Nineties nostalgia beginning to set in

Ahh, the 1990s. I know you get nostalgic thinking about those days at the lunch table,… Ahh, the 1990s. I know you get nostalgic thinking about those days at the lunch table, Simpsons lunchbox in tow, munching on a Fruit by the Foot, sipping your Snapple and fighting over whether Tonya Harding was behind the attack on Nancy Kerrigan. Whether you want to fess up or not, the ’90s were a kick-ass decade.

These were the thoughts I had a few days ago as I zoned out in front of yet another “I Love the ’80s Strikes Back” marathon on VH1. They’ve done the ’80s, tackled the ’70s and served up seconds of the Age of the Yuppies – so it’s just inevitable that there will come a day in the future when you can watch endless hours of B-list celebrities dish about everything ’90s. So I decided to get a little nostalgic and reminisce about the good old days – or, just the old days. I mean, it wasn’t all good. Remember Furbies?

The decade was full of historical moments. The Berlin Wall fell, Bill Clinton was elected president, Princess Diana died and everybody thought the world was going to end at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, because of the Y2K bug. The O.J. Simpson trial captivated America, and when the verdict was announced, it became clear that racial tensions were still very real in our country. Dolly the sheep grew out of cloned eggs and El Nino rocked the Weather Channel’s world. The Unabomber turned out to be a crazy, unshaven man who lived in a shack in the woods and two Colorado students opened fire on their classmates and teachers as the decade wound to a close.

Grunge broke out onto the scene at the beginning of the ’90s, with Nirvana at its forefront. Rap came of age during the decade. Gone were the days when DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince rhymed about how parents just don’t understand; now we heard groups like Public Enemy fighting the power, and we witnessed the East Coast-West Coast rap wars. As the decade steamed along, society was inundated with cheesy bubblegum pop music acts: Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Spice Girls, Christina Aguilera, and, of course, Britney Spears.

I’ll never forget the first time I watched “Silence of the Lambs” – just typing the title makes me shiver. Even though the movie came out in 1991, I was only seven at the time – not exactly mature enough to hear about Hannibal Lecter’s fondness for Chianti and fava beans. It was not until five years later that I let a girl I was baby-sitting talk me into watching it with her. As you can probably guess, her parents came home to her and me huddled together on the couch, her head practically molded to my ribcage. It’s still the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.

The first Star Wars prequel, “The Phantom Menace,” was released in 1999 amid much fanfare and – once everybody saw it – really loud boos, at least in the theater where I saw it. “Jurassic Park” allowed dinosaur geeks’ minds to run wild with the possibility that one day we could bring those gigantic lizards back to life, “The Blair Witch Project” took a camcorder into the woods and scared the hell out of America in the process, and “American Pie” lovingly chronicled what happens when you mix adolescent boys with baked goods. Oh, and this little movie called “Titanic” came out, too.

Television expanded its horizons in the ’90s. NBC introduced the concept of Must-See TV, with “Friends” and “Seinfeld” anchoring the two-hour comedy block to smashing success. It became possible to get your news fix anytime, anywhere, with 24-hour news channels like CNN, CNN Headline News, and – if you want a “fair and balanced” look at events – Fox News. Jerry Springer showed America just how trashy life can be on his talk show, whose guests regularly came to fisticuffs.

Plenty of fads came and went during the decade. Every woman in America wanted a “Rachel” haircut, people embraced fanny packs until they realized just how damn stupid they looked wearing them, and mehndi tattoos were the rage circa my seventh-grade year. The ’90s decade brought with it a whole new set of vocabulary, such as “da bomb,” “my bad,” “as if!,” “all that,” – which sometimes carried the attachment “and a bag of chips” – “bling bling,” and, my personal favorite, “whatever!”

I know I’ve probably missed some of your favorite ’90s moments in this column. You can’t possibly expect me to encapsulate every single thing that happened in the glorious days of our youth. If that’s what you want, I have just one thing to say to you: talk to the hand, because the face ain’t listening.