Back in the day, music video debuts on channels like Much Music or MTV were a big fucking deal. But then Youtube (and OnSmash) came along and that changed everything—but still, the music video didn’t die. In the past couple of years we’ve been exposed to some pretty creative music video marketing techniques—from making videos the memes themselves to putting out teaser trailers.

In the past week or so, three bands—with three very distinct levels of success, from mass to niche—have put out their own innovative music videos online, making heavy use of the internet/meme-chasing/hit-grabbing tactics to prove their virtual relevance.

Last week, Cee-Lo Green—former Goodie Mob rapper turned Gnarls Barkley misterioso turned new soul crooner—dropped a slickly designed, fontgasmic lyric video for new track ‘Fuck You’ to much curiosity. Bands have made sing-a-long friendly videos for a long time, and we’ve seen tons of fanmade creations on Youtube in recent years as well, so Cee-Lo isn’t working with a new concept here. What differentiates this though is that the lyric video was good enough to stand on its own, but it wasn’t meant to—this week, Cee-Lo allowed fans to view the official, Everybody Hates Chris-esque music video for ‘Fuck You’ via his Facebook page. All you had to do was Like the fan page first. The philosophy? You tease and they will Like.

Arcade Fire takes interactive topography to the next thematic level with the video for ‘We Used To Wait’ earlier this week. This one took me a while (um, in web-geek speak I guess that’s like, a day?) to come around to for the simple reason that it requires you to upgrade/download the Google Chrome browser. After inputting the address of the house you grew up in, the multi-window video takes you on a visual tour of your streets interspliced with shots of a hooded teen running and other wastelandic imagery. This would’ve rocked and totes felt nostalgic had my dad not been captured outside of our house when Streetview drove by. Oh, but points for the cool interactive, veiny ‘postcard to your younger self’ you get to make and keep as part of the process.

Das Racist, meme-y highbrow rap group of non-white dudes from NYC, are, like, my most favourite thing ever. And it’s not just because they’re brown or because Heems tweets me about ginger ale or because they fuse lyrics about international development theorists with life as a diaspora-bred P.O.C or because they name drop Bollywood action heros, but because they make me laugh. Sit Down, Man, the follow-up mixtape to Shut Up, Dude is coming out in a couple of weeks and—along with a trailer video featuring voice-over quotables from megaman Diplo—the crew dropped a video for ‘Who’s That Brown?’ WITH ACCOMPANYING VIDEO GAME. BAS.

roflcoptr.

So, here’s the New Thing! An idea so simple, so elegantly obvious and offensive and eventual yet nonetheless surprising and fresh (and awesomely alliterative): Hipster Hitler, a webcomic by JC and APK, whoever they are.

Not sure if this is targeted at hipsters, or hipster haters, likely both though, because that’s a complicated venn diagram isn’t it? Heck, there’s a good chance that JC and APK are actually themselves hipsters, but one shouldn’t overthink this just yet. It’s only three strips deep, let’s just LOL for now. Goebbels has already made an appearance, and I frankly can’t wait to meet Leni Riefenstahl. An angry hipster yelling at a confused filmmaker in Hipster Hitler style is something I can get behind.

• Are New York Times book reviewers biased towards white dudes from Brooklyn? When was the last time you read a book by a female author? Do you get the hype around Jonathan Franzen? I’m crazy tired so sorry about the lazy rhetoricals. But yeah, Chris Jackson wrote something about some such and I dug it somewhat. I can’t totally relate (two of the last good books I read were by women), and I get the feeling this debate as it’s played out on the interwebs is a New York conversation, but dude makes a good point about looking at our reading patterns and asking ourselves what we’re missing out on.  -jc
• In 2009 Dave Eggers and co. launched their experimental one time newspaper, the San Francisco Panorama, and the things was massive. So massive in fact that I only got around to reading a long form feature on the annual Mr. Romance contest held each year to determine who will grace the cover of those oh so trashy romance novels yesterday. While the whole article isn’t online, you can get a good taste of it on the author’s blog, here. Then try to track down a Panorama for years of good reading.-jkg
• Not spending the last weekend of the summer outside in the sun? Hungover? Watch this Youtube-housed, totally engrossing BBC documentary about Nigeria, Welcome To Lagos. It’s in a bajillion parts and long as hell, but totally worth it, even if you’re not too sure about the message behind it. And what else are you going to watch? Another Friends marathon? -am
• Taken a gander at @kanyewest yet? The Village Voice thinks West’s continued personal media assault is killing music magazines. #justsayin -am
• It’s officially soon enough to host a 90′s party. Plaid is cool again, 20-somethings are angsty and Soundgarden are back together. Sure, their new single debuts in Guitar Hero 6 and Chris Cornell is on the wrong side of 40, but this Spin profile manages to remind us of one thing: grunge is for young people *and* geezers trying to reclaim their youth. Remind me again how our generation is nothing like the one before us?

Naively, I read through that NYT piece about my socio-cultural generation and our seemingly preternatural ability to avoid ‘real life’ responsibility and huffed a sigh of relief (and forwarded it on to a few friends). Yes, I thought. Finally, my suffering is legit. But, my much wiser, more astute friends and peers didn’t cop the cop out as readily as I did. And most of them are that 20-something the article listed off; listless, responsibility-free, unemployed but not uninspired. Some of them are more than that, working the kind of jobs and doing the kind of things that people over a certain age just don’t understand and pretty much anyone our age is jealous of.

But what about the rest of us. What about people like me?

This might seem like the story of a quitter, but it’s more about floating. We (“20-somethings”) all start out floating, buoyed by public school-mandated prospects of limitless, bountiful dreams. Our parents, whether they’ve struggled to provide, boosting with nothing but a grade school education, or head up bougey white-collar operations, let us float on benevolently—or, as some might argue, irresponsibly. Even if you start working from the youngest age the government allows, running amok in an amusement park with a billion other babes guised as employees for the minimum-est of wages, you’re still floating. Living in your parent’s house, being your parent’s kid, watching TV in a bedroom equipped with its own phone line with call waiting. That doesn’t mean you don’t learn things and mature, and I’m not saying you don’t grow up, but the idea of settling for something—job, marriage, children—seems far off and vague.

I know a few people between 19 and 30. Lots of them are in graduate schools around the world, adult-aged with freshmen lives and real world problems. I know another who got fired from a white-collar gig and has coasted mysteriously for three plus months on either savings or her parents’ paychecks; she doesn’t like to talk about money. A guy I dated, probably the least conventional in terms of lacking the nuclear family stability circle of my circle, has spent the past year jobless and dream-driven (whether the dream is viable is another question the 20-something rarely faces). Then there’s my med school pal on the straight path, who cried to me about marriageability four years ago between undergrad and post-grad and is on-plan with an engagement right now.

And here I am 10 years on from that theme park gig, a 25-year-old journalism grad armed with a proverbial quarter-life crisis and two years experience as cheap labour with a handful of clippings. I just quit. You’d think I’d be stuck off the realness; freaked out, at least a little, by the every day bullshit of bills and rent. Enough to settle down, like some of my back-home friends who either ditched the dream to follow in the supposedly tranquil suburban shadows of their parents, or who have remained motivated but fell in love. That’s a major nein (but were I seriously enamored, maybe it’d be different? Still, I’m saying, NEIN.) Instead I quit and reveled in my quittingness and booked flights and planned champagne-filled dinners and basically fucking decided to keep on floating.

But here’s why it’s the other side of the 20-something: because I’m not directionless or aimless and maybe I do consider myself a victim of both “the times” and the economy and some other not-getting-into-it socio-economic stuff, yet still, that doesn’t make me some kind of post-juvenile vagrant. I worked very hard, doing the job of three people as just one person, toiling in an industry that is ossifying before our eyes, all while dreaming my definitive 20-something dream of just being able to write. Yes, my parents helped me out here and there, because as a single, childless 20-something, I need beer money and HBO to keep going under at-times soulless conditions. And, as a fair weather 20-something I am reveling and fêting quittage because it took me straight up eight fucking months to find a new job. Trying. This is where the New York Times condescendingly posits that my version of trying doesn’t involve the painstakingly type-written letters and traipsing around in heinous polyester pantsuits of my parents’ age. Always trying to act like the Internet just doesn’t exist, those pure-hearted, shiny-cheeked journalists.

A lot can be said that’s probably true about what it means to be in your 20s in 2010, but all this brings to mind now—post-guidance from aforementioned enlightened friends—is a phrase I never thought I’d hear myself actually saying in truth, “Don’t hate.” We’re just the effects, living out the cultural, economic and familial relationships, of the causes, and we’re self-focused because we can be and because we’ve figured out—unmarried and childless in our 20s—that it’s best to just “do you.” And even though we pursue graduate degrees like they’re golden tickets and title ourselves “blogger slash something” in our Twitter profiles and appear to be floating through life, we’re just on our backs, drifting between the wreckage, keeping our eyes on the stars instead.

These are two things that have helped make my week (and both serve as a nice segueway into this weekend’s Fan Expo) — first up, from the Flickr page of Penguin art director Paul Buckley comes some very great comics-inspired Penguin Classics cover designs (The Communist Manifesto, above):

It doesn’t get much better than this, except that it kind of does, thanks to the other dope-comics-related-thing-that-made-my-week, this time from Tales to Suffice creator Kenny Keil. Keil recently updated his “Superhero Remix” project with more classic hip-hop album covers mashed up with comic characters:

They’re all hilarious and amazing. Check his Flickr for the full set, and thanks to The Beat and Robot 6 for the finds. I’m off to change every single one of my profile pics.

Phoenix's transformation for this role makes Christian Bale's in the Machinist look weaksauce

What turned acclaimed, handsome, witty and charming actor Joaquin Phoenix into an unfunny, belligerent, bizarro Zach Galifianakis?

Is Phoenix really trying to become a rapper? Is he in need of mental help?

Casey Affleck’s film chronicling the last year and change of Phoenix’s life where he: quit acting, became a hermit and attempted to launch a rap career, seems like an idea straight out of Project Greenlight.

Titled I’m Still Here, Affleck makes his directorial debut at the Toronto International Film Festival this year and I can’t imagine too many people are taking this film as anything but some sort of uber-committed act in the hopes Affleck’s film will be this generations This Is Spinal Tap.

I mean, even if you wanted to take this whole thing seriously, just look at the TIFF description for the movie:

But as Phoenix pours his soul into spitting rhymes, his world begins to spiral downwards. Affleck’s camera is there to witness all manner of celebrity debauchery: drugs, alcohol, groupie sex and the casual abuse of assistants. In one near-magical scene, the actor Edward James Olmos attempts to stage a kind of intervention.

EDWARD JAMES OLMOS ATTEMPTS TO STAGE AN INTERVENTION? I’m sorry, but nowhere in reality could Admiral Adama attempt an intervention for an A-List celebrity who has delusions of grandeur as he fails at becoming a rapper (because he is horrible at rapping). I mean, if the following conversation occured:

Phoenix: AM I NOT MERCIFUL?

Olmos: So say we all.

I’m pretty sure the universe would just implode unto itself. Immediately. So surely it must have been be staged. I mean, even the psychobabble narration in the trailer is absolutely hilarious and ridiculous. It makes zero sense. Nothing about this project makes sense. If it’s fake it probably won’t be funny and we’ll wonder why they spent so much time on it. On the god forbidden chance this is all genuine, does anybody really win? Would you want your brother in law making a documentary about your life as you spiral out of control? Talk about awkward.

So yeah, I’m not sure what to expect from I’m Still Here, but I have awfully low expectations. I mean, even if it’s staged you have to give it to Phoenix for stopping work for over a year, embarrassing himself at every opportunity, putting on like 40 pounds and growing a beard that must surely be both itchy and a pain to keep hygienic.

If Hillary Swank got an oscar for playing a tomboy, I think Phoenix would absolutely deserve a gold statue should he prove devoting your real life to a movie role might be the future of Hollywood entertainment.

Weezer fans can't even make this stuff up

Sigh. Break ups can be so confusing.

You know, I told myself I would never post about Weezer ever again after my last rant.

Writing about them meant I cared; and I was done complaining about Rivers Cuomo and his merry band of solipsistic slackers. I wasn’t going to let them get to me.

When presented with their latest affront to art, I simply turned the other cheek (which was hard, because it’s bad. I mean, it’s really, really bad. It wasn’t slap in the cheek bad, it was a Bruce Lee kick to the face bad.) instead of giving a damn.

I had moved on. Or so I thought.

Weezer release their new album Hurley on September 14th, but lost in the shuffle has been the announcement the band is reissuing its cult success sophomore cd Pinkerton, a month later on October 5th. Even crazier are the reports leaking out that to accompany that reissue, the band will be touring not to play songs from Hurley — but a full Pinkerton/Blue album tour where they will perform every track from Weezer’s first two (read: non-horrible) albums.

To more casual Weezer observers, who can’t quite understand the plight of the band’s old fans but must hear incessantly of our whining, this must seem like no-brainer incredibly good news.

“This is what you always wanted!” you might say to us with appropriate amounts of encouraging optimism.

But, of course, excitement is not my initial reaction. So jaded, so cynical, so engrained in lowered expectation have I become about Weezer that my default, instinctive thought upon hearing this information was extremely cautious skepticism.

I mean, first of all, one questions whether or not the tour will actually happen. But, and this is the truly pertinent question I had:

Why? Why now, after openly fleeing those albums for so many years? and HOW ARE YOU GOING TO RUIN THIS FOR US?

The cynic in me believes this is a cash grab. Weezer knows reissuing Pinkerton will sell at least another several hundred thousand copies, which means for doing exactly zero work they can supplement the income of the (most likely poor) sales Hurley will produce.

Moreover, the band can go on tour and perform songs they know like the back of their hands — and make just as much if not more money in the process, despite having just released an album of new songs that apparently they finally realize aren’t as good as the songs they wrote over a decade ago.

And to some Weezer fans, this really is good news. A lot of folks never wanted any more from Weezer than what they were in the early 90′s.

For more deeply pathetic Weezer fans like myself however, we never were angry about the band because they weren’t making music like their first two albums. We were angry because we thought the first two albums showed so much potential. I believed Cuomo and his bandmates had the talent to create truly great popular rock music — that Pinkerton was the beginning, not the end, of a ride we felt we were lucky to catch the infancy of.

Despite all these protestations however, my abused wife syndrome can’t help but theorize about the glimmer of silver lining in this all-too domestic abuse parallelable scenario.

First off, Weezer left Geffen records recently for indie label Epitaph. Raditude, the band’s last album, did horribly. Hurley, if the first single “Memories” is any indication, will be equally awful.

At least their shirts are getting better

Is it possible Weezer finished this album, looked back at the body of work they produced over the last 8 years, and finally realized — god, this is just awful? Is Weezer finally becoming self-aware of their role as artists of public consumption? Has Rivers Cuomo finally matured out of, what Sady Doyle so aptly described as, “an exceptionally prolonged adolescence”? Is it possible “Memories” is really about Rivers remembering when he didn’t completely and utterly suck?

What’s most confusing however, is that, hypothetically assuming the answers to all the above questions is “yes” … does that make it ok?

Would I be able to live with any shred of dignity if I were to forgive this band for coming to the rationale conclusions everyone in the world but their lead singer seemed to have implicitly understood for the past 15 years? For being so flippantly content with mediocrity?

In my mind that would be like getting back together with an abusive spouse just because they finally successfully quit drinking, or at the age of 30 finally understood that the best way to avoid venereal disease is to avoid being a whore.

I hope Weezer learns to embrace their cult status amongst a very devoted base of niche fans. I hope they learn not to shirk their musical potential and write songs that sound more intelligent than a middle-school battle of the bands contest entry. I wish Weezer well, I really do, and I’d be glad if they really are finally maturing like normal people.

But, and trust me, it will be difficult, and it pains me to say: I will not be attending another Weezer concert ever, no matter how many old favourites they trot out.

Some relationships are just toxic, no matter how much things change, or in this case, how much they might try to stay the same. Sometimes, no matter how right old feelings may feel, you simply have to trust your head.

Like I said — break ups can be so confusing.

• Wired magazine has a succinct story about Pitchfork’s newest feature, exclusive multi-camera online concert videos. The musical taste makers at p4k have built themselves from just-another-blog into a shepherd of hipster music fans worldwide. Wired delves into why the newest Pitchfork project — fully self funded by the Chicago site — is par for the course for indie-rock’s ivory tower; and a microcosm of the sites unerring success thusfar.
• Ever wondered what went on behind the scene in Canada’s newspaper war, and why Toronto now has four dailies? No. Hmm. How about how Chuck Palahniuk went from being a journalist, to a mechanic, to a writer, and how is grandpa shot his gramma and his dad was also murdered? Really? Nothing? How about how Bob Dylan really related to the Beat Generation, and how Allen Ginsberg was like a mentor to him? Still nothing? Wow, you’re just not interested in ANYTHING, are you? -jkg
• Frank Miller is undoubtedly one of the most influential comics artists of our time, but lately the man behind Sin City, 300 and The Dark Knight Returns gets easily dismissed as a crazy, woman-hating fascist. Such threads are found in his work, but is it possible that, post-9/11, comics fans just go for the easy read and disregard his nuances? Its one of the topics touched on by the blog Are You a Serious Comic Book Reader, which has been posting great Miller insights all week. -jc
• So have you read that New York Times article about how it’s getting harder every day to define what’s expected and what we often end up with? Oh, no, not that one. I mean the one where a reporter enters the secret world of counterfeit sneaker production in the heart of China’s industrial labour focused Putian province. If you’ve ever wondered why those Nike shoes you see on a picnic blanket in Times Square can be sold for $10 or how anybody can turn a profit on selling fakes for those prices, this is your answer. Conversely, if you’re into sneakers and are curious about insider tales concerning the businesses side of kicks, this article is a must read. -sy

Martha Stewart is convincing you that she rules.

There’s a bit of embarrassment that comes along with making a list of all the self-help/inspirational books you’ve read. For one, yes, there’s the implicit admission of vulnerability, of not being able to handle your own shit, but there’s also the need to uphold an appearance of taste. Looking at the books on this list, I have to admit, none of them even from the ones I like are exactly “good” books. Well maybe one or two, but I wouldn’t fight for them. The rest are clumsy, probably lame, are sometimes simple or cloying, are always too reminding of how boringly straightforward the process of living is.

But I think in the end that’s what separates the good from the evil — the good come from writers who aren’t afraid of “losing points” with the reader and who don’t hide their persistent personal messiness, who are unpolished and kind of worn and whose brains don’t naturally try to capture the universe in tidy marketable lists (says the guy writing a list post) or worse, catch phrases. They come from writers who aren’t selling or promising anything extraordinarily sexy. No gurus, but maybe a few wonks.

I don’t even think many (or any) of the ones I co-sign would be stocked in the self-help section of the book store. Maybe that’s the key — self-help is a genre best tackled by writers tangentially; not doggedly run through constructed stages in a life properly lived, but instead side-swiped in the pursuit of just less overall confusion. Sometimes that means road trips and spartan personal journeys, other times it means filtering everything through a thick wad of popular culture and seeing what universal truths seep through.

But what the fuck do I know. Without further ado (previous ado found here):

The Good

The Tao of Pooh (Benjamin Hoff)

As a child I never cared one way or another about Winnie the Pooh, so I’m not sure exactly what brought me to read this book. Glad I did. Pooh as an example of an exemplary “Western Taoist” makes the character much more interesting, and also brings the eastern philosophy down to earth. Hoff nails the voices of Ashdown Forest’s cast of characters, but more importantly he shows the simple lessons that seemingly smart western busybodies can learn from seemingly stupid Taoists. Or cartoon bears. (Same shit.)

What I learned: Reeelaax.
Further: Hoff wrote a follow-up called The Te of Piglet, but the result is much more forced and Hoff does a bit too much soapboxing. Also, Piglet is annoying, right?

Ishmael (Daniel Quinn)

There’s a goddamn branch of fig leaves on the cover and the tag line is “An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit”, but thankfully in high school I didn’t really know that these kinds of things were usually gross. Since reading Ishmael in 11th grade nobody has ever again been able to convince me that things are hopeless or that we don’t have a say in reversing the damage we’ve done to the world (which sometimes makes me annoying?). I’m not sure if Ishmael‘s politics are as on-point as I remember them, but years of reading DC Comics had already predisposed me to listening to the words of giant intelligent gorillas. (You heard me.)

What I learned: The stories we’ve used to regard history and humankind are toxic, not just to ourselves but to the planet.
Further: Quinn’s written other books. I haven’t read them.

Hardcore Zen (Brad Warner)

Unexpectedly and by far the best book I’ve read on Zen, Hardcore Zen was written by an Ohio-raised 80s hardcore punk musician who found Buddhism and became an ordained priest. That said, it’s not your typical going-to-Asia-to-find-yourself tale, and Warner does a great job of stripping Zen of its exotic mysticism. Instead of waterfalls and lotus flowers, Warner talks of grimy-ass clubs and references myriad obscure pop culture.

What I learned: Sit down and shut up. Also, “enlightenment is for pussies.”
Further: Warner’s follow-up is geared more towards practicing Buddhists, but his third book, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, is a candid story of fucking up and watching your life fall apart. He really adds nuance and practicality to a philosophy too often caricatured (even by its own practitioners).

Spark (John J. Ratey)

Been skimming this one at Chapters over repeat revisits. Ratey explains the connection between exercise and the brain, and makes a strong case that the maybe the real motivation for hitting the gym or the pavement is to ensure proper mental health (not that dropping a couple pounds isn’t good too). It’s one of the best things I’ve read on the topic of mental health, thankfully with zero psychobabble.

What I learned: Move something.
Further: Tony Horton is a fan. Get on that p90x.

Bruce Lee: Artist of Life (John Little, editor. Bruce Lee)

This is a collection of essays and letters written by Bruce Lee, delving into his thoughts on philosophy, identity, self-improvement and kung-fu. It’s a bit choppy and very repetitive, but that’s also its value. It’s like you’re watching Lee labour and fret as he constantly revises his thoughts, and it illustrates perfectly the amount of sheer effort, reflection and repetition that Lee put into the process of becoming who he was.

What I learned: “There is no help but self-help … For the lazy and the hopeless, they can forget it and do what they like best.”
Further: Lee’s famous Tao of Jeet Kune Do contains a lot of life wisdom among the martial arts talk, but for those who like to cut to the chase there’s also Bruce Lee – Wisdom for the Way, a collection of his quotes and maxims.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig)

Not really about Zen but not really about motorcycle maintenance either, Pirsig’s strange, philosophy-heavy exploration into science, knowledge, life and “quality,” took me a couple of attempts to get through. It’s a bit hard to parse if you’re not used to thinking about these things, but very rewarding once you get going. The narrator takes his son on a bike journey from Minnesota to Cali, and along the way faces a phantom of his former self.

What I leared: Pay attention. Be both rational and romantic.
Further: Read it twice.

The Bad

The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

I feel bad ragging on this book because so many people swear by it, but I just don’t get it. The story is lifeless and all the women characters are useless, and after the hero’s treasure hunt he returns home to (spoilers) find what he was looking for in his own backyard. I get the metaphor, but still, he finds treasure. So while I’m left here trying to appreciate the underlying beauty of my daily malaise and impending poverty, he has shiny fucking treasure, and I get nothing out of this.

What I learned: Sheep are easy metaphors.
Further: See below.

The Missing Rose (Serdar Ozkan)

It’s kind of like The Alchemist but with a female protagonist, and talking roses instead of treasure. It’s big in Eurasia, as the saying goes. I got this as a gift from my sister after her travels to Turkey, which is great on the one hand because she got it autographed and I love autographed books. On the other hand, it’s another book that adds a fairy tale sheen to the act of living, which even if inspiring will no doubt peter out over time. You’ll eventually be back where you started, with no treasure or talking roses.

What I learned: I now know the name of a contemporary Turkish author.
Further: Might as well just re-read The Little Prince.

The Secret (Rhonda Byrne)

Just joking, I’m staying the hell away from this book. Take it away, Dave Chappelle:

Reading suggestions? What’s worked for you?
Counterpoints? (If you loved The Alchemist or The Secret, I’d love to hear from you.)
Do you read more self-help/inspirational lit than you admit to?
Do you abhor the genres? Why?
What’s the dumbest self-help book you’ve read?

Oddly enough, when I google “old why guy with pipe”, I also got a pic of

Stephen Harper, and one of Paris Hilton. Photo via

Ah, New York Times, bastion of investigative journalism, defender of human rights, the fourth estate, pillar of a free society, spotter of trends, taster of foods, and of course, constantly perplexed by the age old problem: What is it about 20-somethings?

It’s always funny to see a newspaper, which we all know is run by people who are in their 40s and up, grapple with the problem of youth. “Why are they so different, why won’t they grow up, why won’t they leave home?” they ask as they sip Metamucil™ and squint at the computer screen. “When I was in my 20′s, I worked 44 hours a week for lousy pay so that I could afford a car and a home, and I accepted it because it was a nice way to live. And look at me now, working 44 hours a week for okay pay so that I can afford my home and my car, and I accept it. It’s a nice way to live.”

This highly hypothetical train of thought explains to me why so many articles are penned each and every year trying to explain some wild and crazy youthful trend (refer to: funemployment). Even obsessive navel gazing has been attributed to people in their 20s, but if they are guilty of navel gazing, then the older generation is equally guilty of obsessively gazing at the 20-something navel.

At 30-years-old, I find myself on what is referred to by the Times as, quite simply, the “age 30 deadline.” And it’s true. So true. But I didn’t need an 8,000 word article to tell me that. I’ve been telling myself that for the last 10 years :”Jesse, you don’t need to be rich, you don’t need to be successful, you just need to have some sort of semblance of what the rest of your life is going to look like.” Low standards, yes, which might explain this next quote.

A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.

I’m not sure if that number is amplified now that it’s 2010, but I truly hope so because it means I’m right on track. Ya!

And if 20-somethings nowadays are taking even longer to figure their shit out, even better. That means I won’t grow up to have a boss 10 years younger than me. But of course, that’s a massive generalization, as is the Times piece, because there are tons of people who go straight from school to work, just like their parents, and grow up someday to write articles for the New York Times trying to explain 20 year olds. But there are also people who choose to travel, or take unpaid internships, or go back for more school, or to actually pursue something they want to do, rather than just acquiesce to the pressures of parents and the status quo. And what the Times is missing here, in it’s sprawling attempt to make sense of things that, for those of us who have never had to watch a black and white TV, already makes sense, can be easily explained in one paragraph:

We grew up watching our parents work hard so that they could “give us a better life,” as we often heard so much. But “better life” doesn’t necessarily mean more channels on the HDTV, but the freedom to pursue careers that are fulfilling, rewarding, and yes, interesting to us (some pay would be nice too). How many people watched their parents toil away at jobs they couldn’t wait to get out of just to watch their RRSPs evaporate in 2008? It was crushing. So what is it about 20-somethings anyways? They are learning from the mistakes of the generations before them and trying to avoid making the same ones. The 20 to 29th years of our lives are like the last 10 yards of a football game, so rather than settle for the field goal you throw every last play in the book out on the field, from the fake punt to the flea flicker, with some lateral tossing for good measure. Eventually something is going to get you there, and when it does you will have happily experienced as much as possible and will be content to spend the rest of your life with the tried and true play-action. But not until you try everything else at least once. Then you turn 30, and it’s over, and you hope to god some generation of keeners doesn’t come up from behind and leave you in their dust filled with ambition and “yes sirs.”

Actually, if the whole world just regressed 10 years, this wouldn’t even be an issue anymore. Prices could come down because we couldn’t afford them, science would come up with some miracle cure to let women get pregnant much later (it would have to, because we’ve all seen what happens in Children of Men), and it wouldn’t be weird to see a childless single 29-year-old in an unpaid internship at some company they think is “cool.”

Actually, sometime I just wish I could re-do my whole 20s again, right from the start, knowing what I know now (that everyone is a live at home, funemployed slacker) and just hone myself to have some sort of advantage and eventually, inevitably, rule the world. But only if I can do it during my own generation’s time (as in, go back in time, thus not living my 20s in the 2010s). Because if being in my 20s right now means I have to relate to Ke$sha and this douche bag below, T. Mills, then I take it all back.

Music these days. What is it about those 20-somethings anyways?