Somewhat related to the previous entry (well, they both involve music, nostalgia, and grumpy old man-ism, at least), Lileks related a story today about his encounter at his local coffee house with one of those Damn Kids™ I’m always grumbling about. Here’s his comment about the young lady’s ignorance of “99 Luftballons,” the infectious ’80s classic about an accidental nuclear exchange (ah, the Cold War… those were the days!):
Kids today. No respect for kids of yesterday. Thing is, we were required to know every fargin’ thing about the 60s when we were coming up, being schooled in the ways of the Most Important Musical Genre Ever. You were required to nod at your elder and respect their sage ways, and thus I found myself in a few dorm rooms listening to peers explain why Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Reefer and Cocaine were incredible not just for their harmony and song-writing skills, but their ability to make music that [went] on longer than three minutes. To which you could only say: may all your girlfriends take “Love the One You’re With” to heart everytime you’re out of town.
Lileks’ real point here is, of course, less about the kids of today than his own resentment toward the ’60s — he strikes me as a man who is convinced that everything went Horribly Wrong long about 1967 and it’s only gotten worse since then; come to think of it, that’s not entirely incorrect, depending on how you look at it — but he touches on something I’ve considered myself from time to time, which is the way Boomer culture has always dominated the conversation and how people my age dealt with it, and more importantly (to me, anyhow) how that’s different from the way kids these days deal with my generation’s culture.
