Whatever Happened to the 90s

The title of this blog post is an inside joke that only I understand, but I'll let you in on it. Back in the late 00's, I decided I would start a blog that would spend most of its time alternating between being angry about the state of MTV and relentless self-deprecation (which you'll probably notice is a trait I have retained in my writing style and life in general to mixed reviews). With the MTV critical analysis being the main shtick however, I decided a good title would be "Whatever Happened to the 90s?"

Then I realized I was 19, was strongly suspicious of my major being complete bullshit and something I could easily put minimal effort into (which is half true, but an unemployed 22 year-old saying this has a lot less validity than one still in school and teeming with potential), and had multiple sources that could buy me alcohol. I was also kind of depressed, because apparently that's what you're supposed to do if you're a college student who can't find a solid niche.

So I basically just spent the next two and a half years not writing in the blog and drinking too much, but I assume most of you guys know this already.

Unintended gigantic tangent aside, I followed the Youtube rabbit hole from Len's seminal jam "Steal My Sunshine," after Andres recommended to check out the highest rated comment for the video. It is quite comical, if you wish to see for yourself, but the song only exists to think about in the context of "wow, I can't believe this was ever popular" territory. Like, seriously, how did that happen?

But this video did lead me to watch the video for the Natalie Imbruglia song "Torn," which brings me to what I really want to talk about today.



Natalie Imbruglia is hot. Like, super hot.

And I never knew this, because I didn't care about girls when it was the 90s*. But goodness, the woman is wearing baggy men's clothing and still gorgeous, it's mindblowing. She does talk about being naked on a floor a lot in the song though, so maybe it's a weird juxtaposition that is creating this insecure sexuality she has (by the by, insecure sexuality is quite possibly the sexiest sexuality in the spectrum of sexiness, and I wrote this sentence almost purely for alliteration's sake).

This is a dangerous new territory for me, because I've never plunged the depths of old music videos to find out which one-hit wonders from my elementary school years were hot. And that will lead to me desperately trying to find out if they're still hot in modern times (Imbruglia totally is, by the by), or if their lives have tapered into either sadness or relatively comfortable anonymity.

This could be the nadir of my internet obsessions. But "could be" is the operating term, and I will tell you why right now.

This music video sucks. Hard.

It's boring, and while I kind of understand the concept, I don't get why she is with a guy straight from an Old Navy ad in the first place. She's wearing baggy clothing, for gosh sakes, she should be with some alternative dude who ignores her because of a heroin addiction. Were we past that part of the 90s at this point? I think not.

It's at this point in my rambling where I realize I've learned a lesson or two about myself. One, although I'm all for ogling attractive women from 90s music videos, I won't put up with bad filmmaking.

Two, my aloofness at noticing pretty women in the 90s (also see the asterisk) has perks. For example, here was my favorite music video from my childhood:



Totally awesome, right? And all the music videos I watched ended up being like that. Most of them ended up being by Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze (and Hype Williams, to a lesser extent), and a lot of them were way more fun to watch than a static shot of a pretty girl. And it's probably not a coincidence that a lot of the music videos I enjoyed as a kid were made by someone I consider probably my favorite filmmaker in terms of what I wish I could do with film.

Now, as a bonus lesson, it occurs to me that maybe my major being bullshit and easy to get good grades in because I was obsessed with the medium before I even knew the cool music videos I watched were made by cool filmmakers. I just was along for the ride, attractive girls be damned.

*Any woman that has tried to get me to notice them in modern times will probably note that I still don't care about girls.