Catching Up

Okay, so my early results of the Great Experiment are this: I got tired of not listening to specific stuff when I wanted. It does appear that the shuffle function of media player doesn't really assign a weight by play count. Oddly enough, the two bands that were played the most were the Beatles and Black Sabbath.



I'm trying to figure out why Michael Jackson's death has evoked such a sense of melancholy in me, as I was never really much of a fan. Sure I have Thriller, and I enjoy listening to it, but I was never rabid about owning every piece of music he'd ever released, like I occasionally get about other bands. One of the articles I read offered some clarity and insight into my sense of loss: Generation X is losing its icons. Maybe not its heroes, but the people who inspire nostalgia in Gen Xers. Boomers remember where they were when JFK was shot and listening to Sergeant Pepper for the first time. I remember listening to Thriller when I was a kid, and watching the premier of the video. I remember where I was when the shuttle blew up.



I look at the Boomers and realize that they were the generation that threw their opportunities away, in defiance of authority. Thanks to this, our generation never had any opportunities. We came from broken homes, or from uninvolved parents--parents who were still following the "if it feels good, do it" philosophy, often at the expense of proper parenting. Our generation has had to find ways to rediscover the values our parents never imparted to ensure we teach those to our children. We learned our lessons of love from romantic comedies, not from our "free love" elders. They had their Easy Rider and Peyton Place. We had The Breakfast Club and The Celestine Prophecies.



So hats off to Wacko Jacko. You were definitely iconographic of Gen X.