Comments on: Boomer breakout?

By: Grant

Grant — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 10:55:55 +0000

Jeff, agreed, thanks for the correction, Best, Grant

By: Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 10:13:57 +0000

That fellow smashing the guitar in Animal House was John Belushi, not Jim Belushi.

Shocking.

Jeff

By: bjk

bjk — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:16:01 +0000

Animal House was about and written by pre-boomers. Chris Morris was born in 1942. Check out the fraternity picture.

http://www.chrismillerwriter.com/bio.html

“I still wanted to tell the world what those patrician kids (and some not so patrician) were doing, back there before Kennedy got shot and the world changed.”

In fact most of the famous boomers are pre-boomers.

By: bjk

bjk — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:09:53 +0000

Animal House was about and written by pre-boomers. Chris Morris was born in 1942. Check out the fraternity picture.

http://www.chrismillerwriter.com/bio.html

“I still wanted to tell the world what those patrician kids (and some not so patrician) were doing, back there before Kennedy got shot and the world changed.”

In fact most of the famous boomers are pre-boomers.

By: bjk

bjk — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:09:21 +0000

Animal House was about and written by pre-boomers. Chris Morris was born in 1942. Check out the fraternity picture.

http://www.chrismillerwriter.com/bio.html

“I still wanted to tell the world what those patrician kids (and some not so patrician) were doing, back there before Kennedy got shot and the world changed.”

In fact most of the famous boomers are pre-boomers.

By: pnautilus

pnautilus — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:41:38 +0000

One word: Harley. Watch the Harley sales curves over the last ten years. Sharp uptake by baby boomers until about 2 years ago, when the trend and subversion became a bit too prominent (a la the dominant paradigm), sales began to slow. It seems as though boomers were caught between the need to rebel and the need to be America’s new old money elite.

By: Mary W

Mary W — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 02:54:58 +0000

Well, FWIW, my own bet on the next phase of Boomerdom will be transforming the current model of old age and retirement. (More Magazine is a recent interesting addition to the media space in this area). IME it’ll be a combination of things:

1) remaining youthful, well preserved, sexy. Increasing popularity of medical treatments for the older cohort, both to alleviate real medical conditions (joint replacements etc) and purely cosmetic needs (face lifts etc).

2) “leaving a legacy” — the next chapter of life, mentoring younger people, “meaningful” second careers, etc.

3) pursuing behaviors formerly labeled as “for younger people only”: playing extreme sports, starting new businesses, getting drunk in public, etc.

(that last relates to a personal peeve of mine: I’m annoyed at how many “nice” ie expensive restaurants in my neighborhood are becoming dominated by a bar crowd of noisy drunks in their late 40s-50s, swilling $12 cocktails and braying like donkeys. When I spend $50+ pp on a meal, I expect a relatively well-behaved environment, and it’s becoming less the case. It’s like a retirees’ frat party; the same people from Animal House, just 30 yrs older. And because they’re spending $$$ and there’s a lot of them, the restaurants hesitate to do anything to rein them in. Ah, life in the shadow of the boomers…)

By: Jo Paoletti

Jo Paoletti — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:34:23 +0000

Well, of course there are limitations to all this boomer stereotyping. Does it need to be said that much of what is written about boomers is actually about upper-class, white folks? Back when “yuppie” was a current label, I adopted the label “ohho” — for old hippie homeowner. Being an academic (genteel middle-class) with a blue-collar spouse (carpenter, and not the rich contractor type), I find little in common with my generational kindred beyond a fondness for Motown and the ability to recite commercials from the 60s. It’s all too easy.

By: jkh

jkh — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:49:23 +0000

peter,

there was a very interesting remark by peter aspden (art critic at the ft)

“(It)has been a key characteristic of 21st-century art forms, to reinvigorate themselves continually, widening their gene pools to embrace alien cells.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1946d16e-8372-11dc-b042-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

this now one can read opposed to the logic of 20th century art (which in a way was developing much more vertically) where a new art form emerged mostly as counter-statement to a previous one.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:17:11 +0000

A friend tells me that the male restroom of the Philosophy Department at the University of Texas, Austin, had some graffiti which said:

“Subvert the dominant paradigm!”

Underneath, in another hand, was written,

“What if that is the dominant paradigm?”

The boomer dilemma in a nutshell!