Tribute to the 90's

From mid-decade to mid-decade

You know you’re old when you can relate to practically every little item on a show like “101 Reasons the 90’s Were Cool.”Ah the 90’s; the only decade (so far) I’ve lived through and understood. Don’t get me started on the 80’s.

Underdogs ruled.
The typical archetypes were scrapped for unlikely antiheroes, putting some self-doubt into a world that was getting overconfident, and admittedly, quite boring.

Movies
Two words: Bad Boys
Rap was cool, Miami was the place to be, and a Porsche could ALWAYS kick a Cobra’s ass, oh and Tea Leoni… Plot? Who cares?!? It was kick-ass.

Perhaps banking on Nostradamus’ prophecies were the emergence of Apocalypse movies. No one really believed it, but it sure kept us at the seat of our pants.

TV
It wasn’t Friends, Ally McBeal, or those career dramas that caught my attention. What did it for me was Frasier. Why? Put the words Dateless, Desperate, Epicurean, Uptight, and Neurotic into one show. It had all of the makings of a good tele-drama but this was a sitcom, ladies and gentlemen. Suddenly, it was cool to be condescending.

Cartoons
Animation took a startling turn toward maturity, churning out frighteningly serious cartoons, owing to the success of Akira. Sure they were about world domination with a few sexual innuendos squeezed in between, but that was stuff reserved for live-action movies.
I never thought I’d hear my dad prohibit me from watching cartoons.

The Maxx, Aeon Flux, The Head, Beavis and Butthead, and Ghost in the Shell…
Thank you.

Music
You either loved Alanis and hated the Backstreet Boys, or vice versa. This was Alanis before she became a deranged hippie, mind you.Yes, the Pop vs Alternative war was intense minus the Eastside vs Westside violence of Hip Hop. Alanis left a generation of kids questioning what 'Ironic' really meant, No Doubt was popular on 'Sunday Mornings,' and everyone just wanted to 'Push.'

Eraserheads and Rivermaya rocked the OPM scene and Filipino songs, were finally taking the forefront. Music was great when pirated CD's were unheard of. You actually wouldn't mind parting with P375.

Cars
Picking up the pieces from the failed Box-type movement was the automotive industry, finally showing fruits of American Keiretsu’s. BMW’s were still bad-ass though boxy. Yet what really shook the world were the fourpots from the land of the rising sun, waving a flag that numbered the days of the V8. Everyone wanted an SIR. Everyone else had to get a 16 valve or were left in the dust.

Video Games
Need for Speed and Gran Turismo were in fierce competition. Supercars were nice but most people needed something a little closer to home. Who wouldn’t want to buy a car spec library that gave you an excuse to play too. Soup up your four door and kick V8 butt suffering from understeer all the while. The Playstation put PC users to woe, consoles would take back the gaming world.

Books
Michael Crichton called all the geeks out of the woodwork, making us all realize that we can’t beat technology. Tom Clancy was there too but we’ve had too much of government conspiracies already. It was the private multimillion dollar companies we had to fear.

Fashion Trends
Admit it, you had a pair of Doc Martens. Whether concealed between jeans or accessorized with all sorts of apparel, they just had to be seen, highlighting the strange uncoordinatedness in all of us. I held on to my large and bulky shoes as long as I could, but time had other plans.

Tech
From beepers to celphones, we just had to embrace technology. Privacy was never an issue, it was a need to stay connected, the more ways to do so, the better. And since it was all advancing faster than the space program, why fight it?

Ah the net, the invention of the nineties that allows me to share my very thoughts with you now. How can one even have a life without it these days? Every insignificant person could finally justify that he existed with some phrases separated by dots and slashes, and a “.html” to end it with.

It was a great decade for the underdogs, the outcasts and the maligned. It was one of those rare decades that showed promise for everyone. We believed we could change the world, and we did.