Rhymes With Five: 1995 was a pretty good year

Lots was happening in the world as the 1990s crept towards their midpoint-- genocides, domestic terrorism, record-breaking, guilty verdicts, major advancements in home-theater technology-- but I was oblivious to almost all of it. It was 1995, and I was languishing in my early adolescence, lounging around in fake Umbros in my Mary Engelbreit-themed bedroom, reading and re-reading Little House on the Prairie and hoping 5th grade wouldn't suck too much. Yes, I was 11. I guess if you ever took me seriously, now's a good time to stop.

Here are five things I liked in 1995 that I still like now. These things miraculously survived the vicious crucible of discontent that was my teenage years-- what survived yours?

Christian Bale
Before he was Patrick Bateman or Bruce Wayne or Bob Dylan, Christian Bale was Laurie (pictured above) in the 1994 film adaptation of Little Women, which I saw twice in theaters in January 1995. Winona Ryder's Jo was already kind of my hero, so of course her love interest was my love interest too. But really, with the floppy hair, the jaunty vest/puffy sleeve combo (see above), the slight lisp, the endless humoring of Jo and her sisters' theatrical escapades, even the angsty post-Harvard facial hair-- it wasn't a difficult affinity to share. He wasn't my first celebrity love interest (the earlier ones are a little too weird discuss here-- one was a lion tamer) but he's proven the most enduring, though do I like him a little less since he capped his teeth or secretly got braces or whatever.

Clarissa Explains It All
This Nickelodeon series was in re-runs by 1995, but I'd watch it now if it was still on. To this day, Clarissa Darling remains incomprehensibly cool. Not only did she have her own computer (which she wrote programs for), a best friend that eschewed the front door for a ladders and windows, a decorative hubcap collection and a pet alligator, but she was unflappable, self-assured, stylish and so very much herself in a way that, at the time, I assumed was de facto for anyone over the age of thirteen. Wrong. I'm still working on it. Anyway, Clarissa likely influenced my next fixation...

Dangly Earrings
After winning the battle against my mother to let me get my ears pierced, the next frontier was convincing her that I was old enough to wear what my sister and I called "dangly earrings." I don't know if any other adolescent girls at any other point in time in the world have used that phrase, but I'm sure many others shared the same fixation. Mere studs were not enough. We wanted charms and jewels and baubles that hung down, fluttered around in the breeze, got stuck in our hair, maybe even rattled or jangled a little. Once my mom decided that I wasn't stupid enough to rip my own earlobes apart with such finery, I hit up every 10-for-$5 Claire's sale that crossed my mall-trolling path. My vast collection of "dangly earrings" included ice-skating penguins, flower garland-bedecked pigs, overall-clad cows and one particularly heavy pair of Taz earrings that may have actually been made of pewter.

Cracked Rear View, by Hootie & the Blowfish
Once I won $10 in a raffle at school, and that weekend, I made my dad take me to Camelot Music at our mall so I could buy this album on cassette. I even remember the outfit I wore that day. It involved flannel and the aforementioned cows-in-overalls earrings. This was the first album I ever bought with my own money, and I loved it. Loved it. Still to this day, when I'm at the grocery store or an airport or dentist's office and Darius Rucker's fratty baritone comes wafting through the Muzak speakers, I have to restrain myself from singing along. All the words. At the top of my lungs. This is why I bought a used CD of the album a few years ago, so I can do that at home whenever I want and spare the rest of the world. And this is officially the most shameful confession I've ever made in the name of Paste.

Les Miserables, the musical
Romance! Politics! Intrigue! Labor camps! Whorehouses! French Revolutionaries! What more could an 11-year-old girl ask for in a musical?! I dunno, but speaking of asking, my mom once had the dubious task of explaining the concept of "prostitution" to me when I inquired after watching the Les Miserables: In Concert special on PBS for about the fifteenth time. Fortunately for her, I was satisfied with "Uh, well, honey, it's a woman that men pay to, uh, keep them company." Uh, well, vive la awkwardness.

Note: Welcome to Rhymes With Five, the weekly blog post where I feature five things that I like that somehow relate to each other. I came up with a few other names, like "Five Alive" and "Five Jive" but, as you probably already figured out, those names all sucked. See you next Thursday!

[Last week on Rhymes with Five: And those who can't cook, read food blogs]