Mind Your Own God Damn Business

Fuck tequila. I've got your panty stripper right here.

As an old man, it’s my right, my duty, and my unavoidable habit to accuse the generations below me of being softer than I am and liking stuff that sucks compared to the stuff I liked as a kid. If I’m not ranting about twitter and MTV raising a nation of pussies or letting people younger than me know that MTV used to be cool when they played music instead of reality tv all day, I’m not doing my job.

This is my role, just like their role is to ignore me and believe that they’re the only generation that “gets” it. I yell about having to share a phone that was attached to a wall with my entire family growing up, and they roll their eyes and compliment each other on this fresh new style of shoes that they’re all wearing called “High Tops”.

Most of the time, I manage to keep this in check; any time I’m getting ready to start accusing the generations below me of being a new breed of fuck ups, I think back to 18 year old me and realize that the clothes and the music were a little bit different when I was that age, but other than that, we were almost exactly the same.

There is an exception to this rule, I think, and it’s been bothering me a little bit.

Where is the music that pisses off people’s parents?

When Rock and Roll first showed up, it freaked out adults. They only showed Elvis above the waist on the Ed Sullivan show, because the network didn’t want teenage girls seeing The King’s hips swiveling in a suggestive fashion. At the time, it was believed that the sight of a man in leather pants gyrating his pelvis would make it physically impossible for teenage girls to NOT have wild, unprotected sex with anything and everything that they could find. People still remember Elvis, but not as a menace to the virginity of young girls everywhere. It has more to do with his music, his love of fatty food, and that he died on the can.

I have to get off track for a second here – everyone talks about Elvis’ death while on the toilet like it’s a mark of shame of some kind, that there’s no worse way to go. What the fuck? When you go, you should be somewhere comfortable, doing something that you love. Something like, I don’t know, snacking on a fried peanut butter banana sandwich and evacuating your bowls while you’re high on painkillers. Think about it: Doesn’t that sound pretty nice? Even without a sandwich and a bunch of Vicodin, I always enjoy my time in the bathroom; I get plenty of reading done, nobody tries to interrupt me, and it’s nice and quiet. The question isn’t “Is there a worse way to go?”, It’s “Is there a better way to go?” Hell, I hope that’s how I go, assuming that it’s not at the hands of an animatronic shark from the shower (although I would feel a certain level of vindication about my fear of them while bathing if one were to kill me – It would certainly teach a lesson to all of you judgmental assholes that have been making fun of me for all these years). The only way it could be any better is if someone I hated was the first paramedic on the scene and had to deal with my cold, dead, poop-smeared corpse.

"I knew it! Time to make sure that my 5th grade girlfriend is the first person here, and then enjoy a smug death."

Let’s move on.

When I was a child, my earliest memory of this phenomenon was 2 Live Crew’s Me So Horny. I remember segments on the news about how terrifyingly inappropriate the song was, and how badly is was going to fuck up kids. To their credit, that song was pretty dirty; at one point towards the end, one of the guys requests that a girl suck his asshole. We’ll never know if she did or not, because the song ends after that. It’s one of the great mysteries of our time. After the initial media outrage, the band kind of faded off into obscurity (barring, of course, Hoochie Mama). People still listen to that song, but no one seems to be afraid that it warps minds like they used to.

Later on in the mid 90′s, it was gangster rap that had the media’s attention. Newsweek articles and adult panic focused on it. If I cried one manly tear of blood every time in the mid 90′s that I heard someone bitching about how these goddamn misogynist rappers referred to women as “bitches” and “hoes”, I could canoe everywhere on a river of blood. (Look, I know that didn’t make very much sense. I spent all of my blogging time doing homework and now it’s very late. Just shut up and go with it.) Most of those guys are still around, but nobody seems to be threatened anymore. Dr. Dre has quite a bit of mainstream respect now, and I think everyone on the planet now thinks that Snoop Dogg’s antics are endearing instead of dangerous. The public finds him roughly as threatening as they found Bill Cosby in the late 80′s.

"Despair, 'Sheeple'! Am I blowing your tiny, conformist mind with my dapper top hat and my turquoise eye shadow?

After that, the panic switched to Marilyn Manson. He wore a lot of goofy makeup and wacky latex outfits with breasts built into them, and it freaked adults out. I remember it all peaked in 1999 when Columbine happened. There were accusations that his music was what caused Klebold and Harris to shoot up their school (along with the game Doom II), and he even canceled a leg of his tour that was running through Colorado. Now, nobody cares. He released an album about two weeks ago, and even though it’s the same kind of thing he was coming out with in the late 90′s, nobody seems to think that it’s going to push an impressionable 17 year old over the edge.

Which brings us to Eminem, who said plenty of goofy shit about abusing drugs, women and homosexuals. Once again, everyone’s prognosis was grim for their children, who’s minds were being poisoned by his wacky lyrics about Vicodin, misogyny, and the murder of his wife while his child was in the car with him. I remember that everyone thought that it was a relatively big deal when he did “Stan” with Elton John.

And, once again…nobody cares anymore. He released a new CD last month, which, by all accounts, is filthier than anything he’s done before. I don’t know if he’s deliberately going balls to the wall with the shock value, but it certainly seems like it. It’s number one on the billboard album chart right now, and yet, so far, no parent groups are frightened by it.

And then…well, maybe I’m out of the loop, but it seems like it dropped off. I haven’t read a single article or seen a single protest aimed at an artist since, and I’m not sure why.

Is the music being written not offensive enough to freak parents out? That seems unlikely. Surely there’s something out there that parents can blame their children’s problems on, but I don’t know where it is! Am I just getting too old to keep track of this crap? That also seems improbable. Now that I’m old, I should be one of the first to know if old people are freaked out about something.

Maybe it’s just time for me to accept something that I’ve suspected all along:

That today’s youth are a bunch of pansies who’s steady diet of T-Pain, The Black Eyed Peas and Green Day has tuned them soft.

I’m just kidding.

But seriously, artists. You need to step your game up. I know that you’re trying to push the envelope, but if 35 year olds don’t think you’re fucking up their kids, you’re not doing your job. Here’s some material for you to study:

Fuck what you’ve heard, and save your drama. All I want is my hoochie, mama.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s very late and I have to go to bed. See you on Wednesday.