yes, i've seen it

1. how old is (mc) hammer?
2. if one more white person gives me a knowing look while saying "[___] gangnam style", i'm going to lose it.

sure, why not?

something more fun

whoa, sorry for the downer dudes. i feel like i'm going to have to take that post down at some point, so get it while it's sad.

anyway, i'm having overwhelming 90s nostalgia, as my team is in the stanley cup finals for the first time since 1994. yes, this is incredible for many reasons, least of which is that i was well into my teens back then. judging by the comments on that youtube video, clearly i'm not the only one who loves this song. (e.g., "best nba theme EVER. it defined an era," "i still get goosebumps everytime i hear this song.")

what can be more 90s than tesh + vest + goatee + theme to NBA on NBC?

and as my friend tyler pointed out: invisible basketball dribbling! for more on the theme's resurgence, see here.

livin' in the 90s

i'm sure i've done a "livin' in the 90s" post before, so sorry about the repetition. i can't help it if it was the greatest CD compilation ever. (extra 90s nostalgia: it's available in CASSETTE!)

what up with all of the 90s revivals of late? aside from my alicia silverstone sighting, i mean. (what about ed begley, you ask? i think he's pretty timeless, no?). plaid shirts are everywhere! have you noticed this? i suppose they're not as ill-fitting as they were in their first iteration, but i still wouldn't call them exactly flattering. also, c4ts i think went to some yo la tengo/flaming lips concert--not in 1995, but like last weekend. and finally, my friend just informed me of this.

[insert a totally 90s expression of surprise here]

the last time i saw superchunk they gave a really awkward concert at my college with nas. yes, kelis's ex-husband nas. i think it was raining that day and superchunk were kind of low-ish energy, then nas rolled up in a huge tour bus with the requisite number of video hos. or perhaps an inadequate number, since he proceeded to call up more hos from the audience. good times.

oh yes, in other 90s revival news: pavement are reuniting. setting aside the fact that tickets are sold out and of course i completely forgot to get some, i think it would be nice to go to a concert where i don't feel ancient. (for instance, can i really go to CMJ in good conscience?) then again, i don't know whether being surrounded by a bunch of olds would be all that fun. oh well.

omg i finally have another chance to use our balki bartokamous tag! have you read this interview? i know, it's more 80s than 90s, but hilarious is hilarious.

don't stop thinking about tomorrow

a little more girth, a little less hair, a lot more gray...but they're back! nostalgia ensues...

picture it, you're 14 and kicking back a crystal pepsi in vancouver. some chubby southern guy running for president decides to don sunglasses and play the saxophone on arsenio hall. yes indeed, black people who are not the president are featured regularly on television during this crazy time. your school plays "smells like teen spirit" during the winter dance (the "snow ball") and all the plaid-clad white kids start screaming and smashing into one another while most of the asian kids decide to sit this one out. you don't know what to do, so you start bumping into other kids, too, despite lacking the requisite outfit and, erm, pigmentation.

oooooooooooh don't you look baaaaaack...

Contest!

This picture speaks for itself, I know. But because I believe in two part harmonies, let me speak for it also. This is the greatest photo portrait in the history of human existence. It is also a picture of me in my dorm room in the fall of 1996. Your task is to identify how many 90's elements there are in this record and comment accordingly. This photograph will soon be on display in the National Archives; the curator thanks you in advance.

90's4Life.

Nothing Is Impossible

"We all know who the real number one is. Quite frankly, I'm the best in the world....I've been writing, but I haven't been writing. In my mind I've been saying I want to write, but I haven't actually physically picked up a pencil and started writing...So that is my next challenge, to actually to sit down and do it. No (not my life story). A screenplay. Nothing is impossible."-- Serena Williams

One night during my freshman year of college, when I instead should have been living the life that Asher Roth --anti-Christ de jeure--celebrates in his brain-grating ode "I Love College", I found myself watching the television program Friends with a dorm-mate. We got into a spirited debate about the import of liking characters in order to like that in which said characters appear. I advanced the theory that we need not like characters (in books, films, etc.) in order to like the larger works in which they star -- in fact, only lesser intellects would think that. And I don't mean "like" in the moral sense. No one likes Hitler, but we'd all read a book about him with a sense of intellectual curiosiity, I suppose. I'm talking about like in the sense that their lives interest us. I am talking about things like the show Friends, which was, as we recall, peopled by a stunning array of unlikable characters, three of whom could drop dead on screen and I would carry on without a sliver of remorse; Rachel's selfishness when she and Ross were on a break, her pettiness, her impossibly cavernous West Village apartment, her astonishing careeer success (barista to Ralph Lauren), Ross' inexplicable sexual successes, the subdural itch brought on by Phoebe's "quirky" personality , the lot of it made me want to reach out and throttle those three. But still, I liked this show. (Look, we're all going to have to get over ourselves: it's okay to like things that are popular).

While I would have taken garden shears to Jennifer Anistons tips, if only to murder the cultural chatter surrounding her inane haircut, Lord Christ in Heaven above, I fell out of my seat when she accepted Joey's mistaken wedding proposal. Note I am not talking about hate-watching here (e.g., of the kind done with regard to those two human shaped turd sculptures on MTV) -- that's a phenomenon popularized later by reality television and Elizabeth Hasselbeck; I'm talking pure unadulterated hate for characters in a narrative that one otherwise loves. I am talking about hate and love coexisting. My friend with whom I was watching the show that night could not understand my theory -- for him, Rachel was sex on shapely legs, Ross was goofy and funny, and Phoebe was so quirky; he loved them all. And thus he loved Friends. And if I didn't, what the hell was I doing watching this show on Thirsty Thursday whilst munching on my food-points-purchased Subway sandwich. To love Friends was to love every sarcasic toss of Rachel's hand-of-God-crafted head.

So, what does any of this have to do with Serena Williams, epigraphed above? Well, I hate her too. She is vile and arrogant, dismissive of her rivals, and she is also a pure pleasure to watch. The quote above is taken from a press conference in which she claims to be the best player in the world despite the computer rankings now favoring Dinara Safina. To be fair, nobody would dispute Serena, it's just that it's so unbecoming of a true champion to draw attention to the obvious fact that she couldn't give a shit less about the lesser tournaments that Safina has been cleaning up in, and plays only when she feels like it, so fuck the system. Serena will show up at the French Open out of shape and cranky, use the opening rounds to get in shape, scowl at various overmatched opponents, bitch about how little respect is afforded to her, win the whole damn thing, and then take the next few weeks off, the whole beginning of the grass season, to design a new unitard or write a screenplay. That is just how she rolls. I hate her, but I will watch her matches when she plays the French because it is a thing to watch such a ridiculously talented ingrate decimate the poor little girls who devote 23 hours a day to the sport and who have no Hollywood ambtions. And I will watch for another reason: who knew it would take a ridiculously talented and possibly moronic ingrate (Serena Williams is sponsored by Nike; "Nothing is impossible" is Adidas' slogan) to give voice to my slogan for this blog -- "I've been writing, but I haven't been writing..."?

ps -- The video above is what I got trying to find youtube of "Joey" and "sandwiches."