Day 1: Blizzards, Airplanes, and Blowfish
Hello from 1996. Those of you that had been holding your breath for me, I am happy to report that I landed safely this morning in a different time. I have entered the tacky-colored and excessively baggy day one of my month-long endeavor of only soaking in 1996 entertainment and media. I have officially left 2021 behind and will not be deliberately watching, playing, reading, or consuming anything aside from food that wasn’t released in the year 1996. There was no build up, celebration, ritual, or moment of goodbye from last night to now. I simply closed my eyes in 2021 and woke up in hybrid-1996, but I woke up extremely excited. I’m going to summarize the 1996 I have soaked into my brain so far and what I plan to dabble in later tonight.
“How do you want it? How does it feel?” - Tupac Shakur, 1996
Good questions, Pac. I want it to be weird. I want to be moved and transported psychically to another time and another place. I want it to be an escape through time via forced nostalgia as if left in a sensory deprivation chamber and intermittently shocked through skull mounted electrodes with drip fed news updates from Kurt Loder. So far, however, it feels no different. As of mid-afternoon I have successfully listened to approximately three hours of nothing but 1996 music and aside from the saturation of ballads that flooded the mainstream back in the day, this has hardly strayed from my usual listening habits. Spritzed between nauseating efforts by Hootie and the Blowfish to “hold my hand” or Mariah Carey’s incessant ploys to make me “always be her baby” (I would kindly oblige), I’m still getting plenty of Metallica’s Load, Tool’s Ænima, and Soundgarden’s Down on the Upside to name a few of the albums of the time I’m fond of. I’ll dodge the in-depth discussion of how those albums rank within the catalogues of those individual bands but I’ll just say I’m not a hater of any of those albums. Call me basic, but call Collect. It’s 1996.
In an odd juxtaposition, I had a difficult time convincing my Google Home device to play the 1996 Spotify playlist I had created for myself. If I were extremely on-board with this idea, I would have recorded a bunch of cassette tapes to listen to but at the same time, the reason this endeavor is even as possible as it is, is because the amenities of modern life make it easy to do. Screaming “Hey Google! Play my 1996 playlist on Spotify” and getting “Yes. Playing Randy Travis on Spotify” was frustrating and not likely an issue anyone faced 25 years ago. Typically, you just slapped the CD or cassette into the thing and hit play and you were rarely caught off guard by your boombox or stereo giving you sass. In this case, 2021 was a bit more of a hassle than 1996 but only slightly.
I checked out the news this morning and January of 1996 was very storm conscious and not too far removed from today’s 2021 news, though not quite worthy of the blizzard title, we are enjoying a rare six inches of white powder stacked up outside. In 1996, there was a legitimately brutal blizzard blowing through the eastern US that swept up the news cycle for nearly ten days. In one story they said that a zoo in Washington, D.C. couldn’t even let the panda bear outside because of extremely brutal temperatures. That poor panda bear! I just looked it up and they only live 15 to 20 years on average but can live up to 30 years with human care so there is a chance it still lives! Highly doubtful, though. Don’t get your hopes up. In fact, I just did a little more research and that particular panda from 1996 is one-hundred percent dead now. I’m sorry I brought it up.
There are montages of news clips with icy wrecks, homeless people seeking refuge, and non-homeless people getting around city streets on skis like a bunch of assholes. I barely remember this particular blizzard as the one from 1993 in Virginia, where I’m from, was more memorable for me despite me being much younger but I do recall an extended stay home from school during 5th grade. This particular weather event is being referred to as the Great Blizzard of ‘96 and not much has changed in our reactions to those things since then. People are complaining of no milk or bread available at supermarkets, planes are grounded, and public transit is restricted. Here is a video to a news reel compilation of the blizzard.
I have also started a pair of books from 1996. Michael Crichton’s Airframe and Alex Garland’s The Beach, which later became a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio that I haven’t seen. These two books were chosen based on their availability and my lack of familiarity with each author. I know most of Crichton’s works have been turned into film (Jurassic Park, Congo) but Airframe hasn’t been and I figured it would be a book written about the mid-90’s that would allow me to soak more in the context of the time. So far, I’m not wrong. It’s a story about a really strange event that takes place on an international flight and so far it is setting the stage for a quite engaging mystery, though Crichton tends to get overly technical about jetliners to prove he’s done his research.
Aside from the story, it’s already extremely interesting to get an in-depth perspective on the airline industry pre-9-11. There is expectedly no mention of the TSA, air marshals, or any other airport securities we’ve become used to over the last twenty years. I never took a flight before the year 2008, so I never grew accustomed to the security-lax days of yore.
Cell phones are referenced a lot but they are purely regarded as a business person’s device and a sign of status. Driving a fancy BMW and wearing sunglasses while toting a black briefcase is declared the universal status symbol for “business person” and Crichton plays that up here to the 10th degree in what I consider to be typical 90’s fashion. As for The Beach, it is largely removed from a lifestyle you could compare to that of a conventional 90’s American, as it takes place in or around Bangkok. But the protagonist does make a reference to playing his Atari and wiping out space invaders which was obsolete even by 1996’s standards. Perhaps it was still popular in Asia or the author just went for a universal reference as Space Invaders is quite ubiquitous.
On the docket for tonight is to start Quake, a video game I completely whiffed on over the years. I am actually quite excited to jump into that and soak in all of the post-Doom ID and Nine Inch Nails soundtrack goodness. Expect an update on that tomorrow!
This weekend, on Saturday, February 6th, I’m planning to watch Super Bowl XXX from January of 1996 between the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers. I was a huge Cowboys fan growing up but could care less about the NFL now. My brother was always a Steelers fan, and I remember that match-up being a good time for ribbing each other. I’m excited to see Kordell Stuart, Jerome Bettis, Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Emmitt Smith, and Deon Sanders get wild. And perhaps more than anything, I am excited for some Super Bowl commercials from an era I thought they were actually good! I miss the Budweiser frogs, believe it or not. I hope they were still doing their thang in 1996.
Talk to you tomorrow.
