So I don’t expect many people– and certainly not students just starting college– to ever see the email I’m speaking of, but any of my peers or those who are my elders in the academy will know what I mean. Every year, when classes start, there’s this email that circulates about all the things that the new class of students weren’t alive to see.
It’s meant partly to be funny, I think, a sort of silly reflection on how educators age but our incoming classes stay forever young in a way (because you go on to other things and we get another set of you next year). But it also helps us to understand what you know and what you might not, culturally speaking. So while it’s not a great barometer of anything… it’s interesting to read.
I decided to invert it. Many of you just left high school (some of you, I know, aren’t first year students, but most of you are). So I wanted to give you a little glimpse of what the world was like when Phill graduated.
Picture it, the year was 1995. NBC, the TV network that is now almost in ruins, had the top 3 rated shows in broadcast (ER, an upstart show called FRIENDS that just never seemed to take off, and a quirky little thing called Seinfeld). There were two still World Trade Center towers in New York (though at the time a little-heard from property developer named Trump wanted to build one great big one to replace them). Michael Jordan was retired (for the first time). Bret Favre wasn’t, but I’m sure he thought about it a few times. Bill Clinton was President of the United States and hadn’t yet been declared a pervert for that whole thing with Monica.
This guy was President
This guy was a rapper
This guy was a robot from the future who would be back
This guy was a wrestler
Those, my friends, were great days.
Here are the 5 biggest news events of 1995 (in Phill’s opinion– not in a ranked order):
1) Timothy McVeigh and a small group of domestic terrorists commit the Oklahoma City Bombing (worst act of terrorism on US soil previous to 9/11)
2) OJ Simpson is found “not guilty” in his double murder trial. For those who don’t know, Simpson was once a great NFL players and is now a broke- dead beat who ended up losing several other legal battles. Also– one of his lawyers in this case is the father of Kim Kardashian, so two injustices stemmed from this case.
3) The Netscape Navigator debuted—it was the first truly stable and widespread Web Browser (okay, maybe mosaic was, but Netscape was the first one to have staying power). Some credit Netscape with the births of the dot com bubble.
4) The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame opened, causing people to actually visit Cleveland, Ohio.
5) Sony debuted its “sure to fail” video game system: “the Playstation.” And trust me, no one bought it. Or the second one. Or the third one. Everyone knows console gaming is all about Nintendo vs. Sega!
@the Movies:
It was a dark time for films, but here’s 5 movies that represent the year (not that I consider them the five best, or even five good films—though I did enjoy a few of ‘em)
1) Jumanji
2) Seven (or Se7en as the posters read)
3) Bad Boys
4) Batman Forever
5) 12 Monkeys (it was a good year for Brad Pitt)
On the Radio/Video
Here are five of the songs rockin’ graduation parties in 1995.
1) “This is How We Do It!” — Montell Jordan
2) “You Don’t Know How it Feels” – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
3) “Good” – Better than Ezra
4) “Keep Their Heads Ringin’” – Dr. Dre
5) “Boombastic” – Shaggy
In Sports:
1) The San Francisco 49ers beat the San Diego Chargers in the Super Bowl. The two biggest stars in the game were Jerry Rice for the Niners and Natrone Means for the Chargers. I bet you’ve never heard of one of those guys.
2) The New Jersey Devils swept the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals. I bet that didn’t go so well around here after that. But hey, the Devils had to go back to Jersey, where a tiny, tiny Snookie and the Situation where rockin’ a daycare.
3) The Houston Rockets beat the Orlando Magic for the NBA title. The Magic had a young star named Shaquille O’Neal. People said a guy that big, that bruising, would have a short NBA career.
4) The Atlanta Braves beat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series. Luckily, those guys could go back to Cleveland and go to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.
5) Pete Sampras and Stefi Graf won big at Wimbledon. Jaques Villanueve won the Indy 500. No one my age cared. 🙂
And in print:
Here are five magazine covers from that year.
1) Look who ELSE graduated from HS that year. I’m clearly the one with the higher profile, but still… not a bad second best, right?
2) This show will never last!
3) She was everywhere
4) It was a problem, even then
5) He was a little less weird than he was before the end, but Michael was still strange…
So that’s a little snapshot of the world the year Phill graduated. It was a weird, weird time. 🙂