least 2 other genres that soared in popularity during our favorite decade. Alternative rock and Pop-punk music both dominated the airwaves (that weren't packed full of teen-pop like the Backstreet Boys and N*Sync) throughout the 90s. And although both genres continue to crop up in contemporary bands, Gen Y members know that the heyday of both occurred before Y2K.



Grunge: angst, distortion, and dynamics

Nirvana
Come as you are

Of course everyone knows that the big band of the 90s was Nirvana. The brooding, flannel-clad nonconformists took the airwaves and discontent teenage hearts by storm. Their surprising rise to fame has only been surpassed by their overwhelming influence on music since their unfortunate end with Kurt Cobain's death. Despite the band's relatively short lifespan, they still managed to record 3 studio albums of material, with 10 other releases of EPs, Live records and compilations. For their 3 studio releases, Nirvana had a whopping 20 singles, which goes to show just how popular they had become by the early 90s. Though it may have pissed Kurt off to know that Nirvana had become such a big name in the music industry, their songs are still in regular circulation and they are often cited as a significant influence on contemporary bands.

Check them out:

• Smells Like Teen Spirit
• Come As You Are
• Polly
• Lithium
• In Bloom
• About a Girl
• The Man Who Sold the World

Other 90s Grunge bands include: Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden

Pop-Punk: fast, melodic brattiness

blink-182
What's my age again?

Along with Green Day and the Offspring, blink-182 headed the 90s genre of Pop-punk, giving snotty teens that weren't pissed off something to blast from their boom boxes and car stereos. Pop-punk was all fun and power chords with the occasional incoherence and allusion to masturbation (or entire song about it, see: Longview by Green Day). Although it didn't take root right away, by 1997 pop-punk had caught on thanks to Green Day's Dookie, the Offspring's Smash, and blink-182's Dude Ranch. blink-182 was known for their melodic toilet humor and catchy adolescent anthems, releasing 3 more albums before a hiatus in 2005, and returning in early 2009. Though Pop-punk doesn't hold a title as instantly recognizable and influential as Grunge and Nirvana did, this genre did have a very large appeal to the teens of the 90s and 2000s, and has spawned a contemporary wave of bands following in its footsteps.

Check them out:

• Dammit (blink-182)
• What's My Age Again? (blink 182)
• Feeling This (blink-182)
• When I Come Around (Green Day)
• Church On Sunday (Green Day)
• I Choose (the Offspring)
• Want You Bad (the Offspring)

Other 90s Pop-punk bands include: Rancid, the Descendents, Less than Jake

Alternative: post-80s grab bag of rock

"Alternative" is really a blanket term for music since the late 80s that doesn't fit exactly into one specific genre or another. As such, there are a shitload of "Alternative" bands out there today, with such different types of music that it is nearly impossible to pick a defining band like Nirvana is to Grunge. At its inception, Alternative was known as "College Rock", since bands of the genre were widely played on college radio stations as a reflection of college students' musical tastes. Scores, if not hundreds of bands like the Strokes, 3 Doors Down, Barenaked Ladies, Matchbox 20, the Gin Blossoms, and Oasis encompass the Alternative genre. With the advent of Grunge, windows opened for Alternative bands and their popularity soared, still lasting to this day. One of the most popular and recognizable Alternative bands is R.E.M., especially among Generation Xers, but by now anyone could name an Alternative band that they have in their ipod/iphone/mp3 player library.

Check it out:

• Hey Jealousy (Gin Blossoms)
• (What's the Story) Morning Glory (Oasis)
• Ain't That Unusual (Goo Goo Dolls)
• Kryptonite (3 Doors Down)
• Pinch Me (Barenaked Ladies)
• Semi-Charmed Life (Third Eye Blind)
• Creep - Radiohead

Other 90s Alternative bands include: Tonic, Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket

90s music is a huge subject to talk about, go out and search for some artists outside of your 90s favorites. Regardless of your favorite genre, you'll find dozens of songs and artists to add to your library!
Look around Amazon.com and you'll find items like Non Stop '90s Rock,
or put your favorite songs and artists into Pandora and find new music as you listen!

Where Are They Now? pt. 1

Since All Saint’s Day (the day of the dead) has just recently passed, and since 2009 is drawing closer to its end, I thought we’d spend a bit of time looking back at some of the notable 90s icons, and seeing where they are today. A Then and Now, if you will. And you will.

R.I.P.

We all agree already that it's a sad thing that the 90s have passed by and left us in the new millennium with cold, unfeeling machines and up to the ears in text messages and "i-[product]"s, whereas BopIt and Simon (the game) just aren't cool anymore. But it saddens me to share with you the passing of some of the more cuddly familiar faces since the turn of the century.


Dolly the Sheep (1996-2003)

Remember all the talk when Dolly was first born? The first cloned mammal from an adult cell, "the most famous sheep in the world" (suck it, Lamb Chop), was a huge deal when the success story first hit the news. It was all over then, The Attack of the Clones was nigh (thanks a lot, Star Wars) and mad scientists were surely cooking up batches of look-alike killing machines from our stolen hairs.
Well, the takeover never happened, and six and a half short years later, Dolly the First Cloned Sheep died of lung cancer in 2003. The funny thing is, I know everyone heard about Dolly being born, but I can't remember at all if the news ever got out that she died. I didn't hear about it until I saw it online several months ago. Despite being more than half a decade late to the wake, I now share with you the sad reality that is a post-Dolly world. Since Dolly's successful birth, many other animals have been cloned, and scientists even suggest that cloning may eventually be able to reproduce extinct species such as Woolly Mammoths and dinosaurs. But hey, at least we weren't attacked by clones, right?

CHOOSE YOUR DEATH!

Gidget the Taco Bell Dog (1994-2009)

A lot of celebrities died this summer, but here's one you may not have heard about. Granted, Gidget didn't moonwalk or do kung fu or sell Oxiclean; she didn't direct movies or create guitars and she wasn't one of Charlie's angels. But dammit, she was cute and damn good at making us crave fast food!

After several years of being the face of Taco Bell, she played a role in Legally Blonde (something no man should have known before reading either this blog or that linked article) and lived in doggy luxury until the age of 15. Gidget's catch phrase lives on, buried in the minds of the 90s kids and their parents. Pop culture and Psyche!the90s remember her and the words that hijacked our brains: "¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!"

Clash of the Consoles, pt. 2 (And the One Reason 90s Kids DID Want to Go to School)

Reason #3 kids wanted to stay home: Sony Playstation

Look at that sleek, savvy thing up there. That was one bitchin console when it came to us from Japan in 1995. It caught the attention of kids like wildfire with its impressive graphics and fast gameplay, and even though it lacked an iconic character like Sonic or Mario, it offered many popular game franchises like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Frogger, the video game giant that is the Final Fantasy series, and a slew of sports and racing games. It catered to everyone; Hell, you could practically hear a choir of angels singing as you opened the box. This wonder machine has claimed millions of childhood hours worldwide, while parents’ suggestions to “go outside!” fell on deaf ears.

Ahh, Frogger…so many good times. So many angrily thrown controllers.

And the winner by a long shot: Nintendo 64

The granddaddy of classic video games, the Nintendo 64. Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye 007; this console holds claim to the heavyweight champions of the classic video game world. It came to us in 1996 and hasn't stopped being great since. You haven't fully experienced video gaming until you've played at least one of these great titles. The number of hours 90s kids spent collecting stars, shells, swords and bullets, and stomping on, stabbing at, and shooting up colorful villains must be astounding. I know I spent a good 3 years of my life playing on this system. And regardless of where you look, these games make it on nearly every list of the top video games of all time. Of all time; this console offered games in the late 90s that beat out games powered by a 250GB Playsation 3 more than a decade later. Japan sure knows their video games. I've probably spent a couple hundred hours playing through the big-name titles time after time, how about you?

What are your memories? Let's get some feedback! Post a comment with your favorite console, game, or memory, or maybe your worst; frustrations are welcome as well. You know you played at least one of these games or systems, and you know you loved it. Now revel in it!

Ok, you've been waiting and suspecting since seeing the title of this post, now it's time to sate your curiosity. The one reason 90s kids did want to go to school was...

Oregon Trail

Yes it was. You remember this. Oregon Trail day. The day the class got to use the computer, and that was the best day of the week for damn sure. No one even cared that it was an educational game, we loved it anyway. The only thing that wasn't awesome about it was that eventually the class would be over (alas, the great despair of all video gamers), and you would have to go back to boring, actual learning.

Book learning sucks.

You led a caravan of settlers through the titular trail, you hunted deer, rabbits and oxen, and maybe died of dysentery. AND YOU LOVED IT.

AND, since I know how you really want it, I'll go ahead and indulge your pangs of nostalgia. There is an ONLINE VERSION OF THE GAME. Oh yes. Enjoy. Go die of dysentery. It'll be the best thing you've done all day.

Hooray for reliving 6th grade!

Funny, I Feel Like I've Seen This Before

This past weekend I went to see Surrogates at the theater since the trailer caught my interest and I was curious to see what they were making Bruce Willis beat up nowadays. And he's got that godawful wig on. The movie itself was decent, I give it 6/10 stars.
******



But be warned: there is a whole lot of déjà vu in this movie. That's probably because I, like most people, saw it the first time around when it was called

Yup. Pretty much. The premise is that people can buy robots (overtones of I, Robot) that they can make look however they want (like the Matrix characters do when they're plugged into the Matrix)and sent out into the world as a proxy to do pretty much whatever they want while they themselves are plugged into a machine (getting pretty blatant, here). There's also a rebel group that hates the machines and eventually someone that wants to wipe them all (the machines in this case) out. His name isn't Smith, though. Too bad, we were almost 5 for 5 there.

Does anyone else notice that movies lately tend to be shameless ripoffs of other movies (see here), shameless remakes (Black Christmas, The Omen, I Am Legend), or shameless capitalizing on books (the Harry Potter franchise, The Road, Narnia movies, and the unfortunate reality that is Twilight)? How does this keep happening? When did it become ok to constantly recycle older ideas? Isn't that considered plagiarism? Isn't plagiarism bad?

And the real shame is that the several original ideas that make their way to the cinemas each year are usually pretty terrible. Maybe I'm just hard to please, but when I see previews for Saw VI, 2012, and The Men Who Stare at Goats, my faith in the movie industry hits rock bottom, and I really really hope that it's not just me.

I guess we can only hope for the best, and watch our DVDs of better movies from better times. Here're some of my recommendations (90's themed, of course):

• American Pie (1999) Sexy comedy
• Jurassic Park (1993) Dinosaurs and Jeff Goldblum (and Colonel Sanders)!
• The Matrix (1999) Ted Theodore Logan, post-Alaskan military school
• Scream (1996) Ghostface!
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - for the Burton fans
• Titanic (1997) - for the girls
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) Arnold is back, just like he said he'd be back!
• Home Alone (1990) Every kids' how-to guide to boobytrap your house and piss off your parents
• Tommy Boy (1995) or Black Sheep (1996) It's really the same movie either way
• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) Disturbingly hairy Mike Myers works mojo and bad teeth
• Back to the Future, part 3 (1990) DeLorean and hoverboard awesomeness in the Old West.