Another sunny Sunday

Discover Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers!

So we were watching Tom Petty play at the Super Bowl half-time show (Margaret and I missed most of the first half while making dinner), and I turned to Abby and said, "This is a great half-time show, perhaps the greatest I've ever seen. After all, who couldn't find this music appealing on some level?" They played "American Girl" - one of the greatest rock songs of all time - and "Free Falling" - another great song. Who could be so jaded that they wouldn't tap their toes to those songs, or at least tolerate them (unlike many Super Bowl half-time shows - recall the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake debacle and other shows of that type)?

I felt that my logic was impeccable. Great, melodic songs - who could argue with that? As the set wound up, Abby essentially agreed with me, but then asked: "Do you think it just reflects our age that this music appeals to us?"

Damn. Another reminder of how old I am. I could write a whole bunch of thoughts about how it's become apparent that I'm getting old. For example, I still think of Nirvana as "hip" music. But Nirvana is 15 years old which makes it equivalent to the Beatles when I started listening to them as a kid. And the Beatles were ancient at the time. Even worse punk, in my view, still has an edge even though it's, omigod, over 30 years old. Facebook? What the heck is that? I now realize how people get stuck in the culture of their youth and have problems keeping up as the world moves on. I recall having conversations about music with my Uncle Mike in the 1980s. He knew all the "old" bands of the time (e.g. the Who, Rolling Stones, etc. who had managed to survive from the '60s) and the "newer" guys like Bruce Springsteen, but was much less informed when I asked him about the new "hip" bands (e.g. Madness, Dexys Midnight Runners, etc.) At the time, I didn't really understand why he was starting to lag in his "hipness" (Uncle Mike with his Bitchin' Camaro - an inside joke for those fans of the "cool" Dead Milkmen - being the coolest uncle I knew), but now I understand. First, there's an extent to which the culture of your formative years just dominates all of the silly new stuff. This new stuff is just crap! Then come other obligations, most notably work and kids, which make it difficult to keep up with what's new and cool. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, apathy. At some point, it just doesn't matter if you're hip or not, perhaps because you realize that it's a futile struggle. I'm starting to reach that point, but I still hold out hope that my flannel shirts will come back in style when grunge makes a comeback. Alas, I suspect that's sort of like a hippie who is still wearing his tie-died shirts 40 years after the '60s.

In any case, we went to Great Falls in Maryland today. I carried Margaret in a back pack (or "pack pack" as she calls it) and, despite her best attempts, she wasn't able to fuss enough to ruin the trip. Here are some pics (and a hip, new - albeit 10 year old - remake of Dexys Midnight Runners greatest, and to date only, hit):

Discover Save Ferris!