Sunday, August 29, 2010

Imagine I Have A Lawn. Then Imagine I'm Yelling At You To Get Off Of It.

I'm feeling old.

Last night, GF and I went to a neighborhood place for dinner. It's a casual Bar & Grill kinda place we like.  I wasn't really paying attention, but at some point, I realized that all of the music that was playing in the background was from approximately my college days -- the late 70's and early 80's.  We're talking some Elvis Costello, David Bowie, Talking Heads.  That sort of stuff.  None of this sounded like Oldies to me; it just sounded like music that was part of my life.

Then, I looked around and realized that most of the other people in the place probably weren't born when those songs first came out.  Or they were infants.  For them, this music was like me listening to Fats Domino, Buddy Holly and The Everly Brothers.  It's not like they weren't familiar with the stuff; it's just that they thought of it as nostalgic. And a little ancient. Quaint, even.

I felt mildly bad about it until I realized that one day I'll be able to point to songs like Psycho Killer and Broken Hearts are for Assholes as the music of my youth, while "The Greatest Generation" is stuck with Mairzy Doats and How Much is that Doggie in the Window?

Also, there was an article in the NY Times a couple of days ago about how nobody remembers phone numbers any more, since they're all stored in our phones now.  When I was the Rental Manager at Blake Films, I had hundreds of phone numbers committed to memory.  If I needed to call Bobby, or Phil, I just picked up the phone and I dialed their number.  If you asked me for their number, I probably would have hemmed and hawed a little, but if I didn't bother thinking about it, I could just dial it right.

I can't remember diddly any more.  Phone numbers, account numbers, passwords...I'm hopeless.  And, of course, other than the phone, for numbers, I don't have any kind of central repository for all this info any more.  I'd say, "If I ever lost "X", I'd be in real trouble", but it's not really true.  All this stuff exists on scraps of paper, on stuff in my wallet, in my computer, on the's all over the place. 

I will feel a little bit better when we all get chips implanted in our heads.  I mean, hey -- if I lose my head, what will I need all those numbers for, right? 

But I doubt it'll make me feel young again.  While most people will be worried about the government tracking them with their chips, I'll just be thinking of it as On-Star?

Where was I?


Warner (aka ntsc) said...

The greatest generation, of which I am a child, had Big Band beside which most other pop music fails.

Nathan said...


I'm allowed to emphasize certain things and ignore others in the service of making a point. You'll note that I made no mention of The Pina Colada Song or Do That To Me One More Time (Captain & Tenille) being Top 40 songs in 1980.