Day 13: Bio-Dome, Weird Al, Goosebumps, and Disposable Cameras
Beavis & Butthead are Tesla and Edison by comparison.
Last night I watched Bio-Dome with my internet friends and I should have regrets but I don’t. A bad movie is always better among friends and I’ve sought out worse movies in the past for this purpose. Is it more fun to watch Schindler’s List by yourself or Birdemic with a group of friends? Admittedly, I seek alone time more than most folks despite appearing pro-socialization, but when it comes to movies and my attention span, it’s always better if people are around to keep me focused. Watching Bio Dome last night was one of those times. I watched that movie close to when it came out in 1996 and while I didn’t remember much of it during last night’s rewatch, I probably liked it then. I was a dumb kid that laughed at everything. I still laugh a lot but I thankfully grew out of Bio Dome. I had a hard time believing that the co-lead was Stephen Baldwin. Pauly Shore is way more intolerable than I remembered. And the movie’s entire premise was beyond terrible, as one might expect with one quick glance at the title and then back down at the cast. Plus, it’s worth mentioning perhaps, that some scenes did not age well past the #MeToo movement. The soundtrack was fun though!
The Eels - Novocaine for the Soul
After movie night, we settled in for a second round of 1996 music videos and that was once again another highlight of the “year”. Soundgarden’s Blow Up The Outside World, En Vogue’s Don’t Go, Garbage’s Stupid Girl, The Presidents of the USA’s Peaches, and Weird Al’s Amish Paradise were all highlights for me. I started to notice after some time that a lot of music videos are just of bands playing in the street somewhere. Just outside, in a place where bands don’t belong, playing music to no visible audience. That’s not unique to 1996 really but it was a hallmark of the 90’s. How do you make a video on a small budget? Just set up somewhere nearby, play the song, record it, then have someone who promises to know their way around a clipart library make all the stock images flash on the screen too fast for the viewer to process. It’s as if music videos wanted to appear subliminally effective but really amounted to freshly graduated film students experimenting with their new software.
FOOL
Weird Al. I love Weird Al. The summer of 1996, between fifth and sixth grade, I was invited to some local summer bored kid camp bullshit that my mom thought would be great for me to go to since it meant I wouldn’t be able to interrupt Maury Povich for a couple of weeks. I just remember solving puzzles, making crafts that involved way too much glue, and being forced to socialize with other kids. I hated it. Worst of all, they made us meet in the kindergarten wing of the school and all of the tables and chairs were too small for us larger, pre-middle school children. Especially too small for a chubby little dynamo like myself. I did make a friend there though.
“What’s it gonna be ‘cause I can’t pretend?
Don’t you wanna be more than friends?
Hold me tight and don’t let go (don’t let go)
You have the right to lose control (don’t let go)”
His name was Justin and it turned out he lived not far from me and his mom volunteered to give me a ride home every day after the program. In the tape deck of their van was a strange sounding, fast singing, high pitched voice that sang clever lyrics over familiar tunes. “You like Weird Al?” he asked. “Weird who?” I said. His mom also chided me, “You don’t know Weird Al?” No, sorry. I was born in 1985 but mostly raised in the 70’s, enlighten me. He let me borrow the tape and my mind was blown with songs like Gump, Amish Paradise, The Night Santa Went Crazy, Callin’ In Sick, and Since You’ve Been Gone. I had always replaced lyrics in the songs I got bored humming along to (as you do) and discovering Weird Al, perhaps later than most but discovered as a tween nonetheless, left an indelible impression on me for a brand of humor that holds firm for me to this day. As a little shit among close friends, I freely took the easy road to laughs by replacing lyrics to songs with the nastiest words my 11 year old brain could summon. Weird Al made it clear that placing intellectual effort into being clever instead of relying on the foul provided more rewarding laughs from a crowd. If you just so happen to mix the two, you might get even harder laughs but of course Weird Al would never go too far down that road. I think The Night Santa Went Crazy is as dark as I’ve heard him go, or maybe a few lines of Jerry Springer on 1999’s Running with Scissors. I’ll never be as clever as Weird Al but that hasn’t stopped me from tabbing him as someone who shaped who I am today, as silly as that may sound.
RL Stine’s Goosebumps books were all the rage back in this era and slightly before. 1996 was near the tail end of the franchise but that was about the time I was finally able to get my hands on some of these tween-spookers. The alluring covers adorning the distinctly early-to-mid 90’s art style still draw me in still to this day. The books were addictive reading for youngsters as each chapter ended on an enticing little cliff-hanger. I don’t ever remember being creeped out by the stories but I was definitely interested in reading them, something other books didn’t have going for them with me at the time.Thankfully, my nostalgia won me over a few years ago and I started collecting the Goosebumps books when I could find them. They’re easy to spot and usually go for $0.50 apiece, why not?
I revisited a 1996 book in the series this morning, Say Cheese and Die - Again!, a sequel. My favorite parts of the books I’ve read or the movies and television I’ve watched from this year are the dated and outdated technologies and concepts. One of the very charming elements of Say Cheese and Die-Again so far is something we’re all too familiar with - cameras! In an early part of the story, the main character describes the camera as a Polaroid type that spits out the physical picture as soon as you snap it. Hipsters have the corner on that technology now and it remains popular in some circles, and I still think Polaroids are cool, but in this story the character needs to see the picture immediately to know whether it’s cursed. Stine had no other options. There were no ubiquitous cameras he could reference that allowed you to see the picture you just took on a screen after you took it so Polaroid was the best option for the kid-friendly plot. The second quickest method to seeing the picture you had just taken involved getting a cheap, disposable camera, or as described in this story at one point, “one of the cheap, yellow cameras you can throw away”, and take it to a local kiosk or visit a photo development store. Hardly anything in this paragraph still exists, at least, not in the way it did in 1996.
In early 1996, when I was wrapping up fifth grade, our class took a trip to colonial Williamsburg, Virginia and I was unleashed with a disposable camera so I could cement my memories of that trip forever. I have no idea where any of those pictures went or if they were ever developed. I just remember snapping a picture, rolling my thumb across the clicking dial until it stopped, and then looking through the tiny, clear plastic window to see how many pictures I had left. When you got to the end of the roll, you were never sure if you had one more left or no more left as the counter rested perfectly between the two numbers. The last few pictures were always a gamble. You want to make sure you don’t blow it on something dumb like you THOUGHT you saw Nolan Ryan at a rest stop somewhere off a rural stretch of interstate outside of Charlottesville. It wasn’t Nolan Ryan and that man lectured me on privacy in front of several classmates. I always thought that was something Nolan Ryan would do too so I remain unconvinced. I should find that roll of film.
“What a fun looking movie! Is this about how the B52’s met?”
As I write this I am rewatching Trainspotting for some reason. A difficult movie to endure, for sure. Powerful in many ways and a snapshot in time, whether accurate or not I have no idea, that tells of an underground society, presumably pervasive still, that I have thankfully never been exposed to. If you haven’t seen it, I don’t recommend it for the faint of heart. There are scenes and moments that may never leave your brain. I watched it for the first time in college and I’ve morphed a hundred shades since then but I’m happy to report this movie still fucks with me. I may have more respect for it now and I’ll happily never watch it again.
In May of 1996, Clinton’s lawyers ask court to delay proceedings on his sexual harassment suit until he leaves office. A headline comes across as written by an older person posting on Facebook with “New Nintendo Game Faces Internet Challengers”. What they really mean is the N64 cannot connect to the internet like the PC can. Here is an excerpt at the beginning of the article that I found particularly interesting to read:
Nintendo of America, the longtime leader in the video-game market, gave its first United States preview today of its flashy next-generation game machine, which it is hoping will revitalize the slowing video game industry this Christmas.
But the new Nintendo machine, which will be more than a year behind schedule when it reaches the market in September, may be arriving at a time when much of the action is heading away from stand-alone video devices and toward PC games played by groups of contestants over computer networks.
On June 3, 1996, some young Stanford golfer with a weird name, Tiger, has elected to stay in college another year and delay turning pro.
