Retro Ramblings
Hypercolor: The Shirt That Exposed All My Sweaty Secrets
My Hypercolor shirt changed colors, all right—mostly under the arms and across my stomach, creating a heat‑sensitive map of every place I wished people wouldn’t look. …
90s
Retro Ramblings
Mom and Me Would Yell at Strangers About Turkeys
Mom and I watched Supermarket Sweep every evening, shouting grocery advice at contestants like seasoned pros who absolutely knew the fastest route to the world’s most valuable ham. …
Retro Ramblings
A Weekend Wrapped Around One Song
Before music lived in the cloud, I stood under KMart’s fluorescent lights flipping through cassette singles, searching for the one song I could carry home in my pocket. It felt like choosing who I wanted to be. …
Retro Ramblings
Staying Up All Night With Rhonda Shear
When I think back to being a quiet tween in the early nineties, trying to figure out where I fit in the world, a handful of things shaped me more …
Retro Ramblings
Nostalgia From a Five Dollar Chalupa
Paying over five dollars for a single Chalupa made me realize how far Taco Bell has drifted from the cheap, late‑night hangout it was in the nineties, when a few crumpled dollars could fuel an entire night. …
Retro Ramblings
The Pizza Hut Street Basketball Made Me Look Like a Doofus
Every March, when the brackets come out, I don’t think about buzzer‑beaters or star players. I think about that wild neon Pizza Hut street ball from 1993, the one I was sure would turn me into a basketball legend. …
Retro Ramblings
Ringing in the New Year With MTV ’92: A New Year’s Special
In those years before I had a driver’s license, before I could pile into a friend’s car, blast the radio, and roam around town on New Year’s Eve like we …
Retro Ramblings
Merry Christmas 2025
The picture above is of my mom and dad and was taken not long after they were married. Way back then, they had no idea that I would come along, …
Special Feature
Highlights From the 1990 JC Penny Christmas Catalog
In my neck of the woods, the Christmas season always officially kicked off with the arrival of the yearly Sears Wish Book and JC Penny catalog, which was usually sometime …
Retro Ramblings
Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes
You always knew when Christmas was really here. Sure, the lights went up on the houses, the church choir started practicing “O Holy Night,” and the department store Santa showed …