The Lady GaGa video (two more people feel about it the way I do!) is just one of the many inventive ways in which thirtysomethingness continues to be catching up with me.
I swear I haven’t planned to become one of those people who mutter sentences starting with “those yoof of today”. Who get irritated by loud music playing at fashion retailers. And then they get irritated by the fact that all t-shirts seem to have juvenile prints on them (really? there are girls who would go for a bloke wearing a t-shirt saying “FUCKING GENIUS” with 12 pictures of various positions underneath? or a t-shirt saying “I RECYCLE GIRLS”?). And then as they walk home they see two teenagers in very lowly pulled pants — starting below their buttocks more or less — and they roll their eyes and go “jesus, what in the Alexander McQueen HELL are they wearing”.
Nevertheless, that’s exactly what I have become.
I listen to the Music Of Today and roll my eyes thinking “this has been done before, and so much better as well”. I realise it’s irrelevant, because pop music has never been about originality, and that it has never been aimed at thirty-somethings, but I can’t help it: it HAS been done before, and it HAS been done better. Which is why I can’t possibly enjoy Lady GaGa the way most of her uber-loyal disciples do. And because I hate stupidity in lyrics, I can’t possibly chart Ke$ha. Or Black Eyed Peas.
Then I look at my vinyl collection. And that’s even before I look at my CD collection. After carefully removing all the CDs I will never play again from the shelves and sticking them in a box (because I can’t possibly make myself throw them away) I ended up with 700+ CDs. I paid very good money for a lot of them. Almost none of them are worth that money anymore. Yet an iTunes download of the same music sometimes costs more than the CDs with thick, nicely printed booklets. Physicality of the object, thus, became a con rather than pro, and I can’t help but think those yoof of today are voluntarily getting screwed. (Except of course they have the last laugh, because they don’t REALLY pay for downloads.) Which doesn’t change the fact that it is me who has invested shitloads of money into CDs which right now aren’t really that much more than a waste of space.
The current H&M collection features jeans shirts, jeans jackets and jeans tops, last seen in the 1980s. I don’t only remember 1980s, I also remember the shame with which we laughed at the pictures only a few years later. What would make that stuff fashionable again? Oh yes — the yoof of today, who don’t yet realise the embarrassment they will feel next year when looking at the pictures they take today.
Movies made today? A very large part of them is either visual extravaganza without a plot whatsoever or badly acted remakes of movies made 30 years ago whose only fault is the fact that it’s impossible to add product placement to them. The remaining few are, perhaps, good — but the time it takes to separate the dross from the amazing? Who has that time in the age of information when you need to get a live feed of your neighbour’s cat’s bowl contents?
Those yoof of today get served shit on a golden platter. And they, ultimately, are the winners, because both them and me are force-fed the same excuse for entertainment, but I am a bitter old queen mumbling about “the Old Days used to be so much better you know” while they actually enjoy themselves.
