English Topics - Cool In The 90's

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.