CC: Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY)
Senate President Kamala Harris (D)
Budget Chairman Bernard Sanders (I-VT)
President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Minority Leader Mitchell McConnell (R-KY)
To The Honorable Sirs And The Honorable Madam,
I am here today to ask you, for the good of our children and our neighbors, to recognize that the 1990s, against all odds and against all reason, have returned.
Now, I have no hard data to prove that this is true, but I did graduate (in 1998!) with one sociology credit to my name. So I am well-versed in the collective, socialized, unconscious drift of human beings. Also, I am a professional columnist for a prestigious media outlet who is in possession of anecdotal evidence of this trend, which more than qualifies me to consecrate my observations as an official widespread cultural phenomenon. I have a 15-year-old daughter who’s currently into shoegaze. And not even well-known shoegaze. She likes Slowdive. NEED I SAY MORE?
Well, guess what? FUCK IT. I’m gonna say more anyway. Perhaps you’ve been too busy negotiating infrastructure packages and managing our way out of the pandemic to see what’s happening on the ground with your constituents. Ladies and gentlemen of the chamber, allow me to enlighten you. Baggy jeans? They’re back. I had a reader literally email me this year to complain about visible underwear waistbands on guys. I swear to fucking God this happened. We’re in a pandemic and this man was worried that other men were being too casual. My God, man. MY GOD.
But if you think what’s covering your bottoms—or not covering them, it appears—is the only 1990s heirloom being taken hauled down from the attic, you are WRONG. Signs of an impending '90s renaissance are all around you! Jamie Foxx is making sitcoms with a laugh track again! Brett Favre wants attention! People are complaining the Oscar nominees have gotten too arty! The guy from the Anita Hill hearings is our President! All our most popular music is mopey horseshit! The Energizer Bunny is back! Donald Trump is a has-been again, desperate for relevance and pulling every muscle in his body to find an outlet where he can tell the world that Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was “never that much of a looker”! Someone in 2021 who isn’t Bill Simmons is even openly suggesting, without a trace of self-awareness, that MTV can become popular again by showing videos!
I’m watching MTV Vault videos and it’s not that hard to emulate the vibe they had goin on. They can still play music videos, and do interviews, maybe throw in a few older 90s interviews/music. Hell, they could even record it on old film for an “authentic” look
— 𝐍𝐀𝐓 ᴹ♚ᴶ ˣ (@notimeforwigs) April 21, 2021
I haven’t even gotten to the political correctness panic! White people are freaking out about it! AGAIN! ZOMG I CAN’T MAKE FUN OF ANYONE WITH A SESAME SEED ALLERGY THESE DAYS! GUESS IT’S 10 YEARS IN THE GULAG FOR ME IF I DARE! That’s all back! That’s all happening, Senators.
Please be aware that I do not support the re-'90s-ing of our great country. Everyone’s still got a huge, terrible boner for the '80s but that’s because the '80s were kinda cool. NO ONE thinks the '90s were cool. The '90s were the '70s of, uh, the '90s. I know this firsthand. I grew up during the '90s and they were total ass. Everyone looked like shit. SNL was always a letdown. Everyone had movie sequel fatigue. College sucked. I got to college and the seniors were like, “Man, you guys should hear about the shit our house pulled in the '80s. NO LAWS!” And I was like, “Wow, that sounds cool,” and then everyone on campus wore sweatsuits eight sizes too big, listened to Des’ree, and NEVER fucked.
That’s all happening again now! College isn’t fun now because no one can party! No one is horny! We’re not making babies! We made Queen hot again for another round of youngs! I’m getting unexplained cravings for Taco Bell! New York sucks again! Chelsea Clinton is probably gonna win something! Bill Gates is single again and down to fuck! Two weeks from now someone is gonna tell me PCU starring Jeremy Piven is “an underrated gem” and I will have to murder that person!
This is a crisis, one that I would like recognized and addressed by the upper chamber of our Congress. Do you know I caught my daughter listening to “Sex and Candy” the other day? Slowdive is cool. “Sex and Candy” is SHIT. Just the worst goddamn song played by the laziest goddamn band. Do we want this kind of thing back in our lives? Do we as a society want there to be everlasting cultural cycles wherein jorts are allowed to return without judgment, which they have? Do we want your sons and daughters spending their hard-earned money eating overpriced salads at the Fashion Café? Do we want Bruno Mars going to No. 1 with a cover of “Nothing Else Matters"? We do not. It matters that we prevent this. We must exit this coming night and enter the light.
And we should be active, not jaded. Remember when being jaded was a thing? When kids were like BLAH BLAH BLAH LIFE IS SHIT AND NOTHING MATTERS AND THAT’S COOL? I see tweets like that every five minutes now, sirs and madams. Not only are our youths jaded, but they have actual REASONS to be so this time. They don’t even have to fake it like a bunch of rich-ass white kids used to back in my day! Well, you know what happens when kids get jaded? Aerosmith comes back and records a song about it. Do you want that to happen? Again? Well, DO YOU?
You do not. I do not. WE do not. We cannot let the '90s win. Our lives and our freedoms depend on us defeating them. Pass the resolution and declare war on the '90s or I’ll beat you all to death with a Thighmaster.
