Changes

There are certain forms of entertainment that some will love forever, and there are some that, as one ages, turn out to be not as cool or entertaining.
Last week I decided to re-read Tom Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” for the first time in many years. It’s an interesting story about author Ken Kesey and his little group known as the Merry Pranksters. The story still interests me, the post-Beat Generation and what was between that and the hippie scene fascinates me, even though I don’t trust hippies in any way, shape or form.
But the writing is just awful. Wolfe’s style and prose in this book read like it was written by a 14-year-old who was clubbed in the head with a giant rock. I understand authors who try to step out of the norm, in fact I normally love it, but reading this made my brain feel like it was about to ooze out of my head.
This made me think of other books, movies and music that haven’t aged well with me.
Every Kerouac book besides “Dharma Bums” is pure trash. Either he’s writing in a way that you can’t tell what’s going on, or he’s writing in such a goofy way it’s incomprehensible.
The band Weezer. I love the first two albums, hated every one after them. But when I thought about it, I can’t imagine any time in the near future I might get a hankering to listen to that band. They were decent enough, but Rivers Cuomo is not an indie rock genius, just an average indie rock songwriter.
Also, I looked at my Miles Davis collection and out of the five albums of his I own, all I pretty much need is “Kind of Blue.” The rest is not interesting to me anymore.
Then I thought about movies. I think “The Matrix” is not as great as I once thought, thus reducing the Keanu Reeves movies I enjoy down to the “Bill and Ted” flicks, and I think I only like those because George Carlin is in them.
Who am I kidding, I don’t like those either.
I used to love purposely bad films. There’s one in my collection called “The Terror of Tiny Town.” It’s a 1930s western musical with an all midget cast. When I tried to rewatch it the other night, I had to take it out right away. Its camp humor no longer makes me laugh.
I can’t listen to Bob Dylan anymore. His nasally gibberish he passes off as folk poetry is just a huge pile of fail. Just because someone is cryptic and weird doesn’t make them a genius: it just makes them cryptic and weird.
“Star Wars” was ruined for me by its creator, George Lucas. I may still have enjoyed the films to this day if he hadn’t tinkered with the original trilogy in the ’90s by adding goofy aliens in the background and had Jabba the Hut walking around. Then he had to go and make those prequels that were worse than William Shatner’s music career.
Perhaps this is part of growing up. Maybe I’m just a cranky old man at 29. Oh well.