I had the pleasure of attending a Yuppie convention this past weekend - better known as the The Barclay’s Golf Tournament in the Posh NJ town of Ridgewood. Actually, that’s incorrect, it’s ‘Ridgewood Country Club’ in the not-as-exclusive town of Paramus. I suppose using the Ridgewood name is a clever ploy to charge more money. Vive le Capitalism.
As I made my way through General Parking to the nearest make shift tram, I was stopped by an archetypal Yuppie who advised that cell phones were not permitted. He wasn’t part of the staff, just a fellow groupie that was turned back at the gate for ‘carrying’. My first response to the small crowd was “Oh my god, how will I survive’. I said this more in mockery to illicit a chuckle (which it did), but part of me did fall into a momentary panic. What if I need to look something up on the internet? How will I text message my friends and family? What if there’s an emergency and not one of the other 100 Thousand spectators and staff could help me?
I’m not even sure how I didn’t see the Cell phone ban coming, if you’ve ever watched a tournament you know how deafly quiet it is when a Tour Player is in his backswing. Imagine Sergio Garcia slicing his drive into the woods after his concentration was disrupted by an obnoxiously loud polytonic rendition of fur elise. Anyway, after a friend and I literally stood there debating if we could beat the security check, we decided to heed his warning and begrudgingly return our lifelines to the safety of our vehicles.
Obviously, within minutes, my dependency on the charms of Blackberry faded and I was absorbed in the wonder and beauty of the event. As we made our way through the different holes I started to notice how pleasant it was. Not only wasn’t I incessantly checking my e-mail like a pavlovian test case, but no one around me had their nose buried in their handset, or chatted loudly on a superfluous call. More importantly, however, with large crowds moving about the grounds, nobody was distracted enough to cause foot traffic or general chaos. As much as I relished this, it seemed incomprehensible that our generation lived two decades without such modern technological conveniences.
I’m sure kids today think we’re part of the dark ages since we grew up withouth the Internet, Cell phones, and email. For the first time I think i’m turning into my dad; I can start a story to my young cousins with ‘when i was your age, we didn’t have email – We had to walk up hill both ways in the snow to a mailbox!’ *gasp*
Yeah, I know it’s been a while since he died, but I really miss him. Besides, this site wasn’t up when he died.
Who am I talking about? Well George Carlin, of course…
No, I never met him. He could have been a huge prick for all I know. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was one of the greatest minds I’ve ever had the pleasure of learning from.
So I guess this where I share some snippets of dialogue or pull a video from YouTube to show you my favorite bits from his stand ups. Nope. No need to. You all know his stuff, and have your own favorite memories of him. Why push my (questionable) tastes on you?
Instead, I’ll just say that the biggest reason why I’ll miss him is because no one else called “Bullshit!” like him. He could find bullshit in anything and everything, not because he thought something might be full of shit, but because it actually was bullshit. In media, manners, sex, race, legislation, politics, death – you name it. He never worried about hurt feelings, censors or any other “sanity checks” we deem necessary to govern our lives. He just lived his life, spoke his mind and called bullshit when he saw it. And we loved him for it.
So as I finally come to the end of this little dedication to a great mind, the last thing I’ll put out there is – Who do we trust enough to call “Bullshit!” now that he’s gone?
Ok, so I’ve been thinking about how to kick off my first post on this site.
Do I try to put something up to describe what a GenXer is? Do I dare attempt to define a generation that refuses to be defined? A generation that always sought out “the alternatives”?
Do I dare attempt to lay out requirements on what does or doesn’t make you GenX? Well, hell, if Generation X as a generation defining term is in dispute over at Wikipedia, who the fuck am I to lay down the ground rules? That won’t work.
Should I try to argue or whine about what is or isn’t GenX? Hell, that’s too predictable, and predictability is not becoming of a GenXer.
So, to kick shit off here, I guess I’ll just say – Hey, welcome. Feel free to dig around (I know, there isn’t much up here…yet) or feel free to reply to this with some topics you’d like to discuss.
Is it fun stuff, like toys games and gadgets? Fuck Yeah! They don’t call us “slackers” for nuthin!
Is it Music? Yeah, we’ve got opinions on that.
Is it Politics? Yeah, we can talk about that a bit.
Is it career advice? Yeah, we’ve got a ton of experience living in the cubical coal mine, so feel free to ask or kick off topics.
Is it raising your kids? Well, we can talk about it, but maybe that’s something we can all try to discuss and kick around as a subject.
Is it investing? Well, after the dot com era, most of us lost a ton of cash, but shit, maybe you can teach us a thing or 2.
Is it about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster or the Chupacabra? AWESOME (Well for me, I’m a bit of a Cryptozoology junkie. Feel free to lol).
Basically, we want this to be as much about you as us. We’re gonna come here, spew shit that ticks us off, makes us happy, and might even embarrass us a bit, but fuck it. Why start caring now?