English Topics Cool In The 90s
Alisha: Hi, everybody. My name is Alisha.
Today, I am joined again in the studio by…
Michael: Michael. Hello.
Alisha: And, today we’re going to be talking
about things that were cool in the 90’s.
So, the things that were interesting or things
that maybe we were interested in the 90’s.
I’m guessing that we’re going to have some
very different opinions based on our experiences
in the 90’s.
So, let’s get right into it.
Michael, your first item, please.
Michael: Okay, “boy bands.”
So, I remember boy bands were very, very popular
when I was a kid in the 90’s.
I had three older brothers who had punched
me and tell me, “Boy bands are for girls.
Don’t like boy bands.”
So, that was my experience with them.
They became kind of uncool, I feel, after
the 90’s.
And then, they never were uncool in Korea
and a lot of Asian countries.
They still had a strong boy band kind of a
scene or whatever.
Alisha: Man bands now.
Michael: Is that really what they’re called?
Alisha: No, I don’t know.
I just mean, I think, boy bands—
Michael: They are now becoming Boyz II Men.
Now, they came back.
What’s the British one?
Now it’s kind of cool again.
Alisha: Oh, One Direction.
Michael: One Direction, yeah.
So, I think it’s come back.
It’s full circle.
Alisha: Didn’t they just break up?
I’m going to go with something that I loved
in the 90’s.
This is probably way too specific.
Uh, probably.
But, it’s this show called “Doug.”
It was on Nickelodeon.
There weren’t a whole lot of episodes of “Doug.”
I don’t know, like 20 or 30.
I feel like not even that many.
Did you ever see this show?
Michael: Yeah.
That’s very nostalgic for me.
Twenty, 30 episodes?
Alisha: I feel like I’d seen them all.
I know that I saw them all because it would
come on one day after school and, “Aw, it’s
the same episode.”
But, the whole idea with “Doug,” Doug
was just this plain kid and he had an older
sister, he went to school, he had a dog and
a best friend and he would just encounter
these everyday life scenarios that would be
kind of troubling or he wouldn’t know how
to deal with them.
But, he was kind of a role model, I feel like,
he was kind of being like a good kid.
Sometimes, he would get into trouble but then
eventually he would solve the problem or he’d
find a way out of it.
I really loved that show.
I really loved Nickelodeon in general during
the 90’s.
Did you watch that channel?
Michael: Of course.
I loved Nickelodeon.
I think I was more like Fox, stuff like that,
but I guess, I’ll segue into another one of
mine.
You’re talking about wholesome so something
that’s my childhood.
I was raised on TV, the sitcoms.
Alisha: Yeah.
Michael: I think this kind of died down again
like the boy bands where people think it’s
cheesy.
Now, it’s all reality TV shows, that kind
of stuff.
But, that is my childhood right there is.
You know, “Full House,” and these kinds
of shows, “Step by Step,” where there’s
a moral at the end of the story.
The protagonist is always like maybe he’s
unsure but by the end, they know the right
thing to do and they play like the violin,
kind of sad–not quite sad but like heartwarming
music and they’re like, “Well…”
And then, they give a speech, and as a kid,
you don’t really like think about it but that
gets into your—ooh, man deep.
Because, at “Full House,” if you lie–I’ve
learned this deep in my subconscious.
If you lie and then you keep lying, it snowballs
and it gets worse and worse and worse so it’s
best to just right away tell the truth.
That was a really common theme and most sitcoms,
I think.
They’re trying to teach kids, “Don’t lie!
It’s bad.”
Alisha: You’re right.
Sitcoms are huge.
By the way, sitcom is a portmanteau.
Portmanteau, meaning, two words put together,
of situation and comedy.
So, situation and comedy equals sitcom, in
this case.
Okay.
Nice, nice.
I’m going to go to my next one.
Let’s see.
I think, probably, every little girl in the
90’s in America, anyway, knew what this
was.
I don’t know if you knew.
It’s this brand called Lisa Frank.
Are you aware of Lisa Frank?
Are you aware of Lisa Frank?
No?
Okay.
She knows.
She knows what Lisa Frank is.
Lisa Frank is brightly colored school supplies
like pinks and purples and blues and would
always have unicorns and dolphins and mystical
creatures.
It was just bright and everybody, all the
girls loved it.
I loved it.
I had Lisa Frank, just whatever I could get
my hands on.
It be pencils or the erasers, just pinks and
rainbows and hearts and stuff like that.
So, I think, every girl who grew up in the
90’s knows what Lisa Frank is.
Michael: Okay.
So, talking about style and whatnots.
Grunge.
Grunge is something that hits close to home
for me and I think that came out of the 90’s.
I mean everybody knows.
Around the world, I think, most people know
Nirvana.
Yeah, Kurt Cobain.
And, this is something that I guess was brought
to the world from Seattle and it was a music
genre and it was kind of.
It’s like rock but sometimes slower, almost
emo, kind of like sad usually undertones.
But, anyways, the style that came with it
was the opposite of like the 80’s and early
90’s of really bright colors.
It was the opposite.
You just wear holey jeans, you don’t really
shower that much, you don’t shave and plaid
and just really like dreary colors.
That was really popular.
At least, I remember in the early 90’s,
like mid 90’s.
Alisha: Yeah.
As soon as I saw that card, grunge, “Oh,
Nirvana.”
That’s the first thing that comes to mind
when I hear grunge.
I didn’t get into the grunge scene.
I was I was busy with boy bands but like grunge
for me was never –I was aware of Nirvana
but I did not–I was not at the Nirvana pot.
Okay, I’m going to go to a style point then
too because you’ve brought up a style point.
I’ll bring up a female style point, scrunchies.
Still popular, perhaps, among some people.
What is a scrunchie?
A scrunchie, let’s see.
I don’t have.
So, there’s regular rubber band that you can
use to tie back long hair.
He’s making an “O” shape with his hand.
Yes, it’s very descriptive, very descriptive.
Michael: I’m the prop and then you go like
this, digi-digi-dig.
Alisha: I bet there’s an awesome video team
somewhere like right here.
Anyway, yeah.
Scrunchie is just a piece of elastic with
some kind of colorful cloth wrapped around
it but when not in use, it would scrunch,
I think.
This is why we call it a scrunchie.
But when you pull out, it could expand it
a bit and wrap your hair up in it and when
you’re finished doing that, it would kind
of close around it.
I had a couple.
Michael: Nintendo.
Any game-related stuff.
I remember Game Boys, anything handheld.
Except when I was a kid, it wasn’t like this
fancy Dd highly vibrant colors.
It was like black and white and you’d play
it in the car and you had to squint and it
hurts your head if you’re playing too much,
you’re getting like carsick and you can barely
see Mario.
Alisha: Are you talking about Game Boy?
Michael: Game Boy or any like.
There’s handheld.
There was Atari and stuff like that and Sega.
Sega was pretty good that would light up.
Alisha: I was thinking about NES when you
said Nintendo.
I imagined my NES.
The one that like when it wasn’t working correctly,
you could just pull the cassette on deck,
[blows], put it back in.
Michael: So, you put the cartridge in here,
right?
And sometimes, if it was really stubborn and
it didn’t work.
You would blow into this part.
And you try it and it really doesn’t make
a difference but you would take turns.
Me and my brothers would be like, “No, you
want to be the one to get it to work.”
So, you take turns.
“No, let me, let me.”
And just by luck, it’d work.
You’re like, “See?
See!
Yeah.”
This is super nostalgic.
I love Nintendo.
Alisha: I have a game too.
Pogs.
So, you have Pogs?
Michael: Yeah, yeah.
Alisha: Pogs are simultaneously the most brilliant
game and the stupidest game ever invented.
They’re just discs of cardboard about this
size.
On one side there’s a picture and on the other
side, there’s just nothing.
And then, you had a thing called a slammer
which was essentially just a heavy Pog that
you would use and you had to flip–you had
to use the slammer to flip the plain cardboard
ones.
Michael: I guess…
Alisha: I don’t even know…
It was that stupid and forgettable of a game
but it was like crazy.
When I was about, I don’t know, 2nd or 3rd
grade or something, everybody had Pogs.
We had Pog gym days at my school.
I remember that vividly.
Michael: “America, we’re really obese.
Let’s go into the gym and sit there and smash
cardboards.
That’ll solve our problem.”
Alisha: We played Pogs.
I was telling her before we started this.
One day, my mom wanted me to get a haircut
and I was just being stubborn and I wasn’t
having it, I was in the malls, “I don’t
want to get a haircut.”
She’s like, “I’ll buy you Pogs,” and she
did.
It was like this giant tube of Pogs and I
was just so thrilled and I agreed to get my
hair cut.
Well, that was a lot of things that were exciting
and/or popular and we were into in the 90’s.
What were you into in the 90’s?
What was popular in your country?
I really have no idea what was popular around
the world at that time.
Maybe some of these things are similar.
Please let us know in the comments.
I’m very interested to find out.
We read these, by the way.
Any thoughts?
Any closing thoughts about the 90’s?
You’re not going to sing a song for us?
No boy bands?
Michael: [sings MMMbop].
Oh, that’s copyright, we can’t do that.
Alisha: No, that was that was very accurate
so I’m sure we can use that.
Very accurate, I mean, totally wrong.
Clearly, we’re very good at talking about
the 90’s.
Okay.
We hope that you are too.
We hope that you learn something exciting
about the 90’s.
That’s all for us today.
Thanks very much for watching and we will
see you again soon. Bye.