Every week, we send someone stumbling into the dark Maxim archives to see what we were up to way back when. This week we’re going back to January of 2002, when Jessica Simpson was still wearing a promise ring, Drew Carey still thought Cleveland rocked, and we broke several limbs while trying to breakdance.
Cover Girl: Jessica Simpson
Where You’ve Seen Her: When looking back on the pop scene of the early aughts, most of us will remember Britney Spears’ version of Catholic school, a pre-Dirrty Christina, and regular ear-bleeding. But to us, the best thing to come out of the genre was Jessica Simpson, the gorgeous blonde vocalist with a smokin’ bod. With an automatic hit single, her innocent girl-next-door vibe, and a promise ring heard around the world, it was hard to avoid Jessica‘s spotlight.
Where She Is Now: After gaining a ridiculous amount of fame from her lack of knowledge regarding tuna fish, Jessica stuck around in the limelight, thankfully while decked out in daisy dukes. After a brief stint as an actress, the gorgeous Southern belle split from her boy-bander husband Nick Lachey, started a fashion line, and decided to pop out a kid with new boyfriend Eric Johnson. Clearly she’s been busy since she donned our cover, but what’s next for the pop star remains to be seen.
Featuring:
Chug Yourself Fit With Drew Carey
When The Drew Carey Show debuted in the mid-’90s, it quickly joined the golden ranks of primetime sitcoms and gained our attention, particularly when Christa Miller strutted around the office. Profiting from the mind-numbing boredom produced by 9-to-5 desk jobs, the comedy had a nice run and influenced some of our favorite contemporary sitcoms. Since then, the show has ended, Drew Carey has practically lost the weight equivalent of an entire human being (hooray for gastric bypass!), and Craig Ferguson hosts a late-night talk show. And yet, somehow we still manage to get that damn theme song stuck in our heads.
Breakin’ A Benjamin
We’ve accepted our antiquated lack of style from issues past, so we’re going to ignore this schmuck’s hip-hop-wannabe look and focus on the one thing we really don’t miss from the past: breakdancing. Too many middle school dances resulted in ambulance runs more horrific than Ted’s prom day zipper incident because we stupidly thought we could reenact that Run DMC video. Lesson learned, but only after a serious grounding.
Check out more of Maxim’s Throwback Thursdays:
Throwback Thursday: December 2001
Throwback Thursday: April 2003
Throwback Thursday: January 2002
Check out what we were up to in January of '02. Don't worry, we'll leave out our middle school class picture.