"Am I so out of touch?....No! It's the kids that are out of touch."

[G-DDT]

Sorry, I had to borrow that line from the Simpsons. Lately, I've become a bit perturbed between age gaps and the cultural differences that define them. Most of this falls under "things you encounter at line at the grocery store"

On two different occasions, I've gotten into talks with folks ringing up or bagging at Kroger's about movies we've seen. I mention "Birdman", and I get a blank look. "Nope, haven't heard of that one?" "Really, it's been out a while. It has Micheal Keaton in it." Then I get a nervous laugh and a "I don't even know who that is." I grab my receipt, groceries, and my jaw which is lying on the floor at my feet.

Today, I was waiting [[a while) in line at Meijers [[I refuse the self-scan), and you get to hear all kinds of wonderful things. So, a family with a mother who looks like Suzy Orman is buying some nice booze, and they have a nine-year old daughter scoping candy and the periodicals set out. She sees the various magazines depicted the recently departed Leonard Nimoy, and comments "Who's Mr. Spock?"

You know...back in my day [[Oh Gawd!-here he goes), we had a better appreciation and awareness of the older things. Even if my classmates weren't like this, I was raised to check out the older stuff. I was watching "Little Rascals", "Laurel & Hardy", "Marx Bros.", & "3 Stooges" religiously either rather early morning or rather late at night at the age of six [[I also knew who Spike Jones-not the director-was). I was probably one of the few ten year-olds who saw at least five Hitchcock films, knew who Ernie Kovacks was, could name the entire cast of "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World", or point out various charactcatuers [[sic) of famous actors making cameos in old '30s & '40s cartoons from Warner Bros.-all thanks to my upbringing.

Which brings me to cartoons. Maybe it was worth having your chub series stuff afterschool [[Transformers, Voltron and the like), but better still, waiting until Saturday mornings when you could get frizzle-tweaked on Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs [[Now with purple marshmallows!) and have a four hour block three-channel cornucopia of mind-numbing cartoon nonsense to enjoy, instead of a constant stream 24/7 from a dozen cable stations. Some things [[like contacting folks face-to-face versus constantly texting/chatting about nothing. After all, there is truth to "Absence makes the heart grow fonder".) are just worth waiting and building up a charge for, instead of just perpetually giving in and indulging in instant gratifications and quick fixes.

Folks can huff and say what are the point of any cartoons [[regarded an anathema policy to a failed cartoonist like myself). Yet, I think younger generations of this Idiocracy are robbed by not seeing the old cartoons. One can learn and establish history lessons [[like the old war cartoons-"Gremlins from the Kremlin" and all that-heh heh!) or lock down their understanding of traditional music or classical pieces [[just think of how many times one has heard Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" or ugh-Wagner "Kew da' Wabbit! Kew da' Wabbit!" thanks to cartoons?). After all, these were called "Looney Tunes".

All and all, my Andy Rooney rant is that there should be no reason in this day and age of "vast information highway" where folks can find out the silliest collected trivia about some actor's earliest work in an obscure '70s flick or commercial, that can't leave the kids of today open [[and interested) in tracing back the roots of well-anything. Why the lack of interest? Why the phasing out, watering down, shrill cheapening, and re-booting of classics [[Not looking forward to any version of Bill Condone's "To Kill a Mockingbird" or Micheal Bay's version of "Wizard of Oz"-Joel Schumacker was bad enough!)?

Any one concerned about this? Or am I going to be left hanging here? Because I would like to hear someone's input about their concerns in this area or how they notice how the younger ones don't stay up on their past.

[Pam]

There are probably some kids that are interested. To be fair, they have a lot more decades to catch up on than your average 40-50 year old had. I notice comments on music on You Tube sometimes where the poster claims to be 15 or whatever and likes listening to oldies.

[Lowell]

Ha ha great all star rant! I'll be sure to stay off your lawn or, to borrow a Bill Maher line about Harrison Ford's condition after his plane wreck, "He has been upgraded from cranky to to grumpy."

Actually I find a little co with music. My millennial-hipster age son and his cohorts like the icons of preceding eras like the Beatles, Hendrix, Joplin, Rolling Stones, Sinatra etc. I and my cohorts ignored or hated the preceding era particularly big band like Glen Miller, Guy Lombardo etc. Rock and Roll was there to stay instead.

[WKL]

Saw a great T-Shirt. "I may be old but I go to see all the cool bands"

[Ray1936]

I gotta pretty much agree with G-DDT 100%. Well, maybe 95%.....some kids still get training in the classics, I suppose.

I never much cared for contemporary music ever since that Elvis fellow came along. Up until then, the only rock music I ever heard was "Rock of Ages". In high school [[Mackenzie, thank you) our band played lots of Mozart, Bizet, and on up to Leroy Anderson [[his "Bugler's Holiday" became "Bungler's Holiday" with our brass section.) Anyway, I don't know how the rest of the band fared in musical tastes in later life, but I absolutely love most classical music today. Love watching Andre' Rieu over and over on YouTube, especially when he plays anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Most flicks today are the same thing over and over....explosions and mayhem. I much prefer "Casablanca" where only two folks are tastefully shot. Letters of Transit can get you in an awful jam, sometimes. And, yeah, Laurel and Hardy and the Stooges are incomparable. As Mr. Laurel said to Mr. Hardy, "Any bird can build a nest, but it's not anyone can lay an egg." The pure stupidity of that line shows great intelligence, which is beyond most of today's young 'uns.

In high school I had a great job at Fromm's Hardware on Grand River. To make a sale, we had to write up a sales slip and punch number into a keyboard on a regular cash register. No computer gadgets like they have today. And if the bill was $1.54, and the guy gave me two bucks and four pennies, I knew instantly to give the guy two quarters in change. Do that at a McDonald's today and it will probably blow the kid's mind.

Well, good rant, DDT. And I couldn't agree more. Now, where's, my Boston Pops casettes?

[rb336]

Saw a great T-Shirt. "I may be old but I go to see all the cool bands"

was it "go to see" or "got to see?"

[WKL]

It's "got". Darn spell checker doesn't correct properly spelled wrong words.

[Johnnny5]

Any one concerned about this? Or am I going to be left hanging here? Because I would like to hear someone's input about their concerns in this area or how they notice how the younger ones don't stay up on their past.

"Out of Touch" ? Or just not familiar with a bunch of old TV shows and movies? I'm getting a little bit older [[Mid 30's), but I haven't owned a TV in over 10 years and haven't been to a movie theater in close to 15. I pick up a bit here online occasionally, but would not recognize most "TV stars" and probably couldn't name more than a handful of current TV shows. I wasted enough time watching that crap to cover several lifetimes when I was a kid. Now I just use all that extra time by wasting it here on the internet.

[G-DDT]

Thank you much folks. I just got a bad case of E.O.G. [["Early Onset Grumpiness"-saw Ed Begley Jr. diagnose Armisen on Portlandia with that last night-and I said "Yeeup! Das' me!"). I know it's silly of me to base all of my consternation of this thread on the specifics of pop cultural references [[which are always going to be limiting to folks of either era and/or region). Yet, the trend towards scrubbing the past away is getting a tad overwhelming. As fractured as even Ren & Stimpy was in the early '90s, those guys behind it knew their past, drudged up retro styles, stuck in classical pieces, and got voice talents from guys like Frank Gorshin [[as the Rev. Jack Cheese).

By the way, Ray, I had it straight from a number of sources when living in Boston, that back in the day, Arthur Fiedler [[of Boston Pops) was quite the eccentric. They told me that any time he heard fire engine sirens go off, he'd hop out of bed [[still in his nightgown) and sprint out into the cold night to where the fire was happening. I later confirmed that with Wikipedia.

[Ray1936]

Yes, I heard that about Fiedler also. A real fire bug [[not meaning 'arsonist' by any means!). As for me, I gave up any interest in fires after the '67 riot.

[Hermod]

We didn't get a TV until I was 12 [[1951) a 12in black and white Admiral. The TV channels didn't have a lot of original programming and you saw a lot of 20s and 30s movie shorts and old B&W cartoons. Saturday mornings were nothing special. After 11pm, you got to look at the "test pattern" until the next morning.

[Maof]

"After 11pm, you got to look at the "test pattern" until the next morning."

oh crap, i remember that too and i was born in the mid-sixties!

[gazhekwe]

I never heard of most things on TV, so I would say I am "out of touch" in terms of mainstream entertainment. That is not a new thing, been that way since the 70s at least. It does take me aback when a younger person has not heard of something so familiar to me as Mr. Spock, but I can take them aback when I don't have a clue who Katy Perry is. It's lifestyle, not age.

[G-DDT]

“Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.”
-Albert Camus

[Kevgoblue]

I personally just don't care for the stuff that these kids do watch. But to be fair to them, why would you expect them to watch old classics? You did because you grew up in the day of 2-4-7-20-50-56-62. 6am - 12am. That was it. Few choices. And those choices were moreso aimed at adult viewers.

In todays world kids can look at Disney, Disney Jr, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr, Cartoon Netwook, Sprout, ABC Family, Boomerang, etc. That's more channels devoted exclusively to kids, than we had in total. And I'm sure there's more, I just worked to come up with 8. There's a reason that the whole neighborhood was watching Looney Tunes and SuperFriends on Saturday morning. Because after 12:00 cartoons were over for the day.

In every generation the old folks decry the values of the current youth, as is refelected in what they enjoy. Look at the musical artists that older perople have decried. The Beatles, Elvis, Prince, Maddonna, The Rolling Stones.
I imagine 40 years from now someone will be posting on DetroitYes! [[or maybe WarrenYes!) that they can't believe that the current young kids never heard of Brittney Spears or Eminem.

[Jimaz]

... You did because you grew up in the day of 2-4-7-20-50-56-62. 6am - 12am....

Let's not forget 9. eh?

[G-DDT]

"Fewer choices" versus overwhelming deluge catering to every whim [[and in such a wrong area such as T.V.)? One would find it hard to believe coming out of a windbag like me, but as much as I love choices, in the area of T.V.,there's something to be said to "Less is More".

[G-DDT]

I was raised a socially and emotionally defunct "vidiot". For the first 13 years of my life, I'd watch 8 hours of T.V. every day. That was a third of my life. I saw every cartoon and every rerun of Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, Brady Bunch, Beverly Hillbillies, Addam's Family, etc. Because me neighborhood was filled with kids who didn't like me, I related to T.V. better than people. I got all my morality plays from T.V.-not through the defunct ways of my Evangelical Lutheran upbringing [[that never once taught us one didactic of Jesus, not one N.T. epistle, not one peep from the O.T. prophets, not one Proverb or teaching of Solomon-nothing but the same "parting of the Red Sea, building an Ark, walking on water" narratives, all those years).

When I was ten, my mom's boss added a video store, let my mom have an old unit, and allowed her to bring home a movie every night. Eventually, I got hep to Monty Python. At thirteen, we finally got cable. Nickelodeon, MTV, E! Entertainment Television [[with Greg Kinear), A & E, and how Fox was riding piggyback on channel 50. Lots more things aimed at me [[that and corruption scandals caused my boss to stow his entire video store in our back den for a summer. Guess who was the popular kid that year?).

I clicked and I flipped and I surfed and I scanned, until some kind of "Show-verdose" overcame me. I burned out and said "There's got to be more to life than this." A few months later, I lost my virginity. I wanted nothing more to do with T.V. It's something I never want to return to- ever.

I truly despise having a family that thought that this was the only way to bond. My mother is lost in T.V. and can't pay attention well to anything. Her elderly mother before her would tune out rare visits from relatives by absorbing herself in T.V., and then wonder why she was so lonely.

I feel sorry for the generation X-treme that lives in perpetual, static bombardment that can never think outside of the box. I also have been growing an ever-developing hatred with 'puters, as well. If the Amish were more racially diverse, I'd join them, since I'm already religious and buttoned-down [[yeah, I know "buttons" and Amish-no mesh there) and it's the only place to escape the hideous panopticon Minoan maze of contrived, filtered, and heavily monitored data that is the internet.

[jackie5275]

But to be fair to them, why would you expect them to watch old classics? ...In todays world kids can look at Disney, Disney Jr, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr, Cartoon Netwook, Sprout, ABC Family, Boomerang, etc....

Since you mentioned Boomerang, I'll point out that many of the classics are on Boomerang. That's their line up.

[jackie5275]

It's lifestyle, not age.

Sure is. I don't pay much attention to television or movies as much as I do sports. Could I spot half of Hollywood on the street? No, but I could spot most of MLB or NFL on the street. It depends on what you like.