Music

Year: 1990-1998
Place: Everywhere I ever lived between those years (see sidebar)
My age: 11-20

Looking at the age range alone should tell you that this will be an interesting journey through the world of music.

At the beginning of 1990, I was an 11-year-old grade six student living in the small town of Raymond, Alberta. As a rule (one with very few, if any, exceptions) 11-year-olds have terrible taste in music. I owned maybe half a dozen albums, all of them Weird Al Yankovic cassettes. Having four older siblings, I was exposed to more popular mainstream music (and, in my brother's case, some not-so-mainstream music), but I was, for the most part, a fan of Weird Al and little else.

Music in the very early '90s sucked serious ballz. Seriously, just take a look at the state of music in the period between decent '80s music and the grunge revolution. It made me want to puke back then, and it makes me want to puke even more now. '80s butt-rock (which was never good) was coasting along with no changes, not realizing that it was about to die. AC/DC and Guns 'N Rose were on the top of their gag-inducing games. Roxette had a huge hit with "Joy Ride". Tom Cochrane was singing "Life is a Highway" years before Disney/Pixar made it an international hit with the movie Cars. Alanis Morisette was simply Alanis, and she sang bland teenage synth pop. Seriously, how did we make it through those years without mass suicides? If this era of music had been much longer, I think that's exactly what would have happened.

Thank goodness for Nirvana. Their breakthrough album, Nevermind, was released in 1991, and the single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" breathed life back into the music industry. Being a dumb kid, I didn't really become aware of them until 1992, but once I discovered them, I was hooked. Go back in time to 1992 (I recently bought Back To The Future), go to my house (3519 109 St.), look in my bedroom window (it's the one just to the right of the front step) and you'll see me sitting on the floor reading comic books and listening to Nevermind. Or maybe watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on my crappy portable TV.

Later, Weird Al released the album Off The Deep End featuring the parody "Smells Like Nirvana", and I listened to it more than any other album I had. (Those albums being U2 Rattle and Hum and my Weird Al tapes. I didn't actually own Nevermind. It was my sister's.)

There were two more notable early '90s albums that I owned before I developed my real musical taste later on. The first of these albums was Classic Queen, a compilation of Queen songs. This was during the huge success of the movie Wayne's World, which prominently featured the song "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was, in turn, featured on Classic Queen. The other album, one that I'm not ashamed to still own, is Gordon by the Barenaked Ladies. It is, by far, the best of the Barenaked Ladies' albums. I own two others, but Gordon is the only one I still like.

Grunge was good, but the music that followed in the death of the short-lived, yet important, grunge revolution was the best music ever to have seen the light of day. (That's not just my opinion; it's scientific fact.) Music became truly good in 1994. There were two notable albums. Naveed by Our Lady Peace was the first. I first heard the single, "Naveed", while living in Prince George during 1994. I loved the song, but I never went out and got the album until a few years later. The second album deserves a paragraph all to itself.

My sister Sara gave me a present for Christmas in 1994. It was Weezer's first self-titled album, which has come to be known by their fans as "The Blue Album". (Get over it, Beatles fans!) The album had a profound effect on me that no other album has matched. Some have come close, but none have matched it. The Blue Album completely revolutionized my own personal taste in music. I couldn't stand Queen anymore. The Barenaked Ladies seemed silly. Weird Al was juvenile. Weezer never left my CD player for months. It was the only album I listened to. No other album has ever so completely dominated my life.

After a while, I started listening to more music again. I still listened to The Blue Album on a regular basis, but I listened to other stuff, too. The Offspring's Smash came out while I was still living in St. Albert in 1995. It one of my favourites for completely different reasons than Weezer. This was back when The Offspring was still a band that wrote mostly serious songs, before they started depending on silly songs such as "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" and "Original Prankster" for their success. A year or two after the death of Kurt Cobain, former Nirvana drummer picked up a guitar and fronted the Foo Fighters. Their first album had some good songs, but we'd see better outings from them later. Green Day released their breakout album Dookie.

Shortly after I graduated high school in 1996, Weezer released their second album, Pinkerton. At first, I was disappointed with it because it wasn't just an extension of The Blue Album. I wasn't the only one who thought this way. In fact, I think it was Rolling Stone magazine that called Pinkerton the most disappointing album of 1996. However, I grew to love Weezer's sophomore album almost as much as The Blue Album.

Then came 1997. Homer Simpson once said that rock achieved perfection in 1974, but he couldn't have been more wrong. Everybody knows that rock achieved perfection in 1997. Foo Fighter's second album, The Colour and the Shape, featuring one of my all-time favourite non-Weezer songs "Everlong"; Transmission by the Tea Party; Ixnay on the Hombre by The Offspring; Our Lady Peace's second album, Clumsy; the not-very-well-known Clodhopper by Glueleg; Sammy Hagar's Marching to Mars (HAHAHAHAHA!!! Just kidding!); OK Computer, Radiohead's best album; The Devil You Know, Econoline Crush's only good album (but, man, was it good!); Urban Hymns by The Verve; Underdogs by the Matthew Good Band (note: I wasn't a Matt Good fan until after the '90s). I could go on, but I don't want to kill anyone with an overdose of awesome.

This posting is getting out of hand, so I'm just going to wrap it up. See the side bar for a list of great '90s albums, which is not, by any means, comprehensive. 1998 was another great year in music, although not as good as 97. A sour note in all of the good music of '98 was the start of The Offspring's sad decline into a parody of their former selves. I left on my mission in late 1998, so I wasn't musically aware of 1999. All I knew at the time was that they really liked The Venga Boys and Lou Vega in the Philippines.

Amy Tries to Blind Me

Year: 1990
Place: Raymond, AB
My age: 12

I'm noticing that a lot of these memories take place in Raymond. Interesting place for a small town.

I was at home with three of my sisters. Maybe four. I don't remember exactly, what, with it being 19 years ago and all. Amy was definitely there (see title of this post), and I'm pretty sure Sara and Jenny were there, and maybe Mary. Again, I'm not sure. Correct me if I'm wrong, girls. For some reason, I remember it as being a school day, yet we weren't at school, so I might be wrong about that, too. Maybe I should stop writing about memories from 1990.

Anyway, we were in the room that was shared by two of the girls (Amy and Sara, I think). Of course, knowing my family, with it's ample supply of sisters, it may have been shared by three of the girls. We were sitting on one of the beds just shooting the breeze. Typical teenage sibling talk. Amy had this small metal rod, about a foot long and 3 millimeters thick, that was curved into an unsharpened hook at one end. I have no idea what it was for and why it was in the girls' room. She was holding it by the straight end and idly bouncing it up and down while we talked. One of the bounces had a little to much oomph to it, and it bounced up into my eye, sliding effortlessly under my eyelid, completely concealing the blessedly dull hook. With a collective gasp, we all froze, except for Amy who let go of the metal rod, which was probably for the best. We all sat, unmoving, as the hook dangled from my eye, wiggling slightly. After a few seconds, it fell out and landed on the bed. All of it was completely painless and didn't damage my eye at all, but man, it sure felt weird, and the girls (and me, apparently) still talk about it today. In fact, in a recent meme on Facebook in which my friends were posting memories they had of me, Amy said this: "I once, accidently, stuck a hook in one of Mike's eyes -- he was surprisingly calm about it."

Of course, I wear glasses now, so maybe there was damage done.

The Adventures of SuperAndy and SuperBruno

Year: 1990
Place: Raymond, AB
My age: 12

I say this took place in Raymond in 1990 when I was 12 years old, but that's really just the starting point of something that is still going on today.

In the spring of 1990, I was a 12-year-old boy nearing the end of grade 6. My teacher, Mr. Maxwell, gave the class an assignment: write a story in which children are heroes. Superman: The Movie was released the year I was born, and I grew up watching it and its various sequels. It bordered on obsession. So, when Mr. Maxwell presented us with this task, I took my childhood friend, David Jones, and myself and gave us Superman-like powers. The story was a labour of love, and Mr. Maxwell loved it. "What suspense! You could have a great future as an author!" was scrawled on the last page next to the perfect 10/10 he gave me as a mark. It was a simple enough story: two boys stumble onto an underground lab and are experimented on by the evil scientist, Dr. Zooge (eh? Is that an awesome evil name, or what?). They receive super-strength, super-speed, super-hearing, x-ray vision, blue laser vision, and the ability to fly. Adventure ensues.

Before I go on, let me go back a little way and delve into the questionable decade of the '80s. One day, I was walking to school with my friends. They wanted to play Transformers and started laying claim to which Transformer they wanted to be. I didn't want to be a lowly robot. I wanted to be human. So I was myself, a full-grown adult in the futuristic world of the year 2000, wearing what I called a "power suit", which is basically highly advanced body armor. Over the years, I developed this idea with my friend Adam until I had an entire world in which Admiral Mike MacKenzie was the leader of Earth's military, Earth, in turn, belonging to the Mars Federation of Planets. (I watched a lot of Star Trek growing up, too). When SuperBruno (that was me) came along, I merged his world with Admiral MacKenzie's world. The logistics are complicated, and I could go on for pages explaining everything, so just accept that, in my fantasy sci-fi world, there were two of me.

By the time I was 15, I had written four SuperAndy and SuperBruno short stories in addition to the original one I wrote in 1990. I decided at that point to write a novel based on the ideas that I was constantly developing in my head. The novel rewrote the original short stories (I had matured and developed my writing style considerably since I had been 12) and incorporated them as chapters in the novel. I finished the novel when I was 16. It was ambitious, spanning from 1990 to, if I remember correctly, 2028. It had the early superhero career of SuperAndy and SuperBruno, the dubious side effect of receiving the powers that split the fictional me into two separate people (one with superpowers, one without), aliens contacting Earth, and a long war between Earth and Saturn. The structure of the novel was shaky, and was really a collection of short stories that had a common thread.

I attempted to write two sequels to the novel, and actually got quite a bit of the second sequel written. But something happened: adulthood. When I was 18, I decided a couple of things. First of all, a fictional novel in which I was a superhero was a little too egotistical for my liking, so I replaced myself with Stormy Logan, and I replaced David Jones with Peter Nesmith. Second, I dropped the Super off of Bruno and Andy, and eventually dropped those names, too. Third, I tweaked their powers so they weren't such obvious Superman rip-offs. I got rid of the laser vision, x-ray vision, and super hearing. I also made them a little weaker and a little slower than Superman. The fourth change was the most drastic. I scrapped the original novel in an effort to clean up the story and make it more realistic. This included completely trashing the second Stormy Logan who grew up to be a military leader in an interplanetary war. Also, Stormy and Peter were 18 when they received their powers instead of 11 and 8 respectively.

SuperAndy and SuperBruno were a huge and mostly private part of the entire decade of the '90s. The fantasy of it enthralled me. Whenever I was alone and not occupied with something such as reading or video games, I was mentally in a world in which I was a superhero. There are so many stories those characters have gone through that will never be put to paper. There are just too many of them. Even today, I'm coming up with new ideas for Stormy. In his current incarnation (consisting of a novel that is complete in my head but not on paper), Stormy works through legal means (he's a special officer for the RCMP) rather than vigilantism, his secret identity proved impossible to maintain, and the experiment went horribly wrong with Peter, physically deforming him, shattering his sanity, and making him Stormy's greatest enemy. Oh, and the evil Dr. Zooge is now the misguided Dr. Trevor Sinclair.

Failing to Seal the Deal

Year: 1994, 1995
Place: Prince George, BC; St. Albert, AB
My age: 16, 17

This is actually two different events that illustrate the same theme, hence the two different years and places. These aren’t the only instances of this happening, but they are two of the best examples.

Puberty, as it usually is, was unkind to me. From ages 12 to 14, I went through a very awkward physical transformation that saw me grow horizontally more than vertically. I had been a skinny, athletic child, and my first few years as a teenager were the opposite of skinny and athletic. It didn’t do much for my confidence, and made my childhood shyness seem mild in comparison. I drew inward, and melted into the background. I went mostly unnoticed in junior high school (instances of being noticed will be featured in future postings) while living in Edmonton in ’92 and ’93.

When my family moved to Prince George in the summer of 1993, things changed. I started coming out of the awkward stage of puberty. At the time, I still thought I was an ugly fatso, but upon review of photographic evidence from the time period in question, I now realize that I was hunky beefcake. I give credit to three things: 1) I spent the summer living fast-food-free with my grandmother in rural Nova Scotia; 2) I was riding a bike everywhere; 3) Record snowfall in Prince George that winter saw me shoveling snow over a pile that was a good two feet taller than me every day.

The change was more than physical. My social life was different, too. There were two wards of the Church in Prince George, and the youth in these wards were very tight-knit. They accepted my sisters and me into their group of friends immediately, and I was forced out of my withdrawal. Somewhat, anyway. I was still known for going in my room, turning on crappy music (this was pre-Weezer), and reading for hours on end. But when I wasn’t reading (or playing Doom), I was hanging out with friends. It was common for us to play basketball, which should probably be listed as a fourth factor of my weight-loss, but I’m too lazy to go back and change it.

Wow, I really need to get to the point. The important facts from the rambling you just finished reading: I was shy, I was good-looking but didn’t realize it, and I had a healthy social life.

I had a huge crush on a girl (note: I’m not going to use the real names of the girls I write about in this post. I doubt they’ll ever read this, but if they do, I don’t want them to be embarrassed). We’ll call her Wilma. Wilma was a chronic flirt, and she had big boobs, so it’s no surprise that I, a shy 15-year-old raging with hormones, developed a crush on her. Nothing ever developed with her, mostly due to the missionary who started dating her, so my eye wandered whenever she wasn’t around, which was often. By “wander” I mean that I had a minor thing for every pretty girl in northern British Columbia. There was one girl, though, who stood out. She stood out so much that I am absolutely positive that I could have made her my first girlfriend if I had only tried. Let’s call her Angela. (By the way, I use a certain logic coming up with these names, but for me to explain it would give away their real names, so I’ll just appreciate my own cleverness on my own. Also, you would have had to read the novel I never finished writing for one of the names.)

Angela was a year younger than me, so she didn’t really show up on my radar right away. She was cute, and I always thought so, but Wilma had most of my attention for those first few months in Prince George. After the whole missionary fiasco, Wilma didn’t come around as much. She wasn’t a member of the Church, and her boyfriend had been one of the missionaries teaching her. (Thumbs up, Elder! The cynical saying is “flirt to convert” not “enter into a romantic relationship to convert”.) Anyway, enough about Wilma. In the spring of ’94, Angela and I actually became friends instead of just two random people in the same group of friends. When our friends got together, we’d gravitate towards each other. There was never any big moment when everyone else would turn to us and say, “Wow, look at those two flirting!” Instead, there were a lot of little things. At a church activity during dinner, we splashed some water on the table and had a low-key water fight that involved us getting our fingertips wet and then flicking the water at each other. At a service project, we sat down in the grass facing each other, each grabbed a short stick, and had a very unenthusiastic sword fight. Little things like that. Most importantly, we made each other laugh, and we were very natural with each other. All I had to do was up the flirting just a little bit and put forth the slightest effort and I could have started dating her. Instead, I inexplicably did the opposite. The quality flirting we had been doing stopped abruptly, and I was the one to blame. One memory that stands out in my mind happened shortly after the sword fight. I kept catching Angela looking at me from across the room with a look on her face that seemed to say, “What gives? Why isn’t he talking to me?” I don’t know, Angela. I don’t know.

I saw Angela again years later when we were both living in Edmonton in 2001 or 2002. She was looking hotter than ever, and we made eye contact at a dance. She smiled at me, and I started over to strike up a conversation, hopefully pick up where we left off six years ago. I got within a few feet of her when my ex-girlfriend intercepted me and started talking to me. I never saw Angela again.

In the summer of ’94, my family moved from Prince George to St. Albert, Alberta. The St. Albert ward had a tight-knit core group of youth not unlike Prince George that accepted me right away. I kept losing weight in St. Albert, too. Since my school was far from home, and I didn’t have a car, I rode my bike every day. I spent roughly an hour on my bike every weekday. I also grew to my full height somewhere around this time—an impressive 5’8”. I was at my best-looking in 1994 and 1995 (see picture on the right). However, I was still pretty shy. Case In point: in the winter of ’95, one of the girls in my group of friends (we’ll call her “Beatrice”) started to go out of her way to be near me. Instead of sitting with her family, she’d sit with me at church. When a group of us were at Tim Horton’s, I stole her cousin’s seat next to her while said cousin went to the washroom. When the cousin came back, I was going to be a gentleman and let her have her seat back, but Beatrice refused to let me leave. And, just like with Angela before, we made each other laugh. The obstacle here was my shyness. There was a second guy involved, another one of my friends. He and Beatrice had a past together, and they were still on good terms and there was the chance of them getting back together. It came to the point—and I realized this as it was happening—that she seemed to be waiting for one of us to make a move. I kept chickening out and chickening out, and on the day that I decided I was going to make a move, Beatrice and, oh, let’s call him Conan, had started dating again a few days previously.

Beatrice and Conan got married a few years later while I was on my mission. The mission where I didn’t date any of the teenage girls that I taught. Also, now I’m married to the best woman in the world, so none of my missed opportunities as a teenager matter.

Shopping Cart Tossing

Year: 1998
Place: Raymond, Alberta
My age: 20

Highway 4 south of Lethbridge was undergoing major construction at the time, and was therefore rarely used by the residents of Raymond, since it was easier to head west on highway 52 and then north on highway 5 to go to Lethbridge instead of going north on highway 845 and then northwest on the ripped-up highway 4. As a result, highway 845 was virtually deserted late at night.

I was actually living in St. Albert at the time getting ready to go on my mission, and I was in Raymond visiting my cousins who lived there. One night, Noah, Neil, and I went to Lethbridge, probably for a late night trip to Burger King. We saw a shopping cart abandoned in a ditch. It had been there for days, and Neil had earlier remarked that if it was still there the next time he drove by, he was going to steal it. Since it was still there, we decided it was time to steal it. We were, however, riding in a car at the time (probably Neil's Hornet, or maybe his Gremlin), and the shopping cart wouldn’t fit. Instead of doing the sensible thing and saying, “Shucks, I guess we won’t steal it” we drove back to Raymond, got the family truck, and drove back into Lethbridge to retrieve the lonely shopping cart. Great. Now what do we do with it? We weren’t homeless, so we didn’t need it to transport all of our earthly possessions. So we must have realized the futility of stealing a useless object and left it in the ditch, right? That would make this a pretty boring memory.

I don’t know which one of us thought this up (when the three of us got together, our collective IQ dropped, even though we never even drank), but we decided it would be cool to get the truck up to a speed of 120 km/h and throw the shopping cart out of the back. It was 2:00 am, and we figured the safest place to do this would be on the practically deserted highway 845. (A-ha! So there was a reason for that first paragraph about the state of southern Alberta highways in the late '90s!)

There must have been a new moon, or close to it, that night, because it was pitch dark in the country. We made sure we couldn’t see even the hint of headlights approaching from either direction, and then Noah and I got in the bed of the truck with our new toy. When Neil was going 120 km/h, he shouted at us that we were good to go. Noah and I pitched the cart out of the back of the truck. I was expecting some sort of lame result. A few small sparks if we were lucky. Instead, what we got was a spectacular fireworks-like display of sparks lighting up the highway as the cart struck asphalt and tumbled to an eventual halt. Noah and I laughed the uproarious laughs that only teenage boys (okay, and 20-year-old man-children) up to no good are capable of. We drove back to retrieve the cart and repeated the stunt at least two more times, each of us taking a turn driving so that we all could be filled with the Word of Wisdom-friendly intoxication of cool-looking, illegal destruction. Who knows how long we would have kept doing this if we hadn’t noticed headlights approaching in the distance, at which point we retrieved the battered and broken shopping cart and went home.

Neil put the cart in the neighbour’s garbage bin, and we saw the delighted neighbourhood children playing with it the next day, effectively making Neil some sort of bizarre, twisted Santa Claus.

Pickle Tossing

Year: 1995
Place: Raymond, Alberta
My age: 17

My cousin Rachel reminded me of this memory recently, and it was such a ridiculous situation that I've decided that it will be the first of my Memories of the '90s.

It was late summer just before my senior year of high school, and I had just moved in with my Aunt Joyce and her three kids, Jake, Becca (who is now Rachel, but since she was Becca at the time, that's how I'll refer to her in this memory), and Noah. It was night, maybe around midnight, and we were bored. Joyce had a large restaurant-sized jar of pickles that had been around for months, and Becca thought they had gone bad. Who knows, maybe they had gone bad. Point is, she was tired of eating them and decided that we should dispose of them creatively.

The creative method of disposal we decided on was to climb onto the roof of Joyce's store on Broadway (Raymond's coincidentally-named main street) and throw the pickles at passersby. Don't worry; we threw them one pickle at a time, not the whole jar at once. We may have been dumb teenagers, but we weren't homicidal. Also, by “we threw them” I mean “Becca threw them.” She was the lightest one of the three of us—Becca, Noah, and myself—so she was the first one on the roof after climbing on my shoulders. Noah and I weren't as spry as she was, and we weren't willing (and possibly not able) to lift each other up. As we looked around for an easier place to climb onto the roof, Becca proceeded with her pickle-bombardment of Broadway. I don't recall how many victims she pickled before deciding to throw a pickle at the windshield of a passing car. The car stopped, and a teenage boy (one of several in the car) got out and examined the object that had defiled his white sedan. “Pickle,” he said in a voice devoid of emotion. He looked up and spotted Becca despite her attempt to hide behind the parapet.

The car started to go around the block. Becca deduced that they were coming around to the alley Noah and I had yet to successfully climb out of.

The car came into the alley. Noah and I were completely oblivious to what had transpired on the roof. But still, I didn't want anyone to find me in a back alley trying to climb onto the roof of a store, so I stood around leisurely facing Noah. Just two dudes hanging out in an alley at midnight. No shenanigans going on here. Nothing gay either, you perverts, so just keep on driving. Geez, we're cousins! Gross!

The car slowed as it passed, the boys inside inspecting us, but it didn't stop and continued on to the end of the alley.

I looked up to the roof as Becca arrived holding out the pickles for me to take. She was hurrying and obviously scared, so I figured that the car had been looking for her and her cohorts. “Oh, crap!” I thought, “those guys are gonna jump us.” Being a non-violent person who had never (and still has never today) been in a fist fight, I joined Becca in her urgent fear as I took the jar of pickles from her.

Handing the jar to Noah, I eloquently (and, in retrospect, hilariously) said, “Noah, takethepicklestakethepicklesTAKETHEPICKLES!!!!” Noah complied, and Becca used my shoulders as her own personal ladder again. She jumped down, took a stumble, got back to her feet, and we started walking away. We didn't get far before we heard a car speeding down the alley towards us.

One of us, most probably me, advised, “Shit! Come on!” I sprinted away, Becca and Noah right behind me, and the car on our tails. I ran through a vacant lot between two businesses and was disappointed to find a fence between us and a not-a-beating. But, ever a survivor, I didn't slow down. The fence had partially collapsed and was leaning towards us. It was maybe three-and-a-half feet high in its drunken state, and I vaulted over it as if I wasn't 20 pounds overweight. Becca and Noah followed me, and, if I remember correctly, Becca fell and scrapped her leg, or something.

I heard the commotion behind me and turned back, but Becca got up on her own and continued running, so I returned to fleeing. At this point, Noah (with, what I can only assume was a silent utterance of “F*** this”) tossed the jar of pickles into a nearby bush.

Our pursuers had to find another way around since their car wasn't equipped with fence-jumping capabilities, and this bought us enough time to dash past the ice arena, the pool, and, under Becca's direction, to her father's house, leaving their brave calls of “You better run, bitch!” behind as they tried to find an alternate route to drive instead of getting out and chasing us on foot, which would have probably resulted in the beating they so anxiously wanted to bestow on us. Instead, we hung out in Larry Heninger's house until it was safe to go home.

Noah retrieved the abandoned pickle jar the next day, and we ate them for another few months.

What, another blog?!

I know, I know. Five months ago I didn't have any blogs, and now I have three. Here's the thing: I was making a list of memories from the 1990s that I was going to blog about on MiKenzie Inc. The list started getting really long, and the memories of my teenagehood threatened to take over the blog. So I figured I'd start a new blog specifically for reminiscing about the greatest decade in the history of time. The first memory will be up later this week. I'm trying to decide between "Pickle Tossing" and "Neil Fingers a Truck Full of Hooligans".