My idea is to look to movie scripts...I want to say it began as early as the 90s with this movie I can't remember the name of, but she was, like, blonde--or even during the "Vally Girl" days of Moon Unit Zappa.

I would say the origins come from California. Now, if we look at the culture from there, there are conclusions we can draw. Look at the word, "dude," now, the expression "so not doing ___." Do we actually think a New Yorker would create the need to use this sort of syntax?

I *so* don't want to sound like an idiot if I am wrong, but my hunch is that it comes from the skateboarder/surfer/snowboarder lingo. This would be my first hunch.

Hey! I have this Cultural Antrhopology extra credit assignment to do, let me give you the link...maybe we all can find the answer there?

http://cfprod01.imt.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/index.html

My other tip would to be to ask a linguistic anthropologist from Harvard...I feel that they must be doing research like that.

Hmmn...