Pays to Remember the Little Things

Adweek says millennials want “authenticity” because they hate advertising. Sounds right. The list of people who like advertising is shorter than the one for people who want rectal cancer.

It’s too bad that 20-somethings never knew commercial-free anything. Because in a mythical past, movies were just movies, journalists did journalism, and politicians were corrupt in secret. These days the bribes aren’t just obvious, they’re mandatory. Everybody’s on the make, everything’s a transaction and authenticity is a renegade aberration of the rat race on steroids that Madonna set off with Material Girl. Oh yeah, it’s on her.

Coming from an age of illusionment I know what I’m talking about. Once, we were dedicated to preserving the illusion money didn’t rule everything. It actually made things sexier. Don’t think so? Picture something really sexy and then stick Donald Trump into it. Capisce?

So my heart goes out to an age of disillusionment and the generation doing their best to restore authenticity—or at least identify it. A note of caution: there’s always a beat ’em or join ’em moment along the way. Try not to screw it up.

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When the profane holds court and the fashion is taunting contempt for dignity and tradition; even as patience, virtue and decency fade like scallop-edged Kodaks into a virtual wasteland of now, now, now, always three milliseconds to fast, hot and vulgar, things like this will pop up, challenging the order and meaning of things, disrupting for the sake of disruption and then passing like casual flatulence into the ancient bijou seat cushions of eternity.

The Path of Enlightenment

The road is long and fraught with struggle.
Persevere, persevere.

Sunday and Done Child

Good in every way earns the right kind of wrinkles.