X's and Y's: Generation Differences

Earlier I spoke with an old friend from college who was describing her visit to our alma mater. To say she was disappointed was an understatement. "Everyone was studying," she said. "It was eight o'clock on a Friday night and no one was drunk or hooking up."

It got me thinking about how things have changed over the years.

I am a Gen X'er. I am a "Child of the '80's," a "Slacker," a "Baby Buster." In my youth I listened to Guns n' Roses and Metallica. I loved EPMD and NWA. I went "wilding" and ate french fries with gravy at two in the morning after a night of hard drinking.

I'm older now, in my thirties. The new youth are all over the place, with their pierced everything and their Britney clothes. I've been hounded time and again by friends how these kids are this or that. Our future is shot.

Is it?

In my youth, America experienced the worst crime wave in forty years. From 1987 to 1993, America was at its most dangerous. Today, Generation Y kids live in a time where crime is not much higher than the early and mid-sixties. And since a large portion of crime is committed by youth, this gives me pause. Gen Y'ers may be more like the V-neck kids who listened to Herman's Hermits and The Four Seasons than my generation.

And the sex thing? Not what you might think. Teen pregnancy is down 28% from 1990 to 2000. In 2003 it was it's lowest in thirty years. These Britney look-a-likes may appear like tramps, but they may be more good girl than bad girl after all.

Also, the numbers of most surveys suggest that drug use is down. Having grown up in the coke-induced eighties, that doesn't surprise me at all. Kids just don't get high like they used to.

I think we get this image in our heads about how bad kids are from a number of areas. Celebrity "influence" is certainly one. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and others look the part of sexually promiscuous young girls. This has definitely influenced the dress code of teen girls throughout America. In addition, horror stories like Columbine and others get transposed everywhere. We fear it can happen in any school. Lastly, we are fed warnings about kids behavior from the media. Kids and drugs. Kids and violence. Kids and sex. Kids and drinking.

The numbers, however, tell a different story.

So Generation X was the "bad" generation after all, but we're grown up now and most of us are contributing in some way to society. Generation Y is just now entering adulthood. They're smarter than we were, better prepared and had lived in a more sheltered (or at least safer) environment. What it means in the long run is anyone's guess.

All this negativity about my generation has gotten me down. I think I'll go home now, grab a bag of Pop Rocks, watch The Breakfast Club and thank heaven I'm not a Boomer.

Another Strike Story

I bundled up tightly, placing the scarf around my neck and zipping my down coat all the way up to my chin. I was too lazy to check the weather this morning. Had I done so, I'd have learned it wasn't as cold as it had been the past few mornings. No matter. I was ready.

To give you an idea of the kind of an impact this strike has had, take a quick look at the numbers. Do you think Chicago and Los Angeles are big cities? Well, combine their whole populations and you still don't have as many people that take NYC mass transit. Still not impressed? Add Boston.

New York is said to have lost $400 million the first day of the strike. That is more than the gross domestic product of 25 nations. In the three days of the strike thus far, the number rises to 59 nations. In just three days.

Now, I'm not going to go into a whole lot about who's right and who's wrong in this, although I do believe causing this much damage so people who drive buses can earn more and retire earlier than teachers is a bit excessive. Rather, I want to talk about the experience.

In the last twenty four hours I have walked about 50 street blocks and 20 avenue blocks (for you city folk, you know what that is). The streets at rush hour were mobbed, more than I'd ever seen them before. And there is only one conversation in New York right now. Every person talking to another person is talking about the strike. It's like one long continuous game of operator.

There is a bit of humor out there as well. People asked me which way was east and west quite a few times -- they hadn't done their commute above ground before. There are cabbies at night skyrocketing their prices and New Yorkers are forced to haggle in order to get to where they want to go. I was proud to see a friend get a cab from midtown to Brooklyn for just $15 last night.

Mostly, as I go through yet another New York experience, I find myself once again falling in love with the City and its people. Sure, there is griping and complaining. But people are going to work -- they're finding a way. People are making do. Even the cabbies who are taking advantage -- how New York to be opportunistic capitalists -- make it wonderful to be here.

There is no other city like this one. Anywhere. And there are no people on earth quite as resourceful and determined.

So today I walked to work. I donned my worldly cynicism and a touch of arrogance -- apparel that New Yorkers wear so well. And I made the best of it.

Ask any one here and they'll just say it's just another strike story.

Tis the Season

Here we go again. We’re being told about another group tearing at the essence of our culture. We’re told we have to defend ourselves against this terrible atrocity that is taking place, threatening our freedoms.

Yes, that’s right, we’re told we have to defend Christmas.

The Christian Right has taken it upon themselves (and I’m grateful for this, I might add – I thrive on their uncanny ability to display their own ignorance) to wage a war on the holiday season, claiming it is the Christmas season and we (the left, I suppose) are taking the "Christ" out of Christmas.

Before we go any further, I would like to point out two things. First, I am not a Christian. I was raised Roman Catholic and had decided that Catholic school was enough religion for any person and have since renounced it. That said, I believe a man existed approximately 2,000 years ago who was not unlike a Jewish Ghandi or Martin Luther King. His words of wisdom are certainly words we all could learn from.

Second, I am a firm believer that anyone who practices a religion has a right to do so. It is one of the wonderful aspects about being an American that we can have multiple faiths.

So let’s go back to this war on Christmas. They say we’re taking the "Christ" out of Christmas. Let’s look a bit further into this, shall we?

Jesus was born during the reign of Herod in the time of a large census. In addition, a great star could be seen in the sky at the time of his birth.

Christendom would have you believe this took place December 24th and 25th of 1AD. That’s great except for a couple of minor issues.

The big census that took place during Herod’s reign came in 4 BCE. A couple of years off, I’d say. In addition, the census was a spring issue – which would also explain the big star (apparently a phenomena that takes place every so often took place during this time – pretty neat).

So all these years, the Christian Right have been celebrating Jesus’ birthday seven months late. You think he likes belated birthdays?

So why December 25th?

Winter Solstice.

That’s right. The Winter Solstice was cause for huge celebrations among the pagan Europeans. In order to sell their religion (even then, Christmas was commercialized), the Church had to incorporate the festivities of other religions to ultimately demolish them.

Romans celebrated Saturnalia by feasting with friends and family and gifts
Lights? Ever hear of Hanukkah?
Yule Logs? The Vikings celebrated Yule as a holiday to celebrate the winter solstice.
Trees and holly and mistletoe? Germanic tribes.

My guess is that the Christian Right is threatened by the fact that we as a nation are once again discovering ways to improve ourselves, to truly be E Pluribus Unum, to have the separations of Church and State. They don’t want to defend their freedoms. They want to take away the freedoms of others.

So when you are decorating your pagan tree this year and lighting up the Yule log and enjoying your Roman feast, all the while paying homage to Saturn and Thor, take a little time, put on a big smile, call Jerry Falwell and wish him a Happy Holiday season.

For The Boys

If you have read any of my rants about the war, then there is no question as to where I stand. I hate this war and everything about it. I wish it never happened.

That said I want to take a moment and reflect on the men and women in service who are in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The people of our armed forces are honorable men and women. They have been called upon to do their duty and they do it to the best of their ability. It must take extraordinary courage to fight the way that they do -- courage that those of us who haven't experienced war will never understand.

I think of a friend of mine who is in the army and fought as we overthrew the regime. I am proud and honored to call him a friend.

I think of the mothers, fathers, husbands and wives and children who are left behind, worrying every minute of every day whether they will see a U.S. military vehicle pull up in front of their home to give them the news that their daughter, husband, father or sister has been killed in combat.

I think about this email I received from someone who has been reading my rants for some time now. She has a fiance in Iraq and I can only imagine what she feels:

So I read your blog! Absolutely the bomb!!! (Very nice.) It stirred up a little anger but for the most part brings me to this. Would you please tell me your view on this? My fiance is in Iraq. Frontline combat. I will not go into the way he feels but I will say this; If our military is trained to fight and kill the enemy, why does the government think it's ok to put boots on the ground and tell them to do what they are trained to do and then leave them there?

Leave them there to rebuild, riot control, body control??? Do you understand what I am asking you? They are trained to fight and kill. Not Stay and be in death and destruction. It's killing them internally. CLEARLY I AM FRUSTRATED AND RAMBLING! But I would love for you to speak about your thoughts.

My friend, you are not rambling. Tell your fiance that he is courageous, honorable and heroic and that I, as well as millions of others, wish him and his fellow soldiers all the best. Ask him what, if anything, we can do here to make it a little easier for him there.

Soldiers, like my friend's fiance, have not asked to be in this war. They do not choose where they are going to fight. They are soldiers: trained to fight and to win. It is the government that tells them where they will fight and what they will do while they are there. This is not their choice.

Yes, it is the government. And, as our Constitution so clearly states, WE THE PEOPLE are our government. In other words, WE THE PEOPLE sent them there. And now, WE THE PEOPLE must "bring the boys back home."

And when they return, let us honor them like heroes.

Auld Lang Syne

This weekend Claudia and I drove down to Philadelphia to see some old friends. They are buddies of mine from college and their wives. We had drinks and dinner and lots of remembering.

There are friends from my younger days that I keep in touch with on a more regular basis. Geography plays a major role in this. Nonetheless, we settled into our friendships very nicely. It was not unlike putting on those old pair of sneakers you loved so much. It just fit.

Much has happened to us all over the years. Marriage, children, hair loss and weight gain. We're all in places now that is far different from the world in which we knew each other.

We lived together for anywhere between three and four years. We saw each other every day -- good days and bad. We drank together, got in trouble together, probably collected enough blackmail on each other that none of us could ever run for office. And probably shared some of the best times of our lives together.

Later in the evening, we drove back to the friends' house where we were staying the night. They had the lights on the tree and the four of us talked -- really talked. The good old days, we all agreed, were every bit as good as we'd remembered them.

And not one of us would trade our lives today to go back there. Not one.

Perhaps that is the most wonderful thing about Auld Lang Syne. You can't go back. And that only makes the memories all the more special.

Dancing Perilously Close to the Edge

Picture this:

You live in a country where things are changing around you, but you aren't necessarily sure it is for the better.

You have seen a patriotic fervor in the past few years and, while it is good to see a love of country, you wonder how healthy this much national pride can be.

Those who control your government have slowly taken away some of your freedoms and, at the same time, increased their own power and authority. And no one has truly challenged them.

These leaders use a religious conviction to persecute others, mainly those considered to be minorities.

They also call upon that patriotic fervor and manipulate it to convince your countrymen to go to war against other countries -- to invade, to conquer and to occupy. And despite the deaths of your country's soldiers, not to mention the innocents of war, no one checks. No one really questions.

In the meantime, foreign -- and sometimes not foreign -- civilians are taken to concentration camps. Many of these camps are in eastern Europe, where the prisoners are tortured and some are killed.

All the while, the leaders of your country violate the laws of the treaty of the last world war. This, you sense is going to bring your country into another, even larger war down the road.

Did you think this was 1930's Germany? Well, it certainly could be. But I was talking about the current state of affairs of this country. Right here. The good ol' U.S. of A.

Think I'm kidding? Think I'm just blowing off some liberal smoke? Look things up for yourself:

About our rights and the increased power of the executive branch of government, one needs only to look at the USA Patriot Act. How oddly appropriate that it is called Patriot.

And the patriotic fervor? Didn't someone not too long ago say something about either being with us or with the terrorists? And right after that, he pushed for the invasion of Iraq, using the same swaggering threat. I have had my own patriotism questioned by one of my own friends for questioning our role in Iraq.

And this, of course, is not stuff that has already happened. This propaganda, these lies, continue to happen today.

We've all read recently about the concentration camps in eastern Europe and the big one in Cuba. You can call them by any name you wish -- they are concentration camps.

So what about the minority thing? Am I suggesting that this administration is about to target and attempt to exterminate a race of people, as the Nazis did to the Jews? Of course not. But they are a discriminating bunch.

The Christian Right, a movement in this country that has so much power that it can certainly claim this President as one of its members, has targeted Ford Motor Company and Wells Fargo because they have attempted to attract gays and lesbians for business. They even have the audacity to attempt to make people think that Christmas is in peril and that Christians must defend their right to celebrate their holiday. They neglect to see the whole separation of Church and state thing as one of the basic and necessary standards of our country -- one that had been lost for too long. And in their own ignorance they don't even realize they are defending a holiday that doesn't really exist in its time and place (Jesus was born in the spring and everything from Christmas trees to holly to mistletoe to the celebration itself was stolen from pagan religions that the Middle Ages Christian church fought to destroy -- but that is for a later rant on Christmas).

But the President isn't involved right? I know that Senator said something about holiday and Christmas but the President is above all this, isn't he? No. The President is openly trying to discriminate against women. Not only is he attempting to put anti-choice candidates on the Supreme Court, he'd even declared a Sanctity of Life Day. Sanctity of life. Whose life? Not the 2,000+ U.S. men and women killed in Iraq obviously. Not the thousands of Iraqis, soldiers and civilians killed by U.S. weapons. But sanctity of the life of the idea that the government should control women's bodies.

This is a dangerous time in America.

If you were a German citizen in the 1930's, what would you have done?

On Parenting

One of the things I've noticed in the six years or so since I became a father is that the pendulum has swung way out of control. Parents allow their children to run amock -- in department stores, at restaurants, in their own homes.

On a sociological front, this is not surprising. Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers are today's parents. The former is a generation largely ignored and the latter is a generation spoiled to the core. Gen X'ers, latchkey kids and children of the divorce boom, lack a good role model. And Boomers are too busy at the mirror to notice that they are failing their kids.

And that's what is happening here. We are failing our kids. There is no such thing as a bad kid. There are kids who have bad parents or need medication, perhaps. But they are not bad. We teach them to be bad. And we do so by not teaching them to be good.

We take our son out to restaurants and museums and arcades and all the places kids should go. I am not exaggerating when I say that 95% of the time when we go with others, our son is the only one who gets disciplined. People have commented on it as well. That comment I consider to be a compliment that my wife and I are good parents.

I'm so sick of it, really. If you don't have the strength to teach your child right from wrong, then you are failing your child. Failing. Like hurting your child.

We are far from perfect parents. We make mistakes all the time. We contradict each other sometimes. We are guilty of overspending on toys. Neither Claudia nor I are perfect.

But I can say with confidence we are doing right by Jonathan. He is a self-confident, well-adjusted kid who knows not to run around in a restaurant, not to scream in the halls of a museum, and he does not have public crying fits. He is loved, and knows it. He has learned to make choices (we give him freedom of choice for certain things) and that he lives with the consequences of those choices. Not bad for a six-year-old.

A small part of this rant is to pat myself and my wife on our backs. I admit that. Part is also to say what a wonderful kid I have. I admit that I am vain when it comes to this.

The point, though, is that so few parents are like us. I can name three sets of parents who I have seen teaching their child right from wrong. Three.

I can name at least five that blame teachers, doctors, this person, that issue or whatever, though, on their kids' behavior rather than their own failing.

Why is our country "losing its values", "going down the toilet", and "becoming a mess"? Number one reason: Bad parenting.

It's the Most Wonderful Time...

I love December. Actually, I love from Thanskgiving through January 1st. For some reason, the cold is bearable, almost enjoyable. The snow still looks beautiful, not that annoying blinding white or dingy gray that snow after January 1st seems to have. No, the snow is a cloud of white -- delicious to the eyes.

The sweaters, the scarves, the gloves. They are wonderful for the first month of winter. As is that taste of hot chocolate and the smell of the wood burning in the fireplace. And the chestnuts -- heavenly.

I am lucky to work in New York City and live in New England. I get the best of both worlds at this time. The tree at Rockefeller Center, the ornaments, the lights, the smells of the street vendors (which always seems to smell better during this month than at any time of year). Plus the pure snow on tree-lined streets, the look of a barn at winter, the beach, with the snow mixed with sand and sea and the village green, decorated generously.

My wife and I went to our first holiday party last night. We enjoyed Christmas music and assorted appetizers. There were neighbors and new friends and the smell of gluvine. We laughed and celebrated and we both realized there are much more celebrations to come in the next month.

Oh, how I love this time of year.

Caught in a Blues Traveler Song

From the 1994 album entitled Four, Blues Traveler struck genius. They wrote a song that was catchy, pleasant, fun and, best of all, really about nothing. It's called "Hook" and I am sure most of you have heard it by now (it is, after all, over eleven years old).

I mention the song because it reminds me of something to do with blogging.

"What?" you ask. "Are you insinuating that E-Luv's Big Mouth is about nothing?" Well, not really, but I'm sure one could make a case that it's true. I mean, really, what important ground-breaking verbiage have I spewed out to you here?

That's not it, however. I mean the advertising above.

This blog of mine has no real theme. It's just a collection of thoughts and ravings on any and every possible subject. It changes, as we all do, from day-to-day.

I find it hysterical to watch the ads above trying to keep up.

I'd written a political piece a few weeks back, challenging the administration on the war. The next day the ad concerned the troops.

My Little Champion, a story about my son's first Tae Kwon Do tournament, prompted ads for martial arts.

I managed to confuse the system (I'm always proud when I accomplish that), when I wrote about my bipolar disorder. I had written an article called The Blackness which so mystified the ad machine that it stayed with martial arts. Then I wrote On Being A Magnet. The next day, I think it was a science advertisement.

Just when they figured me out and gave an inspirational ad to go along with my Thanksgiving article, I throw Black Sabbath in their face. So Rob Halford became an advertisement.

As of this writing, it's Babe Ruth, because I mentioned his name as to why I would have liked to have met Lou Gehrig.

So, I'm wondering if I throw in here a line or two about a boy who refused to grow and fought pirates in Neverland, what the ad will be tomorrow.

And is it all truly about nothing?