When you wake up feeling old...

You know, I would write about what happened to me Thursday night but it turned into one of those nights where I can’t remember which part was real and which I completely imagined. I know that the cast of Batman was involved at one point as well as my randomly running into my favorite bartender not named Donna who I swore was in Chicago. The full story takes about a half hour to share and let’s just put it this way, for most people it would rank as one of the most insane nights of their entire life. For me, it literally was just another Thursday.

Ok, as requested I’ve downloaded the latest Beloit College Mindset List. (Beloit College: don’t call us a cow college just because our founder was actually a cow). The mindset list puts into perspective what the latest group of college freshmen have experienced in their life and basically, just makes you feel really, really old. Which, given that I am turning thirty three next Monday, isn’t something that I precisely need help in right about now. Still, there are some gems when we talk about the class of 2010, who were born in 1988 when I was a sophomore in high school for crying out loud. Am I that bloody old?

Here are some highlights

#1: The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union: This is a major shift from my generation. I grew up with The Day After, the Lake Placid Olympics, Rocky IV, Red Dawn and countless other examples as to how the Soviets were a) evil and b) likely to launch nuclear warheads at my town before I reached my twenties. To know that college kids can’t even fathom that is amazing, though they (and really we) are now dealing with this faceless fear that is even worse.

#9: A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents’: The Bill-Monica affair would have hit when these kids were ten, which means that they were having the “What technically counts as sex?” discussion back when I still thought that an Atari was a pretty cool game machine. What’s even more is that Vietnam and Watergate, which too me were historical events that I didn’t witness but everyone talked about, our now viewed as ancient history. Much like the fact that my knowledge of Korea consists entirely of old MASH episodes, thus making it a rather wacky war until Hawkeye freaked out on the bus.

#11: A coffee has always taken longer to make than a milkshake: Remember the days before Starbucks? Or when going to a coffee shop was something only leftist intellectuals did? Hell, back when I was in college and would go out with Heather to get coffee it was considered avant garde (as well as being an insanely cheap date). Now high school kids are amped up on espressos and that isn’t good.

#15: They have never had to distinguish between the St. Louis Cardinals baseball and football teams: Arizona has held the team for that long? Seriously? How the hell has that franchise not moved to Los Angeles or Vegas by now?

#18: They grew up with and have outgrown faxing as a means of communication: I thought about this when I was getting my new business cards and listed my fax number. I can’t remember the last time I got a fax. It used to be a daily occurrence and now it seems like the dumbest thing in the world. Just e-mail me a pdf file and get it over with.

#21: Milli Vanilli has never had anything to say: I was thinking about this in terms of ND. Hang out at the Backer late enough and Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer will come on. Now I remember watching the video so for me this is nostalgia for my teenage years when people just had bad tastes in music. But I’ve been thinking about the students, none of whom were older than five when that song came out, who go nuts every time it is played. What is their connection? Do they think it is cool in the same way that people my age freak out to old Village People records even though we have no connection to them? Is this nostalgia for a period that never existed?

#25: Phantom of the Opera has always been on Broadway: Showing that an entire generation ahs grown up without taste in musicals…

#33: They have no idea why we needed to ask “…can we all just get along?”: This one bothers me because that was freshman year in college, where somehow as a part of this a part of the Illinois library was set on fire. Not kidding, same night someone set a fire in the graduate library. It was a rage against the machine or at least a rage against history textbooks that no one read anyway. Still, that means that today’s freshmen have not experienced one serious riot in their lifetime and I can take that as a good or bad thing.

#43: They are not aware that “flock of seagulls hair” has nothing to do with birds flying into it: Hell, I’m almost too young to remember that. This was a bit of a stretch though you had to love the early days of MTV for making these kinds of references possible. Or the fact that my now writing Madness “Our House” will now have a group of people singing a ska tune for the rest of the day.

#61: Beach volleyball has always been a recognized sport: And the world rejoiced. Hey, what else are you going to watch while running on a treadmill in summer? Golf?

#66: Dolphin-free canned tuna has always been on sale: And tuna has never tasted the same since. If there is anything that I say when I eat tuna is that it really needs more dolphin.

And I’ll give one that they didn’t list (it’s close on the age but I’ll go with it). If you really want to feel old, remember that for college freshmen the following is true

Nirvana has always been referred to in the past tense.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Tragically Hip “Phantom Power”
2) The V-Roys “Are You Through Yet?”
3) Various Artists “Real: The Tom T. Hall Project”
4) Various Artists “Exposed Roots: The Best of Alt.Country”
5) Richard Thompson “1,000 Years of Popular Music”