Kids and Their Rock'N'Roll

I write this at the risk that I sound old and curmudgeon-y at the tender age of 25.

I've come to the determination that either the current crop of kids suck, or the music that defines them does. Possibly both. Music is the medium that really defines a generation. Movies try, but they don't. How many times have you really watched a movie and thought, "Yeah, I really feel like this is my life"? More importantly, how many times do you look back at a movie and think that? Now how many times do you look back at the music you listened to when you were in middle/high school and feel like that music reflected your world view or mindset?

I realize I'm not exactly breaking new ground here. But if you look at the 90s, you can see how the young generation looked at life. They were angry. They were confused. They didn't know what to do, but they knew who they were blaming. Nirvana still resonates to this day, even though it was a corporate production¹. Pearl Jam is still doing its thing, and they're still beloved. People still identify with them. You know the mentality of the alt-rock crowd. You know the mentality of the ska crowd². What's the zeitgeist of pop and rock music today? Kind of ugly.

If I'm missing something, please correct me. But I just see it today and it's just... nothing. Maybe it's just a logical extension of the increasing jadedness of Americans. Maybe it's the logical extension of the consumerism and lack of meaning we find with aspects of society. Maybe they're distracted. I just think it's pretty sad, the prospect of Fall Out Boy being the voice of a generation.

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1 I think that's a real tribute to the talent of the people involved.

2 If you listen to ska, which doesn't have wide appeal.

Marilyn Monroe

It's a bit mystifying to me that Marilyn Monroe is held up as this sort of paragon of feminism by my generation. Have these people actually spent the time to learn about who she was an what she did? She slept with anyone and everyone. She was an alcoholic and a druggie.

So, yeah, aspire to that.

Two Face

Some words of wisdom from my roommate, Steven C. Porter:

"You have two modes: Really exciting... and everything else."

The Man Across the Net

The human existence is driven by rivalries. We thrive on competition, even if that rivalry is with ourselves. Think about it: The Cold War was really just a rivalry with the US and Soviet Union. Politics thrives on rivalries, especially in this country. You have a rivalry with at least one of your friends in something. The instinct to one-up is hardwired inside us.

This is doubly true in sports. They don't just thrive on rivalries, we need them. If we don't have them, we create them. They are the most important part of the season. The effects of a rivalry are astounding. Winning that game means more than any other win, except a championship. It inspires players to raise their games higher than they had before or knew they could. A rivalry brings more attention and interest to a game than it otherwise would. It's art (sports) imitating life.

I had a rivalry of sorts in my high school career. I say "of sorts" because it was one-sided, and as the old saying goes, it's not a rivalry if one side wins all the time. It was with one of my teammates, Andy Keller.

Andy was/is a friend of mine. We had a lot in common, we were teammates, we had some gym classes together. We saw each other a lot back in the day. He's a good guy.

While I had started playing tennis in middle school, he didn't pick up the sport until his sophomore year of high school (my freshman year). When he joined the team and he wasn't very good, of course, because he didn't yet know how to play. So we played a couple times and I beat him. He started the year on the JV team.

He proved a quick study, moving up to second doubles by the time the season ended. When the next season rolled around, he was a lot better. All of a sudden, I couldn't beat him. His friend Jason also joined the team, and while he wasn't a very good tennis player, he was such a good athlete it was extremely difficult to get a ball by him, and he won matches that way. I wasn't good enough at that time to beat somebody like him, so I went from thinking I was going to be one of the best three best players on the team to not being able to beat a guy I could before and this other guy that had just picked up a racquet.

It was frustrating. I thought I was getting better, but Andy clearly was, too. I never beat him in those last two years he was on the team, and I haven't beaten him since¹. Andy, in fact, was the #1 singles player on the team his senior year². Is he better than me? Yes, but not so much so that he should beat me 100% of the time. He's a little bit faster than me, a little bit stronger, a little bit tougher mentally. Having a lot of little advantages really adds up, more than you might think. I had better volleys and a better second serve, but he made it tough for me to get up to the net.

It came down to my mentality. I didn't think I could beat him, so I never did. One time we were playing and we had to quit tied 5-5. We picked it up the next day, and all I could think was, "Just don't lose the next eight points in a row." What did I do? Exactly that. Why did I do that? Stupid. What made it worse was it would almost always be by close scores; I would just fold at the critical moments.

For his part, I doubt Andy ever saw it this way. Like I said, we were friends, and he was always nice and encouraging. I pulled out an old yearbook not long ago and read what we wrote. Not only did it make me laugh out loud, but I also noticed how he went out of his way to try and pump me up. So maybe I didn't have the requisite anger to really want to beat him for any reason other than my own ego.

One irony about all of this is that I haven't played since I realized all this. I really think I can beat him now. It's partially because I think I'm stronger mentally, but mostly because he doesn't really play anymore. We just don't live near each other these days. It's sad, because we still get along well.

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1 I could beat Jason, who was almost as good.

2 I suspect Joe Ziska intentionally allowed Andy to beat him before positions were set so that Joe could play easier opponents. All three of our singles players that year were pretty close in skill, which was good for the team.

Summertime, Summertime

This article by Steve Tignor¹ had me feeling nostalgic. It's a little weird to feel nostalgic about summer during summer, but think about it. It's not quite the same, is it?

I suppose that's one of the consequences of aging: Summer just doesn't quite have that magic. On the face of it, it makes sense; school is out, you have no responsibilities other than making sure you come home alive when the sun sets, and there was just a sense that you could do anything. The days were wide open. Sometimes you had a thing planned that you knew you were going to do, but more often than not you would get together with your friends and ask, "What are we going to do today?" If you were anything like my group of friends, you'd spend half the day trying to figure that out, but when you did, it was on.

I spent more than one summer this way: Get up, call Josh Crawford, go outside, play basketball in the driveway for 10 hours², sit on the porch when it was finally too dark to play. Throw in an Indians game once or twice a week³ and it was summer well spent. I remember that semi-humid haze of a summer dusk, when it was not quite cool but not really hot and the sky was sort of a ruddy color. Sitting there on the porch, it was just really nice. In high school, it would be going to the tennis courts at end, turning on the lights, and just playing in that warm summer air and imagining it was the US Open with the lights on. We would play well past midnight sometimes, just because we could.

Like all youth, I was foolish enough to think it would always be like that. Now, summer doesn't hold that promise of possibilities Why? There's a variety of reasons. For one, I think I have friends now that prefer to be inside than outside⁴. I also have a lot of friends that are married or in committed relationships now, so they're hanging out with their significant others and not me. Probably more importantly, we have jobs and commitments and other things. We can't just go outside and run around for no reason. We almost have to have a reason to go outside and have fun; it has lost its intrinsic value.

As I got older, I spent less time outside. Why? I'm not sure. It seemed like movies, videogames, etc. just held our interest more. The thing is that I don't think I've ever regretted spending a day outside; there have been many an occasion I regretted not doing so.

Summer hasn't changed, of course, we have. I would still take summer 100 times out of 100 instead of winter or fall. Perhaps I need to learn to appreciate summer in a different way. I've come to appreciate waking up to a brilliant azure sky instead of the gray dinge with which winter greets us. Maybe I need to take the bull by the horns and just get out there more⁵. It's a lot easier to just go to work, go home, eat, and do other things. And by the time I realize it, the day is gone and it's already night. Carpe summer⁶?

(Side note: Hey, hey! Blog post #100! Here's to the second century mark.)

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1 He's become one of my favorite writers. He also uses the technique I think is necessary to be a successful tennis writer: He writes about the things surrounding the game, the spirit of it. He combines this with unparalleled insight and good humor.

2 You would think playing that much would have made me good at it. It did not.

3 My parents were partial season ticket holders.

4 I'm starting to think this is a consequence of getting older. Kids want to be outside all the time. Adults do not. Why? Maybe we feel the temperature more, maybe we get used to the comfort of being inside.

5 I underestimated how much easier it is to be outside all day when there someone else making your meals for you.

6 Something that I've found is that it's so much more enjoyable to do nothing outside than it is inside. Even if it's just reading or updating your blog, it's a lot better to do so outside. That's what I'm doing right now.