What's on my mindset

Three questions I would like answered. Please reply in the comments if you have any ideas…

1) On Tuesday night I have the opportunity to see Weird Al Yankovic in concert. Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?
2) I’m drafting fifth in my fantasy football league. Who should Cobra Kai, the team where fear does not exist, select when they are on the board?
3) If you were dating a girl and discovered that she owned a copy of Jewel’s “A Night Without Armor” collection of poems could you still continue to date her?

On to the main topic at hand. Our good friends at Beloit College have put together the Mindset List for the Class of 2011. It’s a list made primarily made to help me better relate to the young kids I find myself standing next to at shows in Lawrence. It also just shows how old I really am. Here’s some of the highlights.

#1: What Berlin Wall?: Wow, that would really be history in their minds. Also, they wouldn’t get any East German swimmer jokes, which is kind of a shame. It does also mean that they’ve always known a free Czech Republic, which is a good thing.

#4: They never “rolled down” a car window: This is why they will be completely helpless when their car battery dies. You know, I understand the minor convenience in power windows but really, was that development truly necessary? It seems to be, well, a waste of electricity.

#7: They have grown up with bottled water: And will most likely lead the charge to ban it. Though you’ll have to get the flavored Aquafina out of my cold dead hands to do it.

#11: Rap music has always been mainstream: Never again will white suburban kids know the absolute joy of playing Public Enemy at full volume while driving through the subdivision. It’s so tough to rebel when you bought the most popular album around.

#14: Music has always been “unplugged”: I’m not sure if I agree with this. Pretty much every generation from the beginning of time can claim that their music has always been unplugged. It’s only been recently where we can discuss music being plugged. Better to say that we’ve now had nearly twenty years of bands putting out bad acoustic records in an attempt to save their failing career.

#15: Russia has always had a multi-party political system: Technically correct though right now it is Putin and Anyone Who Is Dumb Enough To Run Against Putin.

#18: The NBA season has always gone on and on and on and on: This is actually incorrect. The NBA season has always been 82 games long for as long as I’ve known it. With the exception of the first round going from best of five to best of seven the playoffs are the same with just some additional off days. Come on Beloit, you can do better than that.

#20: Half of them may have been members of The Baby Sitters Club: Which helps to explain why they all lined up for Harry Potter. (And seriously, who else here thinks Ron ends up with a massive drinking problem due to having to listen to Hermione be right about everything for twenty years? Am I the only one who thinks that way? I’d put good money that half the time he ends up sleeping on the couch in Hagrid’s shack.)

#25: Wolf Blitzer has always been serving up the news on CNN: Hence, college freshmen will have an inordinate number of phobias around bearded men.

#28: They never found a prize in a Coca-Cola “MagiCan”: Or had the prize mechanism fail so that you end up drinking a rather disgusting liquid. Or have your dreams of a nice refreshing beverages quashed by discovering that you had won a nice refreshing beverage that you could enjoy at a later date. Great example of a contest gone wrong.

#29: They were too young to understand Judas Priest’s subliminal messages: Apparently something about wearing studded leather, chaps and breaking the law.

#33: U2 has always been more than a spy plane: Let’s see, college freshmen would be bore in 1989 or 1990 so U2 has been a) the greatest band on the planet (Achtung Baby), b) great band getting odd (Zooropa), c) a has been who doesn’t get that they’ve become the joke (Pop), d) a band reborn into relevance (All that you can’t leave behind) and e) that band with that dude who keeps on telling me how I should live my life (all the time, really).

#40: They drove their parents crazy with the Beavis and Butthead laugh: Wow, who let eight year old watch Beavis and Butthead? I drove my parents crazy with the laugh and I was 22 at the time. (And 32 and probably when I’m 42 I’ll still be able to recite the entire “Dark voices inside my head” bit.)

#42: Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus: Hint to incoming freshmen: don’t be a women’s studies majors. Well, unless you plan on marrying a very rich guy…

#55: MTV has never featured videos: Freshmen would have turned ten in 1999 or 2000 so this statement is entirely accurate. And incredibly sad. It’s not like there were any good videos to show but how a channel called Music Television can no longer have anything to do with music and be considered a good thing is beyond me.

#57: Jerry Springer has always been lowering the level of discourse on TV: On the plus side, they’ll always realize that there life isn’t nearly as screwed up as other peoples.

#62: They have no idea who Rusty Jones was or why he said “goodbye to rusty cars”: To be honest, my job is pop culture references and I don’t know who Rusty Jones was. Maybe it’s a Wisconsin thing.

Have a great weekend everyone. Last one before college football so use your Saturday wisely.