Headline of the Week (Early Contender)

The Daily Mail: Folk Legend Joan Baez Injured After Falling from Treehouse/11.20.10

It's as good an excuse as any to bring back this sucker (and yes, I'm busy as hell at the moment so sorry for all the reruns):

"What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It's Been" (Originally Published, 9.1.09)

I'll never forget it: On July 13th, 1985, folk legend Joan Baez walked onto the stage at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium -- site of the U.S. half of that day's massive Live Aid concert -- looked out over the crowd of rowdy kids, lifted up her voice as if she were a pastor at a revival and said triumphantly, "Children of the 80s, this is your Woodstock and it's long overdue."

I'll also never forget my reaction as I sat on a couch with my teenage friends, all of us watching the show live on MTV:

"Fuck off, hippie."

At first glance, my swift and admittedly crude dismissal of an icon of 1960s counter-culture might seem the product of my youth, immaturity and overall lack of ability at the time to appreciate the positive impact that Joan Baez and those like her had on the generation that followed them. You know something though? I'm now almost 40, and although there are those who would tell you that my level of maturity remains that of a teenager, I gotta say -- I don't give any more of a crap about Joan Baez today than I did in 1985. Looking back on it, I still consider her little more than a silly, pompous 60s cliché.

It's standard operating procedure, practically a rite of passage, for each new generation to fiercely rebel against the one that preceded it -- regardless of the optimistic nonsense that Pepsi's highly paid ad agency would have you believe. But for anyone unlucky enough to follow those who came of age in the 1960s, defiance to some extent has felt all but impossible. This is because, quite frankly, the 60s marked a high point in the evolution of American society as a whole and set an inapproachable standard across so many aspects of our culture -- music, art, political activism, even the act of defiance itself -- and it did this despite being one of the most turbulent periods in our nation's history.

And how do we know this?

Because for 40-some-odd years, the fucking Baby Boomers have never stopped reminding us.

Never in the history of this country has there been a generation that's cast a longer shadow without really having done anything to earn it than the children of the 60s -- specifically the so-called Woodstock Generation. For the most part, they're thoroughly undeserving of the immortality they've pretentiously bequeathed to themselves. But for God's sake, don't ever say this to the True Believers in the Boomer-Woodstock nostalgia aesthetic; they'll immediately begin lecturing you on the seemingly self-perpetuating legacy of the 60s protest movement, the brilliance of Abbie Hoffman, and the philosophical importance of shitting outdoors in the mud while Canned Heat plays Going Up the Country somewhere at the other end of the farm.

In case you hadn't already noticed, all this free love for the era of free love has really been pegging the meters lately thanks to the 40th anniversary of what was known officially as the Woodstock Art and Music Festival ("Three Days of Peace, Music and a Complete Lack of Hygiene"). Yes, it was 40 years ago that a bunch of hippies descended on the tiny town of Bethel, New York to drop acid, whirl around in circles and make memories that would last not only their lifetime but everyone else's -- because it was just that important.

If you weren't able to be there for whatever reason (you were part of the oppressive establishment or, you know, hadn't been born yet) the Woodstock folks need you to understand that, dammit, you should wish you could have been.

Such is the real legacy of the 60s, as filtered through the haze of bong smoke still looked back on with fondness by many of those who were there: It introduced the most narcissistic, self-congratulatory, self-indulgent generation this country has ever seen. A group of people political satirist Christopher Buckley jokingly calls "The Un-greatest Generation."

But once again, don't tell them that. As far as they're concerned, they own the goddamned world -- and to some extent they do, and have since they first went from being counter-culture warriors to being shallow, shameless Wall Street capitalists in the 1980s. When Wavy Gravy gave way to Gordon Gekko. When the Baby Boomers ascended to a position of real power in America, it was almost a certainty that they would do what they'd done since the 60s: shove their values (which always came down to one thing: them), their culture, and their nostalgia for their own childhood down our collective throats, allowing the rest of us the opportunity to fully grasp and revel right along with them in what they already knew so well -- their lives ruled. It was this gargantuanly egocentric attitude that gave us the "Me Generation" during the 70s and went on to bankrupt parts of this country, both financially and morally, in the 80s and beyond. No wonder "my generation" (no pun intended), the so-called Gen-X, eventually decided that the only way to fight back was to abandon all that phony, ultimately self-serving conscientiousness and just not give a shit about anything.

But we never could escape the warm bath of encomium flowing from a media machine designed not just to chronicle but glorify the Boomers as they made their way through life -- from their self-reflective 30s (the tedious navel-gazing of Thirtysomething and The Big Chill), through their ascendency to their rightful place at the very pinnacle of American society (the too-much-is-never-enough Clinton presidency), now into their autumnal years (story upon story devoted to how they're "redefining" retirement -- bringing the same level of self-indulgence to it that they've brought to every other period in their lives). To drop a phrase from a generation that existed long before theirs, the more things change the more they stay the same.

The reality is that although the 1960s themselves were an extraordinary time and I'd never devalue some of the truly impressive accomplishments that took place during that era, it would be great if we'd all be allowed to, well, get over it. An adherence to the standards supposedly set in the 60s has at times done far more harm than good. Think the 60s protest movement -- the way in which people are encouraged to protest, highlighting individualism (making my point perfectly) -- really has any relevance to today's climate? You're out of your fucking mind. When what was called for in the lead-up to the war in Iraq -- what would've been truly effective -- was a show of strength through unity and, yes, conformity among activists, what we instead got was what we've always gotten since the 60s: a bunch of dumb-asses in face paint and colorful t-shirts acting like buffoons. Needless to say, this struck fear into the hearts of absolutely no one in the political and media establishment. All it proved was that those who were opposed to the impending war would never be able to get it together enough to make a successful stand against the people calling the shots.

So why did we engage in this thoroughly impotent form of activism? Because we'd been taught since birth that "this is how they did it in the 60s, man!" (regardless of the fact that it can easily be argued that the real reason for the Vietnam protests in the first place was that none of the hippies wanted to get stuck going to war -- 'cause, wow, bummer man).

Big fan of those ridiculous Jesse Jackson-led marches? Do those really accomplish a goddamned thing? Not quite. And yet we allow Jackson to continually hijack any real dialogue and chance at lasting understanding simply because he's a 60s icon -- one who's always at the ready to inject himself into any public fight simply because it will get him on TV (making my point yet again). Or how about this one: Think about how every political or cultural scandal since 1972 has ludicrously been dubbed "Something-or-Other-Gate" -- named for the Watergate break-in ordered by late-60s pariah Richard Nixon.

The 60s is the decade that just won't die.

Those who lived it have spent the last four decades looking down their noses at the rest of us and saying, "You're welcome."

Joan Baez's comment at Live Aid was more revealing about an entire mindset than even she probably realized. So much that's happened since the 1960s has been compared against the standard supposedly set in the 1960s. This is especially interesting when you consider something: Live Aid was actually about alleviating world hunger; what was Woodstock about? You guessed it -- them. They came up during a time when maybe being an individual could be perceived as a threat to the squares in the establishment -- but did that ethos have to continue throughout the rest of their lives, even well past the point that they actually became the establishment? Did the Woodstock generation ever really grow up?

Look, Dennis Hopper is now a card-carrying conservative. The last Kennedy brother is dead. American Express is now aiming retirement package commercials at you featuring a smiling, gray-haired couple saying, "Never trust anyone over 90!" -- officially making you a walking punchline. Taking Woodstock came in 9th at the box office over the weekend.

The trip's over.

Will you please go away and leave us alone now?

Tuesday Is Recycling Day

Oh the bitter Boomer indignation this one drew in September of last year. And here I thought hippies were all about the Summer of Love.

"What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It's Been" (Originally Posted, 9.1.09)

I'll never forget it: On July 13th, 1985, folk legend Joan Baez walked onto the stage at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium -- site of the U.S. half of that day's massive Live Aid concert -- looked out over the crowd of rowdy kids, lifted up her voice as if she were a pastor at a revival and said triumphantly, "Children of the 80s, this is your Woodstock and it's long overdue."

I'll also never forget my reaction as I sat on a couch with my teenage friends, all of us watching the show live on MTV:

"Fuck off, hippie."

At first glance, my swift and admittedly crude dismissal of an icon of 1960s counter-culture might seem the product of my youth, immaturity and overall lack of ability at the time to appreciate the positive impact that Joan Baez and those like her had on the generation that followed them. You know something, though? I'm now almost 40, and although there are those who would tell you that my level of maturity remains that of a teenager, I gotta say -- I don't give any more of a crap about Joan Baez today than I did in 1985. Looking back on it, I still consider her little more than a silly, pompous 60s cliché.

It's standard operating procedure, practically a rite of passage, for each new generation to fiercely rebel against the one that preceded it -- regardless of the optimistic nonsense that Pepsi's highly paid ad agency would have you believe. But for anyone unlucky enough to follow those who came of age in the 1960s, defiance to some extent has felt all but impossible. This is because, quite frankly, the 60s marked a high point in the evolution of American society as a whole and set an inapproachable standard across so many aspects of our culture -- music, art, political activism, even the act of defiance itself -- and it did this despite being one of the most turbulent periods in our nation's history.

And how do we know this?

Because for 40-some-odd years, the fucking Baby Boomers have never stopped reminding us.

Never in the history of this country has there been a generation that's cast a longer shadow without really having done anything to earn it than the children of the 60s -- specifically the so-called Woodstock Generation. For the most part, they're thoroughly undeserving of the immortality they've pretentiously bequeathed to themselves. But for God's sake, don't ever say this to the True Believers in the Boomer-Woodstock nostalgia aesthetic; they'll immediately begin lecturing you on the seemingly self-perpetuating legacy of the 60s protest movement, the brilliance of Abbie Hoffman, and the philosophical importance of shitting outdoors in the mud while Canned Heat plays Going Up the Country somewhere at the other end of the farm.

In case you hadn't already noticed, all this free love for the era of free love has really been pegging the meters lately thanks to the 40th anniversary of what was known officially as the Woodstock Art and Music Festival ("Three Days of Peace, Music and a Complete Lack of Hygiene"). Yes, it was 40 years ago that a bunch of hippies descended on the tiny town of Bethel, New York to drop acid, whirl around in circles and make memories that would last not only their lifetime but everyone else's -- because it was just that important.

If you weren't able to be there for whatever reason (you were part of the oppressive establishment or, you know, hadn't been born yet) the Woodstock folks need you to understand that, dammit, you should wish you could have been.

Such is the real legacy of the 60s, as filtered through the haze of bong smoke still looked back on with fondness by many of those who were there: It introduced the most narcissistic, self-congratulatory, self-indulgent generation this country has ever seen. A group of people political satirist Christopher Buckley jokingly calls "The Un-greatest Generation."

But once again, don't tell them that. As far as they're concerned, they own the goddamned world -- and to some extent they do, and have since they first went from being counter-culture warriors to being shallow, shameless Wall Street capitalists in the 1980s. When Wavy Gravy gave way to Gordon Gekko. When the Baby Boomers ascended to a position of real power in America, it was almost a certainty that they would do what they'd done since the 60s: shove their values (which always came down to one thing: them), their culture, and their nostalgia for their own childhood down our collective throats, allowing the rest of us the opportunity to fully grasp and revel right along with them in what they already knew so well -- their lives ruled. It was this gargantuanly egocentric attitude that gave us the "Me Generation" during the 70s and went on to bankrupt parts of this country, both financially and morally, in the 80s and beyond. No wonder "my generation" (no pun intended), the so-called Gen-X, eventually decided that the only way to fight back was to abandon all that phony, ultimately self-serving conscientiousness and just not give a shit about anything.

But we never could escape the warm bath of encomium flowing from a media machine designed not just to chronicle but glorify the Boomers as they made their way through life -- from their self-reflective 30s (the tedious navel-gazing of Thirtysomething and The Big Chill), through their ascendency to their rightful place at the very pinnacle of American society (the too-much-is-never-enough Clinton presidency), now into their autumnal years (story upon story devoted to how they're "redefining" retirement -- bringing the same level of self-indulgence to it that they've brought to every other period in their lives). To drop a phrase from a generation that existed long before theirs, the more things change the more they stay the same.

The reality is that although the 1960s themselves were an extraordinary time and I'd never devalue some of the truly impressive accomplishments that took place during that era, it would be great if we'd all be allowed to, well, get over it. An adherence to the standards supposedly set in the 60s has at times done far more harm than good. Think the 60s protest movement -- the way in which people are encouraged to protest, highlighting individualism (making my point perfectly) -- really has any relevance to today's climate? You're out of your fucking mind. When what was called for in the lead-up to the war in Iraq -- what would've been truly effective -- was a show of strength through unity and, yes, conformity among activists, what we instead got was what we've always gotten since the 60s: a bunch of dumb-asses in face paint and colorful t-shirts acting like buffoons. Needless to say, this struck fear into the hearts of absolutely no one in the political and media establishment. All it proved was that those who were opposed to the impending war would never be able to get it together enough to make a successful stand against the people calling the shots.

So why did we engage in this thoroughly impotent form of activism? Because we'd been taught since birth that "this is how they did it in the 60s, man!" (regardless of the fact that it can easily be argued that the real reason for the Vietnam protests in the first place was that none of the hippies wanted to get stuck going to war -- 'cause, wow, bummer man).

Big fan of those ridiculous Jesse Jackson-led marches? Do those really accomplish a goddamned thing? Not quite. And yet we allow Jackson to continually hijack any real dialogue and chance at lasting understanding simply because he's a 60s icon -- one who's always at the ready to inject himself into any public fight simply because it will get him on TV (making my point yet again). Or how about this one: Think about how every political or cultural scandal since 1972 has ludicrously been dubbed "Something-or-Other-Gate" -- named for the Watergate break-in ordered by late-60s pariah Richard Nixon.

The 60s is the decade that just won't die.

Those who lived it have spent the last four decades looking down their noses at the rest of us and saying, "You're welcome."

Joan Baez's comment at Live Aid was more revealing about an entire mindset than even she probably realized. So much that's happened since the 1960s has been compared against the standard supposedly set in the 1960s. This is especially interesting when you consider something: Live Aid was actually about alleviating world hunger; what was Woodstock about? You guessed it -- them. They came up during a time when maybe being an individual could be perceived as a threat to the squares in the establishment -- but did that ethos have to continue throughout the rest of their lives, even well past the point that they actually became the establishment? Did the Woodstock generation ever really grow up?

Look, Dennis Hopper is now a card-carrying conservative. The last Kennedy brother is dead. American Express is now aiming retirement package commercials at you featuring a smiling, gray-haired couple saying, "Never trust anyone over 90!" -- officially making you a walking punchline. Taking Woodstock came in 9th at the box office over the weekend.

The trip's over. Will you please go away and leave us alone now?

Children of the Scorn

Following up on MTV CEO Van Toffler's broadstroke declaration that the Millennials are an uncynical, family-oriented, civic-minded bunch (which I'll assume wasn't said while trying to choke back laughter): I've done more than my fair share of generational generalizing around here, having picked on both tween culture and, of course, the Baby Boomers on more than one occasion. What's interesting, though, is that every time I beat up on either of those groups -- and let's face it, making fun of the tweens is entertaining and the Boomers, easy and these days somewhat justified -- I wait for someone to rub in my face a piece I wrote way back in April of 2007. One that took a much more measured approach to generation-bashing. (I freely admit that my level of magnanimity on a given subject can sometimes depend on the mood I'm in when I wake up in the morning.) This will be the first time this sucker's been on the main page in quite some time.

"The Kids Are Alright" (Originally Published, 4.2.07)

"They say all teenagers scare the living shit out of me. They could care less as long as someone'll bleed. So darken your clothes and strike a violent pose -- maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me."

-- My Chemical Romance

I speak from experience when I say that the only thing the modern media loves more than scaring the crap out of Americans for no good reason is making sweeping generalizations about just who they are. It's a given that most news outlets have never met a poll they didn't like -- particularly during an election season, when the grotesque and demeaning practice of reducing the choice between political leaders to a series of cliched sports metaphors becomes the order of the day. At the very least, though, this ritual form of vox populi only attempts to reveal a few select opinions as opposed to acting as some sort of blanket Rorschach whose aim is to diagnose the social anthropology of an entire generation.

In that regard, no generation has been as poked, prodded, probed and -- consequently and confidently -- pigeonholed, as our kids.

I'm of course not refering to one particular wave of American offspring as much as the ever-popular generic and perpetually recyclable notion of "kids these days." Adults have always concerned themselves, occasionally to the point of apoplexy, with the thought processes of those mysterious and often infuriating creatures bringing up the rear. The difference in the latter half of the 20th century and early days of the 21st is that those same adults have an unprecedented global coalescence thanks to the technological advances in mass communcation. Unfortunately, they also have a hell of a lot of people with access to this mass communication who are more than happy to play armchair sociologist, drawing conclusions from isolated incidents involving children then casting them as fact and ramming the whole package down the collective throat of the general public. Needless to say, their adjudications rarely serve as good news from the front for anxious grown-ups. (Remember, what's the one thing that's more beloved than sweeping generalizations?)

All of this is why over the past twenty years or so, you've been able to count on both hands and feet the number of news cycles that have included one alarming pronouncement or another about the state of America's kids: the way they think, behave, dress, fuck, arm themselves with automatic weapons, etc.

I've mentioned before that there's serious money in fear-mongering, and nothing strikes visceral terror into the hearts of your average 35-54-year-old consumers like the notion that someone else's incorrigible rugrats will kill them at an ATM or kill their own drunk, pregnant and meth-addicted spawn at school (provided the latter don't fire first). The only possible exception might be the nagging suspicion that said-same ungrateful spawn will eventually dump them in a third-rate rest home and forget about them until the probate hearing.

About a month ago, my wife and I did something which even at the time seemed utterly ridiculous given our respective ages: We hopped the Long Island Railroad and traveled all the way out to the Nassau Coliseum to see My Chemical Romance. We figured going into it that we were likely to be the oldest people at the show not either part of the road crew or providing supervision for a couple of fifteen-year-olds dressed in every possible shade of black. I'm proud to say that at the very least neither myself nor my wife made any attempt to look like we were a part of the band's youthful core audience, but this admittedly caused us to stick out like -- well -- like two adults at a My Chemical Romance concert. Right off the bat, the guy at the door sized us up and used the Jedi Mind Trick to suggest a different course of action than the one dictated by our tickets.

"Hmm, floor seats," he said, intimating no small amount of concern for our well-being. "You don't wanna sit there. You wanna be away from all that shit and be someplace you can see."

Whatever his reasoning, he was right -- we did in fact want to be away from all that shit and be someplace we could see, so we followed his instructions and met an usher who escorted us to an area of elevated seats right next to the stage. Whether it served as the designated "Unaccompanied Adults" section I have no idea, but if so, it would've confirmed our initial theory about the width of the generation gap on this particular evening, given that we had the area all to ourselves for the length of the show. I remember thinking at the time that the benefits of this were substantial: It would keep us safely out of the path of the arterial spray should any of the goth kids become so overwhelmed by the presence of the Way brothers that he or she decided to end it all right there, and it would save my wife and I the shame of knowing that the final sight that same poor kid took to the grave was of the two drunk old people dancing and singing along to the songs a couple of seats over.

During my lenghty stay on this earth, I've been lucky enough to see Oasis at the Viper Room in L.A., Nine Inch Nails at 1235 on Miami Beach, Jeff Buckley at a bar no larger than my living room and the Afghan Whigs at the Palace. I've gotten the crap kicked out of me at Black Flag and had Siouxsie Sioux wrap a feather boa around my neck and sing Slowdive inches from my face. I've cried during Jimmy Scott's set at Birdland; I've had Mike Patton of Faith No More steal my Lakers cap. While My Chemical Romance at the Nassau Coliseum couldn't really compare to any of these experiences, it was, for the most part, a damn good show and my wife and I left the place glad that we had made the trip.

On the train ride home, we sat not far from a couple of young girls who had managed to perfectly capture the emo aesthetic and were now milking it for all it was worth. Whether by design or necessity, their look seemed more homegrown (as if Mom had driven them to the local Goodwill) than mass-market (as if Hot Topic had vomited all over them). I sat quietly and listened to them talk about the show: which songs they loved, their favorite members of the band, whether the b-sides were better than the stuff on the actual record etc. Despite the black clothes, the ripped leggings, the faces that looked like The Crow had dragged Eric Draven back from the dead one more time simply to give them make-up tips, they were essentially just normal kids. In fact, there was something sweetly charming -- hopeful even -- in the fact that their giddy smiles belied all that gloomy camouflage.

They were just kids.

Or maybe not.

As it turned out, I was wrong in my assessment of the benign nature of my young traveling companions. Their youthful exuberance and facade of naivete was, in fact, nothing more than a clever ruse designed to trick the unsuspecting into showering them with attention -- and as far as those girls were concerned, no one deserved it more than them because no one was more important than them.

Selfish bitches.

I was informed of the folly of my snap-judgment -- the true nature of not just those two kids, but all "kids these days" -- less than a week after the MCR show; it came via every single television network and newspaper in the United States, all of which trumpeted the "startling findings" of a recently-released study authored by a lone associate professor at that most prestigious of our nation's academic institutions, San Diego State University.

The hysterically caricaturish title of the report: "Egos Inflating Over Time"

It's incontrovertible declaration: America has raised a nation of young narcissists.

The study points to modern teen outlets like MySpace and YouTube -- tools which by the very nature of the personal pronouns in their names cast the user as a demigod -- as Exhibits A & B ad infinitum in the canonization of the individual adolescent. It claims that today's teens are self-absorbed, self-obsessed, self-congratulatory and just plain selfish. No, they're not going to take care of you when you're old because they're going to be too busy thinking only of themselves. No, they won't give a damn about making the world around them a better place because as far as they're concerned they are the fucking world!

Worth mentioning at this point is that the aforementioned SDSU associate professor behind the report, Dr. Jean Twenge, is also the author of last year's tailor-made-to-garner-a-guest-slot-on-The Today Show book, Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable than Ever Before. (I swear, some day I'm going to write a book called "Alarmist Assertion: How the Clarification Always Comes After the Colon" -- or maybe just "Exclamation!: Noun Clause.") The cover of Dr. Twenge's dissertation features a photo of an attractive, anonymous female mid-riff sporting the ubiquitous navel ring -- the name of the book emblazoned across those bronzed abs in the form of a tribal tattoo. Subtle it's not.

It should surprise no one that within twenty-four-hours of the initial release of Dr. Twenge's study on February 27th, television news correspondents across the country were fanning out in an epic quest to find the most generic student-union to stand in front of with furrowed brows and parrot the ominous findings. The truly inspired ones even took it upon themselves to seek out as racially and ethnically-diverse a group of American teenagers as possible, then delve into the negative aspects of the kids' supposed self-absorption by pointing a television camera at them and asking their opinions for twenty-minutes.

The end result was that a questionable and otherwise trifling piece of pop-psychology instead became a nationally-circulated indictment not only of an entire generation, but of the generation that raised it -- the one that the study more-than-peripherally implied has enabled such a sickening sense of entitlement by spoiling its children rotten. This latter insinuation is humorous for two reasons: (A) because the older generation in question happens to be the tail end of America's beloved Baby Boomers -- a group which has itself been accused of squandering an unprecedented spirit of revolution and social-consciousness in favor of vanity and excess, and (B) because if you believe (A) to be true, then it stands to reason that any attention lavished on the Boomers' offspring was nothing more than a solipsistic endeavor in the first place.

Once again, though, broad strokes tend to miss integral details.

When I was around twenty-three, there was a seemingly ceaseless flow of unmitigated crap being written about how people my age -- those rounded up and summarily tagged with the absurd "Generation X" label -- were going to lead to the eventual subversion of the American way of life followed by the inevitable rise to power of the Antichrist. We were slackers; we were too cool for our own good; we valued irony over sincerity; we listened to the Replacements. In response, a lot of us got high and questioned why our parents arrogantly believed their childhood to be so fucking spectacular that they insisted on foisting it upon the rest of us via reruns of the Brady Bunch and a somewhat disturbing fascination with an aging David Cassidy -- then we ordered a pizza and watched Clerks again.

Over time, though, fresh news cycles brought fresh assumptions as to who we were and what we were about ("Gen-X Grows Up," "Gen-X Overachieves," "Gen-X Underachieves," "Gen-X Still Gets High and Watches Clerks," etc.); none of them were correct.

The reason of course is because we were never a "we."

No one's saying that a vast number of people aren't likely to be affected in similar ways by the generalities of their collective place in history, but when you do them the service of looking a little closer, you usually find that what they really have in common is that each is unique -- more the product of his or her specific environment than anything else. Among those with whom I shared a childhood, an adolescence and an early-adulthood, there were the narcissistic and the benevolent, the arrogant and the humble, the noble and the unscrupulous, the saintly and the depraved, the industrious and the apathetic, the needy and the independent. Our parents feared for our well-being -- afraid that the evolving caprices of a new and dangerous world would swallow us whole, or at the very least corrupt us irredeemably.

It was the same fear that their parents once had for their well-being.

Last week, two stories made the rounds which caught my attention. One concerned a group of Connecticut high school students who were taking on their principal after he suppressed the performance of a school play dealing with the war in Iraq; the other profiled the rising popularity of so-called "Purity Balls," in which young girls pledge a vow of chastity to their fathers during an elaborate, if not somewhat creepy, ceremony. Whatever you think of the young people involved in these seemingly antithetical endeavors, it would be difficult to argue ego as the primary motivation behind either.

If nothing else, this should provide hope for the future -- by providing proof that this generation, like those that came before it and those that will rise in its wake, defies easy categorization.

That's because "kids these days" are, at their core, no different than kids any other days.

(PostScript, 2.24.10: While I really do believe that every generation is made up of disparate elements, there's absolutely no denying that there are certain cultural touchstones which are unique to a specific generation and around which the members of that group coalesce. The internet, cell phones, social networking, YouTube, iTunes and -- really fucking unfortunately -- reality TV no doubt have had a massive impact on the way the Millennnials as a genus think and how they function in the world. I've joked recently that, ironically, I wouldn't want my daughter watching MTV no matter how much its CEO is lying his ass off to make himself and others believe he's performing a community service by airing noxious crap like Jersey Shore. But that being said, the rise of new media has created a period in history unlike any other, and it's impossible to underestimate its impact on the generation at the epicenter of it. The digitization of information on the internet, which has basically brought together all human knowledge into one place, has created the feeling that there's no past anymore. There's simply a "permanent now." I was talking to a friend of mine about this the other day -- asking him to think about the fact that when we were teenagers, the 1950s were thirty years behind us, nearly the same distance that our teenage years are from now. Yet the 50s felt thoroughly alien to any kid growing up in the 80s; they may as well have been a millennium ago. That's not the case anymore. 80s and 90s culture is now a click away for anyone coming of age in the 21st century. In other words, more than ever, we're one generation. Now please kill me before I write another line that sounds like a Pepsi commercial. Oh, the photograph above, by the way, was taken by Andrew Steiner. You can see the rest of his portfolio here.)

If '60 was '10

You don't even need to read this to figure out what kind of bombastically self-important ground it's going to retread.

The Huffington Post: "The Sixties Turn 50" by Mark Green/1.6.10

And now, once again, my response.

DXM: What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It's Been/9.1.09

Seeing the Forrest for the Trees

Steven Lloyd Wilson's a regular contributor to Pajiba, an occasional reader and commenter here, and a damn fine writer all the way around.

And his take on what Forrest Gump might really have been saying about our old arch-nemesis the Baby Boomers -- the generation that so cherishes this movie and considers it a love-letter to them -- is brilliantly inspired.

Just a sample:

"The movie’s genius is in the way that it really does trivialize history. It trivializes all of the damned things that we’ve had to listen to the Boomers brag about for the last 30 years. Wow, you fought for civil rights? Wow, you realized a politician was corrupt? Wow, you figured out that war sucks? Guess what, any idiot could have figured out those things. By dropping the mantle of the Boomers’ accomplishments onto the broad shoulders beneath that mentally deficient head, Forrest Gump is in effect throwing down against the entire Boomer generation’s self-satisfied ego. So you did all those things, what do you want? A fucking medal? Forrest freaking Gump could have managed those things, so why are you so proud?"

Do yourself a favor and read the rest of it.

Pajiba: Stupid Is as Stupid Does/10.1.09

Related:

DXM: What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It's Been/9.1.09

Shoot From the Hippie

Now I know I've hit the big time.

Tuesday's incendiary little piece on the legacy of the Woodstock-Boomer era has actually generated an official rebuttal on the Huffington Post -- from fossilized 60s counter-culture icon Paul Krassner, no less.

It's titled, imaginatively, "Baby Boomers and Hippies Were Not the Same."

And here it is in its entirety:

"This is a minor response to Chez Pazienza -- the Guitar Hero with feet of claymation [Note: My bio at HuffPo jokingly lists "Guitar Hero" among my credits] -- and his post, 'What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It's Been,' a delusionally subjective, condescending blog, filled with hostile generalizations and a million exaggerations.

These days -- despite the wingnuts media binge and the major disappointments of the Obama administration -- there also seems to be a mass awakening in process, comparable to the evolutionary jump in consciousness that took place during the '60s, enhanced by technology.

It gives me a sense of hope, as well as a sense of continuity, that countercultural values have 'infiltrated' mainstream awareness, such as the peace movement, organic food, animal rights, protecting rainforests, environmental sustainability, growing hemp, anti-pollution, recycling waste, racial equality, feminism, renewable energy, alternative healthcare, and diversified spiritual practices."

Um, okay.

I guess it's a coherent argument if you've made an "evolutionary jump in consciousness" at some point.

By the way, thanks for setting me straight, Paul. I was totally off-base about you guys being magisterial and staggeringly impressed with yourselves.

Battle Lines

Oh the sheer volume of e-mail I've been getting over the past 24 hours from outraged Boomers and Woodstock-philes. I thought those guys were supposed to be all about peace and love.

I'm not going to bother addressing every single complaint I've received or every issue taken with the piece I wrote yesterday. I won't get into how this site and the material posted here is, above all, designed to entertain, provoke and make people laugh -- and how easy it should be for anyone with a brain to spot when I'm being deadly serious and when I'm purposely amplifying my opinion on a subject just to see who I can poke with a stick. I shouldn't have to say by now that I'm a contrarian through and through and often argue just for the sake of arguing.

But I will expound on one quick point hinted at in the middle of all that "disgusting, megalomaniacal venom" (as one reader so poetically put it) published here and at the Huffington Post yesterday. I'll do this because a lot of people latched onto what was essentially a throw-away line and used it to really hammer me -- and I feel like it might be a good idea to clarify exactly what I was getting at.

The line in question was this one:

"...It can easily be argued that the real reason for the Vietnam protests in the first place was that none of the hippies wanted to get stuck going to war -- 'cause, wow, bummer man."

First of all, at its core this was mostly me being a glib smart-ass. Of course it was an oversimplified generalization of what was happening on the streets of America during the Vietnam war -- and I freely admit that it bordered on being in bad taste. (Once again, what the hell do you expect from me by now?) But there actually was and is a point worth making about the Vietnam protests as organized and carried out by the Woodstock generation I was so gleefully lambasting -- the people young enough at the time to risk being drafted and sent overseas.

Let me explain it by way of a personal belief of mine (it's one I've also heard Bill Maher espouse): You don't get to call yourself courageous when your actions are essentially being undertaken to save your own ass. In other words, if you were of draft age in the late 60s and were protesting the Vietnam war, there's a pretty damn good chance that the impetus for all your outrage at the injustice being perpetrated on the other side of the world -- and make no mistake, Vietnam was absolutely an immoral, unjust, thoroughly unnecessary war -- wasn't so much your conscience as it was the desire not to wind up in a body bag. Yes, of course you didn't want to see innocents die, be they American or Vietnamese, and you certainly understood that 'Nam was a political miasma above all else. But would any of this really have spurred you to action the way the potential threat of losing your own life could? You would've been angry and indignant, yes, but to the point where you were willing to face down a phalanx of riot cops, burn a government document or surreptitiously kite off to Canada? Would you really have taken such drastic measures had you not been so personally affected by what was going on in Vietnam?

Let me answer for myself (and the Woodstock crowd will no doubt claim that this is the chicken-shit nature of my generation, running and hiding while theirs would just as soon have stood up and fought for what was right): If I thought I was gonna be drafted to go get my ass shot off in the jungle somewhere, I might very well be out in the street raising holy hell, calling every political figure currently in power a war criminal. I protested Iraq, but I admit that I rallied with nowhere near the ferocity that I would have had my own rear end been on the line. The threat of imminent death to yourself or those closest to you whom you love -- your friends, brothers, boyfriends, etc. -- tends to really put things in perspective.

Incidentally, do me the favor of not lecturing me on how many of those who protested Vietnam were in college and therefore theoretically may have been subject to exemption. Regardless, the knowledge that all it would take was one slip-up on your part -- or an escalation on the part of the government -- to suddenly land your ass on a bus to Parris Island must've felt like the proverbial Damocletian sword hanging over your head 24/7. Once again, would I be marching in the street and/or doing drugs by the handful if I thought that's what the future might hold for me or someone close to me? Absolutely.

If the end justifies the means, then regardless of the reason, the Vietnam war protests were an unquestionable good. My issue as stated yesterday was never really about that anyway; it was about how that brand of protest -- the crazy street fair disguised as effective activism -- has been held up as the standard to which all protests since the 60s must, ironically, conform. It goes back to my central argument in the piece -- that those who lived through the 1960s believe that their way of doing things was and still is the right way because, well, it worked back then. The fact is, that kind of activism doesn't really work anymore -- mostly because the political power structure in this country doesn't fear the individual anymore. It fears numbers. It fears group-think.

Regardless of what the "right way" to protest these days may be, why weren't the protests against the war in Iraq larger than they actually were (when God knows they should've been)? Because hundreds of thousands of young people -- the ones right up the street from you, maybe even you yourself -- weren't in danger of being forced to go to war.

Which leads to one final question, and it's a tough one: Given what we can now witness firsthand, live on TV and the internet, about the horrors of war -- will this country ever see another conflict that mobilizes an entire generation of American kids to march willingly into battle, without protest?

You do a lot of thinking about just what's worth dying for when it's you who's being told -- not asked, told -- to put your life on the line.

Sympathy for the Devil

A few of the more entertaining comments from the 550 or so that my little piece on the Woodstock-Boomer generation drew yesterday at the Huffington Post.

"Wow. Another bitter neocon conservative heartless Republican (don't mean to be redundant) who wants to blame the fall of of the American Empire on the dirty hippies. You probably believe that Reagan single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union and Saddam conducted 9/11. Dude, smoke a doobie. It'll lower your blood pressure and chill you out a bit."

-- oyoyoy

"Mr. Pazienza is simply regurgitating the gross stereotypes about the 60s that have haunted our culture for decades. Two main groups have manufactured those stereotypes: pro-war rightwingers and marketers for industries pandering to, and exploiting the boomers. Actually, I guess those two groups are really just one: "the establishment".

-- Noam4Prez

"I'm almost old enough to be your grandmother so let me say... in my opinion, you seem to be a rather angry little wretch who likes to hear himself talk."

-- Lilies

"A completely offensive article dismissing a whole group of people completely ignoring all the advances made due to them. If you were talking about blacks or gays you'd accurately be called a bigot. Maybe it's because your own generation has done nothing of value and only made greed acceptable as a way of life."

-- Oafishcad

"Since so many people seem to think that Wavy Gravy was just a Woodstock character, I would like to note that like many folks who were "hippies" back then, he has gone on to do a whole lot of good in his life."

-- auntles45

"Sounds like someone is trying to have a seat at the adult table, but we are not ready to give our places up yet, so please go back to the kiddie's table... Please show respect, you have forgotten who has given you that soft pillow that your generation has landed on."

-- donnal

"I wonder if this writer voted for GW. Oh, I forgot - that generation never votes at all. They are too busy sitting on their behinds watching tv, texting and being the little consumers that they were trained to be."

-- Sharon40

"It's obvious from the above that academic standards have slipped to near zero. Glorified day care. Several whole generations of Jay Leno's Jaywalkers have been spawned and are now posting on this and other blogs. You lot have set a standard for passivity and ignorance... Oh, and almost all your music is ugly and incompetent, a perfect reflection of your inner landscape."

-- Bluesman48

"Well join the club, generation zero... I find you not very interesting as well. In fact I can't think of a thing to say about you that isn't boring and whiny. You can go your own way, you can call it another lonely day. Buzz off and get off my cloud, two's a crowd baby!"

-- Lakat

"The author is... a bigot and should be observed as such. Somebody needs a hug."

-- OneVoiceofReason

"and gen x has done.....stood up for.........were willing to die for.......­...pioneer­ed what lasting cultural trends...... baby boomers have not taken all the oxygen. your generation(or y and z) doesn't want any because you have never done anything that required it for your ameoba existence."

-- yappnmutt

"Find something to believe in and you won't waste your time writing cynical rants."

-- Lawyerfan

"Grow up and quit blaming your parents for your pitiful life."

-- Biglith

(Author's Note: For the record, my parents were born in the early 40s and are the furthest thing from Boomers in every possible sense of the word.)

"I have never read anything so clueless in all my life. And considering the crap that passes for ... well ... anything nowadays THAT'S saying a lot!"

-- Cybershaman

"What a hate filled diatribe. I hope you find peace at sometime in your life."

-- RTTucson

"This is perhaps the best case I have seen for reviving the draft. Let this little pisher get conscripted and then he can tell us how irrelevant the sixties were."

-- RedStateDemocrat

"You write with a very pointed tone, and sound like a pushy a-hole. I get the impression you suck at conversation, are domineering, imperious, and probably very LOUD."

-- SteveDenver

"I wonder what some angry, pious kid will say about YOUR generation in another 40 years."

-- Nightwind928

"I am in the over 60 group. For me, when people in polite settings use (even) a single profane word to emphasize a point, the point of emphasis for me is immediately lost. No amount of dictum thereafter can inform me or enlighten me. I have received more information and insight about your piece from responses of Bloggers than I did from reading your piece up to the “F” point."

-- Seventhrama

(Author's Note: Dear Seventhrama, Go fuck yourself.)

And my personal favorite:

"I left 40 over a decade ago this author has issues... It sounds like to much nintendo and he didn't discover outside. What did Joan Baez do to him? Why do you sit in the house to watch a live concert? You should go to the show. Not enough outside thats all it is. I was a kid in the sixties talk about turbulent times. These you folks can't fathom all the things that were squelched in the 60's he wasn't there. The establishment espionage that left JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcom X and Meager Evans dead. So perhaps Jesse Jackson just wanted to live. The Cuban missile crisis I was to young but my dad was within earshot of what was going on it was a very tense time. The bodies of dead soldiers stacked in tents outside the DAFB Morque so many the mortuary couldn't keep up. So if the Boomers did little else they lived through it and 4students dying at Kent State did more to end Vietnam than anything else. Kids get back outside if its safe cause its still whats up!

-- Dieselis

But among my, ahem, "detractors," there were quite a few HuffPo readers who not only pushed back against the circle jerk of Boomer self-love but who understood perfectly the point I was trying to make in the first place.

"I can't help but laugh at the comments to this article. When a snarky GenX'er (or is that redundant?) writes an article pointing out the obvious truth that we boomers are obnoxiously narcissistic, what do we do? Well, we write long, impassioned (and, as per usual, self-righteous and thin-skinned) comments about how wonderful WE WE WE are. For a group of people who are legendary for being self-absorbed, we exhibit an amazing lack of self-awareness. This clever writer has tricked us into unintentionally revealing ourselves and thereby proving his points."

-- SadVoter

"The author's point is not that you didn't do anything worthwhile. It's that half of you won't shut up about it, and the other half abandoned it for cash years down the road. Remember this Boomers: there are 80 million of you. There are 47 million of us (Gen X). When you need us, that size gap is going to feel enormous."

-- Coolmaiden

What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It's Been

I'll never forget it: On July 13th, 1985, folk legend Joan Baez walked onto the stage at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium -- site of the U.S. half of that day's massive Live Aid concert -- looked out over the crowd of rowdy kids, lifted up her voice as if she were a pastor at a revival and said triumphantly, "Children of the 80s, this is your Woodstock and it's long overdue."

I'll also never forget my reaction as I sat on a couch with my teenage friends, all of us watching the show live on MTV:

"Fuck off, hippie."

At first glance, my swift and admittedly crude dismissal of an icon of 1960s counter-culture might seem the product of my youth, immaturity and overall lack of ability at the time to appreciate the positive impact that Joan Baez and those like her had on the generation that followed them. You know something though? I'm now almost 40, and although there are those who would tell you that my level of maturity remains that of a teenager, I gotta say -- I don't give any more of a crap about Joan Baez today than I did in 1985. Looking back on it, I still consider her little more than a silly, pompous 60s cliché.

It's standard operating procedure, practically a rite of passage, for each new generation to fiercely rebel against the one that preceded it -- regardless of the optimistic nonsense that Pepsi's highly paid ad agency would have you believe. But for anyone unlucky enough to follow those who came of age in the 1960s, defiance to some extent has felt all but impossible. This is because, quite frankly, the 60s marked a high point in the evolution of American society as a whole and set an inapproachable standard across so many aspects of our culture -- music, art, political activism, even the act of defiance itself -- and it did this despite being one of the most turbulent periods in our nation's history.

And how do we know this?

Because for 40-some-odd years, the fucking Baby Boomers have never stopped reminding us.

Never in the history of this country has there been a generation that's cast a longer shadow without really having done anything to earn it than the children of the 60s -- specifically the so-called Woodstock Generation. For the most part, they're thoroughly undeserving of the immortality they've pretentiously bequeathed to themselves. But for God's sake, don't ever say this to the True Believers in the Boomer-Woodstock nostalgia aesthetic; they'll immediately begin lecturing you on the seemingly self-perpetuating legacy of the 60s protest movement, the brilliance of Abbie Hoffman, and the philosophical importance of shitting outdoors in the mud while Canned Heat plays Going Up the Country somewhere at the other end of the farm.

In case you hadn't already noticed, all this free love for the era of free love has really been pegging the meters lately thanks to the 40th anniversary of what was known officially as the Woodstock Art and Music Festival ("Three Days of Peace, Music and a Complete Lack of Hygiene"). Yes, it was 40 years ago that a bunch of hippies descended on the tiny town of Bethel, New York to drop acid, whirl around in circles and make memories that would last not only their lifetime but everyone else's -- because it was just that important.

If you weren't able to be there for whatever reason (you were part of the oppressive establishment or, you know, hadn't been born yet) the Woodstock folks need you to understand that, dammit, you should wish you could have been.

Such is the real legacy of the 60s, as filtered through the haze of bong smoke still looked back on with fondness by many of those who were there: It introduced the most narcissistic, self-congratulatory, self-indulgent generation this country has ever seen. A group of people political satirist Christopher Buckley jokingly calls "The Un-greatest Generation."

But once again, don't tell them that. As far as they're concerned, they own the goddamned world -- and to some extent they do, and have since they first went from being counter-culture warriors to being shallow, shameless Wall Street capitalists in the 1980s. When Wavy Gravy gave way to Gordon Gekko. When the Baby Boomers ascended to a position of real power in America, it was almost a certainty that they would do what they'd done since the 60s: shove their values (which always came down to one thing: them), their culture, and their nostalgia for their own childhood down our collective throats, allowing the rest of us the opportunity to fully grasp and revel right along with them in what they already knew so well -- their lives ruled. It was this gargantuanly egocentric attitude that gave us the "Me Generation" during the 70s and went on to bankrupt parts of this country, both financially and morally, in the 80s and beyond. No wonder "my generation" (no pun intended), the so-called Gen-X, eventually decided that the only way to fight back was to abandon all that phony, ultimately self-serving conscientiousness and just not give a shit about anything.

But we never could escape the warm bath of encomium flowing from a media machine designed not just to chronicle but glorify the Boomers as they made their way through life -- from their self-reflective 30s (the tedious navel-gazing of Thirtysomething and The Big Chill), through their ascendency to their rightful place at the very pinnacle of American society (the too-much-is-never-enough Clinton presidency), now into their autumnal years (story upon story devoted to how they're "redefining" retirement -- bringing the same level of self-indulgence to it that they've brought to every other period in their lives). To drop a phrase from a generation that existed long before theirs, the more things change the more they stay the same.

The reality is that although the 1960s themselves were an extraordinary time and I'd never devalue some of the truly impressive accomplishments that took place during that era, it would be great if we'd all be allowed to, well, get over it. An adherence to the standards supposedly set in the 60s has at times done far more harm than good. Think the 60s protest movement -- the way in which people are encouraged to protest, highlighting individualism (making my point perfectly) -- really has any relevance to today's climate? You're out of your fucking mind. When what was called for in the lead-up to the war in Iraq -- what would've been truly effective -- was a show of strength through unity and, yes, conformity among activists, what we instead got was what we've always gotten since the 60s: a bunch of dumb-asses in face paint and colorful t-shirts acting like buffoons. Needless to say, this struck fear into the hearts of absolutely no one in the political and media establishment. All it proved was that those who were opposed to the impending war would never be able to get it together enough to make a successful stand against the people calling the shots.

So why did we engage in this thoroughly impotent form of activism? Because we'd been taught since birth that "this is how they did it in the 60s, man!" (regardless of the fact that it can easily be argued that the real reason for the Vietnam protests in the first place was that none of the hippies wanted to get stuck going to war -- 'cause, wow, bummer man).

Big fan of those ridiculous Jesse Jackson-led marches? Do those really accomplish a goddamned thing? Not quite. And yet we allow Jackson to continually hijack any real dialogue and chance at lasting understanding simply because he's a 60s icon -- one who's always at the ready to inject himself into any public fight simply because it will get him on TV (making my point yet again). Or how about this one: Think about how every political or cultural scandal since 1972 has ludicrously been dubbed "Something-or-Other-Gate" -- named for the Watergate break-in ordered by late-60s pariah Richard Nixon.

The 60s is the decade that just won't die.

Those who lived it have spent the last four decades looking down their noses at the rest of us and saying, "You're welcome."

Joan Baez's comment at Live Aid was more revealing about an entire mindset than even she probably realized. So much that's happened since the 1960s has been compared against the standard supposedly set in the 1960s. This is especially interesting when you consider something: Live Aid was actually about alleviating world hunger; what was Woodstock about? You guessed it -- them. They came up during a time when maybe being an individual could be perceived as a threat to the squares in the establishment -- but did that ethos have to continue throughout the rest of their lives, even well past the point that they actually became the establishment? Did the Woodstock generation ever really grow up?

Look, Dennis Hopper is now a card-carrying conservative. The last Kennedy brother is dead. American Express is now aiming retirement package commercials at you featuring a smiling, gray-haired couple saying, "Never trust anyone over 90!" -- officially making you a walking punchline. Taking Woodstock came in 9th at the box office over the weekend.

The trip's over. Will you please go away and leave us alone now?

Kitsch a Falling Star

As much as I hate to admit it, I'm looking for just about any excuse I can find to resurrect old columns to fill space around here while I work on non-site-related projects. Thankfully, the new E-Trade commercial handed me an excuse on a silver platter. The ad, which debuted during the Super Bowl, features E-Trade's wildly popular talking baby, joined by a second, equally creepy CGI baby. About halfway through the commercial, the new baby breaks out into song -- specifically Mr. Mister's 1985 wuss-rock hit Broken Wings.* It's the latest example of a nationwide marketing campaign blatantly attempting to stoke the fires of nostalgia in my generation in the hope of getting us to buy something. But nostalgia's a funny thing with the erstwhile "Generation X." I brought this up in a piece posted way back in August of 2006.

Rebecca: This is so bad, it's almost good.

Enid: This is so bad, it's gone past good and back to bad again.

-- Ghost World

I'm not now, nor have I ever been a member of the "Kiss Army."

In fact, I'm pretty sure I can safely say that if there were ever an opposing force facing the Kiss Army in battle, I'd probably join up willingly -- no draft required. I'd do this for no other reason than the fact that I and my Band of Brothers would almost certainly emerge victorious against an army of acne-addled kids and latter-day metalheads who had to stop fighting every few minutes to masturbate or roll a set of ten-sided dice to determine their next move.

In deference to those for whom I haven't made myself clear enough: Kiss fucking blows; they always have. They're probably the single most overrated and undeserving phenomenon in rock history -- and this is coming from someone who'd pay good money to watch every Grateful Dead/Phish fan mauled by bears. That, I hope, is saying something about the depths of my loathing for the geniuses who brought you that masterpiece of musical affirmation, I Wanna Rock & Roll All Night (and Party Every Day).

That said, you can imagine my reaction when I learned that A&E's latest foray into the creatively-exhausted reality series genre would be a show called Gene Simmons Family Jewels.**

For weeks now, the advertising for this monstrosity has been unavoidable in New York City. Everywhere you go, it's impossible not to find yourself staring into the aging mug of Gene Simmons as he self-parodically flashes the "devil sign" with his fingers. It's enough to make you realize that the only reason you probably didn't find that so ridiculously funny back in the 70s is because, well, you were really fucking high.

If the unfortunate return of Gene Simmons were an isolated incident it would be easy to overlook, or at least blow off as the purely nostalgic lark of a former General in the Kiss Army (Ret.) who astonishingly went on to find employment that didn't require wearing a blue apron and a button that reads "How Can I Help You?" -- such as A&E Network Executive. As it turns out though, Mean Gene is just the latest in a string of people you probably never cared about in the first place, who've seen their careers miraculously resurrected by the cultural affliction known as reality TV.

Thanks mostly to cable channels like VH1 (the worst offender), Bravo, and A&E, the nagging questions that have been haunting you day and night -- "How's Peter Brady's love life?" "What's Danny Bonaduce doing to make himself even less commercially palatable?" "How can Flavor Flav single-handedly destroy the legacy of Public Enemy?" -- can be answered as only an unscrupulous camera crew and a has-been in need of a paycheck can.

The problem, though, is the way it's being sold to you.

People who once had some small amount of cultural relevance, deserved or not, are now promoted as comforting kitsch; their images from long ago are given an ironic twist and repackaged for a new kind of audience which has supposedly understood from the start that these celebrities were always worthy of a certain amount of good-natured mockery -- even if the folks in the spotlight never understood it themselves. Their second-wind has turned them into my generation's version of lava lamps and lawn flamingos -- so uncool that they're cool.

And right now, no one's riding this wave higher than "The Hoff."

In case you're unfamiliar with The Hoff's humble beginnings, he used to be known as David Hasselhoff: God-awful actor, Messiah to the German people and a fucking laughing-stock to everyone else. He unwittingly worked damn hard to earn that kind of derision; he was a near-lethal combination of arrogant and untalented. The thing is, he still is. The only difference between the Hasselhoff that everyone teased mercilessly throughout the past two decades and the Hasselhoff of today -- besides the several million he's made off the rights to Baywatch -- is his willingness to cynically capitalize on his own absurd image. Make no mistake, there's a difference between learning not to take yourself too seriously (Shatnerization?), and callously milking the public's kitschy fascination with you. There isn't a chance in hell that The Hoff ever thought he was half the asshole the rest of us did for all those years.

I had honestly hoped that my generation -- the so-called too-cool-for-their-own-good slackers of Generation-X -- wouldn't follow the example set by the Boomers, who arrogantly believed that their childhood was so goddamned special that everyone would willingly open wide for the nostalgia they constantly forced down our throats. Technically we aren't; what we're doing is worse. At least the Boomers sought to relive their good old days through the people and places that were beloved by them. Meanwhile, in classic dickhead Gen-X fashion, we're digging up the corpse of our youth and kicking its skull off by inflicting idiots like Hasselhoff on television audiences, of which we're a part.

Comedian Larry Miller once did a really great bit during his stand-up routine where he said that getting re-married is like putting sour milk back in the refrigerator in the hope that it'll somehow be better later.

If The Hoff, Mean Gene, and so many other second-wind celebrities were pretty much sour to begin with, why the hell do we expect them to go down any better now?

*Which, admittedly, was a pretty good song.

**Incidentally, Gene Simmons's real name is Chaim Witz. Am I the only one who thinks that Chaim Witz's Family Jewels, in addition to probably being a very real shop in New York City's diamond district, would've been an infinitely funnier and more clever title?