Viva La '90s

As we enter the second decade of this new millennium, there seems to be a lot of talk among adults about how modern pop culture is a moral wasteland. They say that since the dawning of the new millennium, kids, like me, have become desensitized by the moral sewage brought to them through tabloids and television. They even say we have become spoiled by new technology and social networking that seems to live life for us.

After thinking it over for a long time, though, I must agree that all this technology and pop culture makes this the worst time for kids to grow up in. Look at any other time, a decade like the 1990s, for instance, and you will see that it’s obvious that we’ve fallen quite far off the wagon of morality.

Sure, like any time, the ‘90s had moments that would make you cringe. Someone allowed Vanilla Ice to go out in public, Mike Tyson forgot to eat before a fight and I wasn’t able to locate a knife to gauge my eyes out during Carrot Top’s classic film Chairman of the Board. But, with the help of a still attractive Britney Spears, we were able to flourish in a world before reality TV and before Paris Hilton was famous.

Let me take you back to a simpler time; a time when short shorts were still socially acceptable, the Spice Girls were reminding us all that if we wanted to be their lover, we had to get with their friends, and the world was slowly asking itself, “Does that Michael Jackson guy suddenly seem weird to you?”

Don’t you remember “Sock ‘Em Boppers”? They were the toy that encouraged hostility and fighting among children, but it was okay because they were still, “more fun than a pillow fight”.

We all had the experience of playing with those when all of the sudden one of your friends got way too into it and knocked a kid out cold. You all thought he was dead, and then just when you had decided which one of you was going to prison, he woke up, and you had to punch him back out, because you didn’t want to add a loose zombie to your problems.

Go ahead and find modern day artists to compare to the stars of yester-year. Zac Efron? He’s fine, but he’s no Nick Carter. Seriously, my parents had to declare an Amber Alert because I was lost in his eyes from ’97 to ’99.

Which brings me to the “boy band". They created an unbelievable era when a couple of handsome young guys with no musical ability could come together and make digitalized songs that would be loved by millions of naïve teenage girls.

Every guy, no matter how macho he was, wanted to be a part of a boy band. I dreamt at night of having facial hair that made me look like an Internet predator and getting up on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans to lip-sync songs I didn’t write while dancing around like an intoxicated river dancer.

It really does hurt me to be dissin’ a decade like the 2000s, because it started off with so much promise. No one embodies this more than John Mayer, who started off in 2001 with a poppy spirit that would have made him an icon of the ‘90s. He, like our decade, lost his way and ventured into the blues, and it was all downhill from there.

Say it ain’t so John, was no one’s body a “wonderland” anymore?

So, you can have your iPods and plasma screen TVs, but I long for back in the day when you could say things like “bangin’” and “oh snap”, and no one would hate you. I yearn for the days when rappers weren’t “Lil” or “Yung" but “Dr.’s” and “Doggs." So, ladies and gentlemen, if you want this next decade to be as slammin' as the one we grew up in, I mean one that will make you jump up and say "boo ya", just click your Nike Pumps together and say softly, “I want it that way… again.”