I don't h8 the 90's anymore (Part 9).

• Part 1 (Cartoons)
• Part 2 (Movies part 1)
• Part 3 (Movies part 2)
• Part 4 (Regular-ass TV)
• Part 5 (Cable TV)
• Part 5.5 (Cable TV leftovers)
• Part 6 (Novels)
• Part 7 (Magazines/Comics)
• Part 8 (Music/Games/Internet)

So, all of the above is the media I was consuming.
Now, what I was getting up to as a person in the world.
Bear in mind, I'm a nerd, not a treasure hunter, or ballooninst, or fireman, so my "adventures", are all cerebral and epicurean.


Florida trip (1990)

Disneyworld.

Saw all the usual stuff.
Haunted Mansion, Mission To Mars, Peter Pan (this time, with no "help me Smee!", glitch).

Couldn't get anywhere near Space Mountain.

"Little Mermaid", had just come out, and Disney had just bought The Muppets, so Bob from "Sesame Street", was there singing Little Mermaid songs over and over.

Oh, yeah, Mission To Mars was already falling apart, and unattended, and assholes kept walking right in in the middle, and destroying the illusion, and no one seemed to care, so it doesn't surprise me at all to see on Wikipedia they closed it down in 1992.


Epcot.

Magical Kingdom is good for kids, but if you're a preteen to adult, Epcot is totally where you want to go.

I have it packed away somewhere, the only souvenir I kept from it was this creepy comic book paid for by Shell, or Exxon, or somebody, where Mickey sucks the oil industry's cock for 20 pages.
I mean, not literally, but y'know.
Still, pretty creepy to see a childhood mascot spout corporate propaganda.
And not like Mickey, either, he sounds like an oil executive.
Like an oil industry PR man is wearing Mickey's skin like a suit.
That's pretty funny in hindsight, I guess.

I went to Body Wars, and all the 3-D movie things where you just stand around.
Captain EO, saw that.
Pretty sure that's not a thing anymore.


MGM/Disney Hollywood Studios

At least, that's what it was called at the time.
This was pretty bland, they didn't have much.

Best thing was Star Tours, but once you saw it, you saw it.

There was a movies ride that had animatronic scenes from old movies, and the most modern one was Aliens, and a Xenomorph dropped down from the ceiling as you went by.
Meh, that was all right.

Then there was an Indiana Jones live stunt show with explosions and flame plumes.
That was all right too.

There was probably other stuff, but the lines were too long for anything really good.
That applies to all three parks, really.

I hear they're gonna gut large chunks of this to get Star Wars Land in.
Fine by me.

Oh, yeah, I saw Greg Evigan walk by.
Local Orlando news is owned by Disney.
Like, not directly, but Florida knows who brings in their tourist dollars, so they play ball.
So, they tell you in a special segment what rides are broken, what has long lines, what celebrities are there to look out for, all that stuff.
So, I saw to be on the lookout for Greg Evigan, and I saw him.
He had the "My Two Dads", beard, and the mullet.
It was him.

I didn't say anything.
Didn't want to be rude, or find out it wasn't him, and make an asshole of myself.
Upon reflection, it was him though.


Universal Studios Orlando.

Best thing was the Ghostbusters Spooktacular.
Click the link for the video history of it.

Everything was broken, didn't get to see E.T., didn't get to see Jaws, didn't get to see King Kong.

Oh yeah, that lame Hanna Barbara ride worked.
You just watched a 3-D cartoon while being jerked around in your seat like Body Wars, and Star Tours.
Except not as good as either of those.

Since everything was broken or lame, dad got our money back.
Good.
Fuck that place.
In the ass.
With fire.


Flea World (1981-2016)

It was a giant flea market the size of a mall.
They had lunch wagons, fruit stands, barbecue pits, barbers, ear piercers, tattoo parlors, pets, everything.
Think they even had a fuckin' dentist!
Y'know, maybe I'm exposing my white trash-ness, but I think this was my favorite thing.
Even more than fucking Disney.
Yeah...it was.
Best fucking part.
(Fuck it, I'm making that the graphic)

Found the VHS of Toxic Avenger there.

Bought Hulk #372 there.

Fuckin Disney didn't have comics and Troma.

Flea World wins, bitch.

Sadly, I can never go back.
They don't exist anymore.
I looked it up, and they were bought out by developers in 2015, and demolished in 2016.
Fuck!!
Bastids!!


Overall Florida memories/observations/impressions.

Don't go in summer.
Went in summer in '81 and '90, and it was Hell.
Scorching heat, even your sweat dries up.
It gushes rain, dries right up, and then rains right back down again.
You can SEE it dry.
You can stand right there, and watch a soaked sidewalk turn dry, like the rain never happened.
Air conditioners everywhere strain, and barely keep up.
Only Disney's air conditioners are perpetually freon charged properly, because they're rich.
I guzzled soda like crazy, and I don't remember ever peeing.

What I already said above about the news being effectively owned by Disney.
Plus...boy, lotta murders in Florida.
Maine, we get a murder every fourth month or so, and it's always some asshole taking out his wife over some domestic thing, or killing his kids to hurt the wife because he got fucked hard in the divorce.
Florida, every day, a bloody sidewalk stain where some gang shit went down.

-Bart Simpson was everywhere, because Simpsons didn't suck yet.
-There were fireworks shows every night at Disney that you could see from miles around.
-Fireworks stands were all down the highways all down south to Florida
-The water was sulpher-y. Possibly due to all the fireworks activity.
-Except in Disney, where they had filtering.
-There was a very clear delineation of where the sleazy porn-y parts of town were.
-There was a comic shop near our hotel that I didn't get to check out.

There was a creepy anti Dungeons & Dragons infomercial on the hotel TV.
The Satanic Panic was still going on.
Go to Youtube, and look up "Satanic Panic", it's fucked up shit, and none of it was real.
All the child sex abuse that Christians were making up to scare the shit out of you, WAS SHIT CHRISTIANS WERE DOING!!!!

I can't find the exact one I saw at Florida on Youtube.
Mine had a black dude.
All the Youtube ones have white dudes.
Geraldo was in on that bullshit too.
God, Geraldo fucking sucks.
Fucker ought to be in jail.
Next to Harvey Weinstein.


"Zap Pow Crash", class (1994)

Eh...it was fun, but it was basically paying to sit around, and shoot the shit about comics.

Taught by the guy who made "Scrap City Packrats".
Wonder if that's still a thing.
*Googles*
Nope.


Zone Dweebies (1993-1994)

Story here, cartoons here.

Wrote that during the time I was working at Unum.


Nova Scotia trip (1995)

Went there aboard the Bluenose.
Almost barfed myself inside-out from seasickness.

Worth it.
Canadians are 1000 times nicer than Americans.
A heavy oppressive psychic wave of evil fell back over me once we made it back to the states.
You don't notice it until you're free of it for a week.
God, I hate it here.

I discovered a weird thing you'd never expect.
Japanese people love "Anne Of Green Gables".
We went to the Anne Of Green Gables museum, and it was swarming with Japanese tourists.
Turns out, they had an anime of it over there that a lot of them cherish from childhood.
Neat.

Bought a tape of Canadian hits from the 80's to listen to in the car.
This one in particular burnt into my head.
Tokyo Rose by Idle Eyes.

It popped into my head that it sounded like the kind of song they'd play on Knight Rider.
Sonovabitch, I later saw a Knight Rider rerun, and it had fucking Tokyo Rose!!
I dunno if that was just dumb luck, or if I'd seen it before, and subliminally remembered it.

They've got better chip flavors up there.
Roast chicken was awesome.
It tasted like stuffing spice, and chicken grease.
*Drool*
They also had a gravy flavor.
Mix the gravy with the chicken, and holy fuckballs!
*Drool, gurgle, splash*

They also had plain doodles.
Y'know cheese doodles, right?
Now imagine without cheese.
They're like...buttered popcorn without the hulls.
Awesome.

They also have a jillion flavors of Crush.
Blueberry, lime, pineapple, fruit punch, grape, cherry, strawberry, and the standard orange.
That's just the ones I can remember.

Lotta cute girls.
*Sigh*

Oh, saw the Oak Island Money Pit.
The story behind that is hilarious levels of bullshit.
Read the Wikipedia page, or listen to this podcast.

Saw the Marconi museum.
Y'know, the guy who stole radio from Tesla.
Still a cool museum though.

Saw the Alexander Graham Bell museum.
Y'know, the guy who stole the phone from Elisha Grey.
Still a cool museum though.

Yeah, looking back on it, that trip enlightened me to what a shit-pile of a state in a shit-pile of a country I'm stuck in.
It gave me a clarifying and freeing "it's not me, it was always them", feeling.
I'm thankful for that.
It was the start of climbing up out of my depression.

Thank you, Nova Scotia.
THANK YOU.


Nicely's Video (1987-2005)

See here.

Also, see the candy dish entries on The Kindred, and 4-D Man.


Shady Dave's (1987-1995)

See here.

We started going in 87, Florida trip was 90, Nova Scotia trip picked up right after it died in '95 for something new to do.

I reconstructed the timeline by what comics/novels were out.
First trip, Swamp Thing #57 where he's a red cactus Swamp Thing (Desert Thing!) was out, so that nails it to '87.

I got "Death Of Superman", and "Knightfall", out of there along the way, so that gets it up to 93-94.

We still went to Weathervane and Bookland in Kittery even after Shady Dave's died for awhile, and I remember getting "Children Of The Jedi", and "Darksaber", from the Bookland.
Those are 1995.
I started collecting "Dark Lords Of The Sith", at Shady Dave's, but they wrapped up in 1995, and I didn't get the last issue there.

"Shadows Of The Empire", was a thing in 1996, and we definitely weren't making the Kittery trip anymore by then.

So, 1995 must have been the very last time we went where it was torn down.

Couldn't tell you when they were established.
They're erased from history.
Someone somewhere must have flyers or something in a scrapbook, but none of it's online.


Weathervane (1987-2014-15?)

See here again.

They grew into a whole huge chain across Maine and New Hampshire, and they were always packed, always did a good business, and then they mysteriously closed down all their locations but Kittery, and New Hampshire.
Some crooked manager must have made off with all the money, and gone to Thailand to fuck boys.
It's always something like that.

After we stopped going to Kittery, we still had the Portland one out by the Maine Mall.
Not anymore.
End of an era.

Talked a little bit about it going away here.


Movies Unlimited (1995-1998)

See here.

Yeah, it was a small window before I started Amazon-ing instead.
Turns out, it picked right up after Shady Dave's died.


Borders (1995-2011)

See here.

The other thing that picked up for Shady Dave's in '95.

I know they started in '95, because they weren't there when I graduated in '93, and the first book I remember getting out of there was "Aeon Flux: The Herodotus File", which was '95.
Also got "Miss America", out of there which was '95.
So, they were being built in '94.
Yeah, that works out about right.


Bookland (198?-2000)

See here.

Five years after Borders moves in, dead.
End of another era.
Although, they kind of still exist as Nonesuch Books.


Schwan man (1990-1993) 

Covered this before here.

Finally reconstructed the timeline.
See above.

Neat factoid, they own Red Baron, Frescetta, and Tony's.


Stuff with no clear years....

Home Vision Video

See here.


Casablanca Comics

Briefly mentioned here.

Got Mask, Mask Returns, and a shitload of Star Wars out of there.


Saturday Matinee

Moped about it being gone here.

Got Tenchi tapes, and the cassette of the Heavy Metal soundtrack out of there.


Discontinued (and not) foods from the 90's

Talked about these in Thanksgiving Three.

Links...
90's Twix/PB Max
Chef Wich
Citra and Citrus Frost

External links...
A tribute to discontinued cereals.
A tribute to fallen sodas.

...and, that's the end!
Hooray!!!

Next time, we're going full circle back to cartoons!!