Huh?

I’ve been looking at my early columns lately. Not all of them sold – hard to figure why. Well, maybe not. Here’s one from January 2001.

Like thousands of you out there I was very impressed by Ebay when it started up in the mid nineties and thought to myself: “I really should buy a few shares of their stock.” Of course, I didn't and having missed that boat, I made up for it by buying plenty of tech stocks just before the crash. Ebay ran a business that was based on making money as opposed to the other dot-coms that based their business on spending it. I don’t hold a grudge against Ebay for leading me astray (especially since the court injunction). As a matter of fact, I was thinking of running a search, or, if they allow it, placing a want ad:

“Balding baby-boomer male WASP in search of cool identity”

All right, I was raised in Leave it to Beaver-land. I even whistled on the way to school. The closest I ever came to being a bohemian was that I took swimming lessons at Walden Pond. I've consumed enough peanut butter, Wonder Bread and Campbell’s soup to sufficiently inoculate me from any inkling of abnormality. My problem is that my decidedly conformist existence has hit the most challenging of all conundrums. Non-conformity is now the accepted norm.

Who would have guessed back in 1973 as I traveled the hallways of Acton Boxborough Regional High School in my Greg Brady style maroon velour button-fly bell-bottoms and my green and gold puffy-sleeved shirt that I was headed for such a predicament? Somehow, miraculously, ninety five percent of the student body, who were also Greg or Marcia look-a-likes were transformed through the process of time, to former rockers, dope-heads and hippies. Am I the sole remaining member of my generation who will admit he faithfully watched the Partridge Family, who found the Courtship of Eddy’s Father moving and who was frightfully disappointed when Mayberry RFD was cancelled? Did no one else marvel at the gastronomical breakthroughs of Bunt cakes, Shake-a Pudding and Jell-O 1, 2, 3? Am I the sole remaining purchaser of either pet rock or mood ring? I could have sworn there were others who enjoyed songs like Mandy, and Brandy and that coke commercial where they’re teaching the world to sing.

What happened?

I’ll tell you what happened. Someone built a clover-leafed on-ramp to the road less traveled by.

Who, you ask?

I know that too. It’s them there kids, dagnabit! (I've always wanted to say that)

Baby boomers were yuppies in the 80s because, let’s face it; kids were boring in the 80s. Campuses were quiet, music was boring and Alex P Keaton was a popular icon. It’s hard to respect serious cultural discussion when both sides wear little alligators on their shirts. Blame Ronald Reagan. Blame Arnold Schwartzeneggar. Blame Jane Pauley for marrying Gary Trudeau and putting his sense of humor in the Goodwill bin along with his old sports coats. Say what you will; Iran/Contra could never hold a candle to Vietnam. Madonna was fun, but Janis Joplin she was not!

Sometime in the last several years something changed. Kids got cool! When I was a teenager if anyone said navel piercing, I would check my lunch bag to see if someone was messing with my orange (OK, it was a lunchbox – but I stopped using the one with spacemen all over it long before high school). Sure, the really cool guys started having their ears pierced decades ago, but now anyone under twenty five without at least one hefty body piercing is given an honorary pocket protector and the keys to the audio-visual department. Limp Bizkit may not be Led Zeppelin but Lenny Kravitz beats the heck out of Barry Manilow. Who clued them into the fact that the Democratic Party was just a sugary version of the Republican Party? 

 These kids are sharp! These kids are savvy! These kids are dangerous!

We baby boomers have always had the market cornered on cool. Sure, the majority of us were still basically geekie but we took pride in the fact that a certain percentage of us were true revolutionaries. Suddenly a generation rises that makes its own rules, revolutionizes its own culture, and then invites everyone into the pool.

The attendance figure at the first Woodstock has tripled over the last several years. I wasn't there but I did go trout fishing in upstate New York that summer and I watched the movie twice so it’s only a matter of time until I claim to have been there as well. Is it natural for an entire generation to resort to revisionist history? No, but at least we have someone to blame!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m splicing my high school graduation photo with a picture of Jimi Hendricks. Anyone know where I can get a paste-on graphic for love beads? 

Penn shows a great trick for our generation.

Volition Man Chap L Part Two – Dirgan’s Dream

Volition Man (available here) is the second book in my Genre Series. I’ve been told by a friend and fellow writer that it doesn’t completely suck.

Well – what more do you need to know?

This is the second installment of Chapter L. If you want to start from the beginning, the first installment is here.

Chapter L Part Two

Dirgan fell asleep.

There wasn’t much happening for a while after that. Then Dirgan’s eyeballs started moving rapidly. Inside Dirgan’s brain, synapses fired and the similitude of music formed in his head. The music sounded something like Turkey in the Straw. Dirgan’s mouth grimaced; he didn’t like that tune. The music changed to the theme song from All in the Family. That was better. Images began forming in Dirgan’s unconscious mind. Spon Ghi, dressed in tuxedo and clown shoes, appeared on an old vaudeville-type stage.

“Welcome to Dirgan Voleman’s dream,” said Spon Ghi in a voice Dirgan had never heard him use before. It was an enthusiastic voice, like you might imagine a game show host would use… in Calcutta. “Our dream tonight is brought to you by Pepsi, the cola you have to buy if you don’t like Coke.”

“Pepsi,” murmured Dirgan’s sleeping lips.

“Also by,” said Spon Ghi, “Jack’s Magical Beans! Don’t have a cow, Man, get Jack’s Magical Beans.”

“The magical fruit,” murmured Dirgan’s lips.

Dagmar appeared on the stage with a giant cartoon hammer with which she flattened Spon Ghi in one great, fluid-filled splat. As she pulled the hammer up, Spon Ghi unfolded like an accordion, soaking up his bodily fluids as his figure rose. Dagmar and Spon Ghi repeated the process half a dozen times to raucous laughter from an audience that appeared suddenly around Dirgan. There was also a bag of popcorn in Dirgan’s hand.

“Popcorn,” murmured Dirgan.

A giant hook appeared from off-stage pulling Spon Ghi and Dagmar off stage. Apparently it pulled Dirgan, too, because suddenly he was in a space ship. He was flying near a Swiss cheese moon. A dish and a spoon were seated behind him.

“Step on it, Man,” said the spoon. “They’re gaining on us.”

The dish next to him just blushed. In the rearview mirror, a cat and a laughing dog were in a sleigh pulled by assorted dishes and cutlery. The cat was whipping on the utensils with a violin bow.

Dirgan looked around for the cow. There had to be a cow in a scene like this.

Suddenly there were lots of cows, and Dirgan seemed to be one of them. No, he was all of them. Dirgan felt the grass through a hundred cloven hooves, the digestive juices of twenty-five, four-compartmented, stomachs, and the yearning of twenty-five udders, with four teats each, needing to be milked.

But there was something else, and it made Dirgan a little dizzy. Not only was he twenty-five cows, but he was also a little girl sitting on a soft bag of wool and straw and spooning curdled milk into his (her) mouth.

“Blecchk!” Dirgan murmured in his sleep.

Sorry about leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth. Who knows what indignities await our hero? Come back Monday for part 3!

Last time I gave you a completely unrelated video by Bill Cosby. I might as well make it a trend.

Greatest Country in the World

This forth of July, I thought it might be a good time to think about what makes America so great. Sure, you could cop out and talk about veterans, grandparents and puppies, but all countries have those (unless they eat their dogs – then maybe veterans, grandparents and kittens.) What makes us great is that we’re the best in just about everything… in spite of ourselves.

Number 1: Our Food.

Our food is so good – we don’t even need vitamins or minerals in it! We are the home of fizzy drinks like Pepsi and Coke. Perrier? C’mon Frenchies, it’s not even sweet. Put some corn syrup in it! Speaking of fizzy, we even did it with cheese. The Europeans have their flat boring cheese; we puffed ours full of air, salt, and preservatives.

Are there rat droppings in hot dogs? Sure there are – but they’re good American rat droppings from good American rats. That’s why we grill them every forth of July.

We even feel sorry for the rest of the world and send our burger and chicken franchises to culturally deprived places like Paris and Beijing. Heck, we even named our deep-fried cut potatoes after those Paris folk and do they appreciate it – no. We don’t care – pass the pork rinds.

Number II: Our Culture

We have some fine musicians in our country

like Tyler Nail

and Matt Allivato.

 They make good quality music that’s easy on the ear. BUT… our country is so great, we pretty much ignore guys like that. Instead we promote bad poetry put to 30-year-old rhythms and we call it, “fresh,” and we promote failed musicians from other genres who sell out to make imitation country music, and call it, “genuine.”

Yup – we’re that good.

You wanna see a movie? We got both kinds – romantic comedy and superhero.

Our sports are so superior that we changed the name of the most popular sport in the rest of the world to soccer.

And that's not all!

Letter C: Our Government

We got a grand old Constitution! It’s a whizz-banger, and there’s nobody out there that has any better. We have no idea what it says, but our politicians are positively certain the guys with a different designation next to their name are breaking it all the time. Despite the designation, each pol swears with his or her hand on a dark impressive-looking book that they will preserve and defend our constitution.

Sure enough, from what I hear, the Constitution is buried deep below one of our really impressive government buildings, which might be about preserving and defending, or it might be about ignoring, but our white house, congress and supreme court are all agreed to keep it buried deep and out of the way.

It’s good they all have one thing they agree on.

Yup – we promote our least original artists, eat our worst foods, and elect our shiftiest people. It’s just our way of putting one arm behind our back to let the rest of the world catch up.

Imagine how good we’d be if we tried.

By the way… Did you notice on the Junk Drawer blog that all the postings have my name on them? The good folks at Go Figure Reads made my blog first, and now they’re stuck. Tee-hee.