90s

I'm looking back to my '90s cartoon education for this edition of Pop Pedestal, where we celebrate pop culture characters we admire. This week is all about Reggie Rocket, the rad-girl sister I wish I had from Nickelodeon's Rocket Power.

Today we consider Cheryl Dunye's 1996 feature The Watermelon Woman and how and why certain filmmakers use fiction to write their own histories.

As their biggest hits in the US were love songs, one may forget that much of Savage Garden's music is decidedly dark, especially on their eponymous debut. Major themes on Savage Garden include depression ("To the Moon and Back," "Santa Monica") and troubled or abusive relationships ("Tears of Pearls," "Break Me Shake Me," "A Thousand Words"). As might be expected from a group named after an Anne Rice quote—"The mind of each man is a savage garden"—the gothic subculture was a major influence musically and aesthetically; the liner notes featured artwork from Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. The stunning song "Mine" was axed from the USA release for its reference to "crosses and crucifixes" and replaced by a cute track about how people shouldn't break promises. Still, there's no real losing with Savage Garden, because regardless of how bright or dreary each song is, they share an essential quality: terrific, poetic songwriting.

Lots of songs are slow, but to recall the awkward, needlessly dramatic tradition of the junior or senior high school "slow dance," tunes need to have several additional qualities for me:

• They must speak of a love most intense and cinematic.
• They must have a late-'90s sensibility, regardless of when they were actually recorded.
• They must sound just... so pretty, despite my initial desire to dislike them out of cynicism.

Tracks and space for your own jams after the jump!

Obviously, summer is the best time to be crushin'. But, the formula for the ultimate date is still incomplete. I've already concluded (using sound statistical data, of course) that soft-serve ice cream, bicycle rides, red & white checkered vinyl table cloths, and nightswimming (and/or drive-in movies) are necessary components. Now, if I could create a time machine out of something other than a hot tub full of sweaty, middle-aged men and take my dates back to the 90s, the formula would be finished! (Insert mad scientist cackle here.)