Rancid Monke

Every new generation has to hear from the last generation about how much better things were back in the day. The grass was greener, the streets were cleaner, the people were nicer. The torch has been passed, so now I am the out of touch wierdo urinating on the youth of today’s awesome parade. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s for reference. The problem is somewhere between nostalgia and reality I have begun to realize certain things just really were better in my day. So how do things stack up from then to now?

Fast Food – Better in my day, no contest. Somewhere along the line it was decided that we needed a hamburger in our hand in under a minute. So instead of building a meal with care and attention, fast food workers mostly dump pre-formed proto-food into deep fryers for a 30 second count. They say your taste buds change over time and this may account for some of the change in flavour and enjoyment but that doesn’t explain why ground beef I buy at a store tastes nothing like a patty of burger shaped food goo from a fast food place.

Movies – The big difference is that in my day they still made R – rated movies. Movie Execs weren’t afraid to get some violence and boobies in there to liven up my cinema experience. Hard R action flicks (which was kind of a favorite genre of mine) are now usually more kid friendly. I mean, the original Aliens vs. Predator movie was PG-13. Who thought that was a good idea?

Cartoons – I think once you have to start filling up 2-3 channels worth of 24 hour a day programming with cartoons the quality is going to slip a little. I can’t knock them for making cartoons just to sell a toy line, our generation had it’s share of those too. Still, at least back in the day some sort of effort was put in. My nephew has shown me cartoons where the entire premise is that people play a collectible card game where the characters come to life off the cards and battle it out. Imagine filming your Magic: The Gathering games and splicing in footage of a Godzilla movie. If that sounds riveting, then you are an idiot.

Music – Okay, this one is a draw. I mean, I could complain about Justin Beiber but we had NKOTB (I couldn’t be bothered to type out he full name, don’t mistake that for familiarity or fandom) and Tiffany. I don’t think American Idol and it’s brand of bland pop music is helping the world as a whole, but the sheer volume of music being created in modern times means for every albums worth of crap there is at least one good song out there.

TV- Another draw. Despite all the pointless reality shows currently cluttering up the networks it sort of balances out against shows like “Full House” and “Family Matters”.

Video Games – The modern world wins…fine, bite me.

Celebrities – I don’t know, it just seems to me that back in the day celebrities were better at hiding their crazy from the rest of the world. Makes it hard to watch Mel Gibson movies, I will tell you that much.

Rancid Monke