Tag Archives: the 90s

The SportsAlcohol.com Surprise MiniPodcast: Pretty Woman and Starship Troopers

Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Jesse

They may seem like an odd pairing for a double feature, but that’s part of the design: Jesse had never seen Pretty Woman, Ben had never seen Starship Troopers (which turns 20 in just a few weeks!), and everyone was appalled, so we sat down to fix it. Ben and Jesse watched both movies back to back, then had a quick chat about each other’s reactions to both movies as both first-timers and veterans. All in all, a splendid use of a Wednesday night and we hope you enjoy our talk. I’m taking suggestions for future incongruous double-feature conversation-starters in the comments!

How To Listen

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: The X-Files, Fuller House, and TV Revivals

Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Jesse

Have you guys noticed that no television shows actually die out these days? Whether they’ve been gone for a few months, a few seasons, or a few decades, almost everything gets revived, including recent resurrections of ’90s favorites like Full House (via Fuller House on Netflix) and The X-Files (via… The X-Files, again, on Fox). Marisa, Jesse, and Nathaniel watched all of the new X-Files and some of Fuller House (tune in to hear who watched all thirteen episodes!), then got together to discuss this trend: other examples and forms of TV revivals, whether it’s worth it for these shows or in general, and how we feel about the future of television revivals, reunions, and resurrections. Also, find out just how insulting Jesse can be to the memory of Full House!

How To Listen

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

’90s Week+!

Gripes
There are contrarians, there are iconoclasts, and then there is SportsAlcohol.com co-founder Marisa. A contraiclast? Her favorite Springsteen album came out this century, so she is basically a controversy machine.

Also, she is totally not a dude!
Marisa
Gripes

The dream of the ’90s is still alive at SportsAlcohol.com, and during our thorough examination of the decade, we did the following:

…ranked and wrote about the top 90 songs of the ’90s in three groups (90-51, 50-11, and 10-1), and included a little behind-the-scenes about the voting process. (Before you ask: Yes, there is a Spotify playlist.) The ranked lists are worth clicking on for the era-appropriate photos of our contributors alone.

podcasted about the list so we could gripe about each other’s choices.

…defended some songs that didn’t make the list, including seven tracks that received No. 1 votes, and a few stray others that weren’t No. 1s but should have been in contention anyway.

…put ’90s music in context of music videos, movie soundtracks, and videos from movie soundtracks that specifically featured Elastica (a band that did not make our list).

…remembered that time that Chris wrote Rob an email entirely about Dana from Morphine.

…linked to some other articles that proved we’re not the only website still talking about the ’90s.

No fear.

For Further Reading (Or, We’re Not the Only Ones Who Are ’90s-Obsessed)

Gripes
There are contrarians, there are iconoclasts, and then there is SportsAlcohol.com co-founder Marisa. A contraiclast? Her favorite Springsteen album came out this century, so she is basically a controversy machine.

Also, she is totally not a dude!
Marisa
Gripes

We just spent the last week exploring the ’90s through music. I know 2016 seems like an odd time to take on such an endeavor, but the decade seems to be having a moment right now, even outside of SportsAlcohol.com. The ’90s have officially passed through the era where they were embarrassing (which usually happens to a decade at the 10-year mark), and has come around to being cool again.

Don’t believe me? Here is how the Decade of Flannel is rearing its head around the interwebs.

My neighborhood had a ’90s fest, and the fest ignored almost all of what we at SportsAlcohol.com considered good about the decade (save Salt-n-Pepa). The A.V. Club did a good job taking apart how awkward it can be to go to a ’90s fest in 2016, while Flavorwire talks about the decade’s commodification through the event.

Still, that doesn’t stop the sisters Haim from wanting to bring back Lilith Fair.  Maybe they can get some advice on bringing back the ’90s from Sleater-Kinney.

Our Spotify playlist isn’t the only place to hear ’90s music. You can also hear what Kmart was playing in its stores, thanks to a dude who took all of Kmart’s cassettes with him and uploaded them for our pleasure.

“As the ’80s wore on, [music] got less interesting and I think things got more interesting again in the ’90s. So I think it’s just the way it goes.” Who said it? Joe Jackson in Salon.

We talked about the many reasons that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” ranked as our No. 1 song, but we missed one: science! New evidence says the Nirvana tune is the most iconic song ever. (Take that, decades-older classics like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.)

And yet, there’s still no talk of rebooting Dead at 21.

Best Songs of the 90s: Behind the Scenes

Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Jesse

Now that the official SportsAlcohol.com list of the best songs of the 90s has been revealed to the world in full, I thought I’d offer the list geeks among you a quick peek behind the scenes at the making of the list. So if you’re wondering why Pavement didn’t make the cut or how assured Nirvana’s victory really was, read on!

Participants
As mentioned, we had 22 voters each assemble a ranked top 40 list. There were twelve women and ten men, and most of the participants spent at least some time as teenagers in the ’90s, though one of us didn’t enter teenagehood until after the turn of the century.

Because of the high number of participants, a single number-one vote was not enough to propel a song onto the master list. Every song on our final list garnered at least two votes, and while it was theoretically possible to make the list without any of those votes being in anyone’s top ten, that was not the actual case when all was said and done. Every song on this list was on at least one person’s Top Ten of the ’90s, and in fact several songs with two votes (where one was passionate enough) beat out a number of songs that garnered three or even four votes. That four-vote wonder, the most-voted song that failed to make the list? The subject of founding editor Sabrina’s t-shirt: “It’s a Shame About Ray” by the Lemonheads. A shame indeed; sorry, Dando.
Continue reading Best Songs of the 90s: Behind the Scenes