Prescription Drugs

I often wonder what people with ADD were up to for the last 3,000 years without the properly prescribed medication.

What was the percentage of hobos in 1700 that had ADD? What famous people of old do we venerate today that had ADD? Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, John the Baptist. These guys totally had ADD.

I bet if you gave Mozart Adderall, he would have wound up writing bank notes for his father-in-law by the age of 20 while his piano collected dust in the attic. What if Emily Dickinson took Zoloft? What if Nietzsche dropped Diazapam? What would you set the egg timer to on Abraham being sent to an internist that bills on repeat treatments?

Now I'm not saying that no one needs medication, I just hate to think that the Baby Boomers are creating a world where the individual is artificially conformed through meds. The Baby Boomers loved being different when they were young -- and then they went out to make us all the same.

Pools In the Outfield

America's game, baseball, used to be played in America's temple, the ballpark. A diamond-shaped field surrounded by 40,000 seats, a few dozen latrines, more hot dog vendors than you could shake your wiener at and enough overpriced beer to make you forget about the heartburn. But not anymore.

Baby Boomers got their grubby tentacles on the American Temple and turned it into an Entertainment Complex. That's why Chase Field in Arizona has a swimming pool in a place that should have the most choice seats in the stadium -- the center field stands (see picture). That's why AT&T Park in San Francisco has the Old Navy Splash Landing, where the public is invited to paddle into the San Francisco Bay just outside the stadium -- not to watch the game, of course, but to catch a Barry Bonds baseball that can be monetized in minutes on eBay.

This is not a circus. This is not Nickelodeon. This is not Japan.

Here, baseball is holy, and although swimming pools might belong in cul-de-sacs in fake communities somewhere in the Arizona desert, they don't belong in the major league baseball stadium down the road.

Watch the game, kid. Pick up a scorecard. Watch the grass grow, and get the fuck out of the pool.

Internships

Internships, perhaps the most overlooked Baby Boomer scam. This is a prototypically fraudulent, bullshit way for Baby Boomers to secure free young labor with absolutely no promise of future employment, little or nothing in the way of wages and only passing cooperation from universities that sometimes force their students to actually pay to participate in internship programs.

Whatever happened to apprenticeships, with the cobbler passing on his skill to the next cobbler? What about spending time with a younger hire and passing one's knowledge to him or her? No longer. Now, the cobbler's apprentice makes double-binded photocopies of expense reports and just ends up getting a different job out of college with the benefit of having a lone skill -- organizing Microsoft Word documents alphabetically.

Thanks, Baby Boomers, for inheriting a system based on mutual appreciation and loyalty, exploiting what you could from your parents' careers, and hoarding it all for yourselves without leaving anything behind for those who came after you.

Thanks for leaving us as a generation with no substantive experience in any true skill, so all we're left to do is blog about how shitty you are.

And thanks, Bill Clinton, for cutting through all the euphemisms and literally ejaculating on an unpaid intern's clothing.

Now can you sign this form so I can get 3 credits?

Mega-Churches, a.k.a. "Happiness Companies"

Who can forget everyone's personal favorites: "Shout to the Lord! All the earth, let us sing!" and "This is the tiiiiiiiiiiiiime -- for woooooooooorship!" Yes, it's the classic three-disc, original recording, remastered, special edition "Songs 4 Worship."

If you want to feel good about yourself, it's between that, a Tony Robbins book-on-tape or some DVD where Suze Orman is yelling at you. But what if you could combine being individually happy with the self-satisfaction of belonging to a mass belief system?

Welcome to the mega-church.

I don't know if you've ever heard of the Crystal Cathedral, located in Garden Grove, California. This might be the most extreme example of the American mega-church, but Google the shit out of it because it's mind-bogglingly ridiculous. I grew up two towns away from Garbage Grove, and you can see this monstrocity from almost any freeway in Orange County. Frankly, I have no idea what actual religion this church even belongs to. Sure, it's Protestantism of some sort, but I suppose I'm missing the big picture by getting all bogged down in the details.

The second link on the Crystal Cathedral's website, after "Visitors," is the bolded "Support This Ministry." FYI, it's only $400 per month for a year to become a member of the Diamond Eagles Club, and you get a cool eagle statue--fucking sweet!

Let me quote the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, the former nepotistic leader of said Crystal Cathedral: "'Those who wait upon the Lord whall renew their strength, They shall mount up on wings as eagles, They shall RUN and NOT grow weary, They shall WALK and NOT fain.' This verse, in a few short and very concise sentences, sums up, in a powerful way, the strength that YOU provide to our ministry with your prayers and financial support."

"And financial support"--ahh, three little words that can make all the difference. When I read the above verse from Isaiah, I know financial support is the first powerful thing I think about...besides prayer, of course. I said besides prayer, right? God, I SAID BESIDES PRAYER! And this $400 per month goes to the support of the Hour of Power, a TV program of that week's I'm-Gonna-Ramble-For-An-Hour-And-This-Didn't-Cost-Me-A-Dime sermon whose tagline is "Confident Living=Creative Living." What is confidence? What is creative? Help me Rev. Schuller cuz I've got none of it!

It's one thing to praise Jesus, it's entirely another to set up an organization employing an army of the exact same moneychangers Jesus felt so compelled to overturn. I know evangelistic organizations have been around in the U.S. for a long, long time, but never have we seen such an influx of tax-empt cashish.

Just like the hippies, these religious Baby Boomers have taken the bag of ideology and filled it with crisp $100 bills. As for what these mega-churches are bringing in, there's a lot of figures floating around out there, so I'll pass on an exact number, but let's just say Governor Pilate's head would explode.

And don't forget, get your favorite Jesus-sponsored recipes today.

The High School Prom

If you're a guy, hopefully the man upstairs helped you the month before the high school prom, or whatever else it may have been called (in my school, the underclassmen prom was called the "winter formal" -- different name, same pressure, except you're a freshman and still counting pubes).

So where is this pressure coming from? First, from your other duder friends. They're freshmen at that point, too--and, in retrospect, they don't know shit. But in reality, they're still at an age where the information they're absorbing comes from their Baby Boomer dads and moms and the one guy at school who has an older brother who tells stories.

It's a no-brainer that the stereotypical high school prom didn't happen until the 1950s--we all saw "Grease" and "Back to the Future," and we know those prom-induced boy-ask-girl restrictions continue into adulthood. Gender equality and the high school prom are inherent contradictions. Why spend 12 years teaching children that they're all exactly the same, only to throw in "prom king" and "prom queen" at the end of it all?

This is the paradox of the Baby Boomers: they tried to reject society's conventions and then they instituted many of those same conventions when they grew up. Stop imposing antiquated roles justifying your own childhood while at the same time demanding gender equality. I don't want to ask this girl out. The only thing I know about this chick is that she has chemistry third period. If I liked her I would have asked her to the movies months ago.

In the end, what does the guy get out of putting his tiny balls on the line and playing some gendered part that hopefully involves underage drinking? An awkward slow dance and pathetically late discovery that the girl you just spent an emotionally-charged month around likes some random dude that you didn't even know that she knew. It just gets worse as you get older, but at age 15 it's just plain ridiculous.

Coming May 2020: The 5th grade Spring Fling! Everybody gets laid!

Walkathons

If someone from 1950 could fast-forward themselves in time, one of the aspects of modern-life that would confound them is the bizarre convergence of charity and physical exercise.

Thanks to the Baby Boomers, the most charitable act in America today (beyond writing a check) is the -athon.

Charity alone is meaningless when you've grown up believing that you are God's gift to the earth, that you are the most "adventurous, daring, risk-taking, compassionate, focused and purposeful" generation since Adam and Eve, as this Baby Boomer Blogger believes. And because Baby Boomers can't participate in a charitable activity without some kind of me-me-me-me-me self-improvement function (i.e., trimming the waistline), we are left with the Walkathon, Bikeathon, Charity 5K, Challenge Run, Skip Around the Block for Diabetes, etc.

What a lazy, selfish, pathetic, geeky way of helping other people. How many emails do you get from a Baby Boomer each week asking you to personally join them in volunteering at a local soup kitchen? Is it between zero and zero? And yet how many Baby Boomers at the office, through email and at family dinners, hit you up for $5-a-mile so you "sponsor" them on some stupid early morning walk that ties up traffic.

Instead of using those four hours walking the highway in your track suit, how about doing some pro bono work at your law firm to help an impoverished family? How about reading a book that gives you some insight into the ways global poverty and genocide can begin to be extinguished? How about writing a letter to a congressman about increased funding for disease research?

Asking me to put my credit card number into a walkathon web site is flat-out lazy. I hope you sprain an ankle.

Misuse Of Email

Email is not difficult. Learn how to use it. You figured out the calculator and A/C on a car, so please figure this one out. Email is our generation's medium, so stop using our creation on your own terms and infecting the greatest invention of our lifetime with your retarded tactics. Baby Boomers love to make inroads into our culture, and then try to distort it.

Invent your own communication system where you can treat your own like shit, for crying out loud. Maybe a delivery fleet of Chevy Suburbans that run people over and shoot out Post-Its all over the road that say things like "You should roll that over into your 401K."

A few rules:

1) Email is free. Stop paying for that AOL account AND the service provider. Idiots.

2) Can you imagine grandma not responding to a phone message you've left? No, of course not. Grandmas always fucking respond. In fact, they respond even if you didn't leave a message. Baby Boomers don't respond within the customary 24-hour limit because they think email is a cool new hobby rather than an ideal efficient form of communication, so they'll just talk to you later on the phone.

3) If you send me another FWD: I'm going to take my own life.

4) STOP SENDING ME EMAILS WHERE I HAVE TO SCROLL THROUGH NAMES AFTER NAMES OF PEOPLE! START USING BCC!

5) Those videos as attachments on emails? It's called YouTube. AOL Search that shit.

Gated Communities

Has there ever been a falser sense of security than the gated community? Who are you keeping out? Who are you keeping in? And why must Baby Boomers, the children of the civil rights movement, insist on an economic segregation that is often just code for racial and ethnic segregation?

When I think of gated communities, I think of telling the 80-year-old security guard the last name of somebody I know who knows somebody I know and yelling "sucker!" out the window as the rear bumper blows past the millimeter-thick piece of balsa wood (which in fact poses more of a threat to the residents' S-Class hoods than actual home robbers).

Do you actually think that if I was into raping rich, white teenage girls that I wouldn't just jump the five-foot faux-brick wall and walk through the never-locked side door at three in the morning?

Interestingly enough, gated communities are usually located in the safest possible suburban areas. So if it isn't the thieving scumbags you're worried about, what is it then? The just-as-false sense of self-satisfaction that you're living in a neighborhood filled with 55-year-olds that have the same steady income that you have? People that share the same virtues of hard work and family values?

Well, I hate to break it to you--but that guy across the street who gets home around 8 p.m. every night sells stolen cars and cheats on his wife.

And that other guy around the corner who's always home and has a boy the same age as your son got his money from his father's furniture store (est. 1930) and he stays up late every night doing coke and watching "American Chopper" while his wife's passed out on Xanax.

Not that he really rides a hog, but how cool would that be? Man, "Easy Rider" was a great movie.

Tom Brokaw

As the wheels went off the last presidential debate, and as neither candidate even gave the pretense of answering questions, we had an opportunity to see Tom Brokaw for the empty suit, faux average-Joe-American that he actually is.

Brokaw was the debate moderator (even though he is technically no longer even a working journalist). He is stuck in that brief period of American history when TV commentators were actually a part of Americans' lives, and he is desperate to be remembered as one of the legends: Murrow, Cronkite...ehem...Brokaw.

Brokaw loves to sum up the garsh-darn nature of American society, and his book about Baby Boomers, nauseatingly called "Boom!", did just that: "The heady, sweet aroma of marijuana frequently permeated the air. As thick as the smoke were the four-letter words that suddenly were everywhere."

Yes! The Baby Boomers invented getting fucked up, and curse words?!? Are you sure?

And is it at all relevant that marijuana today is more prevalent, more legal and more potent than it was when The Beatles discovered it at Woodstock in 1969? In case you didn't know, every rock n roll moment worth mentioning occurred at Woodstock. What? You weren't there?! Oh, it was crazy. But that's just how it was back then.

In any case, Brokaw was clearly not listening to a single answer Barry or Mac were giving. He's too busy concocting his scheme for the takeover of "Meet The Press". Ever heard of a follow-up, Brokaw? Or how about maybe holding the candidates' feet to the fire and making them answer a question directly instead of letting them recite their stump speeches? Is this a debate or an episode of "Hee Haw"?

At the end, when the candidates accidentally walked in front of the camera, Brokaw's swashbuckling baritone cut out mid-syllable, rendering him speechless.

"Uh, you're in the way of my teleprompter," he said.

The words he missed? "Thank you for joining us, Americannsh." God-forbid this phony had to actually think on his own for a half-a-second. Goodnight America's lamest generation.

Retirement

When did retirement become an actual fucking concept? It's now practically an obligation and the barometer for most Americans' success in life, but only if you start investing in your early twenties in an IRA, 401K, RBA, LMB, SPA, etc.

Tell me, is being happy something you can only achieve after selling out for 40 years? Has Social Security convinced an entire generation that by the time they start to collect a federal check their time to work is over?

Social Security, initially a short-term concept, has become a psychological safety net for a generation that the FDR administration never even contemplated. Retirement was once only an option for the ante-bellum aristocracy, but somehow it's now been imputed to everybody--and when I say everybody, I mean the middle class.

Since Baby Boomers didn't realize their freedom in the Sixties, they decided to postpone it for forty years and call it retirement. They kept the stick, but made it longer and replaced that big carrot that actually grows in the ground with a bunch of those mini-carrots that come in a plastic bag. But it can only be realized if you avoid smoking, drinking, snorting cocaine, salt, car accidents and non-organic produce.

The feds are betting you won't make it, and once you do, the carrot probably isn't as orange as it once seemed.

Ken Lay

This guy is great. Man did he do it right. Sure, he's going straight to Hell, but damn he had a good run while he was with us here on Earth.

You've heard this before: born in the 40s, got his graduate degree at a time when that actually meant something and then went on to work for a giant company, Exxon, which, unbelievably enough, led to a government job.

Frankly, I have no idea how a job with Exxon would land you a job in Washington, but he somehow miraculously got involved in the private energy sector right before the feds deregulated it and then went on to form everybody's favorite bubble-bursting company, Enron. In 1999, he reportedly earned $42.4 million, which (after the footage I saw of some dude flying a winged jet pack over the English Channel) might be the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen or heard of. But don't leave! The best part of the story is yet to come!

After dumping all of his stock in Enron while simultaneously encouraging employees to buy more, he gets indicted on 11 counts by a federal grand jury and is later found guilty on ten of them. The really sad part is that at the tender age of 64, and only months away from starting to serve his sentence, he passed away from a heart attack while vacationing in the majestic sloping mountains of Colorado. Now that's justice.

Personally, I don't plan on living to 64 because I'm having a loan-related death. The Baby Boomers will have sucked up all of my health insurance, and I'd rather have my son be the beneficiary of my $100 monthly Social Security check so he can pay his $1,500 monthly student loan debt.

But I digress...basically, if there's a Hell, which I really don't hope or think there is, Ken Lay has got to be in it, right? Because if there isn't and he's not, then I'm really lost as to what the fuck this is all about.

Applebee's Neighborhood Bar & Grill

"Honey, can we go out for dinner tonight?"

"Yes, of course, darling."

"Something sit-down, faux-traditional and quick so I can make it back by seven o'clock for a five-millionth repeated episode of Law & Order?"

"Of course, dear! I know just the place!"

Yes, he's thinking of that family-owned corner restaurant that the Baby Boomers' parents patronized, minus the investments of time and money that Baby Boomers shun. The only thing neighborhoody about Applebee's is that there's one located in every neighborhood.

Apparently two dudes, Bill and T.J. Palmer, started the restaurant in 1980 under the name "T.J. Applebee's Rx for Edibles & Elixirs." Clearly Bill and T.J. were burned-out hippies that fell into some daddy-cash--and since it was originally named "T.J. Applebee's," I'm gonna assume it was T.J.'s daddy who had the bank roll. No doubt Bill was the "idea man".

After their second restaurant opened they sold it to a truly great American exploiter, W.R. Grace (anyone else bothered by the fact that the same company can operate a leather manufacturing plant and a restaurant at the same time?). Grace then sold it to IHOP, who will then sell it to some other giant company, who'll then divide that company up into other companies and then sell the "Apple's" but keep the "Bee's"--and then those two restaurants will compete for awhile and then Bee's will buy out Apple's and then in 50 years we'll all be eating at our neighborhood "Beeapple's."

Like the Baby Boomers, Applebee's figured out how to chew on the comforts of their parents' generation and spit out an exploited version to their kids' generation. They intentionally dupe their poor customers by having consultants (i.e., suits from corporate) fly in a week before each restaurant opening, copy some old high school football photos from the yearbooks they have stashed at the local library and then throw them up on the walls in Wal-Mart frames. Holy fucking lame.

In the end, Applebee's is just another example of how the Baby Boomers deify the little man, then conform to the big man. Because a hamburger and fries is so difficult to make that I wouldn't dare go to that new mom-and-pop joint a few blocks away. I demand crappy consistency!

Bill Clinton

Bill stormed onto the scene in 1992 as the personification of the Baby Boomers. Even to this day, if there were a face to the Baby Boomers, it would be his. Dragging an optimistic bag from the Sixties behind him, he espoused such sentiments as "I feel your pain" and "usually briefs."

Finally a guy with the same experiences as the voters! He grew up poor, dodged the draft, smoked doobies and now he's running for president. What a great story! And especially the contrast he offered against Bush 41, whom we can all presume was still having night-sweats about dodging kamikaze pilots and ending up in a Japanese POW camp.

But eight years after that election, Bill was blatantly lying to the public and feeding us such garbage as: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Sixteen years later, we almost fell for it again, as the Baby Boomer voting base nearly elected Bill Part 2, aka Hillary.

But the economy boomed during his administration, so what's the problem? Put some money in my wallet and I'll look the other way on all that other shit--it's the Baby Boomer creed! After all, it worked for Bill, right? That's why they ran wild in the Sixties and that's why they sold out in the Seventies. Hazy idealism was cool when they were young and wanted to get laid. But then they coveted that 8-track player that their rich buddy had, so it was: "Hey man, can you get me a job selling mutual funds?"

In "Audacity of Hope", Barack Obama writes: “In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation--a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago--played out on the national stage.”

Personal politics at its core. Loyalty and rivalry above ideology. Bogus culture wars taken to the extreme. And great potential squandered by the ephemeral pleasure of a blow job from a near-teenager. Bill Clinton is not "a great man." Bill Clinton is a Baby Boomer.

Bud Selig

Oh, Bud--you douche bag of a commissioner. What happened to baseball being about the game? Wait, I know! Like your whole generation, you sold dignity down the river for cold, hard cash. Ding, ding, ding! And what do you get for sacrificing purity for money? A brand, spanking new contract through 2012, of course!

Yeah, sure you put your head in the sand when McGwire hit 70 steroid-induced home runs. Yeah, sure you force-fed an annual interleague Yankees-Mets series that 95% of the fan base couldn't care less about but now have to endure. Yeah, sure you created the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays*, two of the most unnecessary organizations in U.S. history, but as long as the owners are lining their pockets with luxury box money while across-the-board prices go up, hot dogs get steamed less and pitching goes down the tubes, then who cares?

And what's an even better way to increase revenue under the guise of competition? More games of course! Thanks for the wildcard playoff series, Bud. Absolutely fucking retarded. Remember in the old days when they played 154 games, two teams won the pennant (see "When Winning the Pennant Meant Something," by Your Grandfather), a World Series was played and all was said and done? No, of course you don't. Because that was before the Baby Boomers took over. So now it's 162 regular season games, two separate playoff series and THEN a World Series. It's December already. Bud, your cologne reeks like socialism.

The best part of your plan Bud is that even when it doesn't work, the money's still flowing. The worst part of your plan Bud is that when it doesn't work, you just throw up your hands and look like an idiot (see picture--Bud at tied 2002 All Star game). Who cares? No one, but the actual fan.

*Now "The Rays", because what better way to fix something that's broke but to do nothing but change the name and purify it by taking out "Devil". Bring back the Washington Bullets!