These days I venture out of my dojo less frequently than once I did. In those days, I delighted the people with wit, levity, truthiness, and a certain tight-pantsed insouciance that was then utterly inimitable and today remains completely unique. In fact, I think it's fair to say that it will never be replicated. Perhaps if the scientists and dreamers of tomorrow's tomorrow were able to genetically engineer a Robert Plant / Norm McDonald / Jean Paul Sartre hybrid... perhaps that Serpentor of the future would be fit to stand in my shadow, but only perhaps.

But this weekend past I did venture out. I attended a performance given by the comedian Zach Galifianakis at San Francisco's fabled The Fillmore Auditorium and Ginmill and Bathhouse. Not only was it a delight for the waitress I tipped a sum approaching three dollars (American) over the course of the evening, it was a delight for me. I found the show to be very entertaining. Funny, in fact. This despite the unnerving proximity of a variety of peoples to me.

It is those peoples that are the focus of my insightoscope today. Not all of them, of course, as I seldom find left-leaning and professionals with pronounced interest in skiing to be worthy of my gaze, let alone my words. No. The children are the people that I wish to discuss on this great and glorious day.

Apparently Galifianakis has a following among the youth of our crumbling empire. The line of people waiting to get in was filled with them. I'm talking about kids in their latter teens and perhaps very early twenties. I'm not talking about the kind we all prefer -- the fresh-faced and haughty kind with pigtails and genitals like Telly Savalas' head. I'm talking about the disproportionately grown kind. The doughy and acned and mumbling kind. The kind that text messages bafflingly encoded missives to one another. Missives that, one can only assume, and utterly without truth, beauty, substance, art, or feeling.

I've not been exposed to this latter breed of yonker (though admittedly I have to the former, and how!), and was surprised by much of what I saw. I wish to bring to your attention some of their more unnerving life choices.

First, these young people are chubby. That, in and of itself, is no great crime. What bothers me is that they seem to have adopted the worst possible style of jean for their unusual shapes. It is very tight, very short, and very tapered. I assume this is in an effort to ape the likes of Joey Ramone. Unfortunately for us all, Joey Ramone was one of the least attractive beings to roam the Earth in its history. Amoebae laugh at Joey Ramone. And so into these jeans do our youth pour themselves, and the effect is one hundred pounds of ass that looks as though it will avalanche down and out the cuffs were they not so tight.

Second, what's with the hoods? As I am a lover of music, I watch Rockstar: Supernova. Over the course of this season, a number of performers have worn hoods up. I assumed these were misguided attempts to look pensive, dangerous, or like Sand People. Well, I'm here to report that the misguided attempts aren't limited to would-be Supernovas. These kids wear their hoods up and often, and it looks ridiculous.

And finally, they play sudoku. They make a plan to see a comedy show, probably via MySpace text messages or something, they pour themselves into their jeans, put up their hoods, show up at the venue, and whip out their sudoku books. When I was their age, we had a name for those kind of people. Nerds. What's wrong with these people? Why am I the only one smoking a joint in the bathroom?

Analogcabin @ 8:43 AM
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