I Love The 90's predictions...

Not 1997. I remember them at university, which makes them 1994 at the latest.

The only Magic Eye picture I could ever get to work was the one Select gave away free. It was an amazing 3-D rendition of the word SELECT.

I think the war on drugs would have gone a lot better if they'd done posters saying "Kids - Drugs Are As Shit As THIS" and shown a magic eye picture of a dolphin with a grey alien head leaping over a marijuana leaf.

Oh yeah, I think you are probably right Nick, damn my poor memory.

Speaking of rubbish predictions: I don't go out on the LUSENET hull any more, for fear of who I'll meet, but last time I checked the MOST ACTIVE BOARDS, or whatever it's called, the Y2K one was the easy winner. Erm, has anyone any idea what there still is to say?

"Combat trousers, eh? What were we on?" - As no doubt to be said by fat unfunny northerner Peter Kay.

I never did see any Magic Eye pictures, I'm like that guy in Mallrats. Anyway, other predictions please?

Mark - there was an article about this in G2 a bit ago. They of course have a conspiracy theory saying that the Y2K bug not only DID happen but still IS happening and that it's all being covered up.

Or they're all talking about who should cop off with who and whether the Strokes are any good.

My guess is that ILE possibly has the fastest growth rate of any Lusenet board, currently.

The whole of hardcore reduced to a snippet Kate Thornton sniggering about Sesame's Treet.

Bugger. Insert an 'of' between 'snippet' and 'Kate'.

Baggy, Britpop, Bryan Adams and however many weeks he was at number one, Sunny Delight, the 1997 general election, the Simpsons, the fall of the Berlin Wall (soundtracked by the Scorpions), gourmet crisps, Teletubbies, fly on the wall documentaries, cookery programmes, DIY/decorating programmes, mobile phones, the internet, "trendy female fiction", Harry Potter, Ecstasy, Lorraine Bobbit, Up Yours Delors.

I think the Madchen's on the money.

Thank you, the Pinefox. I'm on a roll so, sticking with 1990 seeing as that's this weekend, I say Nelson Mandela's release from prison, the World Cup (soundtracked by New Order) and bye bye Mrs Thatcher. Possibly also the ghastly habit of sticking any two-bit rapper on a single, for example Twenty 4 Seven feat. Captain Hollywood.

Tamagotchis, Furbies, Yoyos, Pokemon, Titanic, Jurassic Park, The Lottery/Mystic Meg, Ibiza...

Power Rangers! (thanks for your answers everyone)

Andrew Collins was on Radio 5 today complaining about not being asked back to be on the 90s remember-a-thon.

This all means we'll have to go through the whole Blur Vs Oasis thing again. And I bet they show that clip of Boyzone on the Late, Late Show. One. More. Time.

And Portillo losing his seat in '97. So it won't be all bad.

Have Pogs been mentioned yet?

Take That splitting up. Diana. Oasis at Knebworth. The infamous 'river of fire'.

Blue Peter Tracey Island. Euro 96.

Anyone see that programme about penalty shootouts? Fuck me, that was shit. That load of posh twats watching it and then talking about it now - "Yuh, it was the only thing in our lives apart from the royal wedding and Diana's death that brought us all together. It was absolutely vital stuff." - and then the pictures of them all going "Ah, Alan Shearer, you are a God. Come on Southgate-o, et fucking cetera." Obviously serious serious football fans that knew their stuff.

I've just seen the trailer (muted), and as far as I can tell it's entirely about Oasis. A flash of Thatcher and Gazza, something about "Generation X" and loads and loads and loads of pictures of Noel Gallagher. Huh?

'That clip of Boyzone' -- for those of us in the States, er?

Ned: Boyzone appeared pre-fame (1993?) on The Late Late Show, wearing very gay sub-Village People costumes. "Classic" dialog:

Host: So one of you plays an instrument?"
BZ: No
Host: But you cansing?
No.
Alright, can you dance?
Not really
Host: You can't sing, can't dance and no one plays an instrument. Good luck to you. (Or some other "if only he had known then..." type dismissal)

They then proceed to dance very badly to a rubbish backing track.

First time amusing, but gets very dull very quickly.

Plenty of people denying they ever owned a copy of '(What's The Story) Morning Glory?', which will now be proved (by science) to be the WORST album ever.
Noel Gallagher saying 'fook' a lot.
The rise of the fat unfunny northern comedian.
More scientific proof of Take That being the brainchild of Robbie Williams, in some horrendous 1984-style revision.

supermodels.

i feel depressed now

DG, what's your beef with fat unfunny Northern comedians?

But Madchen, Berlin Wall=1987 shurely?

If they did this in 10 years time it would be funnier. We could be snootier about it then and it wouldn't cut quite so close to home. Ironic retro-cool in 10 years time? Piercings, 'Celtic' tattoos, Marilyn Manson, combats, Cypress Hill, brushed-forward haircuts (boys), J. Aniston haircuts (girls), big trousers (both). (cf. Onion article: Department of Retro Says "We Are Running Out Of Past").

However, Adidas tracksuits will NEVER be cool, ironically or not.

11th-12th November 1989. Sorry. I was listening to the radio yesterday morning in the twilight between sleep and work and I could have sworn they were talking about the 10th anniversary of the wall coming down. Maybe they were looking back to 1999 or summat. Or maybe I was dreaming.

River of fire took place, or didn't take place, in 2000. We have to wait for the I Love the Noughties.

I reckon they should do another series of the Rock'N'Roll years - similar year themed, bugger we have run out of years concept.

The lovely thing about the eighties and seventies programmes was that they were able to use the "cor, I'd forgotten about those, haha!" factor. I'm not sure how easy that'll be with the nineties. Products that were very in ten or so years ago are still on sale now, TV programmes are still being repeated (more so on cable) and it's just TOO RECENT, darnit.

I don't like fat unfunny northern comedians because they're not funny and think they are. "Space hoppers, eh? What were we thinking?" *SMIRK*

Rather a fat, unfunny, Northern comedian like Peter Kay than a fat, unfunny, Southern comedian like, erm, John Maloney.

Hey, am I defending southern comedians? No. It's just that fat northern comedians associated with retro programs spring to mind more readily than southern ones.

What he is thinking:

"'Timelord' was a great record, wasn't it? All those songs about time travel and redemption and space exploration and struggling for impossible love. Wonderful music."

What this might be translated into were he to risk destroying his entire "new career" with one sentence:

"'Timelord', eh? Foony little songs about space travel and stoof but noothing to do wi' Doctor 'Oo. I mean, what was all *that* about? 1993, eh? Eh?"

What he will in fact say, unless it is even less inspired:

"That Oorban 'Ipe record, that were great, it's foony 'ow we were all taking Es and just wanted to act like we were 5. 1992, eh? What *were* we thinking?"

What he will think to himself, 20 more years gone by:

"What was *I* thinking? I knew about and loved music and culture, was aware of its diversity, knew that you couldn't reduce an entire era to a fascistically and oppressively narrow veritable smorgasbord - sorry, I can't unlearn that phrase - of mainstream pop-cultural references as though there was nothing else around. What was *I* thinking? Eh? Eh? Damn myself and everything I bought into!"

He will take the cash, and that Kingston-upon-Thames villa will grow ever greater and more luxurious. The vinyl of "The Poison Boyfriend" will mould, and will end up on a rubbish tip. As an old man, he will wish he still had it around. But he knew why he could no longer reach for it. He had thrown it away in his late 30s because he couldn't say that it was "pure 1987" in the "mainstream" sense of the time, and there was nothing in it that could seem "funny in a dated sort of way". It was, strangely, its creator's least ironic work. Later, the creator would become the true modern master of irony. But this was an informed and intelligent and knowledgeable irony, one not afraid of globalism and long words and interesting ideas and one not inaccessible to those who had never lived in a terraced house in Wigan (or Upminster, or Kingswood, or Sunderland, or Dudley). It was not a narrow, backward irony afraid of thoughts, or ever taking anything seriously, or taking a distanced, objective view, or embracing any really exciting new music. Once equally non-ironic, the creator and the critic had defined for themselves totally different forms of irony: the creator expounded and passionately believed in an irony living in and unafraid of and celebrating the modern world itself, while the critic had retreated into a self- destroying, inward-looking irony, endlessly regurgitating its own private, false, untrue cultural mythology, afraid of all that surrounded it, eventually to chase its tail round once too often and destroy itself.

The old man woke with a start. He thought he'd got back what he wished for after the years of betrayal, but it was not to be. His vinyl copy of "The Poison Boyfriend" had still not returned, and the massive cardboard cutout of Rick Astley got ever greater, ever more overwhelming.

The old man died in a house fire after the Astley cut out went up in flames. Virtually nothing survived apart from a note he had left saying that he hated Alvin Stardust without reservation and desperately wished he could hear "Three Wars" once more before he died. The chance would never come. Nostalgia, in the end, had claimed another casualty.

("In the end it's not the future but the past that'll get us" - Disco Inferno, 1993)

Maconie should read that. good post

He knows who I am (emailed me once to take exception to comments I'd made on a mailing list where he'd been lurking: I genuinely meant to reply but never got round to it). We'll see.