This generation's Barney the Dinosaur: In the name of research, Part III

"In the name of research" is a semi-regular feature on this blog, compiling the often unexpected topics on which I end up educating myself in the course of writing. And what have you Googled lately?

The latest, all related to The New Project:

-Whether beach houses typically have air conditioners.
-Popular songs of the 1990s. Yes, I was there, but I wasn't cool enough then to immediately know what, say, an uncool dad in the present-plus might sing along with. (Present-plus: the setting of a contemporary novel that isn't done yet and won't come out for at least a few years. Patent pending.)
-Religious and economic demographics of cities, and their distances from other places.
-The names of fictional towns, schools, and businesses to make sure they don't actually exist.
-Names for an aunt character born in a particular decade. Slightly more challenging when your real-life grandparents were blessed with (precisely) ten gazillion siblings and you don't want to use the name of one of your own aunts.
-Points of geography, purely so I can have characters get them humorously wrong in an informed way.
-The number of seats in a minivan (followed by a counting of characters).

-Italian restaurant menus. I even selected the "price: high to low" option for the purposes of a scene, which made me feel very fancy.
-Basic chemistry so as to find a way for a character who hasn't formally learned about enzymes yet to talk about the composition of cheese. (Enzymes, it seems, are proteins. There was a time when I knew that.)
-Details of driving. (It's been a while.)
-Whether arcades are still a thing. (Not to sound crochety, but it's getting harder to get characters to leave the house these days.)
-Arcade games. (I never really went to arcades.)
-This generation's Barney the Dinosaur. That is, something for a kid to be as scathing about as '90s kids were about poor Barney if we were a few years too old for him. I put out a Twitter call for this one out of curiosity, but I'll probably make something up. For everyone's sake.

I may get some interesting ads.

*******************************************************************************

My gloriously nerdtastic Horn Book colleagues and I used the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as an excuse for Fan Week 2016, a celebration of fan creations, fan devotion, and fandom in general. And my gloriously nerdtastic former colleagues at Brookline Booksmith gave Cursed Child a Quidditch World Cup-sized midnight release party. Check out either or both if you enjoy enthusiasm.