Speaking Part

Just little heads-up to any interested parties out there. I'll be doing a segment this afternoon over at HuffPost Live -- the subject, partially, is the piece I wrote a few weeks back taking aim at the claim that Paul Ryan has "Gen X sensibilities" and that they may help him reach that particular demographic. My point was that while Ryan may be many things -- and yes, he's my age -- to label him specifically as "Gen X" is a little ridiculous.

Anyway, I'll be on live, debating this topic, no doubt with a couple of other people who will shout at me. Who the hell knows. Never been on HuffPost Live before.

Feel free to watch if the mood strikes you. It airs around 5:45pm ET.

Quote of the Day, Jr.

"Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades."

-- Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello

I've never been a big Rage fan. Their stuff started out being damn potent but eventually devolved into silly cliché, mostly because Zach de la Rocha's an obnoxious jackass -- and while I agree with some of their politics I absolutely don't agree with all of them.

That said, this goes to what I wrote about a couple of days ago: Paul Lynde was more "Gen X" than Paul Ryan is.

Generation Ex

My column today for the Daily Banter takes a look at Paul Ryan's age -- and whether his experience jibes with the traditional definition of "Gen X."

Here's the opening shot:

"There’s an entertaining little column currently running at CNN.com that I have to admit made me do a double-take, mostly because it focuses on something about Paul Ryan that I should have picked up on but which I’ve strangely overlooked: he’s my age. The piece posits that Ryan’s 'Gen X sensibilities' will be an asset to him as he attempts to ascend to the second-highest office in the land and trumpets the fact that he’s the first person of his generation — my generation — to run on an American presidential ticket. Obviously, he won’t be the last since the Baby Boomers are on their way out as the dominant cultural force and, well, we’re next in line..."

Read the Rest Here

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.)

Quote of the Day

"We're slaves to our different audiences, for MTV that's millennials, who are vastly different than Generation X. They're definitely less cynical -- they're more civic minded. Millennials are really about authentic reality and family. (That's why MTV) played up the camaraderie and family elements in Jersey Shore to appeal to them."

-- MTV Networks President Van Toffler

So I'm too cynical to appreciate the authenticity, sense of family, and general civic-mindedness of Jersey Shore.

Man, this quote is great on so many different levels.

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?

Listening Post

This is a really great video from way back in 1978 when punk in all its variations had already fully crested in London.

Here's a very young Billy Idol and Tony James -- Generation X -- with Kiss Me Deadly.

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?