First Week in 1999
Feels Like '98!
News
The biggest news headlines during the first week of January 1999:
Two Salt Lake City organizers of 2002 games resign when bribery charges emerge
Dennis Hastert was elected Speaker of the House
the Senate began its trial in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton
#1 Tennessee beats #2 Florida State to win the 1st BCS National Championship
Art
The top country music song was "You're Easy on the Eyes" by Terri Clark.
The top-grossing movie at the box office was "You've Got Mail", starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.
Meditations
This would have been the start of my last semester of senior high school. The current start time for Science Hill High School is 7:40 a.m.
I have been baking 1.5 hours of get-up-and-get-ready time as long as I can remember. In order to get to school on time, I would’ve probably been setting my alarm for 6:10 a.m.
Scanning the change in graduation requirements, I am 100% positive that I did not take a personal finance class in high school.
The fact that is now requirement is a fantastic idea!
I think by this point in the year, I’d already learned Emory University had wait-listed my application.
I remember Emory had been my dream school, but I also think any twinge of disappointment was erased by the Tee Martin and the Tennessee Volunteers winning a national championship!
This is why “Feels Like ‘98” has been a Tennessee slogan ever since.
I think we forget how tame and quaint political scandals used to be.
Denny Hastert would later be sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2016 after pleading guilty to a banking charge related to a hush-money scheme to cover up his sexual abuse of high school wrestlers.
The charges of the Clinton impeachment were lying under oath and obstruction of justice. At this point in 1999, Clinton had already reached a settlement with one woman, and it was that lawsuit and his related testimony which led to him making statements that provoked House Republicans to impeach.
I did not remember that the Salt Lake Organizing Committee was in such disarray, but it was that dysfunction which would result in future governor, and current senator, Mitt Romney being recruited to - eventually - pull off a successful event.
From a digital perspective, our culture produced a movie about notifications.
“You’ve got mail” was an alert from AOL and became the title of the movie. The receipt of an email was worthy of a vocal interruption to alert you and make you stop whatever you were doing.
Today, we get hundreds of “You’ve got mail” notifications a day.
To really make it feel like ‘98, we need a movie about the Notification Center feature of your smartphone.
