Last updated on 18 January 1998.
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It's year end again, so it's time for the annual look back at the prior year. Here are a few of the things that happened in 1993: First Business News, after 100+ yrs, Sears closed their catalog. Sears must know something that all of those catalogs that show up my mailslot don't... Carrefour closed their two stores in the US... After spending millions of $$$, Price Club closed their Woodhaven Road store after just a few months. A multi-million dollar screw up, boggles the mind... 'Atsa Pizza opened its first store... Russel Stovers bought Phila treasue Whitman's Chocolates and shuttered it. Their state of the art equipment is now in Yemen and Whitman's Choocolate's are now being made in the Midwest. Phila still has the Frankford Candy Co (which is in South Philly) and Goldenbergs Peanut Chews... large corporations continued shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs... Rep. Bob Borski and his team's cost analyses and hard work kept the Defense Industrical Supply Center in Phila... the cooly Federal Hill True Value hardware store closed. Future visits to Baltimore will be a little empty... Red Bell Blonde Ale was introduced. It's brewed in Wilkes Barre but they hope to eventually brew it in Phila... Cable TV Re-regulation worked. My cable bill went down for the first time ever and we get even more channels that I never watch...
Medical: a VA woman hacked off her husbands penis and then tossed out her car window. She was charged with littering... I celebrated my second wedding anniversary in a hospital bed... Kenny Lakewood used funds raised to kill one of his Siamese Twin daughters for expensive meals, booze, strippers and cocaine. I have some freinds who would like to set up a tax deductable charity to fund their strip club expenses... PA Gov. Bob Casey got a bunch of new organs. None of them was a penis... scientists were able to clone a human embryo. I would be nice to create a clone of myself, just image all that I could get done. As long as one of me stayed at home at times, I think the planet could handle two of me.
Entertainment: Fox was shocked, but I wasn't, when the Edsel Chase Show bombed... it was last call for Cheers. It should have been flagged three years ago... DiBella quit. Zoo's are out, maybe his next radio show will be an aquarium. Aquariums are really in these days... Gumby turned 40. Midle age doesn't seem to have affected his flexability.. CBS, who everyone thought overpaid for Letterman, laughed all the way to Chase Manhattan... the best and hardest to find TV show: Barry Levenson's Homocide: Life on the Street... Charles Manson finally had one of his songs recorded... the highlight of my hospital stay, XUXA in English! It's even more manic and bizarro than the Spanish version.
National: the Bob Dole 1996 Presidental Campaign was in full farce... deflation continued... NAFTA passed, the Budget passed, the economic stimulus package didn't... The Dan Quayle Museum opened. It's logo is a quail sitting on a tree stump. Honest. I think it represents the future triumph of Dan's environmental policies where all the trees have been chopped down and birds have to perch on stumps... Maya Angelou's beautiful inaugrial poem... Ross Perot craftfully dodged "Cuban NAFTA assasins" and his sanity... Republicans bitched because taxes were raised to reduce the annual budget deficit. They are going to be bitching about it for the next four years. I wish these rich bastards would stop trying to sell out our nation's future just so they can buy more crap at the mall.
Weather and lots of it: the East Coast had a once in a lifetime bizzard. It happened on a Saturday. Once in a lifetime and we don't even get one day off from work... the Midwest had once in a lifetime flooding... this year, for a change of pace, it was million dollar homes burning in California instead of slums. No tears from me, if you are going to build a $500,000 home in an area historically plagued by wild fires, fireproof it. One home in Laguana was left standing while all it's neighbors burned; the owner said it didn't cost any more to make it fireproof... as well as the once in a lifetime snow storm, we also had a record heat wave. I finally bought an air conditioner.
Crime, Criminals and Death: Joey "I never touched her" Buttafuco admitted to having sex with Amy Fisher. No word if they are going update the Buttafucco Authorized TV movie to reflect the truth. After the trial, Mary Jo also admitted to an affair. So that's why they call it A Current Affair... one of the World Trade Center bombers was caught hiding out in my back-up hometown, North Wildwood NJ. Even terrorists sometimes need a vacation... after waiting out the Branch Davidians with hundreds of agents for over a month, everyone died anyway. The mess was aptly of biblical proportions... River "my body is so pure I don't eat hamburgers or even drink soda pop" Pheonix OD'ed. Maybe the cocaine and heroin was too pure... A week before the movie of his life was released, Joey Coyle died as he lived, a swinger... violence comes to the 'burbs: a 15 y.o. sophmore shot a classmate dead in his classroom, another 15 y.o. shot a 13 y.o. in her garage, two young men are killed in a video store... The Brady Bill finally passed... it was open season on foreign tourists in FL... Psychos with automatic weapons mowed down commuters on LI and lawyers in SF and Chuck E. Cheese employees in CO... my favorite scam: LaToya Jackson's Pyschic Freinds Hotline. Anyone who would listen to LaToya deserves to be scammed.
Sports: Billy Penn updated his wardrobe... the Broad Street Bellies went from last place to game six of the World Series... the Spectrum II deal died twice... the Phillies Phanatic retired... the Sixers announced that they will move to Camden. Final Score: Millionairre wins, taxpayers lose.
Miscellaneous: I was crushed when Tammy Faye Bakker remarried. I thought she and Jim were made to be together forever... Zima zucks... the PA Convention Center opened and is an unqualified success... Old Original Bookbinders continued their demolition spree of historic buildings... Speed Racer returned. "Grunt. Grunt. Grunt."... NJ Gov. Jim Florio lost his bid for re-election. That'll show him. Imagine raising taxes to balance the budget and decrease the funding gap between wealthy and poor school districts... I finally got a copy of Negativland's U2 "..a little dog named Snuggles"... despite a senseless tragity, my neighborhood continued its steady climb up, highlighted by the release of the Frankford Plan.
International: peace in the Middle East, sort of... universal sufferage in South Africa... continued ethnic strife in Eastern Europe and much of Africa... EuroDisney continued to lose millions. They should have built it in sunny Spain.. multi-party elections in Russia. Communists, ex-Communists, or Nazis, what a choice!
Here are some things to look forward to and/or dread in 1994: an Internet e-mail address for me... a record deal for some deserving local boys?.. Jerseyites can look forward to Christy Todd Whitman's 30% Income Tax Cut and hell freezing over... results of the Knowlton Charrette... a Walmart in Philadelphia... Disney's Three Musketeers will have a sequel, Three Musketeers and a Baby...The Happy Dog Pub?.. riverboat gambling in PA?... I hope to score a copy of the William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy albums... a national health care plan?.. Greg Kinnear hosting Later on NBC... Dan Quayle's book... Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia... During January, Homocide: Life on the Street will air Thursday nights at 10PM EST on NBC... peace in Northern Ireland?.. even more cable channels not to watch. The TV Food Channel hosted by Robin Leech. Uck... Phila's own Furnature on the Mend guys will appear in a movie Double Dragon... Shannen Dougherty's hooters! She'll be doing a topless scene in Resurrection. I think it's a religious movie...
© Scoats 1993. All rights reserved. All glories to Bob Dylan.
Last updated on 18 January 1998.
This page administered by Scoats.