craveonline

When the first ten years of the Millennium came, it was obvious sooner or later we'd see revived pop culture from the eighties. Now with 2010 approaching, we're going to see a renewed interest in items and styles from the nineties. With "The Wackness" hearkening back to the decade of the SNES and Boyz II Men, and the remake of "90210" it's inevitable we'll see the 90's come back in full force. It's not a new trend here, folks. Remember the fifties fixation of the seventies, or the seventies fixation in the nineties? Now, while I'm on the fence in celebrating a vacuous decade nevertheless filled with great memories, here are ten things from the 90's I really don't want back or relived.

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Cassettes
Didn't you hate cassettes? I did. I really hope music stars don't begin pretending Cassettes were great. I know the cassette was originally a staple of the seventies and eighties but as I remember, the nineties were also about the cassettes along with the introduction of the CD. The cassette was the bastion of the poor folk back in the nineties, the rapid fire waves of technology has rendered the cassette tape utterly obsolete. Remember when you'd copy a cassette, you'd have to have the entire cassette play, and then you'd have to get the timing just right on the song. You'd start it, press record, wait for the song to finish, and press Stop. What? You forgot to unpause it? Damn! Now you have to restart the song and sit through it, and also spend four minutes rewinding the song. Good thing for CD's, now you just have to list all the songs on a CD, drop down the songs on Nero where you can make an MP3 disc compilation and make sure you get the sound equalized for all the songs to play on balanced levels of sound and bass, and then wait for it to read the songs, and eventually burn the songs on to a CD. Technology makes things so much easier.

Vanilla Ice
You just know eventually someone somewhere is going to include "Ice Ice Baby," in an ad for Iced Tea, or Dentyne Ice, or something about Ice, and the circle will be complete. Vanilla Ice will be back in the public consciousness, and we'll start seeing more from Rob Van Winkle who will likely host his own reality show, or try to stage a comeback. I don't doubt the man's fleeting relevance in the nineties as a popular white Rapper whose biggest moment was singing a ninja rap during a bad sequel to a kids movie, but what with Eminem and the Beastie Boys still making waves, the last thing we need is for Vanilla Ice to re-emerge and bring the concept of Caucasian rappers five steps back in to comedy territory.

Friends
There were slight rumblings after the success of the "Sex and the City" movie that there were talks of a "Friends" movie. Thankfully it was all nothing but rumors. Although with the long lasting popularity of the series, it may eventually continue. "Friends" hasn't aged well as a sitcom. Sure it was fun back then, but these days trying to watch an episode inflicts immense pain on me. The jokes are cheesy, the acting is terrible, the storylines are absolutely trite, and the plot devices are so saccharine. How many times did we see a character chasing/meeting/reuniting with their loved one at an airport during the series run? How many times did we hear a U2 song during an episode? How many times can you hear someone exclaim "Oh my god!" before you want to shoot yourself? The show ended, everyone has kids, and the spin off failed, leave it be. No movies. No remakes. No reunions. Let sleeping dogs lie. And no "90210" style revivals, please.

VHS
Originally the dominating format for almost two decades VHS tapes were an incredible technology for a long time. Sure all movies were in full screen format, had almost no extras until the DVD was introduced, and you constantly had to spend minutes to rewind and forward, but it was a great technology and we all really enjoyed what it offered in the way of rare films and a new way of watching some of our favorite movies. To this day, in spite of the technology being rendered totally obsolete, there are still an obscene number of films that can only be located on VHS, and rare film collectors don't mind owning a VCR to watch them. VHS is out but it's a hard habit to break especially when hundreds of movies have yet to see a DVD release, while "Van Helsing" is on its third re-release.

Pogs/Bottlecaps
Hey kids, want to collect round cardboard discs? Remember how much fanatics there were for these round cardboard discs with pictures on them? We had a three dollar plastic case, plastic pogs for obscene prices, and metallic pogs for even larger prices. People used to steal them from each other, kids beat each other up for them, and some stores even had large display cases with them. There was even an OJ in jail metal pog for forty bucks. Who ever created the bottle cap must have also invented the pet rock, because only a genius could get kids foaming at the mouth over a paper disc with a flaming skull on it. They'd chip, crack, peel, and god forbid you got them wet. Yes, I collected them. Now let us never speak of them again.