Physical media & the return of the 1990s

Apparently, the ‘90s are cool again (Incidentally, I never thought they ever stopped.) Nostalgia for the era of grunge, bowl cuts, chokers and 90210 is at a fever pitch.

(Thanks, Captain Marvel.)

After all, what’s not to love about an era during which one consumed entertainment by means of tapes and/or discs onto which music and/or movies were prehistorically published and enjoyed by means of inserting said tapes or discs into machines the size of an industrial microwave?

Fun, right?

Speaking of physical media, as an admitted and occasionally rehabilitated pack rat, I often come across mementos, usually (but not always) from the glorious 1990s, in the course of de-cluttering and re-assessing my need for such things as old National Geographics, a third place medal from an invitational track meet in 1992 or the faded stub of an airline boarding pass to Madrid.

So it was that I came across these little time capsules, into which I expect to find an abundance of sequins; a recurring joke about legendary hip-hop icon Snow and his groundbreaking single “Informer;” and old friends looking very young, their smiles and haircuts and baggy clothes like flies caught in amber. Nostalgia may well be a liar, but I’m excited to watch.

Given the circumstances of this archeological find, unearthed while actively searching out things to discard, it’s apropos to use a piece of pop culture parlance that itself will one day be a source of nostalgia, or at the very least the answer to a question included in some future, decade-specific edition of Trivial Pursuit: these DVDs “spark joy.”

So I’m keeping them. (The bronze medal? Alas, it’s headed to the landfill.)