This week’s question is in honor of 1999 Week here at The A.V. Club:
What’s your most significant pop culture memory from 1999?
Sam Barsanti
I was in middle school in 1999, and my most prominent pop culture memory from that year is less about the pop culture itself and more about the impact that it had. I don’t remember when I saw The Matrix, but I definitely remember when a kid got in trouble for running along a wall like in The Matrix. Obviously that’s impossible, and everyone at the time seemed to recognize that it was impossible, but somewhere in the process of this kid imitating a thing he saw in a movie and a teacher observing him imitating a thing he saw in a movie, the story became that he jumped 5 feet in the air and ran along a wall with his reality-bending powers. Later, surprised that he had gotten in trouble, the kid repeated the stunt in front of me and some other classmates. Basically, he had just jumped up and kicked a wall, which was not nearly as cool as what Trinity did in that lobby. The lesson: The Matrix sure was cool.
Nick Wanserski
For as much as I’ve always loved animation, my exposure to anime was bare bones. None of it resonated deeply with me, and I figured I just wasn’t an anime guy. All of which is to say why I had never paid much attention to the output by Studio Ghibli. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have been so completely unprepared for how exceptional Princess Mononoke was when I went to see it in the theater on a friend’s recommendation. The experience permanently altered how I viewed animation and, more basically, compelling storytelling. It wasn’t just that the movie had no clear villains; it had very few unambiguous heroes. The titular character is unrepentantly violent—meeting the force of iron town with force. Even the nature spirit at the heart of the film, despite being threatened, isn’t a moral force; it is wild, and untamed, and just as capable of destruction as mankind. Leaving the theater, my friend I and were lost in thought. Wordlessly strolling down the streets of Milwaukee, we would just tilt our heads to the side and give off a little rattle in imitation of the small, gourdlike spirits that lived in the woods.
Alex McLevy
Like seemingly everyone else on Earth, I was looking forward to checking out Star Wars: Episode 1-The Phantom Menace. Opening weekend, the schoolmate I was dating at the time and their little brother accompanied me to a midnight screening, the three of us curious at to whether we’d find it thrilling, stultifying, or just childish. (My holier-than-thou teenage attitude at the time was that, sure, I loved the original movies, but this new thing was strictly for kids, right?) There are two things that have stuck with me: First, that the roar of the audience when the Star Wars logo appeared and John Williams’ iconic score erupted through the speakers is one of the loudest sounds I have ever heard; and second, I walked out of that theater absolutely delighted by Episode 1. Like, giddily enthusiastic, my date and I already waxing nostalgic about the most fun moments of the movie, and talking about how we wished there had been such cool movies for kids when we were younger. When I went home later that year for the holidays, eager to show my family this wonderful new movie, you could almost hear the scales fall from my eyes as we sat in my living room and watched it in silence: My shock at realizing I had been hoodwinked, by the emotional fervor of that midnight screening, into thinking this was a good movie was almost more profound than my disappointment at the second viewing. So the year will always be characterized by that emotional roller-coaster that played out for the better part of six months. Sorry, Eyes Wide Shut: You were the best thing I saw in theaters that year, but you can’t hold a candle to a stupid pod race when it comes to what 1999 was all about.
Gwen Ihnat
Fortunately, I like the office where I work now a lot, but I have been in some really terrible workplace environments. Especially when I first moved to Chicago and was temping, shuffling between skyscrapers to places like Ernst & Young and Xerox to pay the rent, my meager wardrobe easily identifying me as a kid right out of college with no money. Those horrible jobs always involved navigating a variety of different office equipment types, and no matter where I worked (yes, even Xerox), every printer, copier, and fax machine had its own specific, frequently maddening specifications and quirks. So I don’t think any scene has resonated as much with my life as an office worker than the printer destruction scene from Office Space. When I saw it, I couldn’t believe someone had acted out my 23-year-old self’s fondest wish on the big screen. Some non-office-workers might have wondered how Peter, Michael Bolton, and Samir could harbor so much animosity toward an inanimate object, but like so many others, I understood completely.
Danette Chavez
The year was 1999, and my friends and I were a bunch of dorky English lit majors in central Illinois, wanting to be seen. The movie was 10 Things I Hate About You, an incisive update of The Taming Of The Shrew that captured the original’s wittiness while smartly updating its gender politics. The cast was full of breakouts, including Julia Stiles, the late Heath Ledger, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Larry Miller was an old hand by then, but he also turns in a delightful performance as Kat and Bianca’s overbearing, oversharing dad). We were nourished by Kat’s withering retorts and takedowns of cherished old white guy authors, but the moment that became indelible in my memory was when Ledger turned in a musical number in the stands of a soccer field. Unless you were a fan of the Australian series, Ship To Shore, at the time, this was your first impression of the late actor; and as Patrick, he showed the charisma of a leading man with the versatility of a character actor. And, okay, twist my arm, it was also the most charming stretch of movie I’d watched all that year.
Shannon Miller
In 1999 I was really leaning into my Unimpressed Teen stage, so of course I was a die-hard Daria fan. Following every one of her disinterested interactions served as affirmation for my own awkwardness, so I felt kind of beholden to her (even though she was totally animated, yes). I was also a huge musical theater fanatic, and sometimes those two aspects of my personality clashed tremendously. But on February 17, 1999, my deepest interests met for one glorious moment in television. Daria! The Musical provided a literal soundtrack for Daria’s biting wit and very relatable apathy while Lawndale prepared themselves for (and panicked over) a “big ass storm,” and I love all of it. Hilarity aside, it was an example of how there is plenty of room for both the dramatic and more reserved. Also, “God God Dammit” got me in a lot of trouble, but it was catchy!
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StarCraft: Brood War pretty much ate my life for the later half of 1999.
It’s also the year Cryptonomicon was released, which sort of marked the evolution of Neal Stephenson from an author of smaller, more stylish, novels into an author of extremely long, more detailed novels. I was moderately disappointed in the book because I’d loved Snow Crash and The Diamond Age and wanted more of the same. Also, the sex scene in the book sucked. Other than that, I liked it just fine.
Are we supposed to just list movies and TV?
I smash all his novels together in my brain, but it’s the one after Snowcrash with the least bad ending, for me. If my brain is correct and Cryptonomicon is the one with Shaftoe. At least something happens at the end, and it ties into the rest of the novel.I feel like any potential movie adaptations of Stephenson novels would be chances to properly edit them.
Your brain is correct.
Well, it’s a book with *a* Shaftoe, anyway. Much like Tarantino and his movies, Stephenson seems to be trying to force his novels into a coherent universe, and the 17th century Baroque cycle books (Quicksilver, et al) also feature a character of that name, presumably an ancestor.
Your brain is also correct.
I can’t agree with that. He didn’t learn to write a denouement until Quicksilver, in my opinion. At the end of Cryptomonicon a whole bunch of important stuff happened off-screen as it were, while our protagonist was unconscious.
(SPOILERS)But someone died angrily, which at least, sort of, tied everything together. (I’m talking about Shaftoe, in the past segments.)Unfortunately I only made it halfway through Quicksilver.
I still read Diamond Age every few years. I liked cryptonomicon well enough, but after reading such a perfect distillation of the exploration of an idea in DA, Crypt seemed messy and a lot more prone to overwriting. I haven’t finished one of his books since.For that baroque style, I feel like China Mieville is the way to go.
Oh yeah, my big brother gave me Embassytown a few years ago and it’s awesome.
“When the town blows away!” I LOVE the Daria musical!
What’s your most significant pop culture memory from 1999?
I remember partying as though it was that year. Technically, this was in 1982, but, like Prince, I didn’t obey things like causality or time.
Good joke as always, but seriously how is “dancing to Prince on New Year’s Eve” not the go-to answer? “Auld Lang Syne” didn’t stand a chance.
Even me and my social awkward, mostly metal head, gamer nerd friends played Prince when the clock turned twelve. Of course that may have been because the “party”(lan party with some D&D in between) was crashed my buddies younger sister and her friends.
Oh, I can one up you. I actually paid for Gus pay for view concert where he played the updated sucky version. Luckily, it was the East Coast time zone and I was in California so I could still go out and pRty. Damn did that concert suck.
Much like Apu, I partied like it was on sale for $19.99.
I was the youthiest of youths at age 4, but that year, fate managed to introduce me to Spongebob by its 2nd episode premiere (bubblestand and ripped pants) that summer, on a rainy day after camp at my then-best friend’s house. He was kinda nonplussed, but that show sucked me in like no media had before, starting my lifelong love of animation, which I pretty wholly credit to that delightful yellow square.
I was the youthiest of youths at age 4Get the fuck outta here.
But if he stays we can steal some of that precious young people blood!
KILL THE SPARE
Been here since 2006, not exactly like I’m too fresh…
???What am I missing? Is 4 not young anymore? Is my first major pop-culture experience not worthy of submission?
I’m joking. Hearing someone was 4 in 1999 is just weird. I was 26. Most of us here probably were about that age, too.
You realise that there are probably people reading this who weren’t born until 2004 or so?
Get the fuck outta here.
I was 8 in 1999, so I’m not much better. A lot of the pop culture I like from the late 90’s was stuff I didn’t get into until later, like Galaxy Quest and Daria. I remember Y2k being treated like a bigger deal than it ended up being. It’s intrinsically retroactively linked with Hypnospace Outlaw in my head now, since Y2k is a huge part of the plot (and apes the 90’s aesthetic really well).
I remember wanting to see The Phantom Menace (I had the collectable Pepsi cans and the little squirty fast food promotional toy of Jar Jar), only for my parents to shut me down and tell me they had no interest in Star Wars. Revenge of The Sith was my first and only Star Wars film for a while— and even then, my parents only saw it because of the novelty of it being “the last Star Wars movie ever” (at the time).I also remember initially hating Spongebob because of some imaginary rivalry between it and Invader Zim. I still got annoyed that Spongebob and Dora the Explorer got the lion’s share of Nick’s attention when a) they had equally good shows on that got ignored (Avatar: TLA/LoK, The Mighty B!), and that a preschooler show was the de facto ‘girl show’ on the network. I ended up getting over it, though, and I’m now regularly quoting Spongebob with my brother.
My friend’s brother was in charge of designing the Jar Jar toy that had a candy tongue that would stick out of its mouth for you to suck on. It was later deemed one of the worst tie-in merchandising toys ever on some website. Hilarious.Oh, and also I’ll save myself some time by just typing GTFO.
Shit, when I was 4, I was already in the union, working the line at Oldsmobile…
The majority of the commentariat of AV and the rest of GMG is in the mid-40s to early 50s range age wise. I have gotten the same responses before (only a couple year older than you are)
It’s a joke. Calm down. Sorry to ruin your fun, but there’s no need to be outraged here.
I’m not upset about it. Just explaining to them why they got that reaction.
Some of us are much older and hate you (and ourselves) for it. Nothing personal.xoxo
No, you’re too young. Now we have to jam a straw into your skull like a Capri Sun and suckle on your life force to stave off our imminent disintegration into decrepit dust.
I was in middle school on April 20th, 1999, heavily embroiled in a paperback copy of James Ellroy’s American Tabloid. Three of my classmates had been expelled for supposedly having a Klebold/Harris plan (in actuality, they were just saying how they’d react if shit went down – because when you’re in middle school even horrid tragedies can be turned into Die Hard). And I recall attending graduation that year and being thoroughly searched. Mr. Keegan, my Spanish teacher, even searched my copy of American Tabloid. I’m not sure if he thought I had a shiv or the world’s smallest .22 in there. That tends to resonate still – a moment in my childhood during which even quiet little adventures, hard-boiled, gritty noir and bureaucracy all collided and shattered any sense of youth and innocence left.
Good call. I lived (and now still do) in the same county as Columbine High School, and my best friend at the time’s mother taught there, and escaped that day. That event really cast a shadow over the culture that year, including pop culture (movies pulled, names changed). Especially where I lived it was a topic for months, e.g., I remember listening to a local talk radio show and an angry caller wished that someone would secretly orchestrate the murder of Marilyn Manson.
American Tabloid was one of the most riveting, un-put-downable reads ever for me. I am terrified of revisiting it.
Y2K fever, and the fear that all our electronic devices would immediately cease to function, or, worse, go up in smoke. But yeah, Daria is awesome.
1999:
I walked out of that theater absolutely delighted by Episode 1. Like, giddily enthusiastic, my date and I already waxing nostalgic about the most fun moments of the movie, and talking about how we wished there had been such cool movies for kids when we were younger.I guess your hometown was the one place on earth where Jurassic Park was not released.
Or BMX Bandits!
Episode 1 is the best of the prequels by a long shot.That’s not to say that it doesn’t have some pretty big flaws. And if you see those flaws more clearly upon repeated viewings, well, that’s to be expected. But if you had a great time at the movies the first time you saw it, that’s no small thing, and I don’t think you need to wear sackcloth and and ashes when you talk about it.
I just watched it for the first time a year ago, and I enjoyed most of it. The pod racing is way, way too long. And Jar Jar is annoying, but Boss Nass is genuinely unwatchable. I actually liked Attack of the Clones more (I caught up with that one a few years ago). The bad parts are worse, but they’re more campy than boring. And the action and effects are better executed, even if they drag on and on. I still don’t know quite what to do with Episode 3. Parts of it are excellent, and then… Not.
Despite enjoying the lore, the pod race, and a nice light sabre battle, at the end of the movie, everyone I was with was left wondering IF the wheels were coming off the franchise. Something definitely wasn’t right. And by halfway through the second one, we were all angry theater-goers, mocking the shitty dialogue and goofy plot mechanics (fucking Jar-Jar making the announcement that dooms the Republic??), and certainly by the time Count Dooku flippin flies out of a battle and back into whatever government building that is at the end of the movie, we all knew we were watching a giant pile of sparkly trash. I didn’t go to see the third one in theaters, and I may still not have seen it end to shitty end.
It finally really fell apart for me when Yoda turned into a flipping lightsaber monkey. I’ve never re-watched episode 2 after seeing it in the theater.
The best parts of the movie were the impromptu lightsaber fuels at the foot of the theater between myself and everyone else who bought their tickets, saved their seats, then ran out to the mall K-Matt to buy toys to copy the few that had shown the foresight to do so ahead of time, and Duel of the Fates.
It sucks
I’m going to have to go with The Matrix. I remember getting to the end of the movie and thinking “wait, what did I just see? Somebody really DID something there.” The next day I realized that my husband had exactly the same thought, so we went back to see it again, and then a third time. This is not normal behavior for us. There are plenty of movies I’ve seen multiple (e.g dozens) of times, but generally not in the theatre. For a time something Matrix-related (original score, soundtrack, DVD, Animatrix, etc.) was playing in our house constantly. It’s not that it’s our favorite movie, but it’s definitely something special.
I was pretty excited about it too. I saw it before it really blew up, and went in with absolutely zero expectations. I saw it alone on a weeknight, with a small audience consisting almost entirely of other solitary men ( its target audience IOW). When it ended and we all got up to leave I sort of made eye contact with a couple of them and although nothing was said I definitely felt like the group consensus was “that was pretty cool”.They should have stopped at one though.
Watching a pirated copy of the Matrix on a computer in someone’s dorm room. College was new for me (freshman year), high-speed internet access was still rare, and the Matrix was tits.
Batman Beyond for me. I had never really gotten into BTAS, though I made some attempts to watch it. But Batman Beyond completely grabbed me. It wasn’t Terry that I cared about, it was old Bruce. For once in my life I was watching a Batman whose backstory I didn’t know, and that fascinated me. From there, I worked my way back. I remember the repackaged Batman/Superman adventures ran that year, or early 2000. That one still has my favorite DCAU title sequence. You’d better believe I’ve pre-ordered the special edition Blu-ray set of Batman Beyond, and I can’t wait to get it.
I adore Batman Beyond. The wonderful soundtrack, the stylization. I fervently wish the trend towards serialization got to it before it ended. It *feels* like it should have an ongoing storyline past the first batch of origins and intros.
The egg baby episode of Batman Beyond probably makes it way onto my top 10 episodes of animated television. Love that show.
Batman/Superman Adventures had the best theme of any 90’s cartoon, except maybe for the Jonny Quest update, which was inSANEly good.
Shway.It’s not really a Bayman Beyond episode, but “Epilogue” is certainly one of the top 5 DC:TAS episodes ever.
Freshman year of high school? Listening to a Violent Femmes album from the previous decade over and over and over, probably.
None of my major 1999 pop culture memories seem to have much to do with actual 1999 pop culture. I remember listening to ABBA Gold repeatedly while studying for my end-of-school exams. I remember watching The Living Daylights before going out to the New Year’s celebrations with my friend (which I also remember being really anticlimactic in a way that left me thinking that I really should have just stayed home and watched more old Bond films FWIW). The closest I remember is playing Driver on the PS1 and taking forever to complete the driving test at the beginning. I know I saw The Matrix and The Phantom Menace at the cinema, but I can’t remember anything in particular about the experience. The former because I thrashed that movie so much over the years that I must have completely drowned out the memory of seeing it for the first time, the latter… I dunno. Trauma?
Has anyone mentioned Our Dumb Century this week? I didn’t read it until a few years later, but I think it at least deserves a mention.
So many great headlines in that. Back to front. (captioning Jim Carrey 1994)Rubber-faced Fartsmith is America’s Sweetheart
I’m quite partial to, “Holy Shit, Man Walks On Fucking Moon”.
All the limited edition Millennium food stuff was the best. Millenios with the 2000 shaped Cheerios, Goldfish 2000, Millennium M&Ms with confetti colors… I bought all of that shit and didn’t keep any of it. The fun part is I’ll never experience that marketing blitz again and it’s gone forever.
Speaking of Millennium:That was my show at the time (non-comedy-wise).
After experiencing a really bad breakup, I saw The Spy Who Shagged Me alone, and it was the perfect thing for me to see at the time. All of my sardonic barriers were down, and I completely embraced the silliness of it. It helped a lot.
I was struggling to place myself in that time frame to remember what pop culture thing I was really engrossed with, but this has brought the memories flooding back. I was obsessed with Austin Powers. I bought the soundtrack to Spy Who Shagged Me. I memorized the lines to the Dr. Evil / Mini Me version of Just The Two of Us. I recorded a riff on the song as a voicemail. I was also pretty obsessed at the time with prank calls. I would only ever call family members, who were not fooled in the least, but it was a common morning radio bit at the time, and I would record them onto a Sony Mini Disc and play them back a bunch. I particularly loved the calls with clips of Arnold lines from various action movies, deftly spliced into conversation (if it was truly unscripted, I remain shocked by how quick they were on their feet). I tried to find a YouTube clip, and apparently people still do it occasionally – but none of them seem to work as well as the ones that I remember from the late 90s.I was also really into the Matrix, but I don’t think I caught on right away while it was in theaters. I remember Matrix was the first DVD our family bought. By the time the sequels came out I was totally into it, but that was 2003.I also remember being hugely into Star Wars when I was a bit younger, around the time of the re-releases, but I can’t remember my reaction very well at all to Phantom Menace. I must have been excited to see it, but I don’t have a memory of seeing it in theaters, and I don’t recall whether I liked it or not. This was before I was really immersed in the pop culture industrial complex that formed a consensus opinion about these things, and I think I was just kind of “meh” about it. I definitely didn’t loop it on repeat the way I did the original trilogy.
I saw that with my brother and his girlfriend. We snuck Sobe teas in, and just about the time the warning came up to be quiet during the feature, she knocked over her empty and we heard it roll and clink on seats all the way down. We were already laughing in anticipation of movie, and that just sent us right over the edge. My brother and I still talk about it.
I do remember being disappointed to find that the moon was still there on the 14th of September.
Oh, it definitely had something to do with Episode I. I remember some co-workers of mine at the time taking off early to go see it in the middle of the day, and being SO jealous. They were friends of mine (still are, matter of fact) and I remember grabbing on to one of their legs and yelling ‘Take me with you!’ They did not take me with them.Then I saw it for myself at the Coronet Theater in San Francisco, home to some of the original screenings of Episode IV back in ‘77. So that was cool. Great theater, gorgeous screen, all that. I remember parking was a bitch that day, and my girlfriend at the time and I had to leave the car like BLOCKS away and run over so we’d get there in time. Parking in that area of San Francisco was and most likely still is a gigantic fucking pain in the ass, so we were lucky to even get a spot. Pretty sure we parked illegally, or damn near close to it.So I remember liking it at first. I saw it multiple times in theaters, so I couldn’t have hated it too much. I think it was more the spectacle that I enjoyed the most. I still love the podrace. Sebulba’s podracer sounded exactly like my girlfriend’s old car. The Coronet has very specific memories of that movie for me now, just as the Century Retro Dome theaters in San Jose are attached in my mind to Attack of the Clones. I remember being sad that it was being trashed in the media so much. I enjoyed it at the time, but I clearly had a raging case of PMS (Phantom Menace Syndrome) and could not be consoled.Oh, and I also asked my then-girlfriend to be my then-wife in front of a giant window that looked out into the bottom of a swimming pool on New Year’s Eve. But who gives a shit about that.
The self-professed “corny-lookin’ white boy” who showed up dressed like Bill Clinton, forcing us to learn what his name is.
Everybody knows that best way to do the Matrix running along the wall bit is to perform it in a swimming pool. I spent large parts of that summer practicing those moves in my friend’s pool.
The Roots – Things Fall Apart dominated my music listening in 1999. It’s still one of my all-time favorite albums and has held up extremely well.I don’t believe it would be an exaggeration to say that I probably listened to You Got Me specifically at least 1,000 times in the months after it was released.
This x1000But also “dynamite!” I loved that track too…
that’s such a great album. I’m still upset that Table of Contents Pt. 1 fades out halfway through.
yeah it’s got to be Phantom Menace, I was even interviewed by the Washington Times (sigh, would have been so much better if it was WaPo) at a Toys*R*US midnight opening in Gaithersburg explaining how big a deal this movie was, especially since 2 years before they had the Special Editions in the theatre by contrast 2015 felt very different, perhaps because the hype was so huge for the Prequels and they were divisive (I enjoy them for what they are and think on the whole they are ultimately alright films and rewatchable unlike the later Harry Potter films) The Force Awakens hype felt much more muted even with the return of the Original Cast. I think people just were going in with tempered expectations and were mostly relieved that surpassed most people’s expectations
I enjoyed watching the Force Awakens, but it was striking for how familiar it felt. I enjoyed myself, but it genuinely felt like I was seeing it for the second time.I didn’t see the prequels until years later. They aren’t very good, but they aren’t quite as bad as their reputation, and they fail in ways that are kind of interesting. I liked Attack of the Clones a fair amount, actually – it throws its influences on the screen the way the original trilogy did, but it doesn’t quite make them stick.
1999? Mostly I remember watching the first two seasons of Sailor Moon, every day after school, broadcast on UPN.I mean, I probably saw a Star War, but who can remember that shit.
Wasn’t 1999 the year that Buffy went from good show to great show?Also, Futurama started.
That 1999 Star Wars movie was just plain lame. It was little more than an extended toy commercial and I recall everyone was disappointed in it. The Matrix was the real pop culture event that year. I recall my local theater had that film running for 6 months while every other film got rotated out in 2 weeks max.
Didn’t care much for 1999, but there were two TV shows covering opposite ends of the spectrum that were my jam at the time: Millennium and NewsRadio. Both shows ended in May of that year. And also by that time, Phil Hartman had been dead for a year, so the last NewsRadio season had Jon Lovitz filling in.
Ah, Newsradio. Possibly the only time Joe Rogan was tolerable.But seriously, Newsradio was genius for a very large portion of its run, and at least watchable for the rest.
Your name is Garrelli?
I re-watch Newsradio a ton and it’s one of my favorite shows of all time. That whole ensemble was brilliant.
How are you watching it.. DVD? I’ve dug around and haven’t been able to find it streaming anywhere.
Yeah, on DVD. I think I bought it as the seasons were being released but you should be able to buy a complete series set now though if you do, make sure they come with the special features. I think one that was released recently is just episodes only.
I first had sex. Sorry I don’t remember anything else about that year.
I was 29 in 1999 and had recently gotten my doctorate in microbiology. Which makes me a bit older than most of the people here (it makes me a contemporary of Henry in The Americans and between the kids and teenagers in Stranger Things; meaning I can actually remember the era depicted, although neither Russians nor monsters played a role in my upbringing. Some former Bulgarians did, but they had gotten out in the 1960s before I was born). I think my strongest memory of 1999 was that was the year I got broadband internet (at the time, DSL and absurdly slow by modern standards), because it finally meant I could be online whenever I wanted and not annoy friends and relatives trying to call me by blocking my land line (I didn’t bother to get a mobile phone until 2004 when my boss required me to have one).
So. Many. Good. Movies.
When I looked at that screen cap from 10 Things, my immediate reaction was, “Is that Heath Ledger, or is that Joseph Gordon Levitt?”. Reading on did not answer my question, as apparently they’re both in the movie.
I guess we’ll never know who’s featured in the YouTube clip “10 Things I Hate About You: Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (Heath Ledger)”. Truly a mystery for the ages.
Truly.
Getting a DVD player.
Corey Feldman was truly on the cutting edge of the millennium craze when he wrote a song about it 16 years later. Or at least a song with the word ‘millennium’ in the title. No discussion involving the word ‘millennium’ is complete without it. Dance, you fucking bitch.
Adult Corey Feldman looks like Bill Hader acting out “depression” in a game of Scattergories.
Now I want Hader to make a shot-for-shot remake of this video.
“Limbo,” John Sayles’ attempt at an intelligent disaster film. It’s an unevenly structured, not wholly satisfying film but it has a lot of wonderful moments and lovely dialogue. The cast is uniformly strong, especially David Straithairn, who gives one of his characteristically beautiful, understated performances. There’s also what should have been a breakout showing by 20-year old Vanessa Martinez who also played the teenage version of Elizabeth Pena’s character in Sayles’ even more terrific “Lonestar” a few years prior. I was a bit ambivalent about the film’s ending but it was, for me, the most refreshing film of the year if a minor one. We could really use someone like Sayles these days.
Probably the matrix… it just came out of nowhere. I had no idea what it was about going in, so was completely unprepared, whiwh is the best way to take something in.That being said, Star Wars sucked for me. I am of that generation (x) where the original was the KEY cultural moment of my childhood… the special edition of the original gave me a stunning feeling that all was not right in Lucas land, so the suckage of TPM wasn’t totally unexpected, but seeing it was the exact moment I knew my childhood was dead. 🙁
I was working in a Snowboard shop and a music store in 1999. I had 1999 pop culture EVERYWHERE around me.
Y2K mania. Being hooked on the first season of The Sopranos, and enjoying Sex and the City, Oz, and what turned out to be the last season of Tracey Takes On. Starting Buffy and Angel. Starting ER.Beyond that, probably the coverage of Woodstock ‘99 and the rapes. A final reminder that the ‘60s nostalgia and the “we can change the world” nostalgia was gone and never coming back.
“The Sopranos, and enjoying Sex and the City, Oz, and what turned out to be the last season of Tracey TakesOn”Sunday nights BELONGED to HBO! Tony and the BadaBing Crew felt like uncles and I was fully enmeshed! Being a young Single I also fully related to the relationship woes of the SATC chicks! But they were really out of touch in everything else they portrayed! Working, living and screwing in a white bubble in the most diverse city in the world was just one of the most unrealistic aspects!
When Jon Stewart mused on his last show of that year that when Y2K hit on New Years’ Day, we would all have to learn how to make butter. I can still hear the silly way he said it (“make bu-tah”) and recall how much we all feared at least one big bad would come to pass that day. It was all a big nothing in the end, but it sure was fun to worry. Ah, the old days before 9/11. Before Trump. Where all I needed was a little reassurance from Jon that everything would be ok.
I’d go with two things:1. Was back in the Bay Area at the time and one of the go to theaters for Big Movies back then was the Mercado in Santa Clara; my younger brother and his friends slept overnight to see Episode 1 for one of the evening shows on opening day. Good on them. I drove over to check on them real early in the morning (6ish). The Mercado was showing it like every hour, so I ended up catching an almost empty showing and thinking it was disappointingly just okay. Didn’t want to spoil it for them, so I didn’t give my review.2. Was really excited for NIN’s the Fragile to be released and I still recall trying to record it off the radio when one of the stations nearby played it in its entirety—and really damned annoying commercial breaks—before release. Definitely the kind of nonsense we don’t deal with these days, for better or worse.
This is a downer, but my most significant pop culture memory was the death of Owen Hart, who was one of my favorite wrestlers, and I was shook for months as a teen. The byproduct of then-WWF’s feud WCW saw them pushing their content in ways that made me uncomfortable in 1999. In January The Rock beat with unprotected chair shots in front of his children. In March, Wrestlemania staged a live-hanging of the Big Boss Man from a cage. Along with all the blood, language, and T&A, the company was full Jerry Springer by 1999 and too outrageous for it’s own good. It was only a matter of time before something legit terrible would happen, and that something was in May, when a needlessly dangerous high wire entrance resulted in an employee plummeting to his death in front of an arena full of people.
It’s a split. Episode 1 gets the award for being the thing I anticipated the most. It was the first time I stood in line for tickets for, well, anything, and I really felt a part of something in actuality which until then, I’d only felt a part of in theory, having been born after the first trilogy came out.
But in terms of lasting impression, I’d give it to The Blair Witch Project, which was a masterpiece of construction and marketing, and proved the adage that less is more. It’s a brilliant film, and one I’ll always go to bat for.
This song over and over
When you hit 30, pop culture begins to mean less and less to you. You find yourself gravitating more and more to the music and things that you enjoyed from high school through your 20s. When you hit 30, you find that you slowly pay less and less attention to whatever the hot thing is. And that increases as you make your way through your 3os. For example, in my 20s, I could name all of the hot songs and hot bands on the radio. But as I progressed through my 30s, that number became smaller and smaller. In 1999, I turned 39 just before the end of the year. I could not tell you one single movie or song or TV show that came out in 1999. That’s when I knew I was officially old.And it’s going to happen to you too.
I have a similar experience in my 50s, but there was plenty of stuff back in my 20s that I was vaguely aware of, but thoroughly uninterested in. Now I have a pretty broad span of history to choose from, and little reason to just wallow in whatever happens to be “cutting edge”. I rather enjoy “discovering” music that I missed in the ‘90s and ‘00s.
I have discovered some of my greatest finds years, even decades after the fact. It’s quite liberating to not keep up with the pack and a good book, movie, album is no worse for wear however much time has passed. I do understand why people are in search of new work and I admire those who do so thoughtfully but the mania for being hip to something 15 minutes before everyone else you know (which actually predates the internet) is a fool’s errand.
“the mania for being hip to something 15 minutes before everyone else you know (which actually predates the internet) is a fool’s errand.”NME used to be quite bad for getting this wrong 😉
Oh NME, that brings back memories. I think most of the British music press was and remains guilty of that. I confess I do find their enthusiasm charming.
As someone in the exact same position, I can tell you that 90’s music was the actual end of anything even remotely listenable on a regular basis. It was grunge that celebrated not having any musical ability, and boy bands were the pinnacle of castrated & sanitized musical dry humping for 12-year old girls. There wasn’t much left between those bookends.
All this time I just assumed it was a matter of pop culture being so fragmented, but I guess it’s just me getting old…But seriously, I feel like I know of a lot of popular artists, but damned if I’ve ever actually heard anything by them. Seems weird to hear people talk about stuff being overplayed now when options were way more limited 20 years ago.
I wish I could say, “Not me! I read the AV Club and it keeps me abreast of the latest happenings in the world of pop culture!..” but it’s all just nostalgia, youtube video reposts, and talking about what famous people post on twitter. 🙁
Wait until you hit 50 and you realize how fucking derivative most pop culture really is.
“Hey, didn’t we just see this crappy trend a few years ago? What? It’s been 30 years? But it sucked then, too, why bring it back?”I’m waiting for hair bands to make a comeback so I can point and laugh.
Shit, I hit the pop culture wall as an upperclassman in high school. Once file sharing programs made it possible for me to seek out music I actually wanted to hear, I had no reason to tune in to the increasingly stale alternative rock stations of the early 00’s. I’ve been outta the loop for at least 15 years now.
Excellent point. But, when I was in high school, there was no internet. Cable TV and VCRs had recently been invented, but they were hard to come by and so expensive, almost nobody had them. There were no streaming services, no CDs or DVDs. No Blockbuster Video. No file sharing. It was cool to be able to record your favorite music off of the radio onto a cassette. I never foresaw having a computer in my house. Computers were what businesses had. Who knows what’s going to be out there when your kids reach high school. Unless we’ve been nuked back to the stone age by then.
Perhaps the most accurate Simpsons quote is “I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what’s ‘it’ is weird and scary to me.”I’m 39 now, so they’ve certainly changed “it,” but I’m in the indifferent phase right now. I know that in five years, there will be a new version of this generation’s Marilyn Manson or Grand Theft Auto, and instinctually, it will be the most scary thing ever despite logically, it’s just history repeating otsrlf
I think that’s really why you remember the stuff from your teens and 20’s and care less as tiem goes on … especially pop music & culture. I don’t know what’s going on in pop music and culture now … but I don’t need to. It’s the same crap that’s always been there. There are coming of age songs, songs about love and heartache. Pop singers still fit the 3 or 4 same archetypes. Boy bands are still the same, other than they are now Korean. It’s all the same.
The worst is the popular movies. They are LITERALLY the same movies. Toy Story, Alladin, Lion King, Fast and Furious even TOP FRIGGIN’ GUN is coming around again.
You are not old until you hear music you listened to as a teenager being played in the grocery store. *sigh*
lol in 1999 I was exactly 30 years old. All I know about that year was I was still focusing on night life, happy hours and hitting up the bars.. i.e. same thing I was doing since I was 19. And then I got married and here I am. And yeah I have no idea about the movies, music, nor tv shows of that year for the most part.
This is too true. I’m in my late 20s and I just use Spotify to listen to the same shit over and over again. I haven’t listened to the radio in weeks, and only check out new songs when specifically recommended. I also find myself reluctant to watch new tv shows, lest they are shit and I’m disappointed and can’t get my time back, so I rewatch my favourite shows over and over again. Is that also normal?
Yea, I’d say you’re probably normal. It seems like pretty much every city has at least one “Classic Rock” radio station. So, no matter where I’m driving, I’ll probably have my music to listen to.
I have one, but they started playing Maroon 5 and Gwen Stefani a couple of years ago so I refuse to listen to it on principle. Also because I’m petty.
I disagree that one must become innately less adventurous. I pay less attention to new music, for example, but tons of attention to old music (far older than what I was listening to in my 20s, or whatever). Who says things have to be new in order to be “new”? Digging through the shelves at record stores was what I loved most in the ‘90s, and now I dig through online vinyl rips for old shit that I’ve never heard before. The adventurousness hasn’t died down at all.
I didn’t mean to imply becoming less adventurous. Whenever I need chicken soup for the soul, I tend toward that which gave it to me in the past.
Exactly! It’s just about creating new stimuli for the brain.And finding more fun! Except I’m old enough I can actually you know.. buy an album or travel to see something a bit more now. 🙂
Sounds like you just gave up on life. Poor thinf
Don’t judge me too harshly. If you take nothing else from me, take this:If it happened to me, it can happen to you.For whatever you judge that to mean.
I am 41. I cannot stand 80s and 90s pop culture without the IPs being updated to fit the tastes and zeitgeist of 2019
We’re the same age and in 1999 I had a 4 year old and was 2 years into a “mature student” marketing degree while working full time phase. When people reminisce about The Postal Service and other stuff in the late ‘90’s I should have been dialed into, I just kinda shrug and wonder if i have early onset Alzheimers.
You mean when ‘I’ cuz I’m 36 and I follow modern pop culture just as much as I ever did.
I was speaking in generalities. Of course there are going to be exceptions.At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, I’d listen to modern music if there were any modern music out there worth listening to.
We’re about the same age. I signed in to say my two memories are:1) “Genie In the Bottle” Christina Aguilera may be the last single marketed to young people which I fell in love with.
2) “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” was so successful it was aired three times a week in prime time, officially marking the moment when scripted network television would no longer capture our national zeitgust. The networks would focus on game shows while cable would become a writer’s territory.
What year did “Deal or No Deal” come on? That was probably the last new game show I remember. And I guess that’s why classics like Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud, Let’s Make a Deal and The Price is Right are still around. You just can’t beat the classics.
This is absolutely 100% true.However, like everything else in the world, you have to work to keep yourself from doing that. I use Pandora, ask my kid for recommendations, and.. oddly, I actually listen to the radio from time to time. I may not be an expert in fresh and new, but dammit, I’m NOT going to sit in my nursing home room listening to old Marilyn Manson records and talking about the “good old days”. Those are rose colored glasses that mean nothing.Learn something new, gain a new skill set, go to concerts of younger performers. I’m 48 and while I work a 9-5 job, I’m also learning a new skill.. I’m an apprentice clock maker on my days off and weekends. On the weekends, I try new things.. just pick a direction and drive, or look up close weird places on atlas obscura like weeping tombstones, world’s biggest ball of twine, shit like that. Learn new stuff, otherwise you just.. become inflexible.
Or slowly die. I’m 58-years-old, unemployed and disabled. I’m not married. I have no children. My life ended years ago. My body just hasn’t caught up to it yet. I’m not asking anybody to cry for me Argentina. I had plans, hopes and dreams too. I have 2 Bachelor of Science degrees (1 in computer science and 1 in Health Care Administration). And yet, despite my best efforts, I’ve seen every last one of my plans, hopes and dreams be crushed and destroyed. That’s why my blood boils when I hears conservatives say “All you have to do is learn a skill and work hard and you will succeed.” I did and what did it get me? Nobody ever prepared me for the fact that you can play the game of life correctly and make all of the right moves and still lose the game. Do me a favor and tell your spouse and kids that you love them.
That’s.. that’s a whole separate thing from what I meant and in the context of your original post. I agree with you on that, and the mythology of “work hard and you’ll succeed” is damaging us on a HUGE socio-economic scale.I was just talking about not being exposed to new things.
I can logic things out in other ways, one need not resort to anything so pedestrian as “memory”. In 1999, we were dealing with a glut of crappy Y2K news reports, a few Y2K X-Files story lines, and i believe one X-Files Y2K spinoff with Lance Hendrikson. Easy!
Also, i was working in a RPG / pop culture distribution warehouse, and there was some kind of Wild Wild West Magic-ripoff card game. And hey, the Pokemon collectible Card Game that drove poor Cedric mad at the next desk.
Fuck memory!
* takes a deep 7:45am drag off my wee pipe *
Its all gonna happen to youYou think its a phase
Rock concerts in the center of Belgrade as NATO bombs fell. Wearing the ‘TARGET’ T-shirts. Buying the ‘Sorry we didn’t know it was invisible’ postcards after we downed the F-117. Reading propaganda fliers dropped by NATO. Watching the American Cultural Center being desecrated and graffitied. Playing Civilization II as I could hear the bombs drop. One station decided to play Groundhog Day every day, so I’d often catch myself watching it, though the reception was pretty snowy since the Avala TV tower was already taken out.
I was also delighted by The Phantom Menace when I first saw it at the age of 24. Frankly, I still kind of like it. If it weren’t for the hype, I think it would have gone down in history as an ambitious but ultimately mediocre scifi adventure instead of, as it’s usually portrayed, the worst film ever. I think it’s head and shoulders above its immediate sequel, which is the film that finally convinced most of us that the prequels were really a misfire.
When are they going to make a Daria movie with Michael Shannon as Mr. Demartino?Maybe it’s because I’m more of a music person, but 1999 is such a weird year. A bit removed from the post-grunge bands that were really just great pop bands with messy styling (Gin Blossoms, Lemonheads, No Doubt, Goo Goo Dolls, occasionally Bush) and still a few years away from the Strokes/White Stripes/Interpol thing. I suppose I shouldn’t discount that Britney, BSB, and their ilk were at their peak in 1999. I do still love Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn, and There Is Nothing Left To Lose is my favorite Foo Fighters album. But man is 1999 a hard year to be nostalgic about.I did see She’s All That and Varsity Blues on the same night, and it was totally my favorite day of 8th grade.
1999 was a big rave year. I agree with you, I think rock-related genres were in a bit of a funk at the time, but jungle finally got huge and the bridge and tunnel trance parties were soul-less but buzzy. In 1999, my weekends were either at the Britpop/mod night, or at Mama or the Cooler with cresting jungle or the brand new UK garage, or going to see Sasha or his ilk at like Tunnel or what have you.
Wow, when I wrote my comment I’d completely forgotten about Limp Bizket, Korn, Kid Rock, et al even though they were huge at the time. In 30 years, movies about that era will jump right from Matchbox 20/Third Eye Blind to the Strokes even though rap rock probably made more money at its peak. Even my fave one-off rock songs from those awkward post-post grunge years (Fuel’s “Shimmer” and Eve 6’s “Inside Out”) were 1997, I believe. And then Kid A came out in 2000. The Lilith ladies are another corner of culture that’s bound to be left out of retrospectives, but at least there was some solid songwriting happening. My favorite teen movie from that era is Can’t Hardly Wait and that was 1998.This is another ramble about how I just don’t see 1999 being a great year for culture, even in terms of the mainstream.
Mark Sandman died. That pissed me off.
Having a threesome with my then high school senior girlfriend and one of her friends while Britney Spears “Hit Me Baby (One More Time) was on endless repeat on her cd player.AWESOME song to fuck to.
Chris Cunningham’s video for Björk’s All is full of love.
There is a lot of great music from ‘99 that I still listen to but *sigh* I’m also going to have to go with The Phantom Menace—for a particular reason. While I did wait in line to see a “midnight” showing at my local mall, I would shortly thereafter move to NY and take a seasonal sales associate job at FAO Schwarz where I was stationed primarily in the darkened Episode 1 section that Lucasfilm had built. It was there that my “most significant pop-culture memory” would be burned into my brain by months of “Duel of the Fates” played at 11 on a continuous loop.
I forgot that I also watched a lot of Mad TV in this era (I’ll always have a fondness for Mo Collins, Debra Wilson, Alex Borstein and Nicole Sullivan). And I had my usual love/hate relationship with SNL. One memory that was jogged when I saw some of the episode again earlier this year was that Danny DeVito hosted the last episode of the century. There was a “Delicious Dish” sketch (the NPR-esque talk show hosted by Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer) where DeVito played a chef who’d come on the show to plug his cookbook. The set was now desolate, due to Y2k. They’d eaten all the pages of the book, had minimal supplies, and the attempts at calm conversation over the airwaves were interspersed with mentions of dead co-workers and of rape gangs. It was a very surreal experience, but brilliantly acted by all three.
Jon Stewart started hosting the Daily Show in 1999 and late night tv was never the same.
While I have fond memories of all these, my favorite might actually be learning about the Team USA Women’s World Cup victory from an instructor during the middle of a resupply trip he made while on an Outward Bound semester course in Alaska. I had watched the South Park movie in Anchorage during the break between the river rafting and sea kayaking segments, but spent the next week and a half in the wilderness, where the only pop culture to be consumed was people singing half-remembered songs, talking about The Stuff (and confirming that it wasn’t a fever dream; that movie actually exists!), and one guy having brought along a plush “Hollywood” Hogan doll that would say, “I’m ‘Hollywood’ Hogan!!!” when you squeezed his tummy. Then, we came to the mountain lake where a float plane landed with more food and goodies we’d packed for ourselves – Snicker’s bars, etc. That night, the instructor who had been in the outside world regaled us around a fire with the tale of that legendary team, culminating with Brandi Chastain’s iconic goal.The next memory was learning JFK, Jr. had died when I saw a newspaper headline in Seward talking about his funeral.
I’d like to say The Matrix, but in all honesty Office Space hits home more often on a daily basis.The Phantom Menace was such a disappointment, it’s hard to believe that each Star Wars movie since then (except Rogue One) has managed to suck even harder. I mean, how could you get worse than Jar Jar?
CKYI was 19 and working in a skate shop. The video came in with a bunch of others just like normal. When I got around to watching in the store I full tripped out within the first five minutes. I brought it home to show my cousins and friends and it was an instant smash.It was a dirty little skater secret that really resonated with everyone I knew including my non-skating friends and even my dad. A year or two later it merged with the Big Brother crew to become Jackass and take over everything but that little Landspeed video was maybe the biggest cultural touchstone of the year.
Welcome to RAW!!!!! IS!!!!!! JERICHO!
Blair Witch Project. I was so into that movie. They’re marketing got me hook, line and sinker. I was like, “It’s not real…but maybe it’s real…nah it’s just a movie…but still…”
I remember feverishly playing Civilization II on my old desktop and watching every episode of the anime “Flame of Recca” as it was telecast on local TV, for fear that everything would go black at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, 1999 on account of the Y2K bug. Heh. Midnight came and went and about all that happened was that my old desktop’s calendar got locked into an eternal New Year’s Day. Apart from that it worked just fine.Wasn’t the first time I got snookered by a pop craze either. I was grief-stricken like heck when DC killed Superman, so naturally I fell for their “Reign of the Supermen” hook, line and sinker. But it wasn’t a total waste of time for me — at least it got me thinking along the lines of alternate realities like the ones we see the Avengers’ Time Heist open up in “Avengers: Endgame.”The creepiest thing I remember from the 1990s is visiting my brother Sal in New Jersey and watching David Koresh’s farmhouse burn down on Sal’s TV. At the time I wondered how people could see black as white, up as down, to the extent of killing themselves — to say nothing of other people — over it. Today, after 9/11 and the rise of President Trump, I wonder it more than ever.
Dancing to Blink-182 (want to say it was All The Small Things but it might have been What’s My Age Again?) at a church dance. 11th grade. Danced with Gabi, who I had a huge crush on, but was dating my friend Jack. Jack came out of the closet sometime in college, which, looking back on it, yeah, we probably should have figured that one out. In retrospect, I probably should have at least expressed some interest in Gabi beyond that one dance. She even gave me a cute little pig with a heart on it when she came back from visiting Paris, and I still somehow totally missed the fact that my crush may have been reciprocated. C’est la vie.
Fun fact, down the street from my grandmas house we occasionally see a Daria car. I had no idea anyone was that into Daria. If you look up SWB Wraps on Facebook apparently you can see a video of how it was made, because someone said the guy that owns that car has a buissness making cars like that.Here’s someone’s picture of it somewhere else. It’s damn amazing.
I don’t remember much of 99. I remember being closeted and dating my first and last girlfriend, but not liking it, and going to the skating rink on weekends with my friends occasionally getting into drama and fights, so it was probably Dragon Ball Z I was into around that time, and Pokemon. Actually, might have been Pokemon cards. I was patient zero with Pokemon Cards at my middle school. I used to walk a few miles to pull Ed Edd n Eddy scams and thefts on spoiled rich kids from the rich side of my city at a Books a Million on Saturday mornings to get their rare cards around that time. My favoite idea was getting a promo card they were giving away free in the back of the store and going to the front and having my friends act like I got some super rare card and tricking kids that just were coming in to trading me their Charizards and Japanese Gold Silver cards, because this was the pure gen 1 era when GS was only in Japan and were rumors. Got lifetime banned from there every weekend. Lol
I tip my hat to people who can differentiate past events of 1999 as opposed to 1997 or 2000. Nothing in particular was happening to me that year (just working a night shift) to anchor that date in my mind. I needed to Google to realize Buffy was in its 3rd year or the West Wing had started that year. Can I say a pop culture event was ‘significant’ to me if I have to first look it up to remember it?
I’ve already made my own comment about it, but 1999 was just a weird in-between year for pop culture. Buffy was about to head into its 4th season (the dreaded Initiative), and X-Files was entering season 7 (still largely okay but past its prime), so the 90s monoliths (or the revisionist monoliths as selected by the people who care to talk about these things) weren’t exactly in a great place.
I was 11, so aside from the obvious Phantom Menace hype, I was really in to Pokemon. I remember spending god knows how much on trading cards and dragging my poor mom to see Pokemon the First Movie.
THANK YOU FOR POSTING GOD GOD DAMMIT!!!!!I’ve had that song stuck in my head since I saw it in 1999 and I love that it’s forever lodged into my brain. The dad driving the car will make me laugh silently to myself for an eternity.
I have two memories about the Star Wars release in 1999. The first is that, even though I loved the original three films, Episode One was kind of boring and didn’t spark the same wonder as Empire did when I first saw it as a kid (by 1999 I was in my mid twenties). It put me completely off the idea of even seeing any of the other new films, something I’ve continued to do. The second is that it was the first time I saw people cosplaying in any great number – prior to that I knew of people dressing making super intricate costumes but never really saw it in person. But people in pretty accurate costumes turned up at all our local theaters, something I thought was super cool (and continue to do so).
Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like the Star Wars Phantom Menace news video looks like something at least a decade older than ‘99?
Alex McLevy-It’s either “his” or “her” little brother, not “their”.
Were you afraid of outing yourself?
-R.
The premieres of The Real World: Hawaii and Road Rules: Semester at Sea1999 coincided with the onset of my adolescence. I remember it as a tipping point when the safety and monotony of suburban life began to feel constraining. It was probably the first year in which I became aware of my own desires to explore new social, sexual, and geographical terrain. The premieres of The Real World: Hawaii and Road Rules: Semester at Sea played directly into these newfound yearnings. With The Real World, there was the excitement of watching young adults meet new people, the natural beauty of Hawaii, and then there was Colin talking about sleeping nude (a revelatory conversation for a young adolescent attracted to men – oh, the benign things we find intriguing when we’re in our early teens). That was a memorable episode, but it was the Road Rules premiere that made me truly envious. Watching six strangers come together to skydive down to an island, then build a boat to sail across crystalline blue waters to their Semester at Sea ship (to the tune of “Send Me on My Way” by Rusted Root). At 13, I don’t think I had ever longed for something more, something greater, than I did after watching that episode. Until a year later, when Survivor came along.
‘99 I discovered Rawkus records, Talib Kweli, Hi tek, Mos Def and all the east coast music I never knew existed before finding a real gem of a vinyl store.
These comments are ultra depressing
I bought my last cassette tape in 99 (The Slim Shady LP), as well as CD copies of Midnite Vultures and Play. I saw Something About Mary and Magnolia and American Beauty and American Pie and American Movie in theaters. I became a nightly drinker and didn’t miss a night until 2005, when a run of inexplicable bad luck forced me to quit altogether. I got cable TV and saw Fox News for the first time (hated it from the get-go). I listened to Art Bell at night. I rented so much porn at the video store that the owner began giving me the Senior Citizen Discount, though I was only twenty-six.
Napster.
Fight Club was a great fucking time. I went in not knowing anything about it and walked out elated.I was ambivalent about The Matrix (I love Keanu but he was in a rut) and didn’t see it until a friend who was computer savvy gave me two CD-Rs with it illegally downloaded (it hadn’t come out on video yet). I watched it on a tiny little grainy window on a PC and it was still great.‘99 was also the first time I ever watched a DVD. First one was Boogie Nights. It was crazy. Menus? Deleted scenes? Commentary? No rewinding? More information than a Laserdisc on a little CD? The guy who had it paid $400 for the player.
September 28, 1999:
Hey look. The AV Club ate up all the irrelevant “1999″ articles that The Ringer did over the last two weeks and puked them back up even more irrelevantly.
I remember some HUGE events in the Nu Metal world. Limp Bizkit’s Significant Other came out that year, as well as Korn’s “Issues,” both of which were really exciting. I think that’s when FarmClub.com launched a TV show as well. I remember the first episode of that was super stacked—Limp Bizkit premiered their video for “Break Stuff,” but they played the wrong edit (this song would go on to underscore the chaos of Woodstock ‘99, the effects of which we are still feeling today), Powerman 5000 performed “Worlds Collide,” LB performed “N Together Now,” and I think Korn were there to release a video for “Make Me Bad.” That’s also the year Korn were on a special Halloween episode of South Park where they were basically the Mystery squad from Scooby Doo and they premiered the song “Falling Away From Me” (quintessential Korn of that era for me, along with “Blind” from the first album and “Freak on a Leash” from Follow the Leader. It’s also the year Sipknot released their debut major label album and just destroyed everything most of what me and my sheltered friends understood about heavy/hard music. They really were an evolution.Me and my friends listened to all of that on CD while we rented new N64 like Snowboard Kids 2 and Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes in my bedroom when we weren’t watching The Matrix in theaters or Daria or TRL on MTV.That was the year I finished 8th grade and entered 9th grade. I was the perfect age to soak it all up, and there was a lot more than the short novel above. Despite modern disdain for a lot of it, I remember it all fondly.
In 1999, there was this amazing internet site i found called the AV Club, they had astonishingly insightful stories about pop-culture, but it wasn’t just reposted stuff from elsewhere online – it was really insightful, original commentary, like a window into an academic-yet-playful perspective on American culture. I wonder what happened to that site.