Rice, Rice, Baby

I had a discussion with a co-worker recently about horrible things our respecitve generations are responsibile for unleashing on the world in terms of pop culture. We confessed back and forth for awhile and I thought the results were interesting. Now, to put this in perspective, I am pushing 28, and he's 20. A lot of these have to do with music, but then, music is a huge slice of popular culture. I will freely admit guilt for some of these things is merely through coincidence and timing.

Stuff my generation was responsible (at least partly) for:

1. Rap Music - Before I get shot over this one, let me explain. Rap music itself is fine, I have no problems with it. It isn't my thing, for sure, but that is not reason enough to hate it. In fact a lot of the "old school" stuff was really great, like Run DMC. Only, over time, the prerequisite that you had at least some shred of vocal talent, sense of timing, or individuality was groud away into dust. Anymore, all you get is some random guy who's chosen a street name, put on some goofy clothes, and rambles on about whatever angst-ridden thing or illegal act they can think of or how great they consider themselves while a manufactured, repetitive beat howls along in the background. The 'singer' makes no attempt whatsoever to have anything to do with the backgroud music, which is tragic. Why do people like this so much? Have they not heard the roots of this music, and can they not see the decline? I'm sorry about this.

2. New Kids on the Block - These days you can't turn aroud without running over a boy band, or their evil female equivalents like Britney. These guys started it all, at least so far as I know, the whole manufactured sound. A group of admittedly talented vocalists brought together specifically to be a popular culture icon. Once the music business figured out what a money-machine bands like that were, it was all downhill from there. I blame these guys for the eventual arisal of crap like "American Idol." To anyone watching this show or hearing the latest great tune by LMNT, my apologies.

3. Breakdancing - At the time, a bunch of guys flopping around like drunken silk-worms and spinning on their already brain-damaged heads seemed cool. I hang my head in shame.

4. Magic: The Gathering - The mother of all expensive collectible card games, the direct predeccessor of shit like Pokemon. And it still lives on! My secret shame: binders full of the cards, rotting quietly on a shelf.

5. 80's Music - Some of it was very cool. A lot of it was not. I guess you can point the finger at any decade and make fun of the music scene in general, though. I think the 80's in particular were a stunning mixture of very good and very, very bad. Nostalgia caused me to gather a lot of this stuff. Now I wonder why, and weep openly.

6. Low-Rider Trucks. My sister dismissed this laughable fad (which still lives on, again, sadly) with the following statement: "Yeah, my neighbor's kid is in this Low-Rider club called 'fear of heights.' I hear his truck grinding up over their curb now and then. God." Thanks, 80's!

9. "New Coke" - I don't know what braniac back in the 80's decided Coke needed to be re-done. Remember Coke II? Yeah, most people don't for a good reason. That and "New Coke" are a shameful badge upon my generation. For messing with the Sacres Beverage, my generation is guilty.

10. 3733+ Speek - While this was nowhere near as prevalent or developed at the time, the roots were there. Oh yes. The first time someone told someone else "L8R dewd" while online, all was lost. Someone, somewhere in my generation began this travesty.


Stuff his generation was responsibile (At least partly) for:

1. Reality Television - Jesus. I don't watch a lot of TV anyway, but this stuff is the ultimate waste of airspace. A bunch of artificial people being touted as common folk thrust into whatever fucked-up situation the month calls for. Hey! Let's get 14 random women who are all coincidentally 36-24-34 and air-drop them into the middle of Antarctica. See if they can survive THAT shit. Oh, but we'll give them a hot tub and some soap.

2. Ricers - Guess what, lads! The ass-end of your mother's Honda Civic is not going to go flying off the road and cause you to perform a reverse wheelie if you fail to install a 4-foot-tall spoiler on the back. The little NOS stickers you have on the side of the car don't REALLY cause you to have that kind of mean-machine hardware installed. Here's a tip: take a little of the time you spend fitting huge tachometers to your automatic-transmission cars and actually learn how to drive them first. Thanks a lot, Vin Diesel, your moronic followers are here to stay!

3. Pokemon - I seriously doubt I need to elaborate on this. I'm chewing cyanide right now.

4. Britney Spears - NKOTB started it all, but it lives on. As long as there is money to be made, those with originality will fall in legions before the good-looking moneymakers in the music biz.

5. Gangsta Rap - This is the end result of what I mentioned above. It really isn't about music anymore. It's about where your ho is, whose hizzy is the shizzy, and how quickly you can find a tough-sounding word which has not yet been mis-spelled in the particular manner you're fond of and think is clever and then go market yourself to an industry that is still baffled that the public chooses to pirate their music instead of pay $20/CD for it anymore. I'll give these guys one thing, though. They are akin to many famous painters and artisans of days gone by: When they are dead, their popularity soars.

6. MTV Sucking - It's a sad day when "music television" has to make a separate channel just to show music videos, because the other shit clogging their drain (Such as Road Rules, Daria, etc) won't quite flush.

7. The phrase "tight". Slang is not something I make too much fun of, since I regularly catching myself spewing forth terms like "mass" and "rad". However, this one is pretty bad news. That's tight, yo. Like, to the max.

8. 3733+ Speak - What was once born has been matured by online gamers. Once again there is little need to elaborate. Let me just say "u wil @\/\/@y5 B teh SuQ, lololololol."

NOTE: This was signifigantly more sarcastic than I intend these entries to be.. but sometimes.. that's gotta be how it is. ;)