WILD IN THE STREETS

1968 was a time of revolution in Paris, Mexico, Chicago, Saigon, Prague. Most were put down bloodily by the forces of repression. The young attacking the young at the behest of the over-30s. A young writer Robert Thom wrote a short story WILD IN THE STREETS and Hollywood capitalized on its call to trust no one over 30 by producing the film version with Christopher Jones playing the lead character Max Frost, whose teenage legions take over America after 14 year-olds are granted the right to vote. Power corrupts the pure and the movie ends with 12 year-olds saving. “Don’t trust anyone over 15.” Now the times are reversed and we babyboomers don’t trust anyone under 30 and my brother-in-law David Rutter, leading leisurelogist sent me this epistle to remind me of times gone by aka the 60s THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!! When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning .. uphill BOTH ways. And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it! But now that… I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today. You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don’t know how good you’ve got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!! There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter …with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! There were no MP3′s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ’d usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it! And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, You had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like “Space Invaders” and “asteroids” and the graphics sucked ass! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder, And faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE! When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn’t see, you were just screwed! Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards! And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire. If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot. That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980! Regards In 1980 I was living in the East Village. Life was tough. I had a black and white TV and a dial telephone. My stereo was almost useless and my typewriter was an old Olivetti. My girlfriends were young and we dreamed of a better world. It was nothing like this one. Somehow we were happy. Go figure. To hear the hit song THE SHAPE OF THINGS by Max Frost and the Troopers from WILD IN THE STREETS, please go to the following url http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUMcQGxIBQY&feature=related