This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

also stuff like the cost of housing where I live and the cost of higher education/student loan debt -- younger ppl have it harder than I did.

I just feel awkward about it, like uh oh am I doing the cranky old white male mansplaining thing by telling you about how important Kraftwerk were in the development of that shitty electronic dance music you like so much

also I am not a teacher tbf

xp

just be cool man
they can google kraftwerk, they don't need you

my only moment of that feeling was when i was at a show organized by some very young people and i said something about Can and they were like who's that and i wigged and excitedly told them about Can...and then maybe a day or two later I realized they may have been just fucking with me and they wanted to see the old lady wig out and i felt stupid. but whatever. so i feel stupid? i can't let that bother me. i didn't hurt anyone. i just wigged about Can. that's human.

what's Can

Can is a band
Google "can band"

see how cool i was that time

Suzi Quatro's side project.

they are a band who had a song called Can Can. google "can can can" if you want to know more

I think it's cooler when ppl excitedly explain to me the things I don't know about than when they ask me to look it up

fwiw

keep telling ppl about bands LL it's good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d65oQPTYI4o

^these vids friggin blew my mind

yeah me too
i just had this terrible feeling that they did know and they were laughing at me while i was being happy and excited
that's just mean

I had this weird job once setting up 4merican 4pparel stores on the east coast and The Clash came on the soundsystem and a worker asked me who it was. I gave a quick summary (punk, London, 70s/early 80s), and she said "oh, like The Beatles." I just nodded.

aw, that's tender. i love teaching young people about music.
it's literally part of my job!! having students who are a blank slate and willing to listen >>>>> students who think they know everything and test you just to be assholes

I'm just gonna tell every kid I meet that I'm Damo Suzuki

the kids in that video actually knew more than I expected! interesting to hear all the off-the-wall ways they came in contact with some of these songs (Perks of Being a Wallflower soundtrack, Jonas Brothers cover, Just Dance).

the title -- DO TEENS KNOW 80s MUSIC? (REACT: Do They Know It?) -- almost seems like a deliberate Bojack parody (Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things?? Let's Find Out!)

Not surprisingly, all the featured teens in the video are vivacious and good-looking. Therefore, a representative sample of "TEENS" who might "KNOW 80s MUSIC".

doing karaoke with young people (late 20s/early 30s) is a trip!

i'm told that the kids are into 'frasier' now; this is where they lost me

karaoke is where you really see generational differences re music nostalgia

Apparently "Friends" is a thing with the kids today. My partner teaches high school English, and her students bring it up often (with the occasional "were the '90s really like that?" question).

xp

Still think Frasier's boilerplate "overheard / misunderstood" plot is just Three's Company with better vocabulary and actors.

yeah, in grad school, we had to write a script for an episode of Frasier, and it was pretty much that

I refuse to countenance the idea that Kelsey of the Dark Secrets Grammar is a better comic actor than John Ritter

Haha, point taken. I'm thinking more of David Hyde Pierce's comic timing.

everyone always thinks i'm younger than i am which most people think is great but the flipside is that i get passed over for jobs that other, more wrinkly colleagues somehow just seem more suited for and the other thing is that i'm gonna die way before people are expecting

i look younger than i am too and it always stings when people comment on it because if looking young is what is good about me, i can expect that not to last long.
it's like getting an extension on an assignment; the assignment (looking older) is coming it's just not here quite yet. it'll be here eventually.

otherwise i don't mind.

All sorts of shit is big with my kids. The US version of the Office, Friends, Glee. Grey's Anatomy. Whatevs, if it makes them happy.

Couple of months until I turn 44. Feels fine so far. Got a nice mostly gray beard.

"was the 90s really like that?"

to my own consternation, I don't even understand the question

I fully support the youngins being into Frasier.

I will be 41 a month from today and I am excited about it! I’ve never felt better about myself or more comfortable in my own skin. Tbh I think I look better now than I did when I was 20. I like aging so far and I’m excited about the woman I’m becoming.

I dye my hair so I have no idea how much of it is grey but I def get a couple in my bangs that I pluck. No big deal.

To Tracer’s point - I made a point of telling people my age at my last job once I realized they thought I was a lot younger and were treating me differently as a result.

That REACT vid link gave me a few laughs, being right in the same age range as their parents, playing The Cure and trying to influence my nephew with my tastes. I liked how open they seemed to the music, not derisive, but genuinely appreciative and/or bemused.

Whatever age the protagonist of Hey Nineteen is, that’s the age I aspire to and am in my mind

Sometimes it bums me out to realize when Hey Nineteen was released Fagen/Becker were 32 and 30, respectively. I’m the same amount older than them as they were to the 19 yr old.

32 in the '70s is like 65 today so don't worry

"Hey 38" would be the new version

hey 38
that's Lily Allen

(too recent actually....)

"hey 40, that's ella mai..."

I will say that one unalloyed good of gender transition is that I dont look like a 49 year old man, I look like a maybe early 40s woman.

I'm 44 and for years looked younger than I was but my beard is now 50% grey and gives it away. I've lived in college towns for years and when the places that got busted multiple times for selling to underage kids and are now super paranoid about checking IDs stop carding you, you look old.

I teach university students though which is a fascinating window into young people who get younger every year to the point that now my students have little to no recollection of September 11th happening because they were all 2-4 years old at the time and grew up with Marvel movies the way I did with Star Wars.

What's retro and cool to them is also a trip; my neighbor's kid and her friends are 14 or so and obsessed with the TV show Friends, and dressed as Friends characters for Halloween and carved the Friends logo onto a pumpkin. And in my design class I had a student talk about the design of Stranger Things which led to class discussion about 80s type and design and one of them asking "in the 80s, did everyone KNOW how 80s they looked?"

I told her that someday they would make a movie about now and the actors would be wearing yoga pants and North Face jackets and riding scooters and they all looked totally horrified.

In less than two years Hey Nineteen could be about someone born on 9/11

"in the 80s, did everyone KNOW how 80s they looked?"

I feel like they kinda did!

I teach university students though which is a fascinating window into young people who get younger every year to the point that now my students have little to no recollection of September 11th happening because they were all 2-4 years old at the time and grew up with Marvel movies the way I did with Star Wars.

This was definitely the case for me at UCI in re shifting perceptions of cultural baselines. I get less of it now at my current UCSF job but the volunteers I oversee provide a small lifeline there.

I remember in the 80s thinking "we are the new thing, we're making the 80s its own style" and then I wore a pink denim jacket, grey stone wash baggy jeans and a thin black leather tie to my year 10 formal dinner ... oh and grey leather shoes dear god.

heh i had someone recently compliment a sweater i was wearing as being "on trend" or something similar, and I said, "thanks, I've had this since the 80s"

I feel like they kinda did!

agreed

in the 80s somebody was ribbing my dad about his suspenders (NB "braces" if you're British!) - saying how "yuppie" they were. he was like "I've had these suspenders since the 1950s"

xxp a few years ago I was told I was voted "best looking guy in IT" (not a high bar obviously) by the early/mid 20s women in the admin team, but they also said they were pretty sure I was only trendy because I'd been wearing the same clothes since the 90s and they happened to be in fashion again, which was obviously true

I wear shirts on the weekends older than some of my co-workers.