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!"