My 90s and 2000s Experience: The Phantom (1996, Paramount Pictures)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be talking about the 1996 movie, The Phantom, starring Billy Zane, Treat Williams, Kristy Swanson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, which I just watched for the very first time last night. Normally I talk about movies, shows, music, or whatever it is that I experienced in the 90s and 2000s, but, I've decided to start including 90s and 2000s things that I experience in the present as well, because there are so many things that came out during my childhood that I didn't watch or read that I'd love to talk about on here. So, let's talk about The Phantom. I watched it on VHS last night. Let's get into it.

Despite only watching it for the first time last night, I actually do have some history with this movie. I was nine years old when it came out in 1996 and I remember seeing the commercials for it on TV, starting probably in the fall of 1995, since there was lots of merchandise that came out. For example, on the back of Detective Comics #700, there was an ad for The Phantom trading cards from Inkworks. I also remember seeing the TV spots for it during Power Rangers Zeo as well as during the reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard on TNN, that I was also watching in 1996. I also had a replica of the Phantom's skull ring that somebody got at a convenience store or at Subway for me or something like that. 

I love this movie. At a time when superhero and comic book based movies weren't as prevalent as they became in the 2010s, The Phantom came out at the perfect time. Yet, I never saw it until last night. And the movie wasn't successful at the box office. similar to how The Rocketeer and The Shadow failed at the box office when they came out in 1991 and 1994 respectively. It's funny because just two years later, The Mask of Zorro did extremely well, and yet both are adaptations of old comic strips and pulp fiction novels. 1996 also wasn't a box office hit heavy year either. Though some very good movies came out that year like Independence Day, Twister, and Space Jam.

I love the cast of The Phantom. Billy Zane is great as Kit Walker/the Phantom. He's funny, charming, and very proactive, though not to the obsessive extent that Batman can be portrayed as in the comics, and some of the movies and TV shows. I've only really seen him in Titanic, though he plays a member of Biff's gang in Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II, and he's apparently in Zoolander as an uncredited cameo role as himself. It's been more than twenty years since I saw Zoolander so I don't remember a thing about it. And he plays P.T. Barnum in season 3, episode 2, "Freakshow", of DC's Legends of Tomorrow. This was my first time seeing Kristy Swanson and I've only seen Catherine Zeta-Jones in Ocean's Twelve, but I really loved them both in this movie. Treat Williams as Xander Drax, the villain of the movie, "X-A-N-D-E-R D-R-A-X, both starts with an x", stole the show though. I watched Everwood for probably about half the show's original run from 2002 to probably 2004 or 2005 (I'm pretty sure I missed the show's fourth and final season) and he was one of the main characters of the show, as Doctor Andy Brown, and I loved him in that role. He's also in The Empire Strikes Back, but I have yet to actually spot him in the movie. The rest of the cast is phenomenal.

As a fan of 90s and 2000s things, I watched The Phantom on VHS last night, because, why not? But, it was rough seeing the opening previews on the VHS because the first one was for the home video release of Harriet the Spy, given that Michelle Trachtenberg passed away a few weeks ago. Especially because the 1999 live action Inspector Gadget movie was one of my favourite movies when I was a kid, and of course, I loved Harriet the Spy when I saw it almost 30 years ago. However, the last preview before the movie started is the teaser trailer for Star Trek: First Contact, which I saw on the VHS release of Mission: Impossible when I watched that sometime in the early to mid 2000s. There's no exterior shots of the Enterprise-E in the teaser. Some scenes, including Picard's line about "The line must be drawn HERE, no further!" are included, but it's mostly shots from the TNG season 3 finale/season 4 premiere, "The Best of Both Worlds" and Star Trek Generations.

I had so much fun watching The Phantom. To this day though I have no idea why I'd never seen it before. It was less violent and scary than Batman Returns, and Xander Drax was a way less scary villain than the Joker in Batman. It was also even less scary than any of the three Indiana Jones movies (yeah, I didn't see those until I was a teenager for that reason), and I was older than I was when Batman Returns came out. The only thing I can really think of is that my parents felt my siblings were too young to see it, though it didn't have sexual content in it, no swearing, and very little blood in it. Who knows at this point. I'm glad I got to watch it last night regardless. I might even watch it again at some point in the very near future. 

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more nostalgic posts for you. I'm probably gonna talk about a comic book next week. We'll see though. Until then, have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: Oreos

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Friday. I've got a quick little post for you today. I don't talk about food at all on my blog. Especially not in this series, because most of the food I ate as a kid (pre-1993) is the same as it is now. Yogurt is still yogurt, sandwiches are still sandwiches, etc. But, there is one food that I want to talk about and that food is Oreos. Specifically the Oreos Summer Fun Pack, which came out sometime between 1990 and 1993 (Wikipedia doesn't list these in the list of Oreo varieties), since they don't exist anymore. So let's get into it.

Like I said, I don't have an exact year these cookies were in stores in, I just have my own memories of when these cookies were out. There were very few foods that I could eat before I had the operation that led me to be completely fed through my feeding tube. But, one thing I could do was lick the Oreo cookie filling off the bottom part of the cookie because it was soft. Someone else would eat the cookie parts for me. 

These particular Oreos had colourful filling. The colours were red, green, orange, and yellow. One of the dieticians at CHEO always brought a package of them for me whenever I was in the hospital for however long. As a dessert to go with the soup broth, strained yogurt, juice or milk, applesauce, and whatever else was brought up for me on my lunch or dinner tray since I was on a strictly soft food diet at the time due to the problems I was having at the time with my original esophagus. I also had regular Oreos too, but these colourful ones really stand out to me as something I had as a treat. 

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this today is because these Oreos haven't been available, at least not here in Canada, in about 32 or 33 years and I really wanted to eat them after my esophagial graft was done in 2003, alas I have never found them. I was also curious to know if anyone else my age or slightly older had these cookies. They were from the early 90s for sure because, like I said, I never saw them again after 1992 or 1993. But, they also could've come out in the late 80s and were just released in the summertime until 1992 or 1993. I just know I was introduced to them sometime between 1991 and 1993.

Aside from eating them in the hospital, I don't have any really specific memory of eating them while watching a particular show or movie, or reading comic books or anything like that. Not like eating strained yogurt for breakfast while watching The Care Bears Family on Global or having a juice box while watching reruns of Batman on YTV (before Power Rangers started airing), or eating soup broth for lunch while watching The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Friends and The Flintstones on YTV. Things like that. 

I think that's going to be it for me for today. Like I said, I just wanted to talk about these briefly because I was curious to know whether other people who were kids in the late 80s and early 90s ate these cookies. Plus they were part of my 90s experience and that's what this blog is all about. Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with another post next week. So until then have a great rest of the day, a great weekend, and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: YTV Big Fun Party Mix 4

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I had planned on doing this post last week, but stuff came up and I didn't have the energy to focus on working on the blog. But, I'm back and this week we're going to talk about a very obscure album that I had on audiocassette in the mid 2000s. In fact, it's so obscure that I can't find a picture of the audiocassette cover, so I have to use an image of the CD cover instead. That album is YTV Big Fun Party Mix 4, which was released on CD and audiocassette in 2003. So, let's get into it!

 So I don't really remember when I exactly got this album. It was either a birthday or Christmas present from my friend, Kelly, in 2003, or I bought it for myself while I was hanging out with Kelly and another friend of ours at the time, at Walmart in 2007. I'm about 95% sure that I got it in 2003 for my birthday or Christmas because I remember still being in high school when I got it. And none of my friends drove when we were in high school, so we had to rely on our parents to take us everywhere. And other than going to see The Two Towers in January 2003, the only other time I went anywhere with Kelly in the car while we were still in high school was when Mom and I picked her up in December 2002 for my party for my 16th birthday.

The songs on this album are a mix of the popular pop songs at the time, including "I'm a Believer" by Smash Mouth, which had been made popular by Shrek in 2001. However, there are three songs on here that are...interesting. The first is the English dub theme song for the Anime, Beyblade, "All Across the Nation" by The Black Europeans. The second is the theme song for the Anime, Hamtaro. The third is called "Super Smelly" by Nuclear Donkey.

For those of you who watched YTV in the late 90s and through most of the 2000s, you'll remember Nuclear Donkey. It was originally formed by the hosts of The Zone, PJ Katie and Pat Kelly and they recorded songs for each of the Big Fun Party Mix CDs, except for 7, 8, and 10 (according to Wikipedia). However, by the time Big Fun Party Mix 4 came out in 2003, Jen (PJ Katie) and Pat had left The Zone, and had been replaced by Stephanie "Sugar" Beard and Carlos Bustamante. As the new Nuclear Donkey, they recorded "Super Smelly" which is probably my favourite song on this entire album. Just because it's such a silly song.

There is one song on this album though that I'd love to talk about because it's my favourite song on this album that isn't "Super Smelly". And that song is "Whole Again" by Atomic Kitten. It's track 11 on the CD, but the third track on side 2 of the audiocassette, and I think one of the reasons that this album sticks out to me among all of the compilation albums I have that came out in the 2000s is that I'd heard this song and "I'm a Believer" on the radio a lot when I was in high school. Majic 100 played both songs all the time in 2001 when they were first released. So, when I got this album and saw that both songs were on it, I was thrilled.

I think that's all I wanted to say about this album. I'm honestly really happy with where this blog is. It took me ten years, but, I finally have it the way I want it to be. Which is great. That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with lots more posts. Until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.