for
1/8/2000
Writer's note: Due to the holidays, the Space Toast Page has been on a hiatus. This is regrettable, and I hope my (few) readers will pick up again for the new year and remain loyal readers. I don't care if you agree with me, but I appreciate that you read. Thank you! from the Space Toast Page.
The 1990's are over. The millennium is not, nor is the 20th century, due to our unusual Christian calendar with no year 0. I promise a large millennium edition next year, including Man of the Millennium (Previous winner: Ghengis Kahn) and whatever else I feel like adding, but, for now, I hope you'll all content with a brief look at where we've been for the last ten years, and where we're going.
Decades are a sad method of categorizing time, but so is everything else. Nothing as complex and interlinked as the human sphere can be chopped up neatly into blocks of ten years, twenty years, or even ten-thousand years without severe pigeonholing. Just a friendly disclaimer.
The "Good Try" Decade
Music
In my opinion, the greatest musical event of the 1990's was the emergence of the Punk Alternative genre. Spawned in bits and pieces of the heavy metal of the '70s, the rock of the '80s and something new, Alternative Music, Grunge Rock, Punk, or whatever one wants to call it, screamed out of the garages of a disillusioned middle-class American youth and into the head and heart of popular culture.
Beneath the pounding drums and cheap-amp feedback of Alternative Music was a pure distillment of something that had been little-seen in the Michael Jackson pop of the 1980's: a discarding of syntax in favor of pure personal expression. Image wasn't important. It wasn't the cloths, or the hair, or what you bit the head off on stage, but what you felt--and thus what you sang.
Entering the double-zeros, Alternative Music has mostly dried up and with it, I think, a piece of America--and a good piece at that. Gone are Nirvana, Soundgarden and the Presidents of the United States of America. Here in force are fakey flash-in-the-pan acts like Kidd Rock and Puff Daddy. Some notables--Bush, Live, the Foo Fighters--hold on, but, by in large, the Americas and Britain are moving on without them. I'll address where-to later.
Other forms of popular music reached maturity in the 1990's. Rap music grew from the 1980's largely harmless inner-city poetry slamming to the violent "Gangsta Rap" genre. Electronic music gestated in the rave to emerge as Techno-industrial music. Swing music--well, it tried.
I have no objection to Rap as a form of music, but if I hear one more news story about a millionaire rapper getting arrested for shooting someone I'll want to take a screwdriver to my roommate's CD collection. I don't like any culture that advocates violence for the pure sake of status and who's members believes they're above the law--to be specific, I don't like the Gangsta image. Enough about that.
Techno-industrial is another favorite genre of mine. It is a completely new form of music--the audio collage. My hope is that techno, in the years to come, will manage to come out from under the tyranny of "dance music" and it's DJs, and emerge fully into the world of expressive music.
Finally, "the old time music," Swing made a late-'90s comeback. The now defunct Squirrel Nut Zippers emerged onto the scene, as good or better than most of the old time bands. The only problem was that there was no one of a high-enough caliber to follow. New swing lazed into "Alterna-swing;" it no longer mattered if the band wasn't all that tight, or the lead singer's voice wasn't all that good. It was a good try, in my humble opinion, but only a try.
The [insert here] Decade
Popular Culture
Boy, remember the 1990's? Not really? That's because it's been so many things.
This started out as the decade of upbeat optimism; Environmentalism, especially, was an issue. We were going to clean up the planet for the new millennium. GM's electric car was to be in production by 1997. Solar power was only a dream away.
Then Captain Planet came along and did for the Environmental Movement what Jonestown did for Kool-Aid.
But have no worry; like Kool-Aid, Environmentalism will never really go away.
Bush, no Bush, Clinton, Bush again? Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs. The Internet, the World Wide Web, the Global Marketplace. Japanese compact cars, Japanese American cars, minivans, Saturns, sport utility vehicles, monster trucks? Low-cal, vegetarian, shakes, vegan, exercise, nothing but meat, repeat? Kid, geek, drama geek, art student, filmmaker? It's been a busy decade.
I've written already that I feel that the slow passing of Punk is a great loss. Appearances are coming back into vogue, regardless of what's underneath. Even makeup, in the form of sparkles, is back on the faces of even my more "hippy" friends. New-Kids-on-the-90°-Back-Street boy-bands are back "in," as well as girlie acts who more resemble Brittany from MTV's Daria than serious musicians. Such is the trend, I feel--America is moving back toward 1980s-style falsehood. Sigh.
The Bush Brackets?
Politics
In the greatest public relations coup in recent history, the Bush Administration managed to turn former ally Iraq into the center of world evil. The Gulf War ensued, and George Bush became Time's Man of the Year.
Then we got sick of Trickle-down Economics, and sick of him; in a couple short years, we had a new Man of the Year--William "Bill" Clinton. Clinton did well. The rest of the world respected him. Then he had an on-the-job affair, and became a lying sack of shit to the American populace. The rest of the world still respected him. So did we, even while we didn't--a delightful paradox.
The truth of the matter is that we had more trouble with the thought of a Presidential blow-job than a Presidential lie. It was a forgivable lie, but that woman was fat. The absurdity of a Presidential Impeachment Trial ensued, the humor of the situation tempered only by the concern that it might actually succeed. It didn't, fortunately. History will record this trial with about as much seriousness as it does the Bull Moose Party.
Now we're confronted with the idea of electing George Bush's son of the same name to the post of President. He's ahead in public opinion polls right now, but then, so was Michael Dukakis at this point. We'll see what happens, and the Space Toast Page will be there.
The Web Decade
History
Now we're down to what the United States will remember this decade for. The 40's had their war. The 50's were the "Father Knows Best" decade. The 60's are remembered for baby-boomers and their Hippy ways. The 70's have come back into vogue with disco forgotten (fortunately). The 80's were the Age of Reagan. So what next?
Something came into being this decade which has and will change the way the world works. Spray on hair? No. New car smell? No. It's staring you in the face right now--the World Wide Web.
The Internet has been with us for quite some time. Long the dominion of hard-core geeks and universities, the net got a face-lift in the early 90's with the invention of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which allowed for the transmission of, well, everything you see here, instead of just text. Ladies and gentlemen... I give you the World Wide Web.
Touch the Toast