According to Wookieepedia:

The 1990s (pronounced “nineteen-nineties” and abbreviated as the nineties) was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1990, and ended on December 31, 1999.

That’s the kind of hard-hitting fact you can expect from a group of pop culture enthusiasts and amateur encyclopedians, but what does it really tell us?

Nothing, that’s what.

As someone who was alive from January 1, 1990 to December 31, 1999 (according to the Gregorian calendar, at least) I can tell you that there was a lot more to the ’90s than just the passage of time. Kosovo? Bill Clinton? Milli Vanilli? And, of course, there was the “slacker” aesthetic given a name by the seminal film and Generation X symbol Reality Bites.

Pat’s Trick, by Helium, is a wonder artifact from this time showing off this “slacker” style. The goal, of course, it to never get caught trying. Take a look:

The video opens with a woman using a ho in a lackluster manner.

It turns out it is the singer and, rather than being black and white as we previously thought, she is actually in color.

We briefly get a shot of the bass player who failed to get the memo about slacking.

That is a guy who is trying far too hard. I think he probably begged the other band members to add this shot to the video so he could impress his friends who probably don’t even believe he’s in a band.

The singer’s hands are full of dirt for some reason, possibly from using a ho earlier? Probably because she just doesn’t care.

Next we see the singer attempting to plant a flower by just jamming a flower into the ground.

That is not the act of a person who tries. It’s a demonstration of the most minimal effort possible.

The singer then sings through a pile of dirt.

Then, we see a shot of the whole band, looking extremely cool.

I love the almost expressionless look on the singer’s face in these shots.

She’s singing, but she’s thinking about something else. Something far more important than me, or the song, or the making of this video. That’s what “slacking” is all about.

Check out out the video for “I Could If I Wanted To” for another view of this general attitude:

Next, we see a bulldozer moving a lot of dirt.

In a shocking twist, the singer is driving the bulldozer.

In what is by far my favorite part of the video, we see the singer playing the guitar solo by just kind of moving the guitar around a little bit while holding onto the strap which is not around her neck.

While, yes, this is a super slacker way to do the guitar solo, I think it’s more of a testament to the kind of thing that is only possible with a woman as the lead guitarist. No matter how “cool” and “hip” a slacker Generation X man guitarist might pretend to be, you better believe he’d want close up shots of his hot licks during the guitar solo.

For some reason, the singer then poses sexily on the hood of the bulldozer.

I’m not sure what this shot is doing in the video as it doesn’t really fit in.

For the final chorus, the singer appears to enter an ecstatic trance.

She does some more dirt singing, as well.

We finally get a wide shot of the band toward the end and I really like the set here. They’re inside a colorful flower pot, standing in dirt amongst the flowers.

Very groovy.

The video ends with the bass player again forgetting that he should be acting cool as he does his best to rock out.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about with the guitar solo.

This song is one of my absolute favorites and the video is really an excellent time capsule into what was cool in the ’90s. And I should know because I was cool in the ’90s.

-PTD