MY FAVORITES FROM THE 2000's
Bacon - I'm just gonna get right into it. I know you love it. I know it's tasty. I know it's pretty good on anything including your own flesh if need be. BUT ITS BACON!!!! In the last, i'll say, year in a half, for some reason the Bacon Powers That Be decided to step up their game and create this sort of romantic allure towards this cut of meat that is simply the belly chunks of some disgusting ass pig. It's not attractive, in fact the type of bacon the majority of American's eat is referred to as "Streaky". From now on, I will be referring to anyone who mentions Bacon in my presence as "Streaky". Bacon also is attributed to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, colorectal and stomach cancer. It pretty much just makes Americans more obese and unhealthy which is why it has been embraced by us.
So why the love? Why the Bacon Fiasco of 2008-2009? I have no answers. I think it was clever marketing. The Atkins diet made it cool to eat Bacon, which didn't hurt the cause. For all I know, Al Gore is the one who invented Bacon. So let's thank him.
We have the bacon explosion, chicken fried bacon, chocolate covered bacon, candied bacon, bacon salt, baconnaise and the ever so popular bacon bits that single men nowadays, probably dump in their coco puffs every morning. When will it end people? Bacon Gum? Bacon Cereal? Bacon Bacon? Bacon Condoms? (that is actually a good one...I saw your ears perk up. BACONdoms will be in stores in a week because someone will steal my idea). I digress...
Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE bacon by itself. I don't want it on a sandwich or in my salt or mixed with anything. But I like old school slices of bacon next to my old school scrambled eggs. If I could swim in a bathtub full of bacon....I would do it. I would also take pictures of me in the tub o' bacon and post them on the internet. Because the only thing better than bacon itself, is the sick fascination that people on the interwebs have with it. mmmmm....baconbath.....
In Conclusion:
I give this Bacon fad until the end of the year. 2010 is the year of the Brussel Sprout fo sho. Just simply typing Baconnaise made me throw up in my mouth.
Poker - Poker? I hardly knew her? Anyway, here's the deal with poker. I realize it's been popular for years and years (there is debate, but a majority say it has been around since 1890), but just up until the early 2000's did we start seeing the tables and poker kits on every shelf of every novelty store in America. It became the MUST-GET gift for all dads, brothers, uncles, grandpa's and sons for Christmas and Birthdays. What is more manly than sitting around with your dudes (most likely comprised of a family member you invited because you couldn't find a fourth, a friend that you hate, the friend of the friend you hate and your 9 year old son), talking about the chicks your banging (even though you all have wives that you cannot stand after having to get married because she got pregnant with your 3rd player, the 9 year old son), smoking cigars that the friend of the friend you hate bought from 7-11 (while the wife you can't stand is bitching at you from the kitchen about the smell), you get the picture.....it's pretty comical all around to me.
Much like Bacon, the reasons behind it's explosion are up for debate. I believe the reason it became so popular was because they started showing a ton of poker competitions on television and because you can play poker online for real money. Also, Matt Damon was in a little movie called Rounders with Edward Norton in the late 90's. After that movie, Edward Norton made American History X and Fight Club and became every straight man's bro-crush, so all of the dudes who didn't see Rounders went back and watched it (so they could drool over edward norton) and decided they wanted to make their millions workin people in the poker circuit. 1% of whom did. The other 99% haven't opened that poker gift set their annoying wives bought them and it's dust covered in some random closet next to that Loudmouth Billy the Bass shit that every man received the Christmas before.
For every 1 local dude that makes it to a Vegas competition because he got lucky, there are 2 million single males who are sitting in their college dorm, smokin pot and depositing their student loan checks into FullTiltPoker.com or PokerStars.com and coming up empty handed. It's an addiction that can ruin lives and families but I think a majority play it responsibly. I like that guys can have a poker night, I like that it is a competition that actually has some money involved, I like that it's easy enough for a chick to play. Ever try to play Craps? Fuck that confusing mess of a dice game.
In Conclusion:
I think this fad is almost run its course, but not completely. Poker is funny to say no matter what. Matt Damon is a fad starter.
Livestrong Bracelets - I don't have much to say about this, other than it was definitely a fad. Little yellow silicone bracelets that look cool on anybody and the money from the purchase goes toward the Lance Armstrong Foundation to fight Cancer. Now if i'm correct, Lance Armstrong is a survivor of cancer, no? So....since Cancer is survivable, what is the point? I'm kidding...it's a good cause, I bought one, I bought two actually. Nike is the one who came up with the idea and probably made bajillions from it.
Again, I hate to bring up Matt Damon and his effects of all things "Fad" related, but WIKIPEDIA actually names him as one of the celebrities who donned this beautiful piece of jewelry. Along with John Kerry and Katie Couric. Unfortunately, this fad quickly died because every Tom, Dick and Harry realized it was super simple to recreate the piece of crap and charge more than $1 for them and none of the money would go to charity. Most likely the ones I got went to Habeeb and his family of twelve at the 7-11 I purchased mine from and most likely the ones YOU purchased funded some sort of terrorist organization.
In Conclusion:
Fad is dead. Cancer is still very much alive. You should be ashamed of yourself for funding terrorism
Oversized Sunglasses - This is still prevalent. I have owned 6 or 7 pairs of oversized glasses. The reason this fad pisses me off so badly is because for YEARS, most of my life actually, I continuously tried to get my mother to stop wearing giant grandma sunglasses and instead change to the smaller more Palin-esque glasses. BUT NO. All of a sudden, Nicole Ritchie and her God Awful fashionistas decided that gigantic sunglasses were cool again because you could cover your strung out coke-weary eyes and be virtually invisible while eating at the most popular paparazzi covered restaurants in LA. They look effing ridiculous on all women and Ryan Seacrest, yet we all bought them and love them. Sunglasses are supposed to do one thing and one thing only....block my beautiful green eyes from the harmful ultra-violet radiation projected from the sun. They also assist in keeping my hair out of my eyes while wearing them on my head which I do 90% of the time. Why? Because giant sunglasses are stupid and they look stupid.
In Conclusion:
Fad is still going strong and I am aboard the train. My mom is wearing little sunglasses now (dammit mom!!). With all of the money we spent on sunglasses in the last 100 years, we could have just gotten rid of the sun altogether. If Kanye West sunglasses become the next fad, i'm shooting myself in the face with a makeshift livestrong bracelet bacon gun.
Soduko - It's a puzzle. It's a puzzle on a grid. It's the most ridiculous (yet OBVIOUS) concept i've ever seen but Howard Garns (the architect who created this Fad) is now a billionaire and he deserves every cent of it. It's been around a while, since the late 70's but not until recent could you find 100 page Puzzle Books completely devoted to Soduku. There are video games, you can play it on your cellphone, in the newspaper (wtf is a newspaper?), online against people, it has spawned a game show, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. I honestly can't even think of a way to trash this as I am a lover of all things puzzle related and anything that requires Americans to use their brains. I do not however like the game as it just seems way too easy for me. There is a logical way of figuring out every single puzzle and sequence....so....well.....whats the point?
In Conclusion:
This fad was bigger a few years ago but its still out there. It'll be around forever. I am too smart for it. Matt Damon had nothing to do with it.
MY FAVORITES FROM THE 1990's
Rollerblades - Fucking rollerblades. I don't even want to continue writing but I will (hah, good try). I will get a little nostalgic on this one and use my personal history of this as a few examples of the gheyness that is Rollerblading. When I was younger we had a skating rink called RollerRama in Michigan. I think it's still there. We would go in Elementary School and rent those god awful brown skates that went up to your kneecaps and attempt to look cute while doing the limbo in front of the cute boys. Eventually, I realized that these skates were the LAMEST things ever, so I forced my parents into purchasing me a pair of Speed Skates. They were awesome and I was even more awesome for having them. We had a huge basement and I could skate all night in them. I will gladly admit that I had an entire speedskating routine based solely around the soundtrack from The Mask with Jim Carrey. Why? Because I was awesome. Eventually I got bored with them, because...well...they are effing rollerskates and I realized that they were in fact NOT AWESOME.
Now by the time Rollerblading was cool in my life, it was actually COOL. It was X-GAMES cool. It was ARLO EISENBERG cool (who I effing loved). It was halfpipes and grinding and my brother was big into it so of course, I was as well. This is not the rollerblading I speak of.
I'm talking, neon green laces, giant back brakes, plastic pieces of shit that always rubbed into your ankles, Rollerblades. You bought them at Wal-Mart or Sports Authority, they never fit right, you always had to wear socks with them that stuck out the top and at least once in your life you tripped on a rock, fell flat on your ass and got some serious road burn. If you were lucky, your parents also forced you to wear the elbow and knee pads as well as a sweet dork helmet.
I'm happy to say that nobody really rollerblades anymore although i'm not against it as a form of exercise. Let me clarify. I'm not against as a form of exercise for GIRLS. If you are a dude, and thinking that you want to buy a pair of rollerblades to work off your dukebelly, don't. Just don't do it. Buy a bicycle. You will look way less lame and avoid people throwing shit at you as they drive by your fatass rolling down the road. They are uncomfortable and honestly you will probably break your arm within the first week of using them. Just don't do it guys. Just don't.
In Conclusion:
Fad is dead, but you can still purchase them from Wal-Mart. The only reason I included this was to reiterate to men that rollerblading will do nothing but make you look like a douche.
Chat Rooms - I think everyone I know has a Chatroom story from the 90's. I'm not talking about anything but straight up MIRC or AOL Chatrooms. When nobody had any clue that half of the hot chicks in a room who you were trying to get to e-mail you booby pictures, were actually 50 year old pedophiles. When every single person who even had a sliver of internet computer knowledge wanted to be a Hacker. This was before people met each other online, when it was still fairly anonymous, you could pretty much pretend to be whomever you wanted to me. Now, we aren't so easily duped and expect a Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Personal Website in order to verify your authenticity. You hear that pedophiles??? You better come up with a crafty teenage girl looking Myspace page, or else I will think you are a pedophile.
I was part of a chatroom around 93-94. It was MIRC based and it took me months and months of continuous complimenting and flirting with the MODS before I was FINALLY allowed to be a MOD. It was one of my proudest moments. I used to play S.C.A.R.A.B. with my fellow chatters, which was a first person shooter extremely similar to the current HALO series that I was convinced up until a short awhile ago was actually a figment of my imagination, but I finally found some screenshots and an oldschool website devoted to it.
What I find most comical about this FAD, is that it hasn't died and it really hasn't changed much at all. Even though we have the options now to just speak to each other online via voice and video chat, we still go to the ol' standby...regular text based chat. Ustream and Justin.tv are immensely popular as are the other millions of chatrooms that are available to us. It opened up this world of communication where the worst consequence is either being de-modded or banned. You can speak your mind and learn about other people even if 90% of it is all bullshit. Up until 1997 everything was chill, then Sandra Bullock had to go and make "The Net" and scare the shit out of everyone. Cause ya know, with simply knowing someones IP address you can pretty much change identities and get Dennis Miller killed by switching his prescriptions via hacking into the pharmacies computer system.
In Conclusion:
This fad will never die as we are more and more moving toward a completely non-verbal way of communicating. My MIRC chatname was Seraph2113 and I ruled channel #1, LMFAO. Dennis Miller should NEVER act.
Pogs - Pogs were so lame, but I fell under it's worthless spell back in the day. It started in Hawaii in the 20's but became popular in the 90's. They were simply a piece of cardbored with an image on them that meant nothing. You had a "Slammer" which was a heavier POG. There was a game involved where you would slam your slammer down on the top of a stack and any that landed face up you would keep (which i'm sure pissed off a ton of parents who worked their shit jobs in order to buy you some worthless pieces of cardboard). I never really played the game, I just collected them. They were eventually banned in my school (as was everything) and I lost interest after about a month of screaming at my parents to buy me them. I'm assuming there are still people playing in POG tournaments across the globe and those people are referred to as "LOSERS".
In Conclusion:
Pogs were lame. The fad is dead.
Beanie Babies - Ugh, beanie babies. Every middle aged mother of 3 collected these worthless bean bag filled pieces of crap. I don't even understand how they became so popular, but they did. The nine original Beanie Babies were Legs the Frog, Squealer the Pig, Spot the Dog, Flash the Dolphin, Splash the Whale, Chocolate the Moose, Patti the Platypus, Brownie the Bear and Punchers the Lobster. Let's go over these shall we. Obviously these were created at the Derek Zoolander Center for Children Who Can't Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too, school. Why would the name be PUNCHERS for the lobster? They eventually changed it to Pinchers.....all that means is that the original one is worth about 3 cents more on Ebay. Patti the Platypus doesn't make any sense to me when the rest were actually related to something attributed to them (legs for the front, brown bear, pigs squeal, dogs have spots, dolphins flash their boobs, whales splash, the moose one is racist). In fact, the Platypus is a pretty stupid animal anyway so it should have never been included in the original nine. But some old lady secretary who's name was Patti probably convinced the TY company to make it. Stupid old lady.
The tags on the Beanies was pretty much the most important part. If it didn't have the TAG, then it wasn't authentic. I can only imagine how many children got the shit beat out of them after ripping it off what they thought was just another stuffed animal they could play with.
I just read that there are 50,000 different beanie babies......so i'm done with this. Done. 50 fucking thousand? Are you kidding me? Eff that....get this crap out of my face.
In Conclusion:
Fad is dead unless you are a 70 year old woman. I just purchased the Garcia the Bear Beanie Baby on ebay for $2.50 and am going to tie it to the top of my water bong and rip the tag off as soon as I get it. With all the money we spent on Beanie Babies we could have probably fed, housed and schooled every single poor, homeless and uneducated child in this country.
Furbies - After the Beanie Baby thing, I don't even really want to talk about these stupid toys. I never had one, but secretly I wanted one, my best friend had one and I hated her for it. They were a complete rip off but if used as a projectile, they could cause some damage. They weren't toys, they were annoying and were popular for about 6 months. Pretty much a "Virtual Pet", they started speaking Furbish when first acquired from it's packaging. Eventually they started speaking English and a lot of people thought if you talked to it in English that you were actually teaching it English. You weren't you DUMBFUCKS...you were just talking to a stupid battery operated furry mess that was programmed to start by speaking Furbish and eventually grow to speak English!!!!!!!!!! People seriously believed that. Seriously.
These pieces of furbage were $35 but a majority of people who got them ended up paying over $100 (suckers). I'm proud of my parents for not purchasing one for me. That $35 was much better spent on my POG collection.
In Conclusion:
Dead. They tried to make a come back in 2005, but it didn't happen because although Americans are still stupid, we aren't stupid enough to fall for that pile of crap again. I would like to hack a furby into saying whatever I would like it to say and then place is on an unsuspecting friends computer desk. My first instinct would be to make it say something about its love for Allah. lol, that cracks me up thinking about it.
Y2K - I LOVE Y2K!!!!!! Nothing makes me happier than when the American population gets fooled into believing the most ridiculous and insane shit our Government can think up, in order to keep our minds away from the other stuff that they are fucking up for us. I digress. So when the clock hit Midnight and Dick Clark was teabagging NYC, the entire world was supposed to implode. My toaster was supposed to be talking to me and my computer would turn into some sort of evil "Optimus Prime" and kill me and my family. All of the banks were going to lose our money and every single business was going to stop in its tracks because of computer glitches. On Midnight I was sitting at a bonfire drinking from a bottle of wine and chillin with my friends because the only thing I was scared about at the time was not graduating from High School in May because I skipped school everyday.
Nothing happened. Nothing. Not one single thing happened. For about 20 minutes of my life I was fearful of this thing. I mean, it was fairly logical to me that the dating system of 98, 99 and then 00, would reset some shit and the computers would go back to how they worked in the year 1900....eh, what? Alright, so none of it made sense, but we all bought into it. People were building bunkers in garages and buying thousands of dollars worth of books and system software in order to save all of there priceless digital photos and minesweeper scores. The Government was spending their time trying to fix a bullshit scam some pot smoking programmer created when they should have been hunting down Osama Bin Laden who was planning to ACTUALLY attack us and fuck shit up.
During this crap, Italy and South Korea did virtually nothing to prevent this devastation from happening and they had the exact same amount of problems the rest of the world did, NONE. The total cost of the work done in preparation for Y2K in the US was over 300 billion US dollars. Yep. 300 billion. I would love to think that this money was well spent and that is why nothing happened, but I don't. I know it was a scam and someone made a shit load of money off of it and probably bought an island and named it Y2K in honor of the billions of dollars they scammed out of Americans and the entire World.
In Conclusion:
Bunk, obviously. We were all duped. I wonder what all those people did with their Garage Bunkers? When 9/11 happened they were probably thrilled at the prospect that they would get to use em.
MY FAVORITES FROM THE 1980's
Now, the 80's are rough for me. I have a really bad memory and barely remember yesterday let alone 20 years ago, so these I will quickly touch base on.
Garbage Pale Kids Cards - I was too young to enjoy these, but I know my brother did. They were gross but creative and funny at the same time. An obvious rip off from the insanity that was the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. The guy who came up with the idea was Art Spiegelman, he's a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, some others were involved but I mentioned the Pulitzer Prize winning guy because that seems hilarious to me. There was eventually a movie in 87 and an animated tv series. They released new box sets recently, but they are still not as cool as the older ones.
In Conclusion:
Dead fad. Someone still collects them though and I wish it was me. What is funnier than making fun of a wholesome toy like a Cabbage Patch Doll?
Slap Bracelets - These things were the bomb diggidy when I was a kid. They were made of some sort of flexible steel spring magic alien shit with fabric over them in any pattern or color you wanted. They could be straightened out and then slapped on your wrist, then wrap around it to form a bracelet. As quickly as these came about, they were quickly banned from my school. I guess you weren't supposed to go up to your friends and slap them in the face with them, and eventually the fabric would rip and underneath was actually a fairly deadly steel weapon. Nothing special but completely addictive and we all had em.
In Conclusion:
Dead. My school banned them just like they banned everything else and made us walk 3 feet away from all other students. They even banned us from having bells on our shoes. Wtf? Why the hell did we ever want to have bells on our shoes?
Mad Libs - I'm sure these are still around and I am positive that I would still have to look up in the dictionary what an Adjective and Verb are. Totally fun to do with friends. Here is one that I most recently completed:
Person In Room: President Obama
Adjective: Hairy
Verb: Smoking
Part of the Body: Feet
Number: 33
Noun: Cat
Adverb: Quickly
Verb: Grabbing
Pronoun Plural: Them
Other Person in Room: Glenn Beck
This is exactly what resulted....I clearly do not have a fucking clue about nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs or adverbs....
Dear President Obama,
You are extremly Hairy and I Smoking you! I want kiss your Feet 33 times. You make my Cat burn with desire. When I first saw you, I Quickly stared at you and fell in love. Will you Grabbing out with me? Don`t let your parents discourage you, Them are just jealous.
Yours forever, Glenn Beck
In Conclusion:
Mad Libs = Always Funny. When your a kid and you start learning swear words, this is the most fun way to use them. Then your mom finds your book in your room and you get your ass reemed out for writing Cock and Shit. Bummer. I don't know what a verb is....seriously.
Skip-it - Whoever invented this "toy" should be punched in the face. It's not a damn toy, it's a frickin torture device used to make fat kids lose weight. Granted, I wasn't fat, I was competitive so I fucking loved it. But give me a break. You insert your foot in the hole and spin it around your ankle, then you jump over the stick and it counts how many times you've done it. Yes...that is it. That is the "TOY". Hours of entertainment......mine was pink and I rocked the hell out of it. This is the sort of shit we should be giving our kids nowadays to do, but could you even imagine handing a child this???? They would laugh....they would laugh in your face, then kick you in the shin and probably shank you afterwards. Fucking fat kids.
In Conclusion:
Nobody has this anymore as it was probably deemed too dangerous. Eventually the counter on my skip it broke and I cracked it in half in a ritilin filled rage.
So that's it for now!!! Those are muh favorite fads! What are yours? I don't allow comments on my blog because blogger.com cannot handle their spam very well and I end up getting 90 comments linking me to naked britney spears photos. If you have something to say, just email me, i'll respond and maybe post it on here. Or twitter me, best option to get an immediate response.
Go Pog Yourselves....
Jamie
jamie@theexperience.fm
twitter: @JamieExp
www.theexperience.fm
