I Got 99 Things to Say About the Year 1999 and Whatever You Think I Will Say Ain’t One
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I know some of you may be wondering why I would spend the last day of 2018 talking about the last year of not only the 1990s, but the final year of the 20th century???
And this is how I would answer:
1. When the clock strikes midnight for those of us in the West–no, I don’t mean Cali but the Western Hemisphere–it will be 20 years since the 1990s ended and, technically, 20 years since the 2000s/21st century started, and guess what? We’re still arguing over the same sh*t they were arguing about the last turn of the century: immigration, communicable diseases, and the economy.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
2. Y2K scared the sh*t out of everybody.
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I may have been a shiftless whelp back in ’99–trust me, not much has changed–but the one thing I was aware of: wasn’t a damn thing going to happen to the world infrastructure when computers absorbed that it was year ’00 and therefore since it’s year 0, then back to nothing we go.
When people start spouting that end of the world/apocalypse shite, I always look to one place. . .
Australia.
If Austrialia’s all right, WE are all right.
That’s another reason why I never believed in the 2012 prophecy–though I must say the movie was a tour de force, really, only Woody Harrelson was.
If the world is going to end, we all going to go at the same time; natural disasters do not account for time zones. So, again, when Australia was fine once 2012 struck, then I knew the rest of us were going to be fine.
My grandfather also said that “ain’t sh*t ‘gon happen” back in ’99, and that man fought in a real world war, lost a finger in a car accident that killed his parents, and raised eleven kids as a general laborer post his service days, so I was inclined to believe someone who really knew what death, destruction, and despair looked like up close and personal.
All I know is that December ’99 was a very interesting time, and I laughed my a$$ off every step of the way, because this was the time you could tell someone face-to-face that he/she were a dumba$$ instead of using social media to do so. People learn better from physical embarrassment and shame rather than the virtual kind.
3. The Sixth Sense came out in 1999.
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And I never looked at movies the same.
Haley Joel Osment’s–Lily’s from Hannah Montana older brother for those of you kids who watched the Disney Channel before it went horribly, horribly wrong–Cole Sear saw dead people.
Okay. Fine.
He was receiving psychiatric help; Bruce Willis, we assumed, was his psychologist, guiding him through the f*cked up spool of ghosts he encountered, some who beat the snot out of him and popped up at the most inopportune times.
I had three heart attacks for him, especially with that girl who was poisoned by Pine Sol and other cleaning products kept showing up vomiting.
But besides that, Donnie Wahlberg, who played a pivotal role in the movie for barely five minutes, was totally unrecognizable as Donnie Walhberg, losing over 43 pounds for a part originally created for a 13-year-old boy.
And. . .
as the movie neared its end. . .
we discovered. . .
SPOILER ALERT
Bruce Willis, Cole’s “psychologist,” was one of the dead people, too.
*Throw all the silverware and plates off the dining room table.
W. T. F.
It’s 20 years later, and I’m still f*cked up over it, more so than the series finale of the Sopranos.
And that’s saying a lot. Lord knows I love me some Sopranos.
4. Unless they are going to create some kind of “live forever” serum, I will never see, as I am, another ’99, ’00, ’18, or ’19, so I may as well ridicule and chastise the happenings of the times I did see.
Cheers to another year under our belt.
Hopefully, in 2019, somebody will start paying me to write this sh*t.
Goodbye 2018. . .
Now, on to the next one.
