Generational torsion is not a new thing. Each generation has one that comes before and then comes after. The as-they-are-known Greatest Generation butted heads with the Baby Boomers that grew their hair and attended, to a man, Woodstock. Then the Gen-Xers befuddled their folks by missing expectations, be they a gastroenterology practice, or dropping out of college, as applicable. Befuddling is what we do in that shear between the decades, as if it were a function of nature and not human nature.

And now, as Gen-X grows old enough to inherit the management of the forces that run the world, the Millennials (or Gen-Y, or Echo Boomers), as they [...]

Binge drinking, an activity once confined to college students and the characters on TV's Mad Men, is a growing trend in the lives of a different group: Baby Boomers. That's right, government data shows that "23 percent of men between the ages of 50 and 64 admitted to binge drinking in the past month, as did roughly 9 percent of women." (The definition here for binging is five or more drinks on one occasion in the period of a month, which, you know, really?) Boomers blame their troublesome tippling on the stress of having growing children and elderly parents and mortgages and debt and concerns about the [...]

I used to believe that the Boomers were civilization's most self-obsessed generation, but the recent raft of reflections occasioned by the passing of John Hughes made me realize that maybe no one group of people has a monopoly on nostalgia and self-importance. Still, until Barack Obama pushes through those DEATH PANELS, we are stuck with the Boomers and their endless series of anniversaries for events that seemed earth-changing at the time but, with the distance of history, turned out to be just a bunch of people shitting in a field in upstate New York. That's right: The hippie fuckfest that was Woodstock happened forty years ago this weekend! [...]