One Little Indian

The great H.L. Mencken said it best:

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

The veracity of this statement becomes bulletproof when you realize that this summer, Michael Bay will once again spread his figurative ass-cheeks and unleash a putrid load of cinematic diarrhea on the theater-going public; that Hinder and Nickelback are able to play venues larger than the Wings & Things off Route 4 in Tampa; that George W. Bush has been allowed to occupy the White House for the past six years; and of course, that American Idol remains an unstoppable pop culture juggernaut.

I'm certainly willing to admit my own complicity in the success of Idol; I've watched it on more than one occasion and taken a passing interest in who wins and who doesn't -- mostly out of the desire to know which democratically elected singing sensation I can expect to have forced down my throat for the next eight months. Kelly Clarkson was cute and went on to record one or two good songs, for which she may have received entirely too much acclaim; Ruben Studdard wound up being the only guy whose ass runner-up and perpetually-closeted homosexual Clay Aiken will ever be capable of kicking; Fantasia went pretty much nowhere and has since reinvented herself as the subject of a Lifetime Insipid Movie of the Week; Carrie Underwood now sings love songs about Jesus while her penultimate, Bo Bice, makes the kind of music that I'm still wishing had died in the same plane crash that took out Ronnie Van Zant; Taylor Hicks has wound up being just one of last season's thirty-eight Idol contestants to be awarded a recording contract -- such is the star-making power of the show.

This year though, something's different.

American Idol is under siege.

As you're no doubt well aware, at the center of the maelstrom is seventeen-year-old borderline-retard Sanjaya Malakar.

I debated whether or not to comment on the ridiculous "controversy" involving Sanjaya's admittedly inexplicable presence at this stage of the competition -- his cockroach-like indestructibility and unyielding belief that he does, in fact, have even a specimen-cupful of talent. Although everyone's entitled to a little mindless entertainment, the idea that such nonsense, even for a moment, occupies the same news cycle as an unnecessary war, the complete collapse of the most corrupt and dangerous administration in American history and the rapid disintegration of our planet's atmosphere -- well, it just seems a little shameful. Makes you swell with pride at the knowledge that young American men and women are fighting and dying overseas to preserve "our way of life."

It took this week's elimination to finally tip me off the fence.

When I first learned of Howard Stern's Durdenesque plot to bring down the most inescapable cultural phenomenon on earth, I admit to feeling a rush of anarchist adrenaline which involuntarily curled my mouth into a smile. American Idol had, after all, foisted more musical mediocrity on the general public than the entire career of Kiss; the idea of an organized campaign to subvert the show's credibility by using its own system against it brought out my inner-insurgent. I understood at the time that as a proper misanthrope, I'd have to find a way to put aside my considerable loathe for Sanjaya himself -- rationalizing the benefits he'd indirectly reap -- were I to fully get behind the scheme. I looked at it this way: his victory would be nothing more than collateral damage in the war against the larger enemy. (For the record, I had no idea that the kid was so hopelessly naive that he'd actually believe he was earning his weekly gift from the anonymous legion of merry pranksters). I'll tell you though -- it was tough to not want to see a dumbass like that fail miserably.

A couple of weeks ago, when it became clear that there was malfeasance afoot, the argument against voting for the worst contestant began popping up on message boards, in newspapers and magazines, and on television. It came in the form of a simple and heartfelt plea which declared that keeping Sanjaya on Idol just for the hell of it was not a victimless crime; obviously, if the worst singer stays, that means that somebody better has to go. Once again, I thought -- collateral damage -- an unfortunate but necessary concession for the greater good. I even wondered if someone shouldn't type up letters to the families of the fallen, in appreciation of their sacrifice -- with the thanks of a grateful nation.

In an effort to spin Stern's personal Project Mayhem and marginalize the growing number of juvenile TV-terrorists behind it, Fox executives last week claimed, with a collective straight face, that Sanjaya's ascendancy should in no way be credited to -- or blamed on -- Stern fans, visitors to the website votefortheworst.com, or any other single group.

Oh yeah, unless you count the entire Asian and Indian population of the United States and, quite possibly,the earth.

In the kind of broadstroke ethnic generalization not seen since the opening of the Prison Camp at Guantanamo, a lot of armchair sociologists are pushing the theory that every U.S. resident of Asian or Indian descent believes that his or her life will improve dramatically should someone named Sanjaya Malakar become the next American Idol. Whether or not the hypothetical Sanjaya Malakar in question can actually sing -- which, as it turns out, this particular one can't -- makes no difference at all, as these mindless drones would be basing their allegiance on name, skin-tone and of course the obligation to show solidarity with the motherland. It's entirely possible that many young people of Indian descent are in fact rallying around Sanjaya -- simply because they were born without ears due to the 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster; aside from that though it's hard to imagine anyone being able to overlook his inability to hold a note -- particularly not the same people responsible for all those kick-ass Bollywood musical numbers.

A diabolical offshoot of the main theory -- its militant splinter group, if you will -- posits that the rise of Sanjaya isn't merely the underhanded work of nationalistic terrorist cells living here in the United States; it is in fact nothing less than the overthrow of an American institution by a foreign state -- one that our own government inadvertently empowered. To come face-to-face -- or at least voice-to-voice -- with the enemy behind this nefarious conspiracy, all you'd have to do is pick up the phone and call any toll-free customer service number that happened to be handy. The rumor is as far-fetched as it is clever-as-hell: call center operators in India are making millions of free calls to the U.S. -- stuffing the virtual ballot box with votes for Sanjaya. And how did these operators get their jobs in the first place? Because American corporations outsourced their customer service positions to India, where the labor's cheaper. And who greased the wheels and cleared the hurdles, making it easy for the corporations to do this? Why, the prostrate apostles of free-market capitalism in our own government of course. And who put the leashes around the necks of these "distinguished gentlemen" and made them such servile little bitches? The corporations, their lobbyists and their money, of course.

If it were ever proven true, my first reaction might be to marvel at a guerilla campaign far more ingenious than anything Stern could've dreamed up. My second would probably be outrage at the audacity of another country's citizens seeing to it that someone of their own descent triumphs in a singing competition called American Idol, at the expense of everyone else involved (yes, I'm capable of jingoistic gut reactions) particularly when that person has no business being anywhere near a microphone. My third thought -- the one in which a measure of logical resignation comes into play -- would definitely be that there's no greater irony, and we got what we deserved.

The reality though?

Chances are, there are just a bunch of Indian-American kids, and American kids, and really fucking stupid Indian-American-American kids who think Sanjaya's cooler than Hello Kitty -- either that or Michael Jackson's dropping three-million votes at a time simply for the "pleasure" of seeing that childlike face every week.

When you factor that support into the exponentially increasing number of joke votes he's getting each week, Sanjaya's unwitting rise to pop culture infamy becomes all but assured.

As it turns out though, the early detractors were right -- the seditious fun to be had spray-painting a big "FUCK YOU" on the altar of America's Temple of the Trivial does come at a price, as was evidenced this week.

As someone who grew up listening to Gang of Four, the Replacements, Killing Joke and the Pistols -- and someone who still stands in reverent awe of Tom Waits -- I always valued the passion behind a voice rather than the quality of the voice itself. I have no doubt that very few of the singers who have ever moved me in one way or another throughout my life would be welcome on a show like American Idol; most would be mercilessly ridiculed, then shown the goddamned door. Likewise, I've never been a fan of the way Simon, the drunk to his immediate right and the black guy from Journey tend to Breakfast Club the contestants -- sizing each one up in an instant and branding him or her with one of a handful of generic and recyclable designations. ("The Soulful One," "The Little One with the Big Voice," "The Modern One," "Justin Timberlake," etc.)

This season, Gina Glocksen was "The Rocker."


Although not as powerful a singer as last year's designated "Rocker" Chris Daughtry, she also wasn't anywhere near the worthless, preening dick that last year's designated "Rocker" Chris Daughtry was. Overall, Gina had a good voice, chose a nice range of material, owned it pretty damn well on-stage and, above all, seemed genuinely humble.

As much as I was still fully behind The Sanjaya Agenda and wanted nothing more than to see Stern put on a Guy Fawkes mask and detonate a pound of Semtex under Ryan Seacrest, I was secretly pulling for Gina to at least nab a place in the top four or five -- an achievement which would all but guarantee her a record deal somewhere.

This week, she was eliminated.

A couple of years ago, in one of the many "scandals" that bounced benignly off American Idol's Adamantium hull, someone behind the scenes claimed that the show was rigged -- the winners and losers predetermined. I had always assumed the claim to be bullshit, considering the complete social upheaval that would result from something like "Idolgate" -- not to mention the fact that, aside from playing the numbers in Vegas, there's little to be gained by such collusion.

But as the axe came down on Gina Glocksen; as the stunned crowd began to shout in protest and as she began to cry uncontrollably; and, in a tragically ironic coup de grace, as she was given the stage one last time and was forced to perform the same song she had sung the previous night, which happened to be Charlie Chaplin's Smile, I found myself shaking my head -- amazed at how the entire scene was just so perfect.

It was the perfect object lesson.

It was as if God himself -- either as an Idol enthusiast or simply in keeping with his long-standing practice of crushing the insignificant for the hell of it -- had come down from on high and engineered the ultimate ruthless comeuppance aimed at all those who dared to fuck with the natural order of things. In one moment, it was made crystal-clear that if we chose to spare the undeserving, the innocent would suffer; the fact that this week's innocent turned out to be the contestant most likely to appeal to Howard Stern's target audience -- the cute girl with the purple streak in her hair and the barbell through her tongue; the "Rocker" -- seemed to make the point only that much more viciously.

It worked -- at least on one person.

Once again, in an act of seemingly divine inspiration, the shot of Gina's tear-streaked face as she toughed her way through the lines, "Smile, though your heart is aching," and, "Though there are clouds in the sky, I'll get by," slowly dissolved to show the face of -- him.

And I found myself suddenly filled with rage, and the overwhelming need to rip every fucking ridiculous hair out of Sanjaya Malakar's stupid little head and shove them down his fucking throat -- the one that had failed to produce one decent goddamned note all season. I realized that I'd been wrong; that subverting American Idol by catapulting a dingbat into its upper echelon wasn't worth shattering the dreams of a profoundly more deserving young girl; that the collateral-damage was, in fact, an unacceptable loss.

So maybe I owe Gina Glocksen an apology.

And maybe it's time the American public took down Sanjaya the way it should have from the beginning.

If that's not possible -- if it turns out that his popularity is legitimate and not the product of the country's biggest practical joke -- then perhaps the only thing left is to once again invoke the words of H.L. Mencken:

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Think I'll go put on the Stones' Street Fighting Man and order vindaloo from that place up the street -- then not tip the delivery guy.

Ad It Up

So, I see that pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer has enlisted (read: paid an exorbitant sum of money to...) Dr. Robert Jarvik to help push its cholesterol-fighting drug Lipitor.

In the series of TV commercials currently running all over the place, Dr. Jarvik is seen sitting by a placid mountain lake, unassumingly dressed in a denim shirt and khaki pants. He turns to the camera and correctly identifies himself as the inventor of the artificial heart.

If I remember correctly though, the successful model of that particular "product" bore the name "Jarvik VII."

I wonder what happened to the patients who were implanted with Jarviks I through VI.

Just Die Already

The coked-out dipshits who have their God-like hands on the figurative Hollywood "Green Light" love nothing more than a proven formula.

Not only is this to blame for the unforgivable thread of inferior sequels which extends down from any hit film like so many poisonous jellyfish tendrils, but also for the recent steaming pile of shitty movies based on shitty television shows. The trend toward avoiding new ideas like an airline passenger with monkey bites on his arm has become so virulent among Hollywood's big studios in fact, that it's occasionally difficult not to blame a trendsetting movie -- no matter how great -- for the trend that it set.

And yet despite the two average sequels, as well as the legion of laughably inferior copycats, it spawned -- 1988's Die Hard remains one of the greatest and most thoroughly enjoyable action movies ever made.

It was that rare blockbuster that managed to get everything right: it had a simple premise (what the studios now call "high-concept," which is nothing more than an ironically euphemistic way of saying that even the mullet-sporting high school dropout getting stoned in the back row will understand it), it had a tough, funny, thoroughly human hero in John McLane and a standout performance by Bruce Willis, it had Alan Rickman playing a villain who was as fun to watch as he was sadistic, and it had non-stop action from beginning to end. To this day, it's still one of my favorite movies.

In addition to having the kind of name which proves that the most obvious choice isn't necessarily the best, 1990's Die Hard 2: Die Harder managed to look and feel as if director Renny Harlin (whose entire career provides a compelling argument for declaring war on Finland) never actually saw the first movie. Sure, it has Willis, and it has action; what it doesn't have however is fun. On the contrary, Die Harder remains one of the meanest movies in recent memory: at one point, the camera lingers on a plane-load of unsuspecting airline passengers -- paying special attention to a child -- just before the villain kills them all by crashing the plane into the ground. Although there's something to be said for the sheer audacity of the sequence, it automatically robs the audience of any eventual pay-off by creating a vengeful bloodlust that no scene in an R-rated movie could ever fully satisfy; somehow, getting blown-up doesn't seem like a slow and painful enough death for a guy who purposely crashes a plane.

1995's Die Hard with a Vengeance reunited Willis with John McTiernan, the director of the original; it also teamed him up with Samuel L. Jackson, who surprised audiences with his powerful portrayal of a black guy who screams a lot. McTiernan at least made an effort to inject some of that elusive fun back into the proceedings by casting Jeremy Irons as the villain and encouraging him to ham it up. Unfortunately, it's who that villain is that makes the movie unintentionally hysterical in a Scooby-Doobian sort of way: Irons plays the brother of Hans Gruber -- Alan Rickman's character from the original movie. Add to that one of the most glaring oversights in scriptwriting history -- a plot-hole so big that, once realized, it basically shuts down the entire story, allowing everyone involved to go home ten minutes after the opening credits* -- and you've got a recipe for a whole nation's worth of two-star reviews.

Now, twelve years later, comes Live Free or Die Hard.

Right off the bat, the latest movie in the long-since-dead franchise lets you know where it's coming from: Bruce Willis's voter registration card. It takes place in Washington, D.C.; it involves terrorism (albeit of the politically-correct home-grown variety); the teaser trailer makes good use of the American flag and beauty shots of the Capitol; it's being released on July 4th; and of course, it has a name that's either patriotically kick-ass or uncomfortably jingoistic at the moment, depending on your level of outrage at failing to secure Dick Trickle, thereby completing the entire series of Arby's Limited Edition "Legends of NASCAR" Collector's Glasses.**

All that aside though, a quick glance at the most recent trailer would seem to indicate that the new movie might have bigger problems than just its implied politics. The reason is because, whether money-hungry Fox executives choose to accept it or not, the Die Hard series had a limited shelf-life from the start -- the entire concept created its own expiration date. From the get-go, the premise relied on John McClane being in the wrong place at the wrong time; its unique and undeniable charm is derived solely from McClane playing the role of the reluctant hero -- an average guy who's forced into action by circumstance and whose motivation is personal rather than professional. The audience loves him for his courage, wit, vulnerability and because he's human. Try to stretch the idea too thin though and the dilemma becomes clear: there are only so many times (as in two at best) that this one character can believably "stumble" into the middle of a dire situation and become the only hope for good prevailing over evil, yet if you do continue to play this same card, to be believable the character has to evolve into something far more cynical and far less like the guy everyone identified with in the first place.

It looks like they went with Door Number 2.

I admit to having little to go on aside from the early clips, but the John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard seems to barely resemble the wise-ass everyman who, by nature of the concept, was once forced to use his brain as often as his Beretta to save the day. Quite the opposite, the new movie looks like it's going to fit nicely into the growing pantheon of vehicles in which Willis flexes his acting muscle by playing a humorless guy who's confident to the point of being cooly aloof.

You know, Bruce Willis essentially playing Bruce Willis.

Trouble is, that's the furthest thing from John McClane.


(*Early in the film, it's explained that the bombs the villain is using to terrorize New York City work by mixing two liquids which only become explosive when combined; the bombs themselves are made up of two separate plastic canisters, each containing one of the inert elements. Just before a bomb goes off, a valve located at its top combines the two chemicals, then detonates the explosive mixture. Defusing the bomb is simple; it requires nothing more than a drill. Just drill a hole in the bottom of either of the separate containers -- remember, by itself each liquid is harmless -- let the fluid drain out and the two can't mix and therefore can't explode.)
(**Yeah, I know -- I suck.)

Find Your Power Animal

I'm a firm believer that while not every experience improves as you age, the happiness that's derived from discovering something new about yourself or the world around you actually does increase in direct proportion to how far along in life you are.

I have to figure that this little phenomenon is simply the result of that whole "quiet desperation" thing Thoreau once wrote about: the idea that as you age, you resign yourself to a constantly growing level of cynicism -- the natural result of having seen more, done more and been further removed from the sense of wonder that went hand-in-hand with being a child.

As you age, you tend to make peace with the knowledge that there are few surprises left -- yet this is what makes those times when you're proven wrong so wonderful.

Three days ago, my wife and I left our little apartment on the Upper East Side and took a walk over to Central Park. It was an eerily quiet afternoon -- the low and heavy gun-metal gray sky seeming to swallow the usual vibrations of the city, and the streets themselves noticeably barren. We held hands and strolled along, wondering aloud when the first blossoms of spring might finally begin adding some much-needed flesh to the skeletal tree branches and debating whether French or Italian would better satisfy whatever personal vagaries might eventually be at work come dinner time.

Not wanting to return home, Jayne suggested that since we were walking in its general direction anyway, we go the Central Park Zoo. I hadn't been to a zoo in about twenty years, so I gave her what I'm sure was a sufficiently bemused look and agreed.

We paid our money and wandered through the Children's Zoo first, which allowed me to finally see real, live pigs -- which I admitted have always been one of my favorite animals (all obvious jokes about feelings of kinship aside). We got to pet goats (all obvious jokes about George W. Bush aside) and stand amongst birds of all shapes and colors; we were even introduced to what had to be New York City's most irritable cow (all obvious jokes about the entire clientele of Jimmy Choo aside).

After awhile, we made our way over to the main zoo area, which is basically comprised of two elongated buildings housing the penguin paddock and the tropical rain forest exhibit, and one outdoor path that leads to the polar bear, otter and snow monkey habitats, among others. All of these encircle a primary courtyard -- the centerpiece of which is a large above-ground tank made entirely of glass.

Inside that tank, are the sea lions.

The moment I saw them, something completely unexpected happened: my heart leaped, and a silly smile spread across my face.

I honestly had no idea the extraordinary grace of these animals, but watching them glide silently underwater -- eyes closed as if they were in their own perfect little world -- only to occasionally break the surface just a few feet from me -- well, it was like nothing I'd ever experienced. I was frozen -- entranced. They were beautiful in a way that I could never do justice to with words, no matter how hard I might try. I couldn't pull myself away from the sight of them, and felt a sublime sense of calm in the presence of such simple dignity.

In the middle of New York City, my wife and I had stumbled on a peaceful oasis that reminded me what it felt like to be a kid -- by filling me with pure, wonderous joy.

Since that first encounter, I've made it a point to walk home from work every day and stop by the sea lion tank. Yesterday, I stood there under that same gray sky, watching them swim -- the hushed sound of Badly Drawn Boy's The Shining sluicing its way through my iPod's earphones and into my head, followed by Death Cab's Passenger Seat -- grateful to have found what my wife calls my "happy place."

Sometimes it really is the littlest things.

The Kids Are Alright

"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 (Idiot vs. Predator/03.01.07), 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 would decide 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 travelling 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-balanced 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: #1, 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 #2, because if you believe #1 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.

Listening Post

As Nas stated so well recently, "Hip-hop is dead."

My utter contempt for most of what passes for rap these days has been well-documented on this little experiment of mine. This position is something I won't apologize for -- not even when confronted with a contrary argument from one of the genre's most legendary names.

Last year, I was fortunate enough to be able to meet and interview Joseph Simmons -- better known as DJ Run of Run-DMC. After working my way through a series of softball questions which pertained only to the story I happened to putting together, I realized that I could no longer restrain the outrage that had been building inside of me for almost fifteen years.

There was a hip-hop trailblazer sitting directly in front of me; I had to ask him the obvious:

"What the fuck is up with today's hip-hop? Doesn't it piss you off when you see and hear the mindless crap that it's turned into?" I spat out, shocked at my own level of candor.

To his credit, rather than have his large bodyguard pound my insolent, white ass through the floor, Run thoughtfully explained why, in his opinion, modern hip-hop is as fresh and vital as the beloved hip-hop of old -- why, ostensibly, artists such as Young Jeezy, Pimp C, Li'l Wayne and Pall Wall were nothing more than the Darwinian progeny of acts like Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, A Tribe Called Quest, Ice-T and the Beastie Boys.

Regardless of whether this suggestion was borne out of true belief or simply some form of "loyalty to the game," I bit my tongue, smiled and nodded politely. Run was, is, and always will be a legend -- so what if I disagree with his assertion that rap's actually worth a shit these days?

That said, there are a tiny handful of artists making truly astonishing strides forward in the world of hip-hop -- fulfilling the promise set forth all those years ago, and creating music that's as powerful, original, furious, daring, and all-around cool as I remember from my youth.

One of these artists is El-P.

He's a maverick producer, incisive lyricist, and pissed-off rabble-rouser. His latest album, I'll Sleep When You're Dead is a seriously fearsome sonic onslaught; it plunges head-first into the kind of politically-charged mine-field where few besides P.E. and the Bomb Squad have treaded previously.

The first single from the album features a guest appearance by none other than Trent Reznor; it's called Flyentology.

Sunday Sacrilege