“Once we got out of the 80s, the 90s are going to make the 60s look like the 50s…”
— Dennis Hopper, Flashback
That quote always stuck in my head – as did the movie, if for no other reason than to explain how it was that Kiefer managed to get Dennis Hopper onto 24 back in the first season, when the show needed some stunt casting to pop the ratings into a place where it could stay one step ahead of the Fox ratings axemen.
Anyway, interesting bit on the Gesturelab today about how the current ferment and change are, in their own way, very much like the upheaval that took place in the 60s. Only we’re not all so self-satisfied about it now – I think I read somewhere else that the 00s are like the 60s – only without the hope.
we’re seeing a renaissance similar to that one, where the arc of
experimentation, youth, ego, sex, and money gave way to the constant
change, the evolution as Jason called it, of those artists. The book
I’ve been working through recently, Bob Spitz’ The Beatles, grinds
relentlessly through the familiar (to me) story, adding layer of
rhythm, pathetic floundering, and missed opportunities upon layer, to
the point where you look back and suddenly remember how miraculous it
was that they accomplished anything, let alone the breadth of their
work.
…and here I saw the “Sexy Sadie” headline and thought this post might be somehow about the intersection of Web2.0 and the Manson family. Which would be a freaky thing, and worthy of a pullout feature in Rolling Stone or FastCompany. Right? Right? You’d read that, wouldn’t you? Seriously, there has got to be a story waiting out there about how the acid-drenched fruitbats have adopted the web as their new means of … well, of doing whatever it was they were doing when they weren’t having freaky monkey sex all day and night in the name of bringing on the Age of Aquarius and Universal Brotherhood.
Far be it from me not to join in on the general romanticization of the 60s, since I think that one of the real problems we have as a society is that the ideals of an alternative to crass materialism and the rat race have been so thoroughly discredited (hey – we’ve gone from revering the “drop out and join a commune” ideal to “hey, what’s the latest on Pimp My Crib?”). But I’m not sure that the comparison really holds – well, other than the fact that we have an intractable, unwinnable war on the other side of the world fueling our discontent – but the other factors like civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights and all that which were at work back in the 60s are all experiencing still the backlash.
Give us a bit more time for the pendulum to start swinging back, and maybe this will fit better. Thus: long term investment brokers say smart money goes
into patchouli and buckskin.
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