6/12/97 Stranger Misc. clark@40 MY ADORATION OF JACK BENNY notwithstanding, I decided years ago I wouldn't rue or deny the inevitable entry into the fourties. I wouldn't be like those pathetic boomers, forever striving to retain ever-fading remnants of youthful bodies and identities. (My recent diet-exercise regimen had nothing to do with staying young; I was as out-of-shape at 17 as I was last year.) No, I plan to age disgracefully into a crochety old geezer. Having bosses younger than me, at a paper targeted at readers younger than me, has offered plenty of practice. "Back in my day Sonny, we had real music. Einstruzende Neubauten! Skinny Puppy! Throbbing-fuckin'-Gristle! That crap they listen to these days: Why, it's just noise!" I also plan to enjoy the collected experience of my years on Earth. A few years ago I wrote something called "Everything I Ever Really, Really Needed to Know I Learned on the Playground." Since then I've learned a few more things, including the following: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the concentrate. Everything retro is neo again. Women aren't just different from men. They're different from other women. Hipsters can be just as prejudiced as anybody. They just have a different set of targets. People whose lifestyles are different from yours are not necessarily fascists. People who let downtown Manhattan tell them preciesely how to think are no more "empowered" than people who let midtown Manhattan tell them precisely how to think. If you only read the New York fucking Times and only listen to NP fucking R, you'll never know what's really going on. The New York Times really is the Cadillac of American newspapers. It's bigger, and weighted down with more luxury features, but it's still built on the same Chevy drive train. In an average week, America generates 1,000 books (including 300 new and reprinted fiction volumes), 500 CDs, 150 porn videos, 55 soap-opera episodes, 152 TV talk shows, about 10,000 issues of daily newspapers, 115 prime-time TV shows (in season), a couple hundred magazines, 20 direct-to-video movies, and three theatrical movies. Decentralization of culture isn't pretty. Live with it. Hedonism makes a lousy premise for a revolution, but a great premise for advertising one. I used to laugh at people stuck in the '60s, until I met people stuck in the '80s. Other things happened in the '60s besides affluent college kids getting stoned and/or laid. In fact, that's probably the least important thing that happened then. You're not personally guilty of anything that happened before you were born. If you're born into relative privilege, use it to help make a better world. There are enough real victims around, negating any need for victim wannabes. Feeling good about yourself isn't enough. Feeling bad about yourself isn't enough either. Protesting isn't enough either. You've gotta be for something. There's more than one way to think about everything. There's even more than two ways. Natural born hustlers don't have a clue about what it's like to not be a natural born hustler. There's nothing inherently truthful about The Word or corruptive about The Image. Images merely deceive; words lie. People who suck up to the real centers of money and power are not "rebels," no matter how loud their custom-painted Harleys are. Punk's older now than hippie was when punk started. There is no master race. There is also no master gender, no master sexual orientation, no master bioregion, and no master dietary regimen. White women, white gays, and white leftists are still white. Grammatical rules are made to be broken, with one exception: Never put an apostrophe in the possessive version of "its." If you like to view images of women's physiques, it doesn't necessarily mean you hate women. It probably means you like them. We don't have to tear the fabric of society apart. Big business already did it. We have to figure out how to put it back together. Everybody's ignorant about something. A dictatorship of the proletariat would still be a dictatorship. Most evil people don't say they're evil. They say they're so utterly, completely good, they can do evil things and it's OK. Love is more important than self-righteousness. Even among misfits you're misfits.

2001 COLUMNS 2000 COLUMNS 1999 COLUMNS 1999 COLUMNS 1998 COLUMNS 1997 COLUMNS 1996 COLUMNS 1995 COLUMNS 1986-94 COLUMNS ESSAYS FICTION X-WORDS 'THE BIG BOOK OF MISC.' THE BOOK 'LOSER' MISCmedia, THE MAGAZINE FUTURE PROJECTS CYBER STUFF THINGS I LIKE 'MISC. TALK' DISCUSSION FORUM CLARK'S CULTURE CORRAL: BOOKS, MUSIC, MOVIES REVIEWED AND SOLD Books Popular Music Classical Music Video (Support MISC. Media; make your Amazon.com purchases thru this link.)