march 1st, 2024

It's time to talk those awkward years, as this edition is all about middle school...

Today’s Playlist: ‘90s School Dance Classics

Last time out I wrote about an unfortunate incident at a middle school dance. That got me thinking about the endless cornucopia of kickass songs that a DJ (read: some principal’s cousin that likely should have been nowhere near a middle school) had at his/her disposal in the mid to late ‘90s. Here are some of the most memorable for me:

Kiss From a Rose(Seal)-Three things about this song that are relevant to me: 1) It’s from the “Batman Forever” soundtrack, which I adore. The movie itself? Kind of meh, even though it prominently features a nuclear hot Nicole Kidman. The soundtrack, though? Straight fire. 2) Seal, Michael K. Williams (Omar from “The Wire”), and Joaquin Phoenix are on the medal stand in the “Dudes with Prominent Facial Scars That Dominate Life” competition. 3) The first time I completely misread a situation with a girl happened at a dance with this song playing. We had danced for a couple songs and, after allowing me to touch her hips for several minutes in a row, I was ready to offer up my parent’s house, the land it sat on, and my younger brother as a dowry. She, however, did not share in my enthusiasm. I tried to kiss her, and the excitement I felt about things was 1000% not reciprocated; she didn’t slap me, but I’m sure she wanted to. I learned an important life lesson that night: You MUST be able to read the room. (A big part of the problem? At that age your brain/dick coordination is very underdeveloped. That old saying about having just enough blood to control one or the other is never truer than in the 7th grade. Sorry Jennifer.)

Waterfalls (TLC)-This song, as well as the video, was huge in the summer/fall of 1995, and thus was a staple at our dances around then. While an outstanding piece of music, and one that we all enjoyed hearing whenever it came on, a song about A TEENAGER GETTING MURDERED IN FRONT OF HIS MOTHER AND A DUDE DYING OF A.I.D.S. THAT SOME SKANK GAVE HIM ON PURPOSE perhaps isn’t the ideal subject matter for the junior high crowd.

I Swear(All-4-One)-This is a fucking jam. All-4-One carved out a niche for themselves in the mid ‘90s by covering a couple of country love songs by John Michael Montgomery: “I Can Love You Like That,” and “I Swear.” Did you know that All-4-One and JMM collaborated on a duet for “I Swear” in 2015? Neither did I until an hour ago, but I’ve already listened to it 12 times.

Mambo No. 5 (Lou Bega)-I was in the 11th grade when this song came out and, while my high school didn’t host as many dances as the middle school, there were a few each year. A staple was the homecoming dance. My senior year some buddies and I got shit-housed on cheap vodka and attended that year’s edition, and I had apparently had a GREAT time. I don’t remember much, but I was told that I: danced to every single song, very whitely; tried, very loudly and unsuccessfully, to convince my baseball coach I wasn’t drunk; ate three bags of Dorito’s and a Butterfinger from a vending machine; and used the DJ’s microphone to give a speech/eulogy to the entire dance about a kid in our school that had recently passed away. A practiced drinker at this point I was not.

I Will Always Love You (the Whitney Houston version)-Remember how big this song was? It was on the soundtrack to “The Bodyguard,” a movie starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. One of our assistant principals in middle school would get on the mic and sing this whenever it played, and she was pretty good. This is a very difficult song to sing, especially when you’re a junior high principal trying to keep pace with one of the greatest vocalists of all time, but she always held her own. Can I whisper something without getting yelled at? “I like this version better than Dolly’s version.”

On Bended Knee (Boyz II Men)-It’s hard to articulate how huge both Boyz II Men and this song were in the mid ‘90s. Equally difficult to quantify is the intense pain I feel in my loins when I hear it. 

As established already in past editions of Arm Side Fun, I got a lot of boners as a kid. I don’t know why, and I’m not even sure where I was relative to other dudes my age percentile wise, but I’d imagine it was towards the upper end. Thus, it’s easy to imagine what happened when I began slow dancing with a girl: within about three seconds of initial contact I was stiffer than a Winston Churchill martini. (Totally related note: Tell your sons to NEVER wear mesh shorts to a middle school dance. In 1995 you’re the weird kid with an obvious erection; in 2024, you’re the weird kid with an obvious erection that also might be placed in an involuntary 48-hour psych hold.) Normally it was fine, ‘cause at that age you learn boner control pretty quickly. (I usually went with the tuck parallel to the zipper. Well, as close to parallel as I could get; my shit looked like Nolan Ryan’s curveball.) Eventually, I learned to pre-tuck at dances. The reason I learned to pre-tuck is because of an art teacher, Ms. Bush. I took Ms. Bush’s art class in 6thgrade, and she was a great teacher. She was also fairly obviously a lesbian. (By the way, Ms. Bush is a SUPERB name for a lesbian). I was a very immature kid, especially at 12, and I’m certain she didn’t enjoy the ridiculously mean-spirited comments I made about the Indigo Girls and her seemingly laser-cut chili bowl. The fact that she had to put up with me saying inane, stupid, homophobic shit for an entire school year almost certainly played into the events described below.

Teachers at our school had to chaperone our dances, and Ms. Bush was no exception. Her main job was to make sure kids weren’t dancing too closely. A thankless task, to be sure, because you’re talking about keeping horny teenagers from getting TOO close to each other, while also encouraging them to get KINDA close to each other. A tough ask, but Ms. Bush had a secret weapon: her magic wand (that’s not a vibrator joke, either; grow up). She had this little wand thing that had a star at the end of it, and she’d come around to couples she felt were dancing too close and say, “Make room for Jesus,” while at the same time using the wand to forcefully separate the two offending parties. First off, Church and State, Ms. Bush. Jesus has no place in this public school cafetorium, unless he’s here to turn the water fountain into a Zima dispenser. And second, according to Facebook, Newsmax, and several of my church going co-workers, Jesus was not a fan of your proclivities.

So, 7th grade. In the fall, if memory serves. I’m dancing with my “girlfriend” (i.e., an 8th grade girl I exchanged ridiculously bad love notes with who occasionally allowed me to hold hands with her unless her friends were around), and this song hits. I really liked this girl, and of the many, many dances we shared, this was the first occasion that she pulled me closer to her. As you might be able to imagine, it was go-time downstairs, and I didn’t have time to tuck/adjust. The song gets about halfway through the first chorus, we’re damn near within grinding distance of each other, there’s barely enough blood in the upper half of my body to support vital functions, and I couldn’t be happier. 

Ms. Bush apparently sensed my elation, or her Boner Radar was exceptionally calibrated for a woman of her tastes, ‘cause at this point she had me in her sights. The first thing I heard was “Make room for Jesus, kids.” The second thing I heard was the star of her goddamn magic wand hitting me flush in the dick. (No shit, she hit me hard enough that I heard the contact. She didn’t get cheated, either. She got a fastball over the plate, took a hack, and hit a double into the gap.) The third thing I heard was the ringing in my ears that can only come from getting hit square in the balls, as SHE WENT BACK FOR SECONDS!!! She got me again, this time a little bit softer but right in the sack. Flawless victory/revenge/cock block for Ms. Bush. Nothing kills a vibe like taking a couple wand blasts to your junk, so my girlfriend and I went to sit down on the stage. We held hands for about 20 seconds, then her best friend sat down next to us and that got shut down real quick. Middle school, bro. ________________________________________________________________________________________

One of my credos is, “If nothing else, be consistent.” Sometimes that philosophy can be taken way too far (almost two decades of drug abuse in my case), but overall, I feel it’s a pretty solid standard.

I’ll attempt to live up to this ethos here. And since most of today’s playlist was based around events that happened in the 6th-8thgrades, we’re gonna keep the rest of this edition focused on middle school stuff. Please enjoy my Top 10 Favorite Fads If You Were a Middle Schooler in the Mid ‘90s:

10) Slap Bracelets

These were HUGE in ‘93/’94/’95, but since my mom was an early generation version of the way over-protective and gullible Facebook mom that’s so prolific today, my brother and I never had a slap bracelet. She’d say, “I heard they’re Satanic, and can cause premature arthritis,” or some bullshit like that. I love you, mom, so very, very much. But what the blue hell were you talking about? Which 1994 Karen in your friend group told you that? (It was Mindy, wasn’t it?)

9) Pogs

I’ll be honest: I didn’t understand the whole pogs craze. I had some, but only because the church I went to gave some out one day in Sunday school. (BTW, you’re not as cool as 8th grade me if you didn’t have a slammer with a picture of Jonah on it that said, “Whale of a guy.”) Pogs were these little cardboard discs that had pictures of things like characters from “The Simpsons” or Weird Al on them, and you would lay them on the floor. Somebody else, typically a burgeoning incel with kickin’ Funyuns breath, would lay down their pogs as well. You would then take turns throwing down your slammer (a heavier, thicker disc typically made from plastic or even metal) at the other person’s pogs, trying to turn over as many as possible. Whichever ones you turned over, you got to keep. Or something. I don’t know. Honestly, pogs were pretty dumb. I mainly chose them for this list because of the accompanying picture. You see the pogs with O.J. on them at the top of the post? For a while, it looked like that’d be as close as Juice would ever get to the slammer, right guys? Get it? ‘Cause he murdered two people and never went to jail for it.

8) Chain Wallets

Dude, c’mon. Chain wallets were objectively awesome. I didn’t have one until a few months after they first became trendy, but the day I walked into class wearing a Mossimo wallet, with the accompanying chain dangling past my knee, I felt like the biggest badass on the planet. I was quickly disabused of that notion when said chain got caught on a desk and I tripped and fell face first into a wall in front of the entire class, but for a few seconds there, I was king of all I surveyed.

7) Various Flavor of the Month Brands

I just mentioned Mossimo, but there were so many brands that were must-haves in the mid ‘90s. Stussy. Girbaud. Z Cavaricci. Doc Marten’s. Tommy Hilfiger. Motherfucking JNCOs!!! I tell you what, the marketers and advertising folks for those companies did a hell of a job promoting their products at stores in the mall like Gadzooks, Spencer’s Gifts, and Hot Topic, ‘cause there was a time when I would have drowned a kitten for a pair of Docs, some JNCO jeans, and a Big Johnson shirt.

5) Glamour Shots

Holy shit, remember Glamour Shots? For a while, this company made a ton of money by convincing middle-aged white suburban moms that they needed to invest in a perm, a shoulder-baring ‘80s prom dress, and a teeth-whitening kit, all in the name of trying to take some horny pictures. I’m 42 now and have a much better understanding of the importance of everyone, especially women, feeling and looking sexy. At the time, though? I had no clue why all the moms of my friends (including, yes, my own mother) had the desire to get all dolled up just to pay someone a premium for some pictures that were basically Olan Mills-quality, but with a smoke machine effect. The ‘90s were a time, folks.

4) Fanny Packs

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Did you just say what I think you said? You’re telling me there’s an article of clothing that not only looks patently ridiculous but will advertise to anyone who sees me wearing it that not only am I hyper paranoid about my belongings being taken but am also very likely a super virgin? And it comes in various shades on neon? TAKE ALL OF MY MONEY!!!

3) Grunge

Now we’re getting into the heavy hitters. How good was grunge music? I love ‘80s hair metal, but its greatest contribution to society at large was that it helped to usher in the Grunge Era. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Hole…I mean, holy shit, dude. That’s a list of six first ballot Hall of Fame grunge bands, and I could easily list several more. My favorite was Pearl Jam, by a hair over Nirvana, ‘cause Eddie et al seemed a bit more hopeful and optimistic than Kurt and the boys. I especially enjoyed “Vs.” (“Dissident”, “Elderly Lady Behind the Counter in a Small Town” “Glorified G”, “Daughter”…a fucking embarrassment of riches track wise), and it was among the first CDs I purchased with my own money. Nirvana might have been the better band, though, and I’m not lying when I say I listened to “Nevermind” front to back at least 500 times during middle school. They were so good, and Kurt’s life and demise is a grim reminder that the price of genius is often steep.

2) AOL Chat Rooms

I know that various iterations of this type of technology are still prolific three decades later (text messaging, instant messaging, DMs, etc.), but it’s hard to parse just how game-changing the chat rooms of America Online were to a teenage boy in 1995. Part of the appeal was that you had to wait for your 56K dial-up modem to connect, which sounded like the world’s rustiest chainsaw. That shit usually took two to three minutes at our house, and the anticipation would build the whole time. Then you’d hear those magic words, “Welcome. You’ve got mail!” But it wasn’t the mail you were interested in, it was getting to your favorite chat room and finding a girl to converse with. Were you really talking to a self-described super-hot 16-year-old blonde from Keller that will totally meet you in Fort Worth next weekend, or was it a 38-year-old parolee that was incredibly well-versed in the various statutes of Megan’s Law? Honestly, did it matter? 

1) Starter Jackets

With most of these trends/fads I was usually a part of the late majority or even the laggards. For a long time, my parents just wouldn’t buy my brother and I needlessly expensive shit. The one exception where I was fortunate enough to be an early adopter, though, was my 12thbirthday, when I officially became the first kid in our grade to have a Starter jacket. If you weren’t young in the ‘90s, you can’t possibly imagine how vital having a Starter jacket was. Apex was cool, and Nike was always putting out good stuff, but the Starter jackets, with its Star “S” logo at the bottom of the left sleeve and crisscross diamond patterns on the sleeves, was the alpha of outerwear, and possibly of all clothing. You weren’t shit if you didn’t have a Starter jacket, and since my birthday is in late September, I was able to get one before anyone else. Do you think the fact that the day after my birthday it was 85 degrees in north Texas stopped me from wearing my Texas Longhorns Starter jacket literally all day? SHIT NO IT DIDN’T. I loved that jacket, and wish I’d held onto it. 

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Thanks for reading. Some recent feedback/questions from various readers of Arm Side Fun:

-It needs to be more mobile friendly.

Agreed; the PDF thing is very 2003. My bad. On that front: A very and generous (and lifelong) friend of mine purchased the domain for armsidefun.com and transferred control of it to me, so that will be coming soon. If I ever make so much as one U.S. cent off of that site, this guy will get a piece, and will continue to do so for the life of this endeavor. Mailbox money, bro.

-It’s too sexual. 

Fine, Mrs. ArmSideFun, I’ll tone it down. But you’re gonna have to explain to everyone else why a really good Garth Brooks/cunnilingus joke was cut from this week’s edition. (The punchline was “Friends in Low Places, indeed.”)

-Have all of these things actually happened as you’ve written them?

Probably, yeah? 

-Why do you end each edition with the line “Don’t be an asshole?”

‘Cause it’s really good advice. “Don’t be an asshole” is really just a shorter and more memorable version of the Golden Rule. It’s also our family motto. I’m thinking about getting it put on a throw pillow and gifting it to my wife for our next anniversary. If anyone knows a good embroidery guy, let me know. In the meantime…well, you know.