Generation: Envy

Well... I am fully convinced now that, if God truly existed, he is dead.

This belief of mine started a few days ago. I was driving down Santa Monica Blvd., braving the mass crowd of idiotic Los Angeles on the road, when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye which made me pull over. It was a billboard. Now, I know you're all smugly saying that is the point of a gigantic, roadside advertisement... but you can go straight to Hell. Because you too would feel sick too. It was a billboard for Amstel Light (an atrocious beer to begin with), with three joggers on a grassy meadow running towards the foreground. And, to make matters utterly worse... the lead jogger was Lance Armstrong. Lance 'fucking' Armstrong... Mr. Superhero and Integrity. If it weren't bad enough that he is the forefather of one of this century's most pretentious and aggravating fashion statements.... the 'Livestrong Bracelets.' (Okay... don't let it be misunderstood. I don't hate the message those bracelets stand for. I hate them because people no longer care about their meanings... just as long as they match their outfits!) When a socio-cultural icon falls from grace so hard they are forced to do Amstel Light commercials... you have your proof of the Divine's expiration.

A late night phone conversation with a close friend and one of the few people I actually consider sane recently brought even more to light that riled me up. We got to talking about our present day society and our specific generation. Mostly, how this generation is so fucked up in the head, we can't tell our ass from our ankles. We are a generation is miscreants: always looking to do the least amount of work we can for the biggest payout. Couple that with a highly nepotistic disposition... and you are looking at the most unambitious batch of Narcissistic neophytes yet. But, my dearies... look deep down and realize the truth: its our own damn fault! That includes you, previous generations stretching as far back as our parents and including any potential older siblings! We are the result of all your misdeeds!

Look at what we have to work with. In lieu of great socio-political leaders like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King jr., or the thousands of protestors who marched on D.C. to voice their outrage at the war in Vietnam.... we have Sarah Palin and her ilk, the Kardashians, and the ever-astoundingly unintelligent cast of the Jersey Shore. What sicking characteristic do these three troglodytic cabals have in common? REALITY SHOWS!

Life, as we know it, has become a mockery of itself. The idea of the REALITY SHOW will one day be coined as a precursor to the downfall of civilization. Especially since it is ANYTHING BUT REALITY! If you think that reality is a dim-witted ex-governor hooting and hollering with her bigot kids and apathetic husband on ATVs while hunting... I highly recommend seeing a psychiatrist. They're doing some amazing things in anti-psychotics these days. Reality is not some pampered socialite and her horrendously ignorant sisters trotting around the globe looking for new clothing. And if reality really were an amassing of the eight most moronic, degenerate, unintelligent, self-entitled, stereotypical fuck ups.... then I guess its time for me to jump from a very high place.

TV networks pump out this vapid filth and we, like a group of squabbling meth-heads, clamor to take it in... despite the fact that it's killing us. Come on people! Wake up and smell the ammonia that is so desperately needed to sterilize a once idealistic, intelligent, and progressive society. Sarah Palin and her whole family are a cancer to the socio-political infrastructure of the United States because of their stupidity and bigotry (yep... even her 16 year old daughter is a bigot. Bashing a gay kid on FB just because he insulted her mom's show). The Kardashians are the genital warts of America... never contributing a thing, but always irritating and impossible to annihilate. And the nick-named mongoloids of the Jersey Shore are an embolism in the American psyche... waiting to burst. (By the way, I have to raise one quick issue with the inhabitants of the Garden State. Why the FUCK would you ever support a show like that? Are all of you seriously proud of the way those self-aggrandizing proud-to-be-guidos make the rest of you look to the country? Seriously, NJ! You're already the running joke for most of the Northeast... don't make matters worse by endorsing the worst elements of your culture.)

At this point, as always... I'm sure you're asking yourself one question: "where does this opinionated, self-righteous jackass draw the line?" My answer: FUCK your line. If you don't like it, don't read it. But if we have any chance of making it in the world, folks... stop buying tickets to the freak shows, stop feeling nothing but a profound lust and envy for things you don't have and probably need. In the end... you have to be able to take yourself seriously. Those out there rockin' a blowout, Tweeting about your abs, and fist pumping... there is no hope for you and you should be spayed. For all else... welcome to the dull minutia which is everyday life. You will never have all you want, and you probably will die a nobody. But at least you weren't an asshole.

2011: The Age of Persistent Rain!!! (GODDAMN YOU KEVIN COSTNER! YOU MADE THIS HAPPEN!!!)

Well,

When I moved out to Los Angeles... I didn't realize that there was some devious agreement made between the people of the Pacific Northwest and the Devil to swap the weather with Southern California. I mean seriously! For a half of December, it rained in Tinsel Town... and I gotta say, it isn't a pretty sight. Just try and imagine cruisin' down Sunset Boulevard: a million multi-colored lights radiating defiantly in the night sky as distant spot lights offer guidance to some off-limits social event. People dressed in clothing three sizes too small strutting down the sidewalks acting as if they were better than everyone else, and quizzically placed palm trees resting like comatose giraffes. Now add six inches of oily, highly acidic rain water drumming down, making all those beautiful people look like soaked raccoons. Rivers of tepid and semi-viscous waters propel In'N'Out soda cups and and crumpled newspapers and discarded condoms along like some sort of pulp-influenced David Lynch nightmare regatta. It is indeed a horrifying sight.

And from bad to worse... I was in the heart of darkness: Los Angeles International Airport. In a rain storm after the holiday season, to boot! Driving at LAX is like dating a two-face. At times, it can be a leisurely experience lacking any sort of difficulty what so ever. You pull up to the curb, jump out or deposit your passengers, and drive off back to whatever snake pit you originated from. But then the ugly side rears its nasty little head. Traffic comes to an abrupt halt at a "SECURITY CHECKPOINT" long before even getting near the terminals. This checkpoint generally consists of four police officers who are so preoccupied with chit chatting that they wouldn't notice Hunter S. Thompson's disembodied ghost riding the Woody Woodpecker balloon from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But they stop the cars one by one nonetheless. So A+ for efficiency!

If you are lucky to make it past this first obstacle... you are still in for a miserable experience. I have found in my time out west that Angelinos do NOT know the first thing about sensible driving. They make four-lane changes without even looking, stop abruptly to answer cell phones, run red lights... and stop at the greens. I have seen more order in a Moroccan bazaar that I have on the streets of Los Angeles. While the departure sections are bad... the arrivals are even worse. Stuck in the semi-subterranean canals lined with gargantuan concrete pillars, it is a honeycomb of sorrow. It was within these sado-masochistic tunnels last night, after a grueling 7 hour flight from Boston (containing a narcoleptic Hassidic woman, a screaming baby, and an angry woman who had 4 LAPD officers waiting for her when we landed) that I had these psychotic epiphanies... which immediately invoked rage. That or my taxi driver who made absolutely no attempt to get out of the airport, hiking the meter to $10.25 before I even saw the highway.

For all of this anguish... I blame the rain. Because apparently in Los Angeles, people don't know how to handle inclement weather. Sure, there were mudslides up in Malibu... but really, people! It's goddamn rain! Back in the days of Moses and his desert-trekking menagerie, they would have danced themselves stupid if it rained like this. Yet here, in 2011... the simple act of rain has destroyed social order in the City of Angels. Good grief...

-s/j.@