Monday Madmen

Beginning week three with Mrs. Stroock away on family business.  She's planning to return next Monday. Even the Stroocklettes are tired. It's 0712 hours and not one of them has stirred. Actually this is spring break week, so at least we won't have to worry about getting those little monsters off to school. 

We're binging Madmen. Every time we want to say Don Draper, and we just did this now, we almost say Dirk Diggler [Why am I not surprised?-Ed]. We think they're over doing the smoking thing, but when the show came out, that was a big deal. Did men really act like complete jackasses in the office? We worked in several offices and what we're seeing in Madmen was just unthinkable by the mid-90s. It's perfectly acceptable if you're Andrew Cuomo. Back in our direct-mail fundraising days, we had a very pretty co-working who wore the same dress every other Friday. [You knew it was every other Friday?-Ed] You're damn right we did. And so did she. 

We'll be transitioning [Phrasing!-Ed] to The Final Storm this week. So far we got a bunch of briefing scenes: The Tornado bomber squadron from Polish Storm, Savage and the B-2s, The Aussie F-111s, the Italian F-104 Starfighters and a squadron of Tornados, also a squadron of Israeli F-15s flying out Crimea, Samurakami planning a Japanese F-15 strike in the Far East, Task Force 60 in the Barents Sea, F-117s out of Banak in Norway....Who am I forgetting? Who do you people want to see?

In a post about an appallingly privileged Boomer author, gentlemen adventurer Adam Piggott talks about the realities of book sales. 'I decided to check out this author and see how she rates. When I hear of an author selling everything and moving to France to continue her stellar writing career, my first assumption would be that she has somewhat of a track record. A back catalogue, if you will, to keep her in French red wine and baguettes. Well, I think that my millions of readers will be shocked, truly shocked, at the news that this woman has a single book to her name. Now, yours truly has two books to his name, but the money that I make from the sales of my two blockbusters is barely enough to keep up with my underwear payments. So moving to France on those proceeds would be somewhat foolhardy, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Yet, it turns out that her one and only book is rated at #7,581,863 in Books on Amazon at the time of writing. Now my main book fluctuates between say 3,000,000 and 100,000 on that list depending on the winds of fortune. Based on those numbers I will confidently predict that she is selling around 4 books per month. Good luck with that.' One of Piggott's books has 51 reviews. That's a solid number. We wonder how much Piggott thinks his blog helps sell books.

MV Evergreen is freed but Israel remains stuck. Here's a long article from the Times of Israel about The Man who Divided Israel. The author argues that given everything, Bibi really should have eked out a win here. We know we thought so. Yet he didn't. Americans get sick of a president about midway through his second term*. 'What the electorate, in its apparent wisdom, ultimately did at the ballot box was to require Netanyahu’s opponents to prove that they really meant it when they claimed, as they did day-in, day-out on the campaign trail, that the prime minister has become inimical to Israel’s interests.' At this point we're inclined to agree. Go find something else to do, Bibi.

Monday Metal. We really got nuthin' today so here's the the staff at Cooper-Sterling enjoying the cha-cha and Chubby Checker:

*Note how we unconsciously assumed presidents get two terms. Everyone but you know who in our lifetime did. Of course, the Dems stole it. 

Generation This

Almost every word in this article about Generation X is true:

Headline:

In the war between millennials and baby boomers we have forgotten about the work-hard, play-hard Generation X

Generation X has the benefit of possessing the best characteristics of both – with none of the downsides

And then:

The boomers don’t like the millennials because they think the younger generation are feckless, whiny snowflakes who are scared of hard graft and obsessed by status, more interested in posting a selfie to social media than doing anything useful.

The millennials, on the other hand, see the boomers as a rapacious generation that’s pretty much ruined everything for them.

This is so true:

Generation X was breast-fed punk and invented indie, and grunge, and techno, and any bloody musical genre of worth that you care to name. We transformed the Eighties and we owned the Nineties. We had alcopops and ecstasy and we were fearless and stupid and happy, but we still got up for work on Monday morning, no matter how bad we felt.

This is even so truer:

Boomers live in the past and have ransomed the future. Millennials fear the future and are ignorant of the past.

This is the truest thing of all:

Boomers were old by the time they were 40; millennials have yet to hit that milestone. Generation X is pushing back the envelope of old age, through attitude and health, like never before.

God were Boomers ever old and hopelessly out of touch.

By the mid-80's the Balding Boomers were a bunch of burnt-out, middle-aged complainers who were coming to the realization that they'd just wasted the last 15 years. Their teen and college years were peace and love, but their twenties and early thirties were polyester and disco and those were the last important cultural things the Boomers did. Starsky and Hutch, there's a legacy for you.

The Boomers were already bald, with bags under their eyes and pot bellies billowing over their belts. They were actually aging worse than their parents who never obsessed about staying young or growing old. I guess after seeing your buddies' face turned into mush by a Jap MG, losing one's hair doesn't seem like such a big deal. When your greatest event is Woodstock, well you can never leave, can you? As the waistline expanded and the hair came out the Balding Boomers started living in the past, as the article's author says, and couldn't shut the hell up about it. For all the talk of youth and the age of Aquarius, they could never break out of it. I mean, these people looked at MTV and just didn't get it.

Now in its 40s and pushing 50, Generation X has managed to maintain some youthful exuberance without looking like idiots trying to stay cool and relevant to the kids, man. I myself usually walk around in a T-shirt and jeans, but when teaching it was usually jacket and tie I adorned. As far as their music goes, its for them, not me. Your typical Generation Xer will take out the 80's a have a look but doesn't feel compelled to live there. Be sixteen or even 21 again? No thank you.

You can almost hear the Balding Boomers, can't you? 'But...but...the war, man....Kennedy, man. You weren't there, man.'

Generation Xers faced the same things Balding Boomers faced.

Lets see...

President Shot...                          ✓                

Threat of nuclear annihilation... ✓
Social discord...                          ✓
The man vs your music...           ✓
Sexual revolution...                    ✓
War...                                          ✓

You get the idea. The difference is we moved on, Balding Boomer. Metal was awesome and I still like an AC/DC concert now and again. Grunge was cool. Some like the Nu Metal, and others techno. But I gotta tell you, there's a big project due at the end of the week and I don't have time for this.

As far as the kids today, I'm not interested in taking swings at the Millennials. As noted before I think most criticisms apply only to the elites. Besides, they're still coming on, and taking a swing feels like punching down. And if they are ignorant of the past, it isn't really their fault, is it? After all, the Balding Boomers always told us how awful we were.

We know better.