Gen-X Thieved the Ties

It's nice to see the Cowboys still stuck, losing to the Houston Texans 34-10. 

Hot Air has a post about how Generation-X went right and elected Donald Trump. The post features Justine Bateman's crusade against PC cancel culture. David Strom writes of Bateman, 'That's Gen X in a nutshell: cynical and focused on being left alone to live our lives.'

So yesterday we posted the opening credits to one of the later seasons of Family Ties. Reader(s) may have noticed the montage is about the entire Keaton family. Now here's the opening credits to Family Ties' very first season in 1982:

Season 1's opening credits show the Keatons looking at the family photo album. We see young Steve and Elise when they meet at some hippy protest in the mid-60s. The montage montages and we see Steve and Elise hiking by themselves, then hiking with kids. One gets the idea. 

Family Ties was written and produced by the ultimate Boomer*, TV writer Gary David Goldberg who would go on to bore the nation with a show chock full of Boomer masturbatory nostalgia called Brooklyn Bridge.** Family Ties was supposed to be a Boomer show about Steve and Elise Keaton having advanced from Boomer youth in the mid-60s to Boomer middle age in the early 80s. The ex hippies had turned into respectable middleclass types. 

But as Family Ties developed, the side character kids gradually became prominent, and son Alex the most popular. Here was a television show with semi-realistic Gen-X kids***. Family Ties had several episodes dealing with Gen-X issues, sex, drugs, death, teen suicide, creepy older men, getting into college; a cavalcade of ABC After School Special issues. Gen-X tuned in. The Keaton kids didn't worry about war and peace because they grew up in the 80's, the age of Reagan. The well-meaning Steve and Elise where perplexed. 

Probably there are Boomers out there who sit around and reminisce about the Keatons. These people must exist, right? But Family Ties was a Gen-X show. Did we actually steal something from the Boomers? 

Moving along...ideas, we got a few. But are they good? Here's a good idea, the previously mentioned The Bastard's Conquest. Devotees will recall this story would be about a knight named Robert d' Hauteville, in William the Bastard's army. We'd follow Robert from Hastings to roughly 1096.  We originally had the novel beginning after the Battle of Hastings. But now we're thinking TBC should begin with the battle proper, with Robert in the cavalry line getting ready to charge up the ridge.

TBC is a good idea. 

Ahhhh...but is it a selling idea? People read us for tanks going boom, not swords going clang. And we doubt people who like medieval stuff or sword and sorcery novels would read TBC and then pick up a copy of World War 1990: Operation Arctic Storm. By the way, we'd do a second novel about Robert's son in the First Crusade. 

Exit thought, perhaps The Bastard's Conquest could open up a book sale revenue stream and a new point of writing interest for us. Perhaps, perhaps (?) we could write a tonne Medieval themed novels. Maybe even some alternate history themed Medieval novels. Perhaps. Reader(s) will recall we've written a tonne of Medieval military history. [You're point?-Ed]. Our point is that we're on good ground here.

*Technically, and ironically, Goldberg wasn't a Boomer, as he was born in 1944. But everything about the man and his writing screamed, 'Did I ever tell you kids about the 60s?'

**We watched Brooklyn Bridge. Every episode, every line seemed written to get the Boomer to remember something about the mid-50s. 

*** Tina Yothers was born in 1972 and Justine Bateman was born in 1966. Michael J. Fox was born in 1961 so he ain't no Gen-Xr and...holy mooseburger, Fox is a goddamn Canadian?! Damn you Justin Trudeau! Damn you, you maniac!