I am a big fan of Gerard over at American Digest. The olde Yanks over there make sense for the most part, and the blog is an excellent window on their thought processes and how the boomers there came up with them.
It's a curious thing, the "Boomer" phenomenon. When the subject of Boomers comes up, most people think of the elderly Stubfart Depends Diaper & Velcro Shoe Gang. We are talking about guys like Du Toit, Jack, Quartermain... and most folks forget that there were actually two generations of Boomers. And though the younger kids can't tell them apart... there are differences between the two generations. When du Toit starts droning on about the music of his day I just want to stick my finger down my throat. No, Kim - The Beatles were gay back when that was an insult - and so were you, HAR HAR HAR! Not that he'd know, running around as he did in tight pants, platform shoes and frilly shirts and hanging out in the disco with the fat chicks, HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR!!!! HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR! Errrr.... and discos were gay too!
I made the tail end of the Boomer Era by a couple months. The leading edge Boomers put away their toys, got jobs, grew up and started having families in the mid 60's and early 70's, and had thoroughly sold out themselves, their kids and grandkids by the early 80's. By the onset of the 90s they'd sold out their great grandkids. Their horrible style of music ended in the late 70's I think... and the last of the last of them might have been Meat Head.
I wonder to this day what it was that he refused to do
in the name of love?
Put the terlet seat up...?
I was still a mite too young to claim Meat Head as a singer from my generation... but my older brother by three years - I remember his 8 Tracks and top of the line Pioneer stereo in the 68 Firebird that Pop and I built for him. I would a been 14 or 15 when Meat Head came out with this one.
It was an odd time to grow up. I was a Latch Key Kid - came home to an empty house after school, and was expected to find my own way growing up. It was bewildering for me to look round at my peers and watch them deal with the epidemic divorce rates. When I was small, we called single parent families "broken homes". By the time I was in high school everyone knew someone with parents that had broken up. It was obvious that something was deeply wrong with our parents' generation but for them it was what it was, and what we kids thought of it didn't matter. Most of us kids at the time were just background noise to parents who had not yet found their own way. I remember watching the show that epitomized Boomer angst - The Big Chill. I didn't get it at all.
They are starting to die off now and I wonder at times if they ever managed to get over themselves and sort themselves out? In my world, Pop struggles because he knows something went badly wrong long ago but has no idea what it possibly could have been. Mom just went batshit crazy. I wonder what I will do when I am their age? The elderly leading edge Boomers often refer to themselves as the missing generation... but I wonder if it was us tail enders...? Regardless... the sense of displacement must have been massively worse for our millennial kids. They have no sense of identity either, so they invent their identities and some of them are so bizarre they border on mental illness.
If you can handle your PTSD - get a load of Meat Head singing about paradise by the dashboard light as he makes out with a vintage 70's era tire biter on back up vocals! Retch!!!
ohhh....GAH...!!!!
Well I better get on with my day, y'all. I've had better trips down Memory Lane, and some landmarks are best left in the rearview mirror. Meat Head later went on to do bit parts in the movies and often starred as a villain ... and IIRC he did a pretty good job too. I hope you all find your paradise today... and as always, thanks for stopping by.
I missed the Boomer Generation by a few years, but grew up surround in the odd cross pollination of the Great Depression/WW II generation (my grandparents) and their values (my parents) and the social upheaval that were the Boomers. My mother stopped work and did child care until we were old enough to go back to school, when she restarted teaching - so not really latch key but sort of.
I was talking with my older when were back home in August and relating that I did not know anyone who was divorced until I was in the seventh grade; Nighean Gheal knew it much earlier. Now, it is just the way things are and outside of religious style institutional beliefs and organizations, it seems more remarkable that people remain married than they are apart.
One wonders, as you do, if the Boomers looking back realize both what they have wrought - yes, some good, but all a lot of trends which have been only fully realized in the last few years. Are they conscious of their culpability or, like all of us when confronted with how we may have contributed to wrongs, tend to turn away?
They seem to run the gamut TB. du Toit, for example, thinks he's perfect and knows it all. My mother is just like him and thinks that she can deny reality simply by refusing to see the wreckage and ignore it. Others like Gerard and our crowd are thoughtful and mindful and can see fallout... and most know who to turn to and which Book to read in hopes of sorting some of it out.
Many of the leading edge Boomers were born into an age of prosperity and fell upward in spite of themselves and I think they just assumed the kids would too. When they didn't, they assumed something was wrong with the kid. When their grandkids failed to launch they knew something was wrong but couldn't put their finger on it. They blamed satanic rock and roll music, violent video games, drug culture and flat out refused to see any of their own involvement. To them family and culture are malleable and if one fails to adapt to it, their failure to adapt is their problem and that's that for that!
As I surf the innernet I see a mounting tidal wave of Boomer hate going on among the youth. My daughter hates me with the heat of 1000 suns and I used to be willing to take full responsibility ... until I saw that she hates herself too... as many of our more messed up kids do. It took me years to see it and once I did... I felt bad all over again.
Parenting is damned tough business these days, isn't it? But you are doing very, very well. You must be so proud of your daughter.
I think, like you, there is a rising tide of hate against Boomers that is only likely to increase once the full financial toll is measured out. But that hate is misplaced: the generations that followed have had 20-30 years of voting to make things "better", which they failed to do. And as the Boomers die, they will find their financial problems to not go away.
I am proud. They are productive citizens so far - maybe not quite in tune with my view of the world, but was I really in view with my current view of the world when I was their age? Not at all. Experience has to temper all things.
I knew very little of MeatLoaf, but I do recall one time he was on David Letterman, and Dave asked him point blank: "Are you still experimenting with drugs?" The answer was instantaneous: "Oh Hell No!!...I know EXACTLY what they do."
Glen, coincidence of discussion.
ReplyDeleteI missed the Boomer Generation by a few years, but grew up surround in the odd cross pollination of the Great Depression/WW II generation (my grandparents) and their values (my parents) and the social upheaval that were the Boomers. My mother stopped work and did child care until we were old enough to go back to school, when she restarted teaching - so not really latch key but sort of.
I was talking with my older when were back home in August and relating that I did not know anyone who was divorced until I was in the seventh grade; Nighean Gheal knew it much earlier. Now, it is just the way things are and outside of religious style institutional beliefs and organizations, it seems more remarkable that people remain married than they are apart.
One wonders, as you do, if the Boomers looking back realize both what they have wrought - yes, some good, but all a lot of trends which have been only fully realized in the last few years. Are they conscious of their culpability or, like all of us when confronted with how we may have contributed to wrongs, tend to turn away?
They seem to run the gamut TB. du Toit, for example, thinks he's perfect and knows it all. My mother is just like him and thinks that she can deny reality simply by refusing to see the wreckage and ignore it. Others like Gerard and our crowd are thoughtful and mindful and can see fallout... and most know who to turn to and which Book to read in hopes of sorting some of it out.
DeleteMany of the leading edge Boomers were born into an age of prosperity and fell upward in spite of themselves and I think they just assumed the kids would too. When they didn't, they assumed something was wrong with the kid. When their grandkids failed to launch they knew something was wrong but couldn't put their finger on it. They blamed satanic rock and roll music, violent video games, drug culture and flat out refused to see any of their own involvement. To them family and culture are malleable and if one fails to adapt to it, their failure to adapt is their problem and that's that for that!
As I surf the innernet I see a mounting tidal wave of Boomer hate going on among the youth. My daughter hates me with the heat of 1000 suns and I used to be willing to take full responsibility ... until I saw that she hates herself too... as many of our more messed up kids do. It took me years to see it and once I did... I felt bad all over again.
Parenting is damned tough business these days, isn't it? But you are doing very, very well. You must be so proud of your daughter.
It is Glen, it is.
DeleteI think, like you, there is a rising tide of hate against Boomers that is only likely to increase once the full financial toll is measured out. But that hate is misplaced: the generations that followed have had 20-30 years of voting to make things "better", which they failed to do. And as the Boomers die, they will find their financial problems to not go away.
I am proud. They are productive citizens so far - maybe not quite in tune with my view of the world, but was I really in view with my current view of the world when I was their age? Not at all. Experience has to temper all things.
Disco is not gay. Just listen to those manly BG's. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI knew very little of MeatLoaf, but I do recall one time he was on David Letterman, and Dave asked him point blank: "Are you still experimenting with drugs?" The answer was instantaneous: "Oh Hell No!!...I know EXACTLY what they do."
ReplyDeleteParadise is Meat Loaf's best.
ReplyDelete