Day 2: Quake, Diablo, and Trash TV

This is the second day of my extended vacation back in time and things are really starting to pick up out here. Last night I played a bit of Quake and Diablo, watched two episodes of an old sitcom, and even delved into some risque internet searches. I am really starting to feel it in my soul. Just a twinge. I ended yesterday’s entry thinking this was all going to be a needless and restrictive exercise that left me with nothing more than a longing for the February of 2021 that I left behind rather than a satisfied indulging of the year 1996.  I am happy to report that this is still a needless and restrictive exercise; however, the world around me has shifted color to a lighter tone of denim. You know the jeans with an elastic waist that make you look like you’re part of a NASCAR fire crew? Those were very popular. Even my mullet has transformed from “modern-day redneck gets lazy” into “distinguished lawyer fights for justice”. A little extra hair never bothered anyone in 1996 because proper routine haircuts were reserved for the military and the police back then. The common man didn’t enjoy a routine haircut until at least 1998.  Right now in 1996, tabloid TV talk shows are a horrific nightmare and commenters of the time thought it was going to tarnish our society and perhaps permanently alter our morals going forward.  In hindsight we can say those people were right. Those things are awful.

I used to think this was my dad.

My mother dropped everything she was doing when I was born. She had a career and was going back to school to pick up another degree before I arrived on the scene. After that, she just stayed home with me everyday until I could go to school and then we shared our summers together until I graduated high school. I have a strong recollection of her watching daytime television and not really caring if I watched it too. Not soap operas either. She watched all the grisly, weird, provocative stuff where someone was about to find out they had a new grandmother and surprise, they’re a racist and have sex with bathtub drains. I was hardly ever interested but there were a few episodes that stand out to me, typically involving mean kids or teenagers getting their “comeuppance” on television in front of a studio audience. Healthy. Looking back now, it’s rather appalling but back then it was just something else on TV and those poor saps that were on those shows might as well have not been real. Rikki Lake, Sally Jessy Raphael, Oprah, Donahue, Jenny Jones, Giraldo, Maury Povich - I was exposed to a lot of that.

As a kid at the time I had no real feeling that these shows were considered “trash” and my mother probably didn’t either. It was just something to have on while she folded laundry and kept our home in order. I was vrooming around with my Hot Wheels cars, playing my GameBoy, or doing something else while people screamed over infidelities involving a dog, a horse, and someone’s gay aunt. The people on those shows seemed normal to me! Without going too far into it, I’ll just say that looking back on it now, I am extremely surprised and honestly a little disappointed that no one in my family ended up on a 90’s talk show over some small town drama.

On my last day of 2021 I watched an episode of the documentary series Trial By Media on Netflix and the first episode details the controversy talk show host Jenny Jones found herself in  when one of her show guests murdered another after they got home due to his “embarassment” of being the target of a male fantasy. That happened in 1995. 

Thankfully, I was prepared for 1996 and a friend of mine (Hey Josh!) sent over some cartoons from that year. I have Animaniacs, Space Ghost, Rocko’s Modern Life, and several other goodies of the day. Last night, before bed, I decided that Animaniacs would be the whacky send-off to sleep my brain needed. More on why I needed a cleanser later. The first episode features grouchy old Aunt Slappy, a squirrel character who reminds me an awful lot of my mother, and she goes crazy after watching too many tabloid television shows and the writers pull no punches in this segment. I forgot how entertaining to adults Animaniacs could be or perhaps I never realized it because I was a kid the last time I watched it and all the references floated over me. The clip below is timestamped to where the sketch begins and if you choose to watch the entire episode, just know it’s dark by Animaniacs standards. Tabloid TV was pervasive all the way down to being ripped by animated kid’s shows. I couldn’t get the timestamped video to work here, so skip to 4 minutes for a commentary of the sketch.

Earlier in the night I kicked off some 1996 gaming by firing up Quake. I was surprised to find I already owned it on Steam and only found that out after attempting to buy it. I think this is how everyone finds out they own a Steam game. It’s not by purchasing it. It’s by trying to play it nine years later. 

I was very surprised at how well this original version of Quake held up! Being very familiar with the old Doom recipe definitely helps. I made it through the first of the four realms and started to really miss that old school first person recipe of navigating a horrifying labyrinth for keys to escape. And I have to mention, the scale of the boss fight in the first realm was rather impressive for the time, including the method you’re expected to defeat the enemy with, which is to send a large bolt of electricity through its toothy skull! Hell yeah. The gun play is fun, the graphics hold up enough, and the difficulty feels just right although I died plenty. I plan to try to take on the second realm tonight!

I now think this is my dad.

I felt accomplished after defeating that first realm of Quake and decided to move on to something else. It was time to raise a little hell with Diablo, which I was able to acquire via GOG.com. I have never used that site before but found it to make things pretty easy so I was able to get it going a few dollars and minutes later with no issue. Off the bat, I was concerned the game was going to be a little too slow for my tastes. The character movement is stiff and it’s a lot more mouse clicking than I am used to; most of it errant and panicked. But after about a half-hour of flailing around and getting the hang of it, I was addicted to the loot grind and leveling up system. I guess that’s why Blizzard is still a monster in the addiction industry all these years later.

I’ll take this time to remind everyone that I am not an expert in 1996 although I plan to be considered one on March 1st, 2021. The reason I am going back in time is to soak up what I missed and take a good hard look at the time and its context. You shouldn’t be surprised if I have not only not seen, watched, or played something that I talk about here but I might not have even heard of it before.

A friend of mine through the Polykill Discord (Hello Jeffrey!) recommended I watch a pair of Newsradio episodes. I was not familiar with Newsradio at all despite a fairly star studded cast with Phil Hartman, Maura Tierney, Stephen Root, Andy Dick, and Joe Rogan. The first episode I watched was Season 3’s Halloween episode and in the first scene I spy Joe Rogan and I can’t stop staring at him for almost five straight minutes. I had no idea he was ever in a TV show and he’s easily the worst actor on the show. He has hair, he looks 15, and he’s so blasé in his delivery I can’t tell if it’s a character or if he’s lost. I found it pretty funny and charming though. In the Halloween episode the main character surprises everyone at a costume party by dressing as a woman and shenanigans sure did follow. I liked it so much that I watched another episode titled Arcade that was also fun. Basically the main character is addicted to an arcade game and it costs him sleep. We’ve all been there. I now have a major crush on Maura Tierney and I miss Phil Hartman even more than I already did.

“Lovin’ is what I got. I said remember that.” - Sublime, 1996

Let’s get weird. While watching any of these older television shows or cartoons, I am constantly looking up the actors and actresses, directors, producers, and anyone else involved to see what they have done since. Are they dead? Are they alive? Weren’t they in a legal controversy or several? Ah yes, Andy Dick, I remember now. Well, in some rabbit hole I was digging down into I was diverted to porn. It had nothing to do with Andy Dick. I think it all started with Michael Douglas, which is how it always starts for me. I was curious what year Con-Air came out so I looked it up. It came out in 1997 and I spied Michael Douglas’ name in the credits and forgot he was in that, so I dug (Douglas’d?) deeper and in his filmography I see Basic Instinct there from 1992. If I think about that movie for more than a second, I remember Sharon Stone’s, uh, well… I think of Sharon Stone. And then I immediately decided I should look up porn from 1996. Natural progression. It was unfortunately pretty late on a work night so I didn’t spend as much time on it as I would have liked, trust me, but what I did find was french and those guys can really sling it. I was also correct in assuming it would be different from modern adult films. The music is more prominent and stereotypical, the hair is crazier, and there’s always bad acting through a needless premise. Am I ashamed it took me less than one day in 1996 to go there? No way. I’m surprised I waited until this month long project to look, to be honest. I then cleared my bedtime brain with some cartoons before bed.

The rest of today is going to be a lot more music and it has already started on a fun note. I’m hearing a ton of R.E.M.’s album New Adventures in Hi-Fi as well as Weezer’s Pinkerton. This pairing has made for an interesting mix of upbeat and somber that is oddly stabilizing on a day where I woke up in 2021 to find my coffee maker, electric tea kettle, microwave, and relatively new air fryer all dead. Once again, 1996 is proving to be much better than 2021.