May 18, 2016
Pop culture just keeps rolling along, even if we stop paying attention to certain aspects of it. And it's not just music, is it? It's books and TV shows and movies and games and... well, it just goes on and on. It's weird and occasionally startling. (Wait, when did they cancel "Law & Order"?)

With some exceptions, rock music is frozen for me, like a mosquito trapped in amber, in the late '80s/early '90s, when I was in my 20s and had the time and disposable income to invest in the music of Nirvana, Weezer, Beck, Juliana Hatfield, Cracker, Whiskeytown, Belly, The Goo Goo Dolls (really, their early stuff was great), Hüsker Dü, The Lemonheads, and Paul Westerberg — none of which interests my kid in the slightest.

Pop culture's insistence on continuing without my participation feels to me a little like what death must be like. The whole world just keeps going on without you, taking little notice of your absence.

But even in "death," it's easy enough to entomb yourself in the entertainment ephemera of your youth, fooling yourself that you're still among the hip, with-it, youthful target demo.

Unless you have a 12-year-old around to remind you that you're not.