HI Review Of The “Noughties”
I bloody love the noughties!
How Inappropriate would be as insignificant as Paris Hilton's dignity if we weren't, at this time of year, to strap on our reverso-specs, turn the soft-focus up to eleven and get well and truly misty-eyed about the previous decade as it's bloodied corpse lies chilling and undisturbed, apart from the occasional internet sodomisation, on the kitchen floor of time. Fortunately we already have the definitive voice, the figurehead of retrospection in the form of Marc Butterfinger, our very own Nostaliga Man. Here is his carefully chosen Top Ten of all things bright and beautiful that happened between 2000 and today.
Wotcha! Marc here, Happy New Year! I bloody love new year, it's brilliant, old father time comes in to slay the passing year, and alcoholics all over the land can for a brief, shining moment show the rest of us how it's done without the usual shame, crushing depression or need to attend meetings. Without further ado, here are the moments I loved the most in the noughties, year by year:
Bush Smush.
Bush Smush.
2000
Al Gore eleted to US Presidency
Bush never really stood a chance to be fair. When all your hopes rest on your brother's own state messing up the results so you can take it to a Supreme Court you also own, it's all a bit tenuous. Gore won comfortably in the end, came out as gay just a week after, swapped the military budget for the education budget the week after, brought home all US troops and put them to work strengthening the levies around New Orleans. Wonderfully prescient in many ways.
Where were you?
Where were you?
2001
9/11/2001
Never forget. Eh? Eh! Who could forget? On the 9th November 2001 David Davies and David Cameron threw their hats into the ring to do battle for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Did the world change that day? I think so. The kaleidoscope was shaken, and these two giants of opposition politics fought for the heart and soul of a party that had been out of power for 4 years. Responses were swift and brutal with a Labour rpess release labelling Davies as "out of touch" and Cameron as "inexperienced". The emotion. The shock. The solidarity we all felt as Conservative MPs tried to decide who to back. Never forget.
Pissed up on booze
Pissed up on booze
2002
Diana Ross Arrested For Drink-Driving
Who could forget when troubled 58 year old Motown legend Diana Ross was caught drunk behind the wheel? I personally shed bitter, disappointed tears when Ross was found to have a blood alcohol content of 0.20%, twice the legal limit in the state of Arizona where she was arrested. I'm sure she was suffering from more than a "Love Hangover" when she woke up in a cell the next morning!
Film event of the decade
Film event of the decade
2003
American Wedding Released
The most anticipated film of the decade? I think that's undeniable, people queued for minutes to get tickets to the premiere of this third installment of the American Pie franchise. Hollywood once again showing how sequels can stand alone as great films in their own right.
My opponent was worthy
My opponent was worthy
2004
Gore wins second term
Gore's presidency continues to provide surprises as he wins the presidency comfortably once again after fighting a campain exclusively using Powerpoint presentations with lots of graphs.
Bootiful
Bootiful
2005
Buncefield Oil Depot Fire
On the morning of 11th December residents around Buncefield near Hemel Hempsted in Hampshire were fortunate enough to witness one of the largest explosions ever on British soil. Plumes of smoke rising high into the sky over a wintery UK, beautiful. You just don't get explosions like that anymore.
Democratisation of knowledge
Democratisation of knowledge
2006
Paris Hilton most searched for subject on Google News
Democratisation of knowledge finally complete as, in a year that saw Russia cut gas supplies to the Ukraine in the middle of a harsh winter, Saddam Hussein executed, the Football World Cup, a serial killer in Ipswich and a new secretary elected to head the United Nations, users of the world's largest Internet search engine had their eyes on a mentally subnormal hotel fortune heiress.
Extended to 2008!!
Extended to 2008!!
2007
International Year of the Dolphin
Need I say more?
The Pink Knicker Index was up 3 points today.
The Pink Knicker Index was up 3 points today.
2008
Nothing momentous happens in the economy at all
2008 really stood out for the uneventful nature of the financial system. After Al Gore's 2 terms in the US Presidency and Tony Blair being ousted so early in his premiership to make way for the surprising choice of Katie "Jordan" Price as leader of the Labour Party and Uk Prime Minister, there was a significant change in Western political ideology. The consensus turned away from an over-reliance on already unpredictable financial markets and with more insightful regulation, introduction of a global Tobin tax and a linking of all currencies to the value of a paparazzi shot of the UK Prime Minister's knickers, the global economy saw unprecedented stability with a focus on sustainability rather than growth.
We haven't got a clue.
We haven't got a clue.
2009
How Inappropriate joins Twitter
The fastest growing social media networking tool is joined by the fastest growing comedy trio. A year of "not really getting it" follows. Bloody brilliant!
So there you have it nostaliga-lovers! I think we can all agree it's been a bleedin' fantastic decade, I only wish I could go back and do it all again! Cheers! Marc xx
The Big Bang – bloody brilliant it was.
Those of you familiar with our resident Nostalgia-ist (yes, it's a word, move along now - Ed) Marc Butterfinger, will know that the accuracy of his incredibly far-reaching memory is matched only by his wistfulness for those times gone by. Not everyone is keen to hear him reminisce though, especially as he gets misty-eyed over the formative events of the universe in an important business meeting...
It weren't like that in my day
Nostalgia Corner – We are absolutely sodding mental for the 60s!!
Hi-de-hi Memory Laners! Marc back here with another slice of easily regurgitated pot history. And I don't simply mean 1960s pot history (although there's plenty to be nostalgic for in that department, man), coz this time round we're going to rip through the annals of time to remember the top six things that happened in the best 60s decades ever! We are literally going to tear through the centuries as if we were tearing up a big fat history book with our bare hands. Can you imagine that happening? No? That's how insane in the neurological membrane we are in Nostalgia Corner!
6. The 1460s were of course famous for the Wars of the Roses, which was famously fought over many years between the Houses of York and Lancaster, over a disputed Fragrant Spreader rose-bush which grew in the back garden joining the two houses. Who can forget the Battle of Townton, where the most blood was ever shed on snow-covered English soil? Of course it was ironically that beautiful snow blowing in our faces throughout the close-quarters fighting that was to be the undoing of us fearless Lancastrians, and in the end we had to retreat across the River Cock, but not before 20, 000 of our number were brutally dismembered and left to rot. They just don't wage battles like that these days do they?
5. Of course, what everyone remembers about the 1860s were the skirts, which had reached their ultimate width of 18 meters for day dresses, and a eye-popping 26 for evening wear. In those days, when you wanted to take a chick out to the tea house, you had to hire an enormous horse-drawn cart, fitted with an ingenious winch device in order to haul up your bird's acres of crinoline. Oh yeah, she looked a bit fancy on your arm, but I tell you, it didn't half make it tricky to get your hand up there later on though.
4. A few years ago, in 660,000 BC, you were able to hunt and kill your own woolly mammoth, drag it back to your cave and feast on its delicious raw ears to your heart's content before having a cheeky hand-shandy to some boss Neanderthal cave-porn. Then Homo Sapiens comes along, with his fire, and his wheel, and his ergonomically designed heated car seats. And what happens to yours truly? Miserable, ignominious extinction, that's what. Bloody humans, just because they have opposable thumbs.
3. The 1960s recession is undoubtedly my favourite recession of the later half of the 20th century: astronomically high unemployment rates, incredibly high inflation, and a suicidally bad GNP rating? All hammering down on Joe Pub's pocket, causing consumer confidence in the system to plummet and thus creating a downward economic spiral that swallowed 50% of small to medium-sized enterprises in under one year? In Gillingham? Outstanding.
Harold of England: massive pussy
2. What everyone remembers about the 1060s is the Battle of Hastings, the decisive victory in the Norman Conquest which paved theway for years of Froggy rule in England. Why they remember it is because old Harold got an arrow in his eye and died. And I'll grant you, I got one of those babies in my right testicle during that battle, and i's not a walk in the park. But then again, isn't it tougher to get shot and survive? If Gordon Brown could suffer a detached retina in the field of conflict and live to tell the tale, you'd think Harry could have done so too. Conclusive proof that he was history's biggest loser.
1. I have to say that, despite the massive competiton, the 1560s were my most memorable decade, mainly for my own demise. During my short city break to Paris, Catholic mobs instigated the infamous St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre against the Hugenots. One moment I was quietly minding my own business, eating a lovely pain au chocolate on the banks of the Rue de la Pong; the next thing I know my body is being thrown from the window into the street, mutilated, castrated, dragged through the mud, thrown in the river, suspended on a gallows and burned by the baying Parisian crowd. Bloody French, just because they don't have antiperspirant.
Well that's all for now Nostalgia fans: as always, please let me know your favourite decade ever in the comments box below, and come back next time when we'll be remembering all the mad things that happened in the noughties, like twitter feeds, ipod touches and swine flu ... golly, they really seem years away now don't they?
Nostalgia Corner – We’re going ape for the 1970s!
Welcome back, yesteryear sniffers, I'm Marc and this is your ever-so-familiar Nostalgia Corner update!
This month, we're remembering the 70s, which is when you and I were born! In saying that, I'm taking a pot-shot that you fit squarely within HI's white male 30-something bleeding heart liberal moron demographic, but then again, I could be wrong: you could be an ageing lesbian hippy with saggy cow-breasts. If that is the case, come back next month for some 60s nostalgia, and get out of the way of my 1.3 ltr Ford Capri with go-faster stripes, I'm burning 70s rubber around here, bitch! Let's start the countdown at 7(0s)...
7. Classic glam-rock bands. Sherbet, Skyhooks, Dragon, Hush and the Ted Mulry Gang. Who could forget the sight of those timeless, slightly podgy, ageing axe-warriors in glimmering spandex? Admittedly they were big in New Zealand and nowhere else, but I was shearing sheep in Christchurch from 1971-4, and all I can say is, move over Queen, Bowie and the Zep. You ain't got a patch on all those (not-so) young dudes.
6. Mid-1970s recession. All true nostalgia fans are aware that the 70s recession was mainly due to the Arabs putting oil embargoes on European exports, causing the first instance of stagflation which began a political and economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal economic theory, which in turn directly heralded the election of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher in 1979. But, as far as I'm concerned, it couldn't hold a P45 to any of the other post-war periods of economic crisis. End of.
Keep these girls away from naked flames.
5. Flared skirts, pounced sleeves, big bell bottom jeans, halter necklines, one piece jumpsuits, tube tops, short jean shorts, shirts with big collars, big gold medallions and polyester slacks. Reader, I wore them all.
4. Difficult TV shows. Perhaps harder to remember than The Muppet Show or the Littlest Hobo, were a swathe of mid-70s programming that dealt with another kind of love. The Facts of Life, All In The Family, What's Happening!!, Wait Til Your Father Gets Home, Family Affair and You Can't Do That on Television all dealt symapthetically with the complicated yet rife social taboo of patrician incest, whilst Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels was just pure hard porn.
3. The Kent State Massacre. On March 4 1970, just before I left America for NZ, I was holled up on the Kent State University campus, peacefully protesting at President Nixon's announcment that the US had invaded Cambodia because we believed it was a pretty obvious ruse to expand the Vietnam War. God, those protest days were marvellous, weren't they? If nothing else, they inspired the Ted Mulry Gang to write some of the best anti-war anthems ever penned. Although the tear gas the National Guard sprayed at us to disperse our protest rally ended up blowing in the wind, the real bullets that they hailed down on us shortly afterwards didn't, and four of my student buddies died in the aftermath. Luckily, I managed to scarper from the campus with nothing more than a dislocated chochlea. But, for my money, they were the best political riots ever.
2. The Ferrah Fawcett hairstyle. Girls in the 90s had the "Rachel", 80s chicks had the "Collins", and in the 70s of course, birds had the "Fawcett". It was achieved with little else than an inverted hairdryer and plenty of wrist action, and, much like the subsequent decades' leading dos, looked completely shit.
1. The Poll Tax Riots! Although some say they happened in the 80s, and others the 90s, any of us who were actually there know that it all kicked off in the 1970s (see number 6). About a quarter of a million of us rocked up for the "Battle of Trafalgar" and waited days, weeks and years, as if for a Michael Jackson concert. Finally Maggie appeared in her customary royal blue military tunic, full body armour and tiara, preparing to open with her seminal cover of "Smooth Criminal", and without further introduction we plunged forward armed with wooden staves and scaffolding poles. Is there anything better than bloody confrontation between a murderous proletariat and the pumped up horseguard of the ruling elite? In a word, no.
Please do let me know what your fave memories of the 70s were in the comments box below, memory manics, and come back next month for further hops, skips and jumps down the hopscotch grid of yesterday!
Nostaligia Corner – We love the 80s!
As you crazy memory freaks know, remembering stuff that has happened is a truly magical occupation. It's the lifeblood of this madcap modern world, and each decade of events is but one more little red blood cell doing its bit for the continuation of the human race. And if that metaphor is even half-apt, then Marc is the dogged heartbeat of the whole nostalgia system, remembering every thing that's happened, every minute of the day, often from the 1980s, and particularly during the poll tax riots.
Listen to Marc remembering the 1980s!
Nostalgia Corner – We love the 90s!
Hi I'm Marc, and welcome to the brand new How Inappropriate Nostalgia Corner!
As you web-nerds are well aware, the internet is awash with gushing love for the recently deceased past, and I wanted to make sure that How Inappropriate was no exception. So every month I'll be bringing you top highlights from my favourite decades ever, and inviting you to relive those moments in all their brain-searing brilliance! This month I'm going to take us back to the 1990s which were my ultimate 90s decade ever, apart of course from the 1790s, and at a push, the 1190s. So let's begin the countdown at 10, which is the best nostalgia chart position ever!
10. Vanilla Ice's floor pumping routine in 'Ice Ice Baby'. God that was the best example of early 1990s large-trousered pop-rap ever!
9. Invasion of Liberia. Who could forget Charles Taylor invading the country with 150 trained guerrillas, and then the government only goes and launches an all-out strike on the Gio and Mano groups, which then retaliate with a bloody counter-insurgence against the goverment, ripping apart the country in the attempt! Brilliant.
8. Teenage Mutant Turtles toys launched by Bandai. In the US they were popularly known as TMNT, but of course here they called them TMHT (for Hero) because the government thought 'Nigger' was too offensive, apprarently, but they were still the best 90s part man / part turtle four piece crime-fighting outfit ever.
7. The early 1990s recession. As everyone knows, it was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that led to a sudden decrease in trade with Russia, eventually forcing the Finnish Krona's devaluation, whilst at the same time forcing the UK government to tighten bank regulation, leading to tightening of lending criteria, which combined with a freefall in global demand created a wave of bankruptcies and presaged a national banking crisis. Mass unemployment never really went away after that. For my money, the best recession ever.
6. 'This One's For The Children' by New Kids On The Block. God, that video was seminal. Which made it all the more lucky that Michael Jackson chose not to cover it.
5. Being sucked out of a BA jet at 17000ft. Who could forget where they were on 10 June 1990? Not me: I was holding on for dear life to the nose of a British Airways BAC111, after some incorrectly fitted bolts caused the main port windscreen to be blown out, sucking me outside, and forcing me to cling on to my co-pilot's chin until he was able to landed safely at Titty Ho airport. You kind of only get to have those memories once in this life.
4. Cartoon pop single wars! Everyone remembers the incredibly popular South American kids' cartoon Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? (based on the real events of the popular uprising against the Chilean dictator Agosto Pinochet). Their catchy pop single 'Carmen Feel the Noise of Social Discontent' came out on November 20 1990, the same week as the little-known Bart Simpson's 'Do the Bartman' was released (which was co-written by Michael Jackson). The two pint-sized yellow and brown anti-authoritarians battled it out for the next month, until in 1991 CFTNoSD became the number one song in the UK for three weeks from February 16 to March 9. The rest, as they say, is history - with The Simpsons fading into animated obscurity, and having its underwhelming 3rd series cancelled mid-season by Fox.
3. The Iraq War Part 1. A relatively unthreatening but oil-rich middle-eastern state temporarily occupies a lesser-known middle-eastern state, and an incredibly threatening, but oil-dependant United States takes umbridge and beats the living crud out of it, almost - but not quite - toppling its fun-loving, Kurd-gassing dictator! An utterly compelling war movie (possibly Oliver Stone's best) and a million times better than its limp-wristed sequel 13 years later.
2. Catsuits. If you were at Ritzy on a Friday night in 1992, you couldn't hear the pulsating euro-chug of Techtronic's 'Pump up the Jam' for the comforting squelch of latex on latex.
1. The Poll Tax riots! If you could remember it the next day, you clearly hadn't properly engaged in direct action with Margaret Thatcher's horse-riding, baton-wielding boys in blue. Thrilling dismemberments for all the family.
Let me know what your favourite moments from the 90s were in the Comments box below, nostalgia addicts, and remember to come back next month for more endorphin-releasing trips down memory lane!