As a species, humans have fomented all manner of tragedy and frivolous blunder in the world around us. The inquisitive demeanor that has allowed us to progress to the nearly incomprehensible level of sophistication and convenience that we enjoy also seems to have doomed us to stick our curious fingers in every dirty hole we can find in the name of exploration. Like that monkey on Youtube that pees into his own mouth. And as we charge into what promises to be a tumultuous century it sometimes feels like we’re set to keep making the same thoughtless mistakes again and again, unable to resist the temptation to rehash any idiotic frivolity we can think of, just to make sure we’ve done it to death and flogged it for measure.
Yes, the return of the smoggy warmth of summer has exposed the re-emergence of one of our greatest failings as an intelligent race – the fanny pack. And that’s not all. The misguided emulation of numerous ill-advised 90’s trends is running rampant amongst the youth of our city. This doesn’t just stop at the baffling persistence of mesh-back foamers and camo shorts. No. This thing runs deep. As more and more university students decide it’s a good idea to ironically cultivate a mullet and wear big plastic chains around their necks, more and more of the poor souls who rock these lamentable steez in earnest feel justified in their heinous get-ups. Shoe-corporation t-shirts have never been baggier and jeans’ cuts have never featured lower rises.
I’m not just talking about ugly clothes here, either. What’s the difference between DJ Bubkiss still playing House of Pain on the late-night hits-mix radio that the taxi-drivers and falafel guys always seem to be listening to and some hype, young upstart rocking a ‘Jump Around’ mashup to a crowd of fanny pack-toting CEGEP students? At which point do things become little more than low-budget imitations of the trash they would ironically reference?
You know, there was a reason everybody got scared that the turn of the millennium would cause some nebulous technological disaster and lead to the early release of prisoners and disruption of the food supply. There was a reason film directors became preoccupied with producing visions of a world on the brink of Armageddon in the late nineties, whether it be by meteor or volcano or alien invasion. That reason was The Backstreet Boys. That reason was Limp Bizkit. That reason was the fanny pack. We’d lost all hope and when the millennium finally came and we didn’t get punished for the dreary culture of the nineties, we wanted to turn a new leaf.
But no – now the kids want their own bite of the crap sandwich we got served in the last decade. Well, I for one won’t stand for it. I urge parents to remind their children just how obnoxious grunge was to live through and just how inane and repetitive trance music really was. Friends don’t let friends do Ketamine and friends don’t let friends listen to Ace of Bass. I urge every man, woman and child in this city to stand up and say “No!” to nineties retro.
Little too much coffee... jack.oatmon@gmail.com
