Whatever happened to..

The other day, Rocky Horror Picture Show was on TV. That's one of those movies you can't really every remember sitting down watching, but you know you've seen it somewhere. I tend to get freaked out by it, not because of the men in drag and other forms of homoeroticism, but mainly because Dr. Frank-n-Furter looks identical to a 1982 Corvette-driving Gypsy that tried to pick-pocket me one time. That, and the "Time Warp" gets stuck in my head for about 97 days straight.

Anyway, when I flipped past it on TV, Meatloaf was singing about "Whatever Happened to Saturday Night." I thought about it, not much has happened to Saturday Night that I can think of, but there are some other things I started wondering what happened to:



1. Ketchup: Do people not eat fries with ketchup anymore? Everytime I used to go to McDonald's I had all kinds of tiny ketchup packets in the bag. I hadn't really thought about it until the other day when I realized I haven't seen one of those ketchup packets for about 12 years. Are people really getting to the point where they just eat food so fast out of the drive-thru that restaurants started assuming even putting ketchup in the bag is a waste of time and money?



2. Hover Boards: Michael J. Fox rode one of these in Back to the Future 2. It was flying scooter that he stole from a little girl and ripped the handle bars off to turn it into a flying skateboard. I distinctly remember a Weekly Reader Magazine in first grade saying that the technology for Hover Boards was being fine-tuned, but they would be ready for mass production by 1992. Instead, we got Heely's...



3. Magic Johnson having Aids: Did he just get cured of Aids? Is that possible? When he was diagnosed, it was a big news story that rocked the world. Everyone - usually people with mustaches, it seems - was getting Aids and dying, but Magic Johnson just went about his business opening Starbuckses (how do you pluralize Starbucks?) in Harlem, analyzing games on TNT, and promoting a tax service. Just once I would like to hear Ernie Johnson say, "You're right Magic, that was a great game. By the way, I hate to be a dick, but didn't you used to have Aids? What happened with all that? Shouldn't the government be studying you as some kind of medical phenomenon? We thought 'Magic' stood for your great passing. Apparently it is in reference to your ability to ward off terminal illnesses. Let's bottle some of you up and cure this thing."



4. Dippin' Dots: They promised us this was the ice cream of the future. Well, here's the future and I'm still eating the cream form, getting all melty and runny. Thanks a lot for shattering my hopes and dreams, dots. I wish you weren't such a liar.



5. Swine Flu: I followed this developing disease like a hawk. It seemed like people were getting killed faster than virgins at an Aztec ceremony for about 3 months from it. Usually when we see Asians wearing surgical masks we assume it's because they're playing Ninja. But this time they actually had a legitimate purpose for it. I was seriously looking into buying non-hybrid seeds to barter with when America resembled Waterworld after everyone died from this disease. Then, all of a sudden everyone just started wearing pig noses at Halloween and joking that they were swine flu, and went back to watching American Idol. So much for that scare.

I guess some things have inexplicable, Rick-Astley-Never-Gonna-Give-You-Up longevity in this world while others disappear faster than Lisa Turtle post 1994.