90's Nick, Where Kids Rule!

I like my butt. I especially like sitting on it. And that's exactly what Nickelodeon made me do to it in the 90s. So sit right down and take a trip through the weirdest blacktop spin LSD roller coaster of a television lineup in history, because that was Nick in the 90s. Don't get me wrong, there were some turds in that laced punch bowl of a "children's entertainment network," but it was all good. Trust me. If Nick Reboot is any guide, not every show was as great as those we remember, but still, it was damn good punch, even with the turds. And if it wasn't all great, that's what Cartoon Network was for! (But seriously, only as a last resort... don't bring that evil in here.) 

I recently heard someone criticizing shows like iCarly for all the perversity, and it got me thinking, "when wasn't Nickelodeon perverse?" You're talking about a network that got its start with dumping green slime onto unsuspecting kids who said "I don't know." This is the network that has brought us the surreal, sick depravity of Ren and Stimpy and Invader Zim, the gross-out splashes of Double Dare and You Can't Do That On Television, the trippy postmodernist double-entendres of Rocko's Modern Life and Adventures of Pete and Pete, the subversive goofyness of Salute Your Shorts and All That, all that bizarre claymation, the existence of puppets of any kind, and those other assorted surreal clips, shorts, and bumpers where giant orange balls leveled cities and boys turned inside out. Plus, a whole lot of Marc Summers working through his germaphobia... and perhaps truly enjoying the process of putting kid contestants through the rigors of "Harvey's Wild Oats" on national television and still not letting them go home with the Garfield telephone.  

My childhood Nickelodeon fanboy obsession probably began when I used to watch Eureka's Castle (don't ask, I just remember the castle), Maya the Bee, and Fraggle Rock... but I was so young then my memory of some of those shows bleeds into the commercial breaks, so if you ask me, Fraggle Rock involved the board game "Knock Out" and for some reason I remember seeing a traffic light with about 10 multicolored lights on it inside David the Gnome. Also, the less said about Weinerville the better, especially in these times (I'd need substances and maybe therapy to deal with it), although I have to admire Nickelodeon for giving what I can only assume was a homeless street performer ("puppeteer?") they found outside the studio his own kids' show. Did the gamble pay off? Well... all I remember is the Halloween one where he asked what the kid in the zombie costume was eating and the kid says, "a hand." Some of it seems to seep up from my subconscious to this day, but some of it may just be a fever dream. I did watch a lot of Pete and Pete and Wild and Crazy Kids in the heat of the summer, so I was quite literally in a fever dream half the time. 

Speaking of Wild and Crazy Kids, that show used to get me downright dizzy, and not just for the opening montage. You couldn't watch any second of that show where all these kids would be outdoors doing fun competitions and not turn your head, see a bright beautiful sunny day outside waiting for you, and then turn back to the kids having fun on TV and go... "haha... they got messy!" I distinctly remember watching one in the middle of the blazing hot August sun one day from the couch where the dads had to place their foreheads on the end of a baseball bat and spin in circles until they were dizzy, and then try to play baseball with their kids or something while in the state of delirium. And I distinctly remember the exact combination of my sedentary dehydration, the overstimulation of my eyes, the under-utilization of my brain, the dry heat in the middle of the day, and the repetitive motion of the guys spinning around dizzy, actually making me want to blow CHUNKS. Not to mention it was fun watching the kid from Roseanne get stuck to the Velcro wall and left to die in one very strange cross-promo. 

This is to say nothing about Salute Your Shorts, which actually had the nerve to acknowledge FARTS (celebrated in song no less, and at the start of every episode!), along with the titular underwear hoisted from the mast... and yeah, also mullet punks named Budnick and fatties named Donkeylips who were regular gassholes... plus Zeke the Plumber and Ugg's Nose giving you trauma to this day... and everything else that allegedly happens at summer camps (and no, for the last time, I Am Not Sponge... although that would make a good title for my autobiography). But we are only getting warmed up, because then there was Nick Arcade, which looked like actual freakin' magic as far as I was concerned back then (and not just a kid in front of a green screen) when they somehow managed to actually transport kids INTO video games! Don't even get me started on which Game Wizzard I wanted to go up against in the Video Zone (of course it was Scorchia... give me some good ole clean FEM-DOM any day! Come on baby light my FIRE!). But no, I have no desire to "control Mikey"... just saying. 

"Dun-dun-dun, da-dun dun dun, da-dun dun dun, da-DUN!" (Slowly watching the host lose his mind to that tune day after day MADE the show!) 

URRRRRPLet's see... what else? Seriously Rocko and Pete and Pete are deserving of their own posts. There is just too much to cover. Legends of the Hidden Temple? Own post. GUTS? Own post. What Would You Do? Own post. Nicktoons? Own post. I mean, let's focus on the Arcana of Nickelodeon, the dark underbelly of the orange beast... and by that I mean, the only show that probably was conjuring demons, Are You Afraid of the Dark? To which the reply by me was usually "yesss..." if it was past my bedtime, and especially YES if it was the CLOWN ONE, the ALIEN ONE, the MIRROR ONE, or the "I'm cold..." one! (Fun fact that "only 90s kids know TM" but the Harry Potter actually got his start in Are You Afraid of the Dork. Yeah. He played the dork. And if you don't know what I'm talking about then you probably didn't watch the show.) 

But let's really have a debate about just what slime tastes like for the millionth time. You know they probably changed the recipe often because sometimes it was practically water and other times it was like green cottage cheese. Now I have no idea what Nick Slime tastes like (some say corn starch), but being a booger-eating boy, I manufactured my own slime and I gotta tell ya, it probably had nothing on me. One thing they had that I didn't though were pools, canons, fountains, and explosive taps full of the stuff, literally gushing, splashing, and raining the green ooze from the fucking sky down upon children. THIS was glorious schadenfreude that still gives me a buzz. Nothing beats watching kids get hit with slime, especially GIRLS (and really annoying boys)... so yeah, basically the entire cast of You Can't Do That On Television. This was Nickelodeon Studios... and it was (probably) better than Disneyland. I mean, you can have snot rain down upon you at Nickelodeon studios. You can't even SAY the WORD "fart" in the Lion King. So there!

But let's just discuss KaBlam! for a second. If Nickelodeon in general was a fever dream, this show was its own fever dream inside of that one, containing the stop-motion bumbling stupor-heroes Action League Now, which was just Robot Chicken before Seth Green decided to blow up his childhood... Life With Loopy, which was an acid trip of cardboard cutouts about a kid who somehow manages to be even more insane than his actually insane sister just by being so blase about what clearly is a problem, Promethius and Bob ("an alien's attempts to educate a caveman"), which just proves there never has been intelligent life on Earth, and a whole other universe of whatever bizarre shit they could cram into that animated comic book of theirs. But perhaps more awesome than anything was just getting to see Henry and June open the show with some rather on-point dance moves... well, not as awesome as watching Henry get hit in every episode! Boys are great as punching bags, girls... just sayin. Have at it. (Jk!) 

Damn, I have not even scratched the surface. I mean, All That had a freakin' Giant CORN for some reason they toted around through the sky attached to airplanes and we got to watch Mary Beth and her very real love-affair for the thing blossom over several seasons of SNickL (see what I did there?). She gave us endless "vital information" words of wisdom we've all benefitted from ("All's fair in love and war, all's smelly in a closet full of baboons"), while Keenan Thomson just loved chocolate and bathtub French lessons. Both of these sagas were truly a better love story than Twilight. Clarissa was not always clueless and the Pink Ranger was, well... The Pink Ranger... but the undying love I had for Harriet the Spy and Alex Mack... no human tongue could tell. Heck my love for Larisa Oleynik continued into Third Rock from the Sun and beyond (hell, even now)... and when it comes to Harriet the Spy (Michelle Trachtenberg), what can I say? She was my first love, my soulmate, my flame... I'm sorry, it's just that I always liked girls. Especially powerful ones who could beat me in a fight (I'd see to that) and would definitely beat me in a battle of wits (...I'm gonna go cry now). 

Anyway, speaking of GIRLS... it certainly seems these days Nickelodeon has gone to the teenage girls, but at one time, it was known as the television network for kids that kids actually liked to watch... all the dirt, guts, butts, and grass stains included. If the 80's showed us a Nick that was more about kids watching the world of adults through the travels of a pinball, in shows like Lights Camera Action and Mr. Wizard, mixed in with kiddy sock-puppet shows, the 90's showed us a Nick of slimy, grimy, kooky craziness where kids ruled and adults could take a hike. And you know what? Both still sound awesome. And it wasn't so cut out like that, because the 80's had the early beginnings of what would be the 90's in You Can't Do That on Television, and the 90's had lingering traits of the 80's in shows like Nick News... Oh damn, Nick News could clear a playroom faster than a ... ahhh who am I kidding? I even watched Nick News! 

The only period where Nick could have been classed as "not perverse" (at least not overtly) would be the late 80's and early 90's when all those foreign cartoons were filling up the morning slots, like the Lit'l Bits, Maya the Bee, and David the Gnome, and they were great too. At one time, Nick had something for everyone: the kiddies who liked the soft-lined musical sweetening of the foreign cartoons and puppetry weirdness, the older kids who liked the subversive guts-filled, surreal, anti-PC "kid's rule" middle-finger at the yawn-fest of "social graces," and the teens who were just into looking cool and getting their way past their clueless parents (Clarissa Explains it All). Girls were always tough and smart, boys were always goofy and slick, little brothers were dorks, big brothers were buttheads, and sisters were just evil and proud of it.

It was an age where the silly gelled pretty easy with the crazy, the absurd, the downright nasty, and even (at times) the educational, but it was always perverse... because a half hour before the archeology fun of Legends of the Hidden Temple, it'd be Wild and Crazy Kids, where kids were sure to be competing to fill a bucket with slime after sitting in a pool of it with a sponge strapped to their butts. 

Speaking of which, I think mine's gone numb. 

Magic Eye

These were so 'in' in the 90's. I stared cross-eyed into so many of these Magic Eye books when I was a kid, my nose pressed into the pages, it's no wonder I ended up needing glasses. These things made my eyes hurt--which, save for sticking something in them, is a rare occurrence.  And even if I saw the hidden image, I could never figure out what it was.

Remember, blur your eyes, look "through" the picture...or something.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

This may elevate my dork-dom to nerdhood status, but I think I've done worse. I am not a Trekkie by any stretch, but the fact is, before Jurassic Park arrived on the scene, my all-time favorite movie was probably Star Trek III, The Search for Spock. I didn't end up seeing the best Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, until high school, but I knew the basic plot well enough to understand its sequel, which we had on tape. I saw the first Star Trek movie when I was six on the USA network, and all I could think was "ooh, pretty colors," otherwise, I was probably asleep after 30 minutes. I enjoyed The Voyage Home and The Final Frontier sure, but for some reason, The Search for Spock was my choice picture. Kind of like eating mac'n'cheese, you enjoy it more when you don't know any better. (Spoilers ahead!)

All I remember thinking when I first saw this movie was "when's he going to show up?" I don't think it clicked that the kid was Spock... I was just expecting him to come out of nowhere and for everyone to go "ah, there he is." Come to think of it, it wasn't much of a "search," seeing as they knew where he was, but then again, I guess they couldn't call it "Return of Spock" because that's a spoiler ... even if we could have figured that one out. They wouldn't make a movie and not bring him back. Nor were they just going to bring him back in the first two minutes and carry on. They can pull that crap within a movie in order for there to be a sequel but not when it ends with the character still dead. Ultimately, how they did it works... unless you think about too much.

"So you're telling me that... Spock's casket flew off into orbit around the Genesis planet, fell into the planet's gravity, and then fell thousands of miles through the sky at high speeds and crashed, I mean, 'soft landed' smack between two trees? Then while he was down there in the casket, his body was destroyed and somehow turned into Zygote Spock in the casket and grew into Baby Spock within the casket with no air-holes... and then somehow managed to open the space-sealed casket as a what... baby? child?... before running off naked into the woods?" Sheesh! You know what, I'm glad this movie was called the "Search for Spock," and not "Yeah... That Happened."

Maybe I like it because it's still a gorgeous movie. The score by James Horner is, well, it's just like the one from Wrath so it's excellent. But let's get serious, the real reason I enjoyed it so much was because the Enterprise self-destructs in an epic battle against the Klingon Bird of Prey (certainly the best time this happens). I can still hear the computer voice "5...4...3.."  "Get out of there!"  "...1". I also enjoyed how Kirk stole the Enterprise out of space dock in a grand orchestral swell, and how they had to sabotage the Excelsior and make it go "clunk-a-clunka-ka-dunk" in space to get away. It was all so well done you don't even care about the plot holes... ("wait, why do they need to go to planet Genesis to get Spock's body if it burned up in the atmosphere at the end of II for all they know?"...) My brain didn't work on that level at the time though. Heck, it barely works on that level now.

Anyways, loved the "goin' rouge" feeling, loved the humor, ("How can you be deaf with ears like that?" and [in an elevator], "Up your shaft!") ...can't say I loved the "talky bits," like the mind-melding and the close-ups on eyes and lips and such, but those were the bits I used for bathroom breaks or trips to the fridge. It's not the best Trek film, but it's the best odd-numbered Trek film by far and one of the most entertaining. I'd walk into elementary school and draw little Enterprises on my papers (I liked to draw), and walk around saying "Grissom! This is Enterprise calling, please come in!"

So I may have really revealed my borderline nerdhood with this one, but trust me, I was always more of a fan of the movies than I was of the TV shows, and I never really watched much of TNG, but this film was worth learning how to work a VCR for on a summer afternoon.

Doom By Asteroid!

To this day I can't hear Richard Kiley's voice without getting short of breath. I hold nothing against him personally, it's just his voice has come to be, in my mind, the voice narrating the Apocalypse. The only bad thing about the 90's was that with the new millennium fast approaching, out of the woodworks came all the doom sayers, and following close behind them, the scientists backing them up. Hollywood and science teamed up to inform us that... some serious shit was about the hit the fan, so we better buy out all the stores just to be safe.

After all, weren't we all treated to documentary after documentary, blockbuster Roland Emmerich movie after Roland Emmerich movie, low-budget Roland Emmerich rip off after low-budget rip off, all foretelling Earth's sure destruction through multi-character plot lines? There was nothing our parents loved to watch more than people running for their lives as New York City went up in flames, and nothing I hated more than being forced to watch it too, and I don't even live there!

Anyways, I single out the voice of Richard Kiley especially, for his narration of the 1996 Discovery documentary "Three Minutes to Impact,"--a film that planted the seed into this brain that not only are we going to get hit by an asteroid "the size of Texas", but it will hit a metropolitan area (preferably a world landmark), and it will hit sometime soon enough for people to still be driving around '96 Corollas (as featured during the animated impact scenes). And seeing as how people are still driving '96 Corollas, I can only to assume that doomsday is long overdue! Is it time for a change of pants yet?

Let's be honest here. The first thing anyone thinks when they see asteroids plummeting into Paris, London, or New York is, "thank God that's not close to me."

Every two minutes of this thing I was squished up on the edge of the couch, begging the scientists, "say it isn't so! Oh, say it isn't so. Say it won't happen to me!" And sure as the Apocalypse itself, they just kept retorting, "Oh yeah, it's a mathematical certainty. We will be hit again, in fact, fairly soon too!"

I think the 90's wore my disaster reflex out though. I've seen so many of these things pummel into New York, Vegas, Paris, Rome, London...etc., throughout my childhood, that I don't think the real thing is even going to shock me much. Let's get our hopes up that if it's going to happen though... it'll happen to all those sorry saps living in cities far, far away from me. I'm calling you out, Aprophis.

Kid Vid vs. The Egg McMuffin

Kid Vid was the ultimate gatekeeper. You want in on the Burger King Kids Club? Well, if you're over 4 feet tall, fuck you! (Or so the sign said at the BK play place). Thank you Kid Vid for keeping all the non-little-person pedos out of the playplace! (I tried to make a molestation joke about the older gentleman's "play place" I stumbled upon once in a BK bathroom, but... nah). Kid Vid was what every 90s kid wanted to be... needlessly accessorized! Future goggles from Star Trek, antennas, ray guns, fingerless gloves, shoulder strap and mounted tech thingy, watch, walkman?, sneakers, and only ONE knee pad... RADICAL! Burger King was Blast Processing your fast food experience! (And that ain't no diarrhea joke!) Forget McDonalds and the stupid big-hipped clown! Kid Vid is totally EX-CELENNNNT! Plus, he had his own cult, and you could be in it!

This has fueled my suspicion that BK has always been better than McDs. Since we can't really judge based on the quality of the food they sell on their respective kids menus (because seriously), McDs mascots were a bunch of magical pudgy PUSSIES compared to the awesomeness that was Kid Vid and his lazers! There, I said it, and I am not ashamed. Clearly Ronald McDonald was and still is evil beyond comprehension, but a worthy adversary nonetheless for Kid Vid and his heroic Kids Club in what should've been the ultimate fast food showdown! Unfortunately, Kid Vid and other relics of 90s radicalness bit the dust while the evil Empire of the Clown still reigns taco-supreme. Maybe someday things will become rad again and a true hero will rise from the flame-broiled ashes, but for now all we can do is dream, and resist! Seriously, while BK was making you a king or queen and signing you up for world domination in the lazer-crazed hotshot futureworld Kids Cult, the best McD's could do was make you sit on uncomfortable Hambuger-shaped plastic stools and get you raped by Grimace in the ball pit (that's what happens when Kid Vid ain't there to gatekeep). Well... okay... McD McPlayplaces were usually better than BK's, so maybe it might've been worth it.

My story isn't as much fun as that, but just as traumatic, because it has to do with the food. Let's just say, I did my part in the war effort against the Clown and embodied the spirit of Kid Vid in all his glory, but it has left me battle scarred to this day. Case in point, to this day I still can't eat eggs, and it's all thanks to McDonalds and their dreaded Egg McMuffin. They activate my gag reflex. Sure, I could probably eat an egg white, but I can not eat that gritty yellow stuff they tell you is the baby chick. It's not that I'm a persnickety vegetarian or anything, it's because the taste, the texture, the smell... it calls up the wet McMuck within.  Besides, I do like the sausage part of the McMuffin (probably because it had as much Styrofoam as the container and was as plastic as the Happy Meal toys), but something about that egg just made me wanna hurl. I could never understand how people could eat that which smells like a fart. Yuck! And yet, I was still forced to eat them (eggs, that is... let's not get started on what my brother did to me on the reg).

I was also condiment-intolerant. If you were buying the eight-year-old me a hamburger, you'd be wise to just repeat the following into the drive through talkbox: "two all beef patties... hold the sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, oinions, ketchup, mustard... leave the sesame seed bun." Spare yourself the headache and make it simple, otherwise, "no thanks, you can have it." And if it was hotcakes for breakfast, no syrup please. It was "too sweet." But my dad wouldn't hear any of this. Real men eat everything! So he'd buy me one of those Egg McMuffins every weekend when he had us, and every weekend I had to come up with ever more increasingly convoluted ways of removing the egg part without him knowing. Somehow, at some point, I had to pick off the egg and toss it with the wrappings when he wasn't looking. This usually involved me sticking the egg part in my pockets or hiding it somewhere in the backseat to fester and stink and be found at a later date hardened and crusty. Yuck! My mom was a bit more subtle and let us be picky, knowing that we'd come around eventually. Sorry mom, still can't stand eggs!

So screw McDonalds and your McDonaldland despotism. At BK, you can always "have it your way." The King was always a benevolent monarch. Long live the king! It's how Kid Vid would've wanted it. Seriously, the PTSD of being forced to eat Egg McMuffins against my consent is just... too much to bear. You never recover from the trauma. The spirit of Kid Vid once again reigns victorious in each and every one of us when we boldly say enough is enough and resist the Clown and all other food tyrants at all cost!

But then again, they did come with a tiny Hotwheels car, so... kinda worth it.

Paranormal Alien Junkies

By the time third grade rolled around, my friend Nick and I were a couple of paranormal junkies. I suppose "junkies" is the right term, as it's fitting of what that stuff really is (plus we definitely were paranormal). But don't tell me that aliens were junk back then. Those were the days when we didn't have the History Channel to give us our UFO fix. We had to rely on the infrequent sightings on the Discovery Channel (back then it was the "smart people" channel). I was hooked on all those weekend paranormal Lifetime Channel Unsolved Mysteries marathons. "Television for women" my ass! More like "television for 9-year-olds who love freaky alien paranormal shit"!

My friend Nick was pretty smart. In fact, we used to call him "smarter than the average kid" (in the Yogi Bear sense), or at least, that's what he called himself. He knew all the times tables. Quick... what's 5x7?? Too late! Nick's already answered. Oh yeah. He could tell you all about military missions, airplanes, explosives, and brain eating amoebas in your favorite waterparks. He also could burp on command like a champ, really loud and beastly, and even taught me some of his burping wisdom. So as far as I was concerned, he really was smarter than the average kid. He did sneak nunchucks into school on many occasions, so yeah, of course we were friends. Checks out. And so... anything he said was pretty much gospel. Nick was convinced they were holding aliens in Area 51 and doing autopsies, and I agreed, adding, "who do you think works there?" He suggested that people don't work there like a normal job, they are born, raised, work, and die there and never see the outside world. Yes, for us, Independence Day was a documentary. That's an 'unsolved mystery' our old Lifetime channel friend Robert Stack took to his grave.

Was Independence Day not a documentary? Wasn't that really area 51? I don't know. Nick did. His parents let him watch ALL the Alien movies, and he said they were all pretty badass, so ... he knows what he's talking about. And you know what else? He had some pretty sweet nunchucks.

This is all heavily ironic, for nothing terrified me more as a kid (and even now as I think about it), than being abducted by aliens... that and ghosts... and girls. I knew there was no monster under the bed, but aliens? I wasn't so sure. You could say this fear was also ironic because if you talked to my brother, he would've told you nothing would've pleased him more than seeing me get "taken." He would have held the door for them. Indeed, it might have explained a few things. The feeling was mutual. It didn't help that a new "aliens destroy humanity" movie came out every year in the 90's, and of course, my parents kept renting them... even the horribly terrifying Mars Attacks, which haunted my dreams for weeks. Those eyes, those brains, those ray guns turning people into skeletons, the totally wasted all-star cast, the death of Danny Devito! ("Look, don't shoot me, I'm a lawyer. If you wanna take over the world... you're gonna need a lawyer!") It was a horrible movie (and that's coming from a guy who likes Tim Burton).

Robert Stack probably was an alien, but I had my doubts about some kids at school. Humans? Or aliens wearing human skin? How could you tell? Well, it turned out that Nick seemed to know exactly how to spot an alien (because yeah, the kid knew everything). He told me, and this is 100% true, that if they tell you they're a pack of aliens living out behind the school eating "shiny paper foods" (the place was littered with potato chip bags)... it probably makes sense to play it safe and take their word for it. "Your brain could be next." But then I started having my suspicions about Nick... he seemed to know too much...

How else could you explain his advanced mathematics computer brain unless it wasn't some kind of... advanced alien brain or techno-implant? Wait... wasn't that him eating potato chips at lunch? Look at the inside of his chip bag! "Shiny paper food!" Wasn't that him wiping his boogers on the window? Hmmm... that specimen seemed a bit too green if you asked me. And all the ear-spliting burping on command? Sorry but I know the sound of a Xenomorph when I hear one! And the smell of his breath... whoo! Like sauerkraut and crusty gym sock! Yeah... definitely not human.

That did it. The kid was definitely an alien.

But I could never be sure, and I didn't want him knowing I might've been on to him. He never invited me over, despite telling me he wanted to many times. Seems suspicious, right? At some point in the 4th grade I remember we had some kind of falling out... probably because I was too close to uncovering the SECRET. I remember he threatened to use his nunchucks on me once, and I told the teacher he had brought them to school. After that, I was sure he was gonna come to school and pound me, or do worse, and I actually remember dreading going to school for a few days. But weirdly enough, he didn't show up. Day by day went by, and he was absent. And then for some reason I never fully knew, I never saw him again. Well, it was close to the end of the school year anyway... or maybe he just jumped back in his craft and went back to his planet. Either way, I want to believe.

Or as Home Improvement once put it, parodying the X-Files:

"The truth is out there..." -- Tim Taylor
"No Taylor, you're the one who's out there." --Jill Taylor

All About Reptiles

This is but a mere re-creation.

In selecting the new font for the glorious header of this blog, I came across this oldish Fraktur Nazi-esque one that reminded me of how much I appreciated the Old English font as a kid. I don't know why, perhaps it connected me with my humdrum "I say good sirs!" roots, but something about it could always class up any run of the mill school assignment. All those unnecessary lines, serif hooks, and random hairs, really made me think I was submitting something of quality when I handed in the 4th grade hyper-pixelated masterpiece "ALL ABOUT REPTILES" (in full caps, no less). Now that was fancy!

This was of course back in the day when computers were interesting. The one in the classroom had a really kiddied-up word processor that came with three fonts, and for whatever reason, Old English was one of them. It also had three sizes for header type: large, huge, and "make that, two pages." It allowed you to sort through what kind of image you wanted to adorn the header of your document from a list of severely pixelated and random clipart. Back then it was cool if you had a picture on your reports, whether related or not... so I went with the giant Indian with full feathery headdress.

Between these stylistic choices, "ALL ABOUT REPTILES" was complete at maybe 100 words, and it was pretty badass.