Archives For why the 90’s ruled

*Insert meme of “It’s been 84 years”*

After much mysterious drama, Marit and Marion have decided to come back together to make M2M a thing once again. You have no idea about the adrenaline rush I got when I saw Marit’s post, after missing the original posting on- “September 22nd, Sunday, twenty-five after nine.

Dorks.

I love them. I hope they saw A*Teens performing together for their reunion at Melodifestivalen back in February this year and were washed by a feeling of nostalgia that they couldn’t resist. In fact, M2M has already announced The Better Endings Tour (to change the ending of The Day You Went Away, dorks), visiting a number of places in South East Asia were much of their fandom was concentrated, especially in Manila where they are already selling tickets.

My hope is that maybe, if they would like to increase touring chances in Latin America, they could get together with A*Teens and make it a Scandinavian thing. [Jokes on you! Who’s the dork now?] Thought I wouldn’t mind at all getting the chance to see Marit and Marion up close in more intimate venues, which are my preferred form of performances to witness live, anyway.

In the meantime, M2M have set up a website where you can join their mailing list, and follow them on their main socials Facebook and Instagram, Tik Tok, and a kinda left over YouTube channel.

I forgot to post this a while back, but this is a total feeling when you’re listening to music and the song comes up.

I never really bothered with Halsey before (I’m old, this blog is old. This is a self-hosted blog.), but her sampling of Britney’s Lucky was really well done, and the music video directed by Gia Coppola took it home. It pains me to read whether Britney gave her consent for the sample, but then felt the music video somehow violated some unspoken deal, but then took it all back and called it fake news. The whole project made me nostalgic and blue.

I often think (a lot lately) about how audiences (and now fervent fandoms) literally live off and suck the life out of our supposed favorite stars. Tear them to pieces while they’re up on the spotlight and kick them when they’re down, only to regret having forgotten them in time when they’re gone. Whichever the way— tragic death or slow and lonely. “I wonder what happened to them?

It’s sad that she seems to regret making a comeback due to mean comments from her own fans, because her whole vibe has really taken me back to the late 90s early 2000s, especially in this “stripped” version of the song where she wears baggie jeans and hot pink glasses. The colored glasses really really took me back in time.

Thank you for this beautiful, yet sad, homage to pop stars.

I was doing one of those random searches I do (every other year now) in search of an old show from early to mid-90s, which featured Canadian actress Lani Billard, who later starred on 1993’s Ready or Not alongside Laura Bertram. It was called F.R.O.G and it aired on Discovery Kids Latin America. The show, which apparently was produced by Toronto’s OWL TV (maybe PBS in the US?), was a shown now commonly known as “edutainment” -entertainment with an educational take- about a group of children that used to get together to discover or solve a physics/mechanical/nature/science issue of the day.

I clearly remember two episodes of the show— one featured electromagnetics, which were used to power racing toy cars. The other one featured hydronic heating systems, which were built with a water hose installed on the roof of a shed to “warm up” with the sun. Apparently, the show only featured 13 episodes, to the surprise of everyone’s brains who feels like shows used to last forever, but they were all miniseries (eg. The Storyteller, Mr. Bean, old Shogun, etc.).

My old scattered cable magazines must be somewhere around, but that’s basically the only hard copy I have of the show’s existence. I have never been able to find digital proof of the show ever existing, except for this low resolution picture I just found on one of the few videos that talk about old Discovery Kids Latino.

I barely recognized it, mainly because that’s Billard in the pink sweater. I suppose the kid in blueish green could be Gideon Arthurs, while the kid in red could be Ivana Shein.

I also found this Reddit thread saying it’s “Fully lost” and learned (finally?) that F.R.O.G stands for “Friends of Research and Odd Gadgets,” ha! I had no idea.

According to one of the links above, and the info on WorldCat, the show’s distribution is or was done by Bullfrog Films. For educational purposes, Bullfrog Films used to offer a VHS tape per 30min episode at $50 on a dedicated F.R.O.G page that is no longer available. I tried browsing through their catalogue and doing a search to see if I could find more info on the show, but no luck. I even went through all their YouTube archive to no avail, even though they are still releasing material. In theory, you should be able to order these from them.

In related things— I did find the whole original Ghostwriter series, which had been released on DVD back in the day, as well as a whole collection of Lost Telecourse, which includes a series on American Cinema, and a series about physics and mechanics (also done by TVO) called Eureka!. Outside the collection, I also found some episodes of Newton’s Apple, episodes of Art Attack, and episodes of Pingu.

That’s me. People will ask me if I’m watching which and what show, and I would usually say that I really don’t have time to watch much television. However, the past week I’ve been catching up with my “to watch” list and inundated.

I watched one single episode of Prime India’s Jubilee, which I’m looking forward to finishing. And I just binged through Apple’s Pachinko. I’m usually hit or miss with Kogonada (After Yang was excellent), but my only complaint about Pachinko is that I really wish American series would do their just one off series and not make me wait for two or three seasons.

I’ve also just started Nicole Kidman’s Nine Perfect Strangers (after going through Hulu’s Tiny Beautiful Things with Kathryn Hahn). Going though Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird, and have been catching Demon Slayer episodes, as well as rewatching shows like Cowboy Bebop and Orange Days (went through Tiger & Dragon, as well as Quartet a while back). Picking up old school Trigun, and planning to finally go through Emily Blunt’s The English and FINALLY trying to get through McQueen’s Small Axe.

Not even counting that I really wanted to watch that Prime The Underground Railroad series.

I had no idea that Lee Hyori was doing a brand new variety reuniting with Fin.K.L after all these years! I’m almost offended no one in the timeline talked about it. UNbelievable.

Now all I have to do is find the time to sit through several episodes, but I’ve already spoiled myself with all the clips posted on the JTBC channel. Of course, feelings were had.

Also, Lee Hyori, Queen of the Innocent concept xD~

Bless this concept.

It’s been a LONG time since I shared anything here xD… but this sure is memorable. It’s also been a long time since I paid any attention to MTV or the VMAs. I have no idea who was doing what where, but since Missy Elliott just dropped Iconology [YT], there wasn’t a better time to catch up with news.

In a decade of forgettable American/Western mainstream music, and an even more forgettable MTV music era, it’s hard to come up with a magical moment that marked this decade… but this could be IT. It’s not the best in the history of VMAs, but it could be very well the best performance VMA has offered this decade.

Missy was, after all, at the top during the peak MTV performance years. Bless her soul. And bless her love for baby girl Aaliyah.

– What if someday there came a tomorrow when we were apart?
– As long as we’re apart together, we shall certainly be fine.

from: Pooh’s Most Grand Adventure: The Search For Christopher Robin

As long as we’re apart together

Feelings. Feelings were had. Despite this divide of video/screen, I felt that. Faye’s that good. Imagine being there sitting in the PhantaCity studio watching a video of Faye Wong singing Dreams (梦中人) and, all of a sudden, Faye appears on the stage, right there, in front of your eyes. Woah. Shivers down my spine.

Truly a legend.

I’m not crying, you are.

Did you get to see Faye Wong and Na Ying’s CCTV Spring Festival Gala collaboration? It’s been 20 years since it happened, and this year’s Years (岁月) was probably the most popular segment [like Tang Weiwei’s two years ago]. I do wonder why CCTV hasn’t uploaded the performance on its own (yet).

As far as I know, it’s only available for high quality download on QQ (though, geoblocked), unless… you know, you do your thing.

And now, someone was awesome enough to provide English translations~

Bless them~

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