By Max Warren
And we’re back. I must begin by apologizing for my long absence (miss me? right back at ya, chickens). It is, after all, finals time and the necessary travail thereof has caused me to be far too distracted from the Important Work that I like to think I’m doing here. I would like to thank Travs for manning the ship expertly and think you should all go and read his post, of which I wholeheartedly approve. And now, Colonel Cool is back, Captain of this Rocket to the Moon! (“So are you a captain or a colonel, Eric?” “Neither, I’m both!”)
Sorry, my fingers took over.
Okay. So, where last we left off, I was promising to provide you a little bit of detail on what I consider to be a terrible fucking crime–The Betrayal of The Last Generation. Let me see if I can break this down for you. First, I’m going to provide 2 links to music videos. They’re by no means great songs or anything (I’m more of a Zevon man myself) but I want you to go watch these videos and endure the cacophonous shit–do it for me 
1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP-WT3apPwA
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1R_txIuuio
So, there we have the videos to “There’s a Class for This” by Cute Is What We Aim For and “Check Yes, Juliet” by We the Kings. Granted, these videos are probably a little late to have influenced our generation–appealing as they do primarily to 14-year-old girls–but they speak to the point I want to make. So keep them in mind.
Essentially, the Betrayal of the Last Generation went down like this: in our younger and more vulnerable years we were all fed a serious line of bullshit by movies, music videos and television shows. Like those two videos I just showed you. They taught us to believe in a very particular something. But really, I think I have a friend who can put this better than I ever could. The following is from a recent conversation with my good buddy Max V:
“See?” Max said to me. “That’s another thing. There’s this stereotype of American youth. It’s fucking sold to us by MTV and Hollister and all of it. I remember when I was a kid, thinking that when I was a teenager life was going to be this big, crazy adventure. You know what I pictured? Basically ‘The O.C.’ There were going to be parties every night and fistfights over girls–I might even race somebody around Dead Man’s Curve. I feel like we all believed in that and now we feel ripped off.”
And that, I think, is the story of the Betrayal of the Last Generation in a nutshell. Again, those two videos hit it on the head–and worse yet, they’re inculcating it into the young people behind us (but hey, as we know, they’re lost anyway). We were all taught to believe in The Great American Youth Experience and The Epic Romance. I wanna let Tyler Durden (of Fight Club fame) get a word in edgewise here:
“We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
Personally, I think Max put it better, but the point stands.
If it seems like I’m beating the point rather viciously here, it’s only because I think that The Great Betrayal was one of the biggest crimes perpetrated by corporate America against a generation in history. And you know what? We should be pissed off. But we’re not going to fight back by starting fight clubs and becoming space monkeys. We’re going to do it by saying “no” or “get fucked” or “hey, man, you’re just a reactionary” (that last if you’re not into the whole brevity thing). We’re going to show them just what we CAN do. We’re going to write the great American novel, we’re going to cure cancer and we’re going to save the world the way no one saved it for us. Either that, or we’ll go out in a blaze of glory. See you all in Valhalla.
On tap for next time: our own Great Works, what else I think is in store for us in our future and whether or not we’ll be getting a reward–whether there’s even one to be had. And if any of you have anything you would like hear discussed, hey, let me know and just maybe we can work something out.
Here’s looking at you, kids.
EC
