Wasn’t it great be a ’90s kid?! Pogs! Tamagotchis! The golden years of the Simpsons! Purple ketchup! Schindler’s List! The Oklahoma City bombing! Bill Clinton! The Columbine High School shooting!

Nickelodeon! Ahh, Nickelodeon. I’d spend 28 hours a day in front of my TV soaking it all in. All the inane cartoons, all the horrible child actors, all the slime that led to online sexual fetishization, all the toy commercials selling complete junk like Dr. Dreadful’s Food Lab or those Domino Rally sets. It leads one to wonder, 30 years later, what became of some of these child stars that were paraded around TV like monkeys in a zoo. Some of them went on to write memoirs called I’m Glad My Mom Died. Others went on to become a Saturday Night Live cast member for the rest of their lives, apparently, at this rate. But what became of some of the lesser-known stars? The ones who delighted us as children and disappeared into a volcano after 1999? I’m here to shed some light on the whereabouts of a small handful of minor teen celebrities who weren’t in the news for experimenting with cocaine or MDMA… for example. No judgement here!

Danny Cooksey (Bobby Budnick, Salute Your Shorts)

Danny Cooksey – Cult Leader

America’s favorite ’90s mulleted ginger, Bobby Budnick warmed our hearts teaming up with Donkey Lips to terrorize Sponge Harris at Camp Anawana, but what became of Danny Cooksey after his spirited tenure on Salute Your Shorts?

Cooksey endeavored to become a very successful cult leader in the early 2000s, having founded the Peoples Order of the Grey Heron after a kid threw a stone at his head while walking through the park in his parachute pants. When he came to, he was in awe of a great bird framed by the sun standing above him. It was as if God himself had descended to Blorp’s Pond in order to send him a message; to fulfill his destiny as a powerful, influential leader of lost souls. Then the grey heron attempted to peck out Cooksey’s eyeballs, but it was nothing that a few spritzes of antiseptic spray couldn’t fix!

The Peoples Order the Grey Heron wasn’t successful. Comprising of only he and Tim Stevens from Cooksey’s high school 12th grade English class (where they had partnered up on a book report about The Scarlet Letter), the cult meetings eventually devolved into random evening hangouts where they would drive by clubs and holler at the girls while high on paint thinner. These days, Cooksey sells souvenir bean bags in Wachapreague, Virginia. If you stop by and say hi, he’ll autograph a copy of his memoir for $5: The Cult of One: Why Tim Still Owes Me Money for Breaking My Lava Lamp.

Arthur Reggie III (Alfie Parker, My Brother and Me)

Arthur Reggie III – Homeless

My Brother and Me was a polarizing show to be sure. Some, like me, were just the right age to enjoy its wholesome suburban family antics. Some were outgrowing Nickelodeon and ready to move onto much more sophisticated television entertainment (like Disney Channel or the Spice Network). Some, like you, were too profoundly racist to watch a show centered around a black family. Or maybe you were getting your fill of it from Family Matters. Alfie Parker was the middle child of the Parker household, bringing love and mirth to the spotight with his always cheery disposition! His best friend was named Goo. Here’s a fun fact: “My Friend Goo” by Sonic Youth was about Alfie Parker even though the song was released four years before the show was even on TV.

Arthur Reggie III went on to do great things! And by “great things” I meant “heroin”. Unfortunately, Arthur Reggie III became addicted to smack during filming of the first season of My Brother and Me at the tender age of 11. As a result of his crippling drug problem, the show’s producers decided to break their contract with Nickelodeon as an act of respect instead of replacing Reggie III with Danny DeVito for the role of Alfie. The producers owed Nickelodeon a $4,500,000,000 fee for the breach of contract, which they are still paying back to this day on a 930-year monthly installment plan.

Today, Arthur Reggie III is 39 years old and living under the I-94 overpass on the corner of North and Ashland. If you flip him a quarter and ask him to sing “The Alfie Song”, he gladly let you pee on his hand to shield his frost-bitten appendage from the harsh Chicago cold.

Michael Maronna (“Big” Pete Wrigley, The Adventures of Pete and Pete)

Michael Maronna – Dead

America’s favorite ’90s mulleted ginger warmed our hearts teaming up with “Little” Pete Wrigley to terrorize Sponge Harris at Camp Anawana! If memory serves. We know Maronna played shiftless stoner characters in movies like Slackers, 40 Days and 40 Nights, and The Passion of the Christ, but the public hasn’t seen him much over the years. Where is he now?

Unfortunately, in a Tom Writes About Stuff exclusive, it is with apologetic regret to inform you gentle readers that Michael Maronna passed away in 2017. We banged on the door of his estranged wife’s (Jerri Jo “Driveshaft” Stinkley) trailer for 15 hours until she woke up from her crack cocaine stupor and answered the door. She heard word from her sister (with the club foot) that Maronna was found dead in his basement apartment due to a non-congenital ailment known as “baseball bat to the skull syndrome”. He was $400,000 in the hole after having made hundreds of misguided bets on rigged carnival games such the ring toss, and the Plinko game where the disc falls into the slot. After being threatened by a band of angry clowns, thinking that the traveling carnival was going to leave for their next destination of Belchertown, Illinois, Maronna double-bolted the locks on his 40 sq. ft. Indianapolis apartment and kicked back with a tall glass of peppermint mouthwash. He thought the clowns would never find him again.

He was wrong about the clowns.

Lori Beth Denberg (Various, All That)

Lori Beth Denberg – Interdimensional Parasite

Lori Beth Denberg warmed NO hearts with her abysmal performances on All That, ranging from “obnoxious library” to “professional dumbass”. Her slot as a regular player in the sketch comedy show’s cast catapulted Nickelodeon into the toilet. It took the network 17 years and 9 seasons of SpongeBob Squarepants to recover from the damage. You may be wondering where she is these days. Not me. I don’t give a shit.

After falling into a pile of industrial polonium waste while foraging for garbage near a fat rendering plant, Denberg gained the ability to talk to animals. This power came in handy when she started working for the local police and Animal Control, communicating with the bomb-sniffing dogs and saving children from rhinoceros stampedes. This new power, of course, came with a price. And that price was pissing off the Galactic Interdimensional Mercenary Police. Or “GIMP”.

Lori Beth Denberg had a choice: get ripped apart by wolves as part of the GIMP punitive response to unauthorized use of superpowers without a permit, OR get shrunk down to the size of a tick in order to perform special duties for the GIMP force among the infinite dimensions of the Milky Way galaxy.

Denberg opted for the latter option, doomed to spend the rest of eternity training GIMP dogs for the K-9 unit by burrowing in the fur near their ears and whispering instructions and commands to carry out GIMP’s nefarious galaxy domination schemes. We wish her the best of luck.

Isn’t that a blast from the past? You’re probably wondering “Hey Tom, what about Omar Gooding, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s brother, of Wild and Crazy Kids fame?” Well, gentle reader, he’s dead too of knife to the chest poisoning. His last words were “Put the knife down, Donnie Jeffcoat.”