Old Fogey Ranting

Old. I am. Officially.

And worse, I am Old and Cranky. A two-fer.

At age 38, I have somehow transformed into that bitter, judgmental old biddy who waves a cane at the damned whippersnappers and laments what happened to the good old days.

The days when we ate lead paint and enjoyed its crunchy burst-in-your-mouth flavor. The time we, at any moment, could be pitched through the windshield like a spiral-cut ham, due to our lack of safety belts and car seats.

I have become this person.

I realized I had become Great-Aunt Gertrude of Fogeyland when I went for Chinese food, and I found myself staring steely-eyed at the teen at the next table.

It was family bonding time there for Teen. An evening out for fried rice and family moments. But was Teen talking about her day? Was Teen passing the lettuce wraps?

Teen was texting.

And texting.

And texting.

Twenty minutes, Teen sat at that table in a Cone of Silence, texting.

Then she put it down.

And picked up the portable video game player.

Now, I know the world has moved on from the sepia-toned days I was a kid. I mean, just the fact that poo-brown corduroy split-skirts are no longer a wardrobe staple is a sign of that. (One case, for the better, I admit.)

But if I'd brought even, in Fogey Terms, a book-- that's one of those papery things with words printed on it where you have to turn the pages, in a time of history known as "B.K."-- Before Kindle"--

Anyway, if I'd brought one of those Kindle precursors to read at the dinner table as a kid?...

Man, that thing would have been whipped out of my hand so fast, I would have thought Superman was turning the Earth backwards on its axis again. (1978 Superman: The Movie reference. Non-fogies exempt from understanding this.)

When I was a kid, we had to sit there at the dinner table with the Old Fogeys, be bored to tears, and pretend to like it.

There was no disconnecting from the Mandatory Family Fun. Oh, sure, you still hated it. You'd rather have punctured your brain with a Crazy Straw through the ear. (Fogey Reference #2.) But hating it was a part of growing up, learning to behave, treating others with, dare I say, respect.

So you endured. You found other, more creative ways to entertain yourself. Like tying your straw wrapper into exotic shapes and lobbing them at your siblings. Or strategically planning how much of your vegetables you could smear around your plate to make it look like you'd actually eaten some of them.

But you certainly didn't openly block out your parents with, y'know, fun.

So I've found myself wondering what's going to happen to a generation who's been entertained every second of the day, every day. Kids who have never had the opportunity to be bored out of their well-pierced skulls, in order to be polite to other people.

Will they grow up happy, well-adjusted multi-taskers?

Or develop into those coworkers with the attention span of a fruit-fly on speed? Ones who stand up and shout, "Score!" at the high point of your company presentation because they finally racked up one-bazillion point on Mario Brothers 5000, now with Hologram Mushroom Action?

I don't know. But being a Fogey, I've now exhausted myself with the idea.

Time to go get my shawl and my 400 cats and make sure the LifeAlert machine's turned on, and have a nice nap. Later, I might crank up the Ford (Fogey Reference #3) and see about some more Chinese food.

That fried rice is a nice, easy chew on the dentures.

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Entertainment Nanosecond's Gen Y Adventure Films of 2025

I was watching the movie Stand By Me the other night, where four kids in the 50s go in search of the missing body of a teen from their school.

And it took me back to being ten, and how my friend Susie and I used to find dead bodies all the time, and bring them back home and--

Oh, wait, no. Sorry. Wrong recording.

(Rewind. Press play.)

--How my friend Susie and I used to do all sorts of dangerous-fool things all the time, like play down by the railroad tracks where the crazy winos lurked...

Or drink canteens of polluted Jersey river water after a thirsty day of roaming through the woods alone with no way to call our moms...

Or get nose bleeds and mop up the blood with skunk cabbage leaves rather than go back home for tissues that actually didn't reek like Satan's undercarriage...

Stuff like that.

Yup, even in the 80s, we had a certain amount of freedom from the Parental Order of Juvenile Analysis and Nitpickery. Freedom to do stupid crap that would get us really injured or potentially kidnapped.

And we loved it.

It forms the basis for many a good tale.

So that got me thinking: what kind of stories will our most protected, connected generation to date-- Gen Y-- tell by way of nostalgic adventure?

Maybe something like this...


It's 2025. In your handheld, you've accessed Entertainment Nanosecond, the hottest online film and television venue, detailing every moment of every half hour a celeb is actually popular.

And here's this half-hour's 2025 Top Adventure Films by Gen Y Filmmakers of All Time for the Next 30 Minutes Maybe:

• Inside the Inside of the Inner World of Azeroth. Alone, pursued by orcs, low on supplies, and potential carriers of plague, two heroes face incredible dangers in a mystical realm. Then Justin and Reed log off of World of Warcraft 3000.

• Goonies Revisited. In this exciting remake of a remake of the 1985 film, young Mike Walsh steals his dad's PDA only to find a previously-undiscovered Easter egg facility on it bearing a Spanish map and clues to pirate treasure. He and his friends discuss what they would do in search of this treasure, if they could actually get a lift in the mini-van from one of their moms, to investigate.

• That Ming is Mine. Five high-tech thieves plot to steal a priceless Asian vase, and win the grand prize associated with this catburglary-based reality show. But what happens when each burglar expects to have the starring role?

• As the Eagle Flies- Action star Will Smith, Jr. unknowingly takes on a corrupt government when he becomes witness to a U.S. authorized assassination. He must flee from dangerous federal agents-- and his patriotic mother-- both of whom have secretly implanted GPS tracking into him.

• New-New York Brown and the Lost City of Bowled. Fighting angry natives, diabolical enemies and public transit snags, urban archaeologist New-New York Brown goes in search of the fabled abandoned bowling alley of Brooklyn.

• Point Bruise. In this subtle adaptation of the original Point Break, extreme sports, surfing, and criminal investigation come together as FBI agent and adrenaline junkie Johnny Montana balances his life, his caseload, and 200 pounds of required safety gear.

So what do you folks think we might see in our swash-buckling futures?

(No, no, put a safety blade on that scimitar, please... also a warning label... someone could get hurt, you know.)

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1980s Rewind: The Lost, the Grody and the Totally Awesome

Come with me back in time...

To the era when MTV was new, Michael Jackson still had a nose, and a t-shirt reading, "Where's the Beef?" evoked high fashion and big laughs.

There are some excellent lists of "What it Was Like to Grow Up in the 80s" out there, but I figured today we'd tackle some of those details left unmentioned-- Cabbages style. So grab your jeans jacket and hold onto your slouch socks, my babies, because we're about to drive our muscle car up over that hidden ramp...

Can I get a "yeeeee-haw"?

• Shoelaces so funky, tying them was taboo. What was it about the 80s that had us so focused on our footwear? Even though Velcro had just been invented, the boys preferred these enormous fat shoelaces in their high-top sneakers. Sometimes two sets in two different colors, like red and black. But in spite of spending all that time lacing up those shoes, you never TIED them. Oh, no. You tucked them inside your shoe with no knot, no bow. That way, when you went to play kickball, your shoe would also soar up, up, up... giving an all-new meaning to those “Air Jordans.” Many a recess created one-shoed boys. Also the clomping and scuffing noise in the hallways was astounding. Note: Girls often had rainbows or hearts or smiley faces or unicorns printed on their shoelaces. We tied our shoes.
  

• Hair with its own zipcode. A girl in my junior high class said she used an entire can of hairspray on her hair each day, proving there really was something stronger than the Law of Gravity—80s Aquanet. I myself wasn’t quite that zealous, but I did experiment one year with bangs (for my British friends, “fringe”) which curled up high enough to tune in the aerial television set. If you wanted to wear a ponytail, you wore it in a banana comb, thus creating a sort of hair-covered mohawk look. You still teased your bangs.
  

• Murder, mayhem and mustaches. Every night there was at least one detective program on television. Hart to Hart…. Moonlighting… Magnum, P.I.… Simon and Simon…. Matt Houston… Remington Steele… Probe… Riptide… The list went on and on. And there was an 80% Chance of Mustache on at least one detective per program. One noticeable exception would be on Remington Steele, though I think Stephanie Zimbalist might have waxed.

• Paranoid Playlists. "Who Can It Be Now?"... "I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me"… "Eye in the Sky"… "They're Coming to Take Me Away..." Pink Floyd's entire "Wall" album... Kids in the 80s grew up in a time so paranoid, even our pop music was nervous.

• Safety pins plus beads equaled awesomeness. I recall spending amazing amounts of time putting small colored beads onto tiny safety pins and giving my chums these personalized works of, er, art. These went on our sneakers. If you were a girl who didn’t have any friendship pins, you were a girl without any friends. (Yeah, yeah, you could just make a bunch for yourself, but that was cheating. Also, don't forget-- each of us tried to have our own signature beads and beading style!)

• Made-for-TV horror movies that still cause nightmares. The 80s were great for cheesy, original, made-for-TV movies that scared the Kool-aid out of us kids. Like Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, where those little monsters lived in the fireplace. Or the Trilogy of Terror with Karen Black. Or Don't Go To Sleep with Valerie Harper. Or From the Dead of Night with Lindsay Wagner. Bad choices had ramifications. Even kid characters faced danger and possible death. No one was spared. And for some reason we, as kids, were allowed to watch ‘em.

• You started each school year with a new Trapper Keeper. This school binder had a place for everything, and everything in its place. Also, you could get it in cool rainbow, unicorn, tiger, denim or heavy metal looks. What they never told you was that in order for it to organize you, you actually had to be organized. So my Trapper never quite held up to its hype. I was a scholastic slob. Even the Mead Corporation could not save me.
  

• Blindingly fluorescent was cool beans. Girls -- and even guys-- willingly sported sweatshirts, tiny jogging shorts and socks in retina-burning, day-glo colors normally reserved for hunting season. During eighth grade band, the entire flute section seemed to pulse with color conflict, as Suzy, Kelly and the gang sat side-by-side in a vibrating rainbow of fluorescent shades. No wonder our band director got cranky.
  

• No one ever got hurt in ten car pile-ups. On television shows like the A-Team, CHiPs and the Dukes of Hazzard, cars would jump, flip, roll and even blow up from 37 different camera angles, but the passengers were never hurt. We know this because they would have a voice-over discussion about it, where even cold-hearted bank robbers asked their steely-eyed partners if they were all right. This made it non-violent. Also, Stephen J. Cannell seemed to think we wouldn't notice if both Hunter and the guys from Riptide used the catchphrase, "It works for me."
  

• Underwear went outer. Socks were pulled up over our pantlegs, belts went over our sweaters and boustiers went with skirts. I recall parents lamenting that, "Next, kids would be wearing their boxers and tightie whiteys over their jeans." Then Marky Mark showed up with his drooping drawers and visible undies. Yet, somehow we never quite saw that coming.

• The Rules about Rots and Rulez. At least in my school, things were broken into two categories. They either rotted, or they ruled. Decomposition, while a natural process, apparently had negative connotations for teenagers. Probably due to a bad experience in Earth Science classes. But since we were high school kids and, thus, optimists at heart, most things ruled. And honestly, ANYTHING could rule. You could get an "A" on your essay, find your misplaced Velcro KISS wallet, or get the new Yngwie Malmsteen album on sale, and it would all rule equally. Whereas Doug Sherman who sits behind you in homeroom and snaps your bra each morning... well, he rots.
  

So what springs to mind when YOU think the 80s? Drop me a comment-- I'd love to hear about your totally rad memories.

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