The Ghosts of the Past

Ok, I admit it. Goddamnit, I admit it. I live in the past, when it comes to music. I’m sure everyone is glad to hear me say that. Especially one very vocal critic of my musical tastes. I love Led Zeppelin, I love Santana, I love CCR and The Beatles. Sue me. My favorite songs and artists come from a time, a simpler time, when Rock and Roll was Rock and Roll. A time before Hip Hop and Rap. One of my friends once said that I didn’t really like anything that wasn’t produced before 1982. That is basically true, but with a few qualifiers. I love some grunge and I love some 80s rock. Yes, I also love Jazz and a good bit of Country. I also have a deep affinity for Classical music. However, when everything shakes out, my true love is great 1960s and 1970s Rock and Roll. Gimme a hard driving beat, drums, guitar and screeching vocals. Gimme folksy Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons. I’ll take it.

There comes a time, dear reader, in every social critic’s life, when they have to eat some crow. So, for the sake a pretty good new pair of musicians, I’m going to pony up to the table and ask for seconds on Today’s Special of Fried Crow. Pass the fork, knife and hot sauce. I have to begrudgingly admit that a new band that I was recently hipped to, is actually, sort of, possibly, maybe………….good. The band, you ask? Ghostland Observatory. The other night, my very vocal critic of my musical tastes, called me up and told me to check out this group, Ghostland Observatory, on Austin City Limits. I bitched and moaned about how it was just electric slop and griped about the lack of real Rock and Roll being present in their music. Well, the next day I found myself on Myspace listening to their songs and have been listening steadily ever since. Yes, I dig them. Yes, I think they are pretty bad ass. And yes, I probably will go see them when they come around my way. So there you go, folks. My admission of guilt. I was blinded by my own self-righteousness about what is good music. I am digging the Ghostland.

Marketing Data or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Ok, haven’t been blogging much. Got a bone to pick, so I felt like this was a good way to vent and get back into the groove. Now that myspace and all the rest of the social networking sites are taking over the way we conceptualize the internet, myspace and the rest are apparently becoming the proving ground for up and coming television shows. For example: the myspacetv show, “Quarterlife.” This show centers around a group of 20-somethings trying to figure out their place in life. Now, as a self-diagnosing schizo-paranoid weirdo, I long ago diagnosed myself with the “Quarter-Life Crisis” which is a name for a time in young people’s lives, especially of my generation, when they faced with a world that has educated them to the Nth degree, yet refuse to accept and accommodate them into society. Typical Quarter Life Crisis symptoms include, an apathetic attitude, an aversion to older generations, a feeling of not belonging, etc… Now, back to the show. This show on myspacetv deals with these 20-something artists, living somewhere like LA, perfect skin, perfect bodies, but going through the same Quarter-Life Crisis as me. Right? Wrong. Watch a few episodes of this tripe and you will pick up pretty quick that this show is nothing but a commercial for Toyota. Hell, a good chunk of the fucking dialogue happens in the car, which happens to be a Toyota. The whole show also revolves around the fact that one of the central character blogs about all her shit on myspace. Hmmm. Wait, I used to do that and now I’m on this blog. Goddammit. They have co-opted my whole life! Get out of my head myspace!!! My only question is whether or not myspace will be using the data they compile from all the people who watch this horse shit and sell it to marketing firms who are desperately still trying to figure out how to sell us more useless shit like “Quarterlife.” Oh yea, NBC has pick up this crap for ’08. It will probably be a huge hit, win a shit ton of emmys and I’ll still be blogging and still living an actual “Quarter-Life Crisis.”

Trying, Trying, Trying

Ok, so recently one of my avid readers, and I suspect one of my only readers accused me of not blogging enough. I have decided to make it up to everyone, so here goes.

What have I been doing? Well, in not so many words, trying to get a job. I have concluded that I really don't want to practice law so I apply to everything available where I think a law degree my prove useful to someone or some corporation or company or demonic wiccan cult of Mormons. Ok, that last one was a joke. I would never apply to a demonic wiccan cult of Mormons unless they had a pretty good insurance plan.

The problem with applying to everything under the sun is that either a) HR departments that post jobs on websites only do that for shits and giggles, because I have yet to hear back from any of them or b) a law degree can hurt you. I say hurt you, because I mean that I wonder if people think I'm joking or not serious. Goddammit I am.

I was eating at Broad Street the other day and found myself starring at a stack of applications for servers and cooks. Jesus Christ.

What else have I been up to? Well my insomnia has been raging lately. A few days ago, I didn't sleep for about 30 hours. I was delirious and felt like I was high. I rode around and realized that I probably should not be driving. Finally, I fell asleep for a few hours. My friend informed me that it can take up to a month to satisfy the "sleep debt" that your body incurs from non regular sleeping patterns. It will probably take me more like a year to repair the damage. Mostly, I look for jobs, drink a bit and worry about the bar.

I tried calling back the only job where I actually got a few interviews with. The guy is out of the state. I wonder if they just tell me that shit, or if its actually true. Word around the camp fire is that they are going to make a decision this week on who made the cut. Its like trying to be the most popular kid. You wear a nice suit, laugh at alot of jokes, but the whole time your thinking, "give me the goddamn job!"

Applying for jobs on the internet is strange. All these damn websites post all these jobs, but mostly they are for truck drivers or work from home scams involving stuffing envelopes.

I'll keep it up, though.

Apocalypse Wow!

I was just watching MSNBC when Paris Hilton was ordered back to court. Well, thats it folks. The apocalypse is upon us. As Hilton was driving off in the police cruiser, hundreds, literally, hundreds of camera men mobbed the car and swamped it. The cops had to force their way out. Has our society sunk this low where the public is so desperate for information about a rich, non-college educated, convicted, almost completely useless person? I mean, seriously. With everything going on in the world, this is front page news? They have to have live coverage of her going to court for a misdemeanor? So my conclusion is this: this is the 7th sign of the apocalypse and we are all about to explode in a fiery end. I think the next few signs have something to do with the sky turning to the color of sack-cloth and brimstone raining from the heavens. Better check the weather.

Generational War

Whats this generation gulf between us? Take a look at the captains of industry, politics and just your local friendly neighborhood bosses. There is clearly something going on. I have bitched and moaned for years to anyone who would listen about the problem that exists between my generation (people in their 20s) and the generation above (people in their 40s and 50s.) Johnny Cash wrote a good song about it, something about a different tune and about young people dancing a new step that the old cats of the world don't understand. Whats funny is that song was written from the Baby Boomers to the Greatest Generation. The Baby Boomers were supposed to shake up the world completely, change everything. They were supposed to be the Hippy generation, the generation of change, the generation of hope. Everything they stood for, now, has gone by the wayside in favor of praying for their Social Security and co-opting great songs of the Sixties for Cadillac commercials. It used to be perverse to utilize a song for a strictly shitty commercial purpose, but now its the only way. Its become old hat, but its still sickening to people that cared. The goddamn Hippies who grew up to be investment bankers didn't realize that they passed down their ideas, whether song or literature, to a generation who would get saturated with it. My generation has grown up revering the same things the Baby Boomers did, the difference being we can't appreciate them and use them. They are like isolated instances, only reserved for a previous time. The Baby Boomers have raped the planet, spent wildly without recourse, and convinced a generation, my generation, to be subservient.

Plenty of times I have talked about jobs on here. Always I shift the blame to the Baby Boomers for not retiring or just getting the hell out of the way. A professor of mine recently commented that he was happy that I would have to pay his Social Security and he wouldn't have to worry because he and his ilk (the rest of the Baby Boomers) would be taken care of. In a sarcastic tone, he stated that my generation was another story, basically implying we are screwed. What my professor failed to realize is with that kind of attitude, which I hear everyday from a generation that just can't keep up with mine, is that we will have the keys eventually. Soon, whether the Boomers like it or not, they will have to turn the keys to the country over to my generation. Social Security is a privilege in this country, not a right. Remember that professor.

The generation gulf only gets bigger everyday. Recently a friend of mine tried to explain a relatively new idea about parenting to an older Boomer. The Boomer just couldn't wrap his elderly head around it. He didn't believe it. Its just like back in the Wright Brothers days. I can just see it. Some old timer sitting on a porch, swearing up and down that man will never fly. No way, he would shout to the heavens. Flash forward a couple of decades and Japanese Zeros are bombing Pearl Harbor. The gulf has always been there, and I'm sick of trying to span in backwards to let the Boomers catch up. I'm sick of job retraining, Internet courses for non-traditional students and "Video Professor" for soon-to-be retirees trying to figure out how to operate Myspace. All of these are code for "I'm stuck in my ways and I hate technology." My patience is wearing thin for anyone who cannot at least accept new things and new ways.

So whats the answer? Do we bridge the gulf and help the Boomers retire peacefully? Maybe there will be a generational war of attrition with my generation rising up and crushing the establishment. Maybe it will be a bloodless revolution in which we just simply put the Boomers out to pasture and let them quietly slip away. All I do know is my generation has a lot of shit to fix that has been fucked up by an older, self-righteous, war mongering, deficit spending, bunch of lunatics. I'm sick of them and I'm ready for my generation to get their turn at running this big blue planet.