So it's been just about a year since I last updated this page. That's a pretty long absence, and I suppose I could go on and explain the whole thing, but it's not very exciting and so I'm gonna skip it. Let's just say that a year is way too long to go without updating a web page and that I'll be trying to do better in the upcoming year. No one wants to go away for that long.

Of course, in our pop culture world sometimes the things we'd like to see go away for awhile simply refuse to do so. Like the 90s. In the last month, if you were so inclined, you could have tuned into new episodes of 90210. You could've bought a new New Kids on the Block album. You could've followed a new OJ Simpson trial. It's 1994 all over again. Who asked 1994 to stick around huh? I sure as hell didn't.

In the 70s we got all nostalgic for the 50s. In the 80s we got all nostalgic for the 60s. In the 90s we got all nostalgic for the 70s. Then, by the end of the 90s, we got all nostalgic for the 80s. And now, here we are nearing the end of this decade and the 90s are still hanging around. The Simpsons, one of the biggest shows from the 90s, is still running new episodes every Sunday.

How did this happen? Why did all our other decades slip away in the night like they're supposed to, only to reappear every 20 years or so in all their campy glory, while the 90s still linger like the aftertaste of a stale Diet Coke?

I'm pretty sure even the 20-year nostalgia wheel is a relatively new invention. In the 50s was anyone looking back fondly on the Great Depression? I doubt it. And in the 60s, did everyone sit around the kitchen table to tell stories about the Nazis? Well, probably not, but they did watch Hogan's Heroes every week, so I might not have as strong a point here as I'd like to think. But still, in the 60s you couldn't catch Burns and Allen on the radio and in the 70s Leave it to Beaver wasn't still cranking out new episodes every week. So what's so special about the 90s that they just won't go away?

I blame VH1. And this isn't like when I blamed VH1 for colon cancer, or the heartbreak of psoriasis, or for the collapse of the Mongolian economy. No, this time I think I might be on to something. Once VH1 started running endless versions of I Love the 80s and then I Love the 90s, it was only a matter of time before people started to realize that while it might take some effort to dig out their old Rubik's Cube or Cabbage Patch Doll, they probably still had a Luke Perry poster still rolled up in the closet, so why not go all nostalgic on that instead?

And so here we are, living in 2008 but also trapped in an endless loop of the 90s, where at any given moment you might turn on NBC and catch a brand new season of Mad About You.

The horror.

T "stop, collaborate and listen" green

And, as always, T & Sympathy is brought to you by Crystal Pepsi, Right Now...