Culture Notes - some high, some low

So much to comment on, so few brain waves with which to process the information. Is it just me or am I getting dumber as I get older? Don’t answer that if it IS just me. I thought we were supposed to gain wisdom as we grew older. I’m just becoming more aware of how much I don’t know or understand. Maybe that’s the definition of wisdom.

You think I’m talking about the great questions of the ages, don’t you. Who am I? Why do I exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? But no. I’m pondering deep, philosophical thoughts like –

LOST - What the H-E-Double-Tooth-Picks happened on the final season’s first episode of LOST. I am now way “loster” than I was before. I agree with everything my daughter, Angela, texted during the show.

“Holy cow!”
“There are two of them?”
“My mind is exploding”
“The body count is adding up”

Yep, that pretty much sums up my reaction. And like all episodes of LOST, I’m left with more new questions than resolved ones.

WE ARE THE WORLD – I loved that song when it first came out in 1985. How can you possibly listen to that song and not get chills and want to join hands with the universe and sing along? In 1985 I was busy working, my firstborn was gestating (I was preggers), and I was filled with idealism. We all really could make a better world. Here we are 25 years later and they are doing a remake. I’m excited! What’s really weird, though, is that some of the singers participating in the remake weren’t even born when the original was produced. Certainly, many of them were too young to remember it.

THE BACHELOR – There is a reason that guy’s a bachelor. That’s all I have to say on that subject. Those women should run far, far away. OK, I had one more thing to say.

APPLE iPAD – There’s something that has been bothering me about Apple’s new iPAD, other than the obvious junior high-ish things like thinking the next version will be the MAX-iPAD. Then I heard someone on the radio say it looked like their Grandmother’s iPhone, and I knew that was the thing that had been back there in the back of my brain. It looks like an iPhone for the visually impaired! Like large print books! I bet there’s an app for that, at least. Wait, there is! It’s called BigNames. Love it.

Generation Jones...huh?

Hello 4:00 a.m., we meet again. It's Saturday morning and there's no good reason to be up, but tell that to my restless legs. But hey! I learned something this morning. I apparently have been living under a rock because I've never heard the term Generation Jones.

I'm a frequent reader of Jen-X's blog. She identifies strongly with the Generation X crowd - those born after the Baby Boomer crowd. Born in 1961 (happy birthday to me this month) I've never really identified with the Baby Boomers or the Gen X-ers.

Yes, I was alive when Kennedy was assassinated. But I was two, people! MLK and Bobby Kennedy? I was not quite seven. The Vietnam war was background noise to my Midwestern childhood, my father just barley too old to be drafted and my brother not born until the war was waning. Race riots briefly touched Kansas City. I remember being at the mall with my mother when someone interrupted the muzak to say the mall would be closing early due to said riots. My friend Susan's Dad rushed to the University of Kansas in 1968 to retrieve a college-aged child after the Student Union was burned down and the National Guard deployed. Nixon and Watergate occupied the headlines while I concentrated on sleepovers with friends.

So I'm not really a Baby Boomer. And I'm not a Gen X-er. Generation X claims Michael Jackson as an icon. Born in 1958, Michael Jackson didn't become quite the international pop icon until I was too busy raising babies to be impressed. Personal computers, video games, the Iran hostage crisis, the end of the cold war and the fall of the Berlin Wall...all I experienced as a young adult.

But, tah dah, I just found out there's a name for us folks. Generation Jones, the generation born between roughly 1954 and 1965. Who knew. Well apparently I didn't. Key characteristics?Less optimistic, distrustful of government, and generally cynical. Mmmhmm. Now we're talking.

George Clooney, Nadia Comaneci, Lady Diana, Michael J Fox, Heather Locklear, Julia Luis-Dreyfus, Jeff Probst, Meg Ryan, and of course Barack Obama - all born in 1961. So I'm in good company. Or at least interesting company! OK, yes, Andrew Fastow (think Enron) was also born in 1961, but hey, every generation has its crooks.

So at least I have a place, sort of. I don't really think "Generation Jones" is a very cool moniker. But maybe we're just not that cool as a group. Sandwiched between the hippies and the yuppies, between free love and AIDS, we are too busy trying to keep it all together.

Maybe we should be called the Polyester Generation. Like the preferred fabric of my teen years, we are low maintenance and versatile. Now if I could only claim to be wrinkle free.

Just call my name, I'll be there

So is it legal to write a blog post today and not mention Farrah and Michael Jackson? No blogging about kids or life or moving or work?


I mean, I was startled like everyone else yesterday morning to turn on my computer and see the news that Farrah had passed on. And the drive home was comsumed by reports of Michael Jackson being taken to the hospital, Michael Jackson in a coma, Michael Jackson possibly dead.


Farrah forever changed hair. I was in high school during the early years of Charlie's Angels. All my friends attempted the feathered hair look. No one wanted to be Angels Sabrina or Kelly. Everyone wanted to be Jill. Duh!


By the time Michael Jackson made the Thriller video I was a young wife, busy trying to finish college and get my career and family started. I never really got the beauty of the whole short pants, white socks, zipper-encrusted jacket, white glove, crotch-grabbing thing. I pretty much always related Michael Jackson back to the Jackson Five. Michael Jackson and Donny Osmond seemed two of a kind to me. The little brother with a big voice in a family of singing phenoms. I guess I never really understood the remade version. Or maybe it was a matter of timing.



So I guess I just wrote a post about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett anyway. Both just always seemed sad to me. I'd way rather have had my life than either of theirs. But they did leave their own unique mark on American pop culture. (Thank you Captain Obvious - as my daughter would say).