Two Years Ago
July 20, 1997

Boy does time fly fast. It's amazing. It's like before you even have enough time to grow tired of your calendar, it's already time to get a new one. It's tough to keep up. I used to get those word-a-day daily calendars where you get to learn a new word every day. The only problem was that I couldn't keep up with it. I would still be trying to learn the new word and the day would already be over. I would start falling behind a couple days, then weeks, months, and even years. In fact, right now I'm still trying to learn the word from March 23rd of 1993. But anyway, my whole point is can you believe that this week marks the two year anniversary of Feff World being on-line? I can't. It seems like only yesterday. But it was two years ago, and although it feels like no time, two years actually is a long time. In fact I'm going to prove how long two years actually is by discussing the world as it was two years ago, in the year 1995. You will see how distant 1995 is to us now, and realize that the past is moving away from us at the same rapid rate that the future is moving towards us.

For most of the year 1995, I was only seventeen years old. That seems so young to me now. I just got my license, but I was still too young to vote, buy lottery tickets, or worse yet, play bingo. On the positive side, I was too young to cut cold cuts legally yet. So if you think about it, the activities that take up the vast majority of my time this summer (working at the deli, going to the track, playing bingo, etc... ), I couldn't have done two years ago because I was too young. So wow, what I was possibly doing two years ago? I must of had a lot of time on my hands. Well, what I was doing, was getting this Web page thing started. So thus it is much harder to maintain this Web page now, when I have less time on my hand, than it was two years ago, when I had too much time on my hands. Hence I writing this Whack for last Sunday now at 11:30pm on Tuesday, while two years ago I would have had it done on Saturday.

Well enough about me two years ago, lets talk more about how the world was two years ago. In 1995 the Republicans, headed by Newt Gingrich, took control of Congress, sending a strong message of disapproval to the President. However, it wasn't long before they screwed things up, and Clinton ended up getting reelected anyway. Also the whole O.J. Simpson trial opened that year. In fact, the OJ Trial pretty much swallowed up a vast majority of the year 1995 up whole. From the opening of the trial in January, to the stunning not-guilty verdict in October, to the post-trial debate that still hasn't completely fizzled out, you couldn't have gone very far in the year 1995 without bumping into the OJ Trial. But talking about people getting killed, Selena was murdered in 1995. Personally, w who the hell she was before that. It was almost as if her murder was sort of a rebirth for her. It took her death for people to finally realize that she existed. While we are on the subject of people dying, the whole Oklahoma city bombing thing was two years ago. That was big news since, as the press was quick to point out, it was the first major act of terrorism on U.S. soil. If you ask me though, I would probably qualify all that shit that the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups did to Blacks back during the Civil Rights movement and before as major acts of terrorism. In my book five little girls getting killed in a church bombing is definitely a major act of terrorism, but I guess it doesn't count. Anyhoo, one last thing about death, 1995 was also the year that Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed. Unfortunately I don't think the Israeli press could get away with calling that the first major act of terrorism on their soil.

I think it's time we move away from all the bad stuff that happened in 1995, and discuss some of the culture of that year. In 1995, the top rated regularly scheduled television program was E.R., and the top rated syndicated television program was Wheel of Fortune. The one is an intelligent, powerful drama about life deep inside a hospital, and the other is a corny game show for retards. Damn, I definitely do not envy network executives. How do you decided what sort of programs to air when you are sent those sort of mixed signals? But anyway, the top grossing movie of 1995 was Batman Forever. I think I can proudly say that I had absolutely nothing to do with it becoming the top grossing movie of that year. Not a single cent of my money went towards seeing that movie. Moving out of the theater and to the old video store, The Shawshank Redemption was the top rental of the year, and The Lion King made the most for videocassette sales. So people only wanted to rent the masterpiece portrait of life in jail, but everybody wanted to buy the musical cartoon about the talking lion. Great choice people. Moving away from movies and towards music, Hootie and The Blowfish had the top album, Coolio had the top single, and TLC was burning up the R&B charts. However for me the top album was once again Journey's Greatest Hits, for the ninth year in a row. Finally in the world of books, John Grisham's The Rainmaker was the top fiction book, while John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are from Venus was the top non-fiction book. Unfortunately, since neither of the two books have Cliff Notes out for them yet, I have no clue what they are about.

Well I think it is time to stop looking towards the past, and return to gazing at the future, so to conclude the Whack for this week, I really must have had no life before I could play bingo; a lot of people died in 1995; and daytime TV just isn't the same anymore without the OJ Trial.

Now for this week's very special feature, Feff's top ten favorite Nobel Prize winners of 1995:

10. Robert E. Lucas, Jr. (Economic Science)

9. Eric F. Wieschaus (Physiology or Medicine)

8. Edward B Lewis (Physiology or Medicine)

7. Mario Molina (Chemistry)

6. F. Sherwood Rowland (Chemistry)

5. Frederick Reines (Physics)

4. Martin L. Perl (Physics)

3. Seamus Heaney (Literature)

2. Joseph Rotblat (Peace)

1. Noel Rogers (Entropy)