Blast from the Past or Jumping the Gun?

Yesterday, I was watching that episode of The Simpsons where Homer and Marge tell the kids of Marge's college days in the nineties (yes, the nineties), and for the first time in my life, I was hit with official nineties nostalgia.

However, the 90s still seem so close... can we really be getting misty about them yet like we do with the 60s, 70s, and 80s?

Well, just because they seem close doesn't mean they still are. At this point, they're nine years away. And lest we forget, people were mooning over the loss of the 80s by 1994... and probably a lot sooner. Also, VH1 aired I Love the 90s a few years ago. So I suppose I am a little behind the times; it's really just because when you're living a decade (especially when you're as young as I was then), you don't notice the weird trends and tones that make it what it is-- you have to wait until you're (un)comfortably free and clear. After all, did anybody notice big hair? Not until it had gone the way of the hippie.

Feeling this kick of nostalgia, I decided to evaluate the highs and lows of the 1990s, the decade that produced coffee culture, grunge, and (most importantly of all :), me! You wouldn't know it to begin with, but there is just as much to love and reminisce about the 90s as there was for many people about the past few decades... and some things to hate and say, "Thank the skies that's over".

Harry Potter. Can you believe the first book was published in the US 12 years ago?! That's right. And the books are actually explicitly set in the 1990s (evidently, the movies' production companies deemed it not important, which was a shame-- it would have been awesome to see Fred and George mourn the death of Kurt Cobain in a scene). Well, they started a craze that has lasted longer than most, and has no end in sight. The first three books (all published, I'm willing to bet, in the 90s) were the greatest because not everybody knew about them and J.K. Rowling wasn't pandering to anyone at the time. Plus, Harry is a British punk-- he has the messy hair, the tattered clothing, and, farther into the series, a certain tangible sense of apathy that's the nineties in a nutshell. If he didn't live in England, he probably would have been carrying around Nirvana and Green Day in a walkman.

Savage Garden. If the 80s had WHAM!, the 90s had Savage Garden. No wonder their music was so popular (for three years, 1997 until their breakup after 2000's Affirmation). "A Thousand Words" is one of the best songs of the 90s, and "Santa Monica" manages to capture the decade's spirit (supermodels, coffee shops, and in-line skating), coming through nowadays as a nostalgic cry for a time and place that seem to exist now only in the mind.

Must See TV. The official title of First Must See TV Show is widely disputed. A lot of people put the moniker on Seinfeld (1990). However, I attach it to Frasier (1993), because it was actually bearable. Frasier had it all-- coffee, post-Cold War sophistication, and the redefined family situation for which the nineties are famous. A year after its premiere, NBC did it again with Friends, which a lot of people find an easier show in which to take an interest. From then on, NBC had a nearly continuous stream of hit sitcoms that other networks and even Modern NBC can only envy-- shows like Just Shoot Me and 3rd Rock from the Sun that, even if they were irritating TV series (which neither of those examples were), were still insanely popular and legitimately well-written. No other cache of sitcoms so influenced the decade or were so influenced by it.

Coffee Culture. Bill Engvall said that before 1990, you could go into any coffee shop in the country and just order a cup of coffee, but in the 90s, "You got to have a latte... or an espresso...." He had a point. Before 1990, it would have been pretty darn inconceivable for people to go into a cafe and pay those ridiculous prices just to have one cup of coffee and sit for two to three hours. After that point, we had entire sitcoms dedicated to people doing just that (see above). Over time, this permanent craze has evolved to include high-speed internet and would-be competition with McDonald's (would be, that is, if McDonald's didn't suck out loud), but it was those dark little beans that had one of the most profound cultural impacts of their day.

Grunge. Another fine product of Seattle, grunge is what the characters of the proverbial That 90s Show would sit around and listen to after hanging around at the coffee house. I still believe Nirvana was the only band that could pull off this sound without seeming like ripoffs, but that was because they had the virtue of being on the frontier. Unfortunately, grunge has also produced wannabe copycats and the mess that is now Courtney Love.

Early Green Day. Back before Green Day believed in social consciousness for its own sake, they produced a long string of great punk records and watered the seed that was planted by the Ramones and left to die by their lookalikes. The 1994 album Dookie is also one of the definitive albums of the decade and perhaps even the genre of punk itself (the opening line of the opening track has the protagonist explicitly declaring he doesn't care anymore).

And the not so good....
Jar Jar Binks. Mesa very not impressed. Even as an eight-year-old enthralled by the prospect of seeing Star Wars in theatres for the very first time, I wanted to throw my popcorn at the screen when he first appeared. (Spoiler alert) The real sin is that they killed off Mace Windu and left Jar Jar alive to torture us! Complain about the Ewoks all you want... they don't even hold an obnoxious little candle to this waxy digital monstrosity.

The End of Calvin and Hobbes. Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz wrote up until he died. Bill Watterson, on the other hand, left a mere ten years of Calvin and Hobbes for us to enjoy. We can only conclude that Calvin's parents finally gave in to the siren call of Ritalin.

Bill Clinton's Near-Impeachment Experience. As recent history has shown, there are far worse things a president can do than lie about having sex with an intern. But the lie was still highly disappointing, and the man everybody claimed would restore the Democratic Party to its JFK-era glory ended up leaving office with naught but a whimper and an "I didn't know perjury was a crime."

Jar Jar Binks. He was so bad, he deserved another one.