Every once in a while I like to indulge in a bit of “nostalgia-gazing.” This is when you look backward and become wistfully lost in reminiscence. Maybe you look up old neighborhoods or homes you lived in, schools you attended, or places you used to frequent. You might even take a road trip out to those places.
During one such bout of backwards-gaping, I happened to look up a house my family rented way back in the halcyon days of 1991 located in West Chester, PA. West Chester is a quiet, middle class town with a few upscale neighborhoods and cul-de-sacs. It’s an idyllic place with a small town feel, located just 40 minutes or so west of Philadelphia. It’s still one of the places I consider “home,” even though I haven’t lived there in over 30 years. Such is the impact of certain places we live in as children.
Anyway, I decided to look up my old house–an abode where I once enjoyed a Jaws-themed 10th birthday party, where my friends all dressed as different sea creatures. I was the Great White shark, of course, as I was obsessed with the movie at the time. I found a link to the house through Zillow, and up came the house’s sale history as well as the current estimated value. My family only rented the house from 1989-1991 before moving out after the school year in June, after which it was bought in ’91 for a whopping $150,000.
That sure sounds cheap by today’s standards. Especially when the estimate for the current value of the house is $750,000. And that’s actually cheaper than many of the surrounding homes in the circle in which we lived. Some homes just across the yard on the next street over are well past the million dollar mark.
You won’t find much affordable in West Chester, PA today, unsurprisingly. Homes tend to start around $650,000 and go up rapidly. The town is a perfect example of what many Millennials and Gen-Zers (and I suppose some underperforming Gen-Xers, too) gripe about when it comes to the inflated price of homes.
“The Baby Boomers had it so easy! They had cheap housing! Why, back in the late 80s and early 90s, you could practically buy a house for a pint of blueberries! Now a house costs a first born and your eternal soul just for a down payment! I’m gonna rent until I die!”
We’ve all read the histrionic and hysterical pronouncements on social media. We’ve all seen the memes. It’s an outraged generational war cry: “The Boomers had it easy!”
But did they really? I don’t think supposed “cheap housing” tells the whole story. I think there’s a lot of ill-informed and misplaced criticism here when it comes to the affordable housing shortage, as well as some selective memory on the part of Millennials. It puzzles me sometimes seeing my generation so appallingly ignorant. After all, we were there, too. As kids, but we were there. Sure, I spent my days jumping on enemies in Super Mario Bros. and watching Saturday Morning Cartoons. But I was there. I remember the context of the supposed “easy times.”
My family was not rich. We were lower-middle class. Even the “low” cost of $150,000 for that house was too much for us. Hell, the house we wound up buying some years later in another area was like half that price. We struggled. I was the oldest of four kids. My three younger half-siblings were born 5, 7, and 9 years after me.
See, people forget that the Boomers were BREEDERS in addition to “cheap” real estate beneficiaries. Boomers did what people have been doing for eons–they purposefully set out to get married and have kids. My father had seven. My mother had four. My step-father had three (my three half-siblings). And they had those children starting relatively young. My dad was 18 for his first. My mother was 24. Most of my aunts and uncles had children, sometimes multiple, before the age of 30. It’s only recently that couples are having fewer and fewer kids. It used to be common to have three or more. My grandmother had eight, for instance.
And what do you have to do when you have a lot of kids? Well, if you’re responsible, you put them up in a HOUSE. A house becomes a priority by default. And not because a house is a “good investment” or an asset or whatever else the finance bros want to call it. But because it’s an absolute necessity.
And therein lies the first major counterargument against the “Boomers had it easy” mantra. Boomers were forced to buy houses because they had lots of kids. Kids need toys. They need their own rooms. They need yards. Kids need a lot of stuff, actually, and a house is the best way to contain all that stuff.
For most Boomers, their house was EVERYTHING. It was the black hole that sucked in all their available money. Most Boomers were not rich. They were middle-class. Most Boomers did not invest in the stock market. They did not buy gold. They did not buy silver. They did not buy bonds. Obviously Bitcoin and crypto did not exist back then.
No, most Boomers had a little savings account that earned maybe 5-6% interest, and their house. That’s it.
Today, it’s never been easier to invest in the stock market. Download the Robinhood app and in seconds you too can be FOMO-ing into the latest meme stock or crypto that some dude on the internet told you is “going to the moon, brah.” Financial awareness has never been higher than now. Go on Youtube and there are a million finance dudes who will happily educate you on everything from “diversification” to the “4% rule,” to the “FIRE movement,” as well as on more complex investment instruments like LEAPS, scalping, daytrading, and more. But who knew about any of that stuff back during the Boomer’s time? No one. Because even today the majority of people remain woefully ignorant on financial matters.
Today, investing in a variety of assets is seamless and nearly cost-free. Back in the ’80s and ’90s you had to visit a broker in person. You had to mail them a check. You had to pay PER stock transaction. And it wasn’t cheap, either. I remember as late as the mid-2000s paying $9.95 to Scottrade just to buy a few shares in Apple. Most exchanges today allow you to trade stocks at no cost.
Back then, almost nobody knew about index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, dollar-cost-averaging, “buy the dip,” or anything else. The typical Boomer investment portfolio was their savings account, a CD, a government savings bond or two, and perhaps a few physical stock certificates in IBM their parents handed down, some baseball cards, and maybe a family heirloom like dishes or something.
And their house, of course. Their house, that certainly took up the lion’s share of their assets.
And how did they do with those “investments?”
Well, on the surface, they seemed to do okay. The house that my family passed on in 1991 sold for $150,000 but today is worth a staggering $750,000. Wow. That’s a 500% return. That’s good, right?
No, that’s awful. So, so awful. Especially over 35 years. Even if the house was worth $1,000,000 it would still be a bad return given that time frame.
And that’s only looking at the base price of $150,000, too. Houses have ongoing costs. You’ve got maintenance, insurance, property taxes, and of course the interest on the mortgage. Over that 35 year period until today, my Boomer mom and step-dad would have likely put in around $300,000 minimum, which means they would have only just barely more than doubled their money.
Also, there’s a little thing called “opportunity cost” that makes this awful return even worse. Opportunity cost is what you miss out on by investing in one thing versus another. By investing $150,000 into a house you miss out on investing it in other things like stocks, gold, and silver. Remember, for Boomers, their house was it. It was harder to invest in even simple things like mutual funds. If Boomers had exposure to stocks it was largely through their jobs, which may or may not have had a 401(k). They might have had an IRA or a personal brokerage. Just like today, most people did not invest in the stock market. Or anything, really.
But let’s look at how some other popular asset classes did during that 35-year time period. From June, 1991 until now (March, 2026) the S&P 500 Index has gone up over 1600%. Gold went up around 1200%. Silver 1700%. And the Nasdaq Index went up an unbelievable 4700%.
That means the return on that $150,000 investment becomes:
In an equally weighted portfolio (25% in each asset class), the return comes out to around $3,450,000.
Suddenly, that supposedly large $750,000 becomes rather puny, doesn’t it? If you had invested your money into pretty much anything else except housing from back then until now you would have made vastly more money.
“But, but, but, Boomers were also able to invest in those things in addition to enjoying cheap housing.”
Absolutely. A small minority of them did, anyway. But if the statistics on stock ownership of today are any indication, many of them did not. Or if they did, they didn’t own much for it to really matter. According to Pew Research Center, 58% to 62% of U.S. households today own stocks. The top 10% of households own almost 90% of all stocks. The top1% own 50% of all stocks. While the bottom 50% of households own only 1% of stocks. That’s even with widespread frictionless trading apps like Robinhood and others, and the YouTube and social media algorithms giga-pumping financial knowledge bombs on you left and right. I’d guess that almost certainly stock ownership was probably a lot lower back then than now.
Yes, in the purest technical sense, Boomers got housing “cheap.” Not “pint of blueberries” cheap perhaps. But certainly way cheaper than today, nominally-speaking. And now they are enjoying much higher valuations on their homes. But at what cost? No matter how you slice it, a barely 2x return over 35 years is absolutely abysmal relative to almost anything else. Even a CD with a rate of 5% beats it.
My West Chester, PA childhood home represents a good average. Homes in Southern California, of course, and other places, have gone up a lot more. But you can’t just look at the prices and compare them to decades past. That doesn’t give the whole contextual picture.
The average Boomer struggled just like the average Millennial and Gen-Zer does today. They had limited passive income, or no passive income. And even if they were aware of investment opportunities, they had to sacrifice investing into them for the sake of their families’ needs (i.e. you). I remember my mom being very aware of Microsoft back in the ’90s, and mentioning how we should put some money into the stock. But we were so poor at the time that my half-siblings and I had to go door-to-door selling candy to help pay the bills. Do you have any idea what a mere $1,000 into Microsoft stock back in 1991 would be worth today? At least $250,000, not counting dividends reinvested.
In actuality, the Boomers got screwed on housing. They were forced to buy homes because they had larger families. At the time, interest rates were much higher, sometimes even into the double digits. So they were also forced into loans with ruinous rates. Having a house balloon into a million-dollar asset today is great, don’t get me wrong. But it’s cold comfort when looking at how much was sacrificed to get it. And how many decades it took. And then there’s the question of whether or not you can even sell it. Many homes today are stuck going unsold because there are fewer qualified buyers.
The Boomers are not faceless amorphous entities. They are our parents. Often, I think my generation and Gen-Zers apply too much bad-faith and cold-hearted criticism toward them when it comes to housing. When I think back to that house in West Chester, I just think of the house ten-year-old me got to enjoy a Jaws-themed birthday party. I think of the hole I dug in the backyard all summer for some reason. I think of the many friends I played with in that circle and on other streets. It doesn’t represent some great investment I was cheated out of. Even though I only got to live there for two years, I’m glad I got to live there for the time I did. If I could, I’d move there again. But I can’t afford it. And I’m almost a millionaire. Yes, that’s disheartening. I make a substantial income and have a solid net worth and even I can’t afford to live where I did as a child.
Look, the housing market is ridiculous today. No one’s denying it. But we have easy access to many other types of investments and opportunities with way better rates of return. Interest rates are much lower. We’re far more mobile now than people were back then. Many have the freedom to work from home. We have more options. Boomers didn’t really have a choice. They still had to contend with a lot of traditional social and cultural pressure on their shoulders. It was “get married, have kids, and buy a house.” Imperatives that many today, even ones with money, are ignoring or avoiding.
Seeing eight countries in two weeks was equal parts thrilling, grueling, exhausting, memorable, frustrating, educational, culturally enriching, and accompaned by a gutting sensory overload. Overall, I enjoyed the trip, but will never do one like this again.
Last year I visited Thailand with a quick pitstop over in the Philippines for what was mostly a fun excursion with some enjoyable attractions (i.e. Lion Land). I cover that in this article here in Part I. But unlike then, when going abroad was somewhat of a spur of the moment decision, this time I planned out my trip farther in advance by several months.
It’d been goal of mine for a while to travel in Europe during the Christmas season, mainly to experience what the holiday was like in another part of the world, and to see the famous Christmas markets set-up throughout the different cities. Before this trip, I’d never even been to Europe, except for a brief stop in the Frankfurt airport back in 2001 en route to Israel. So, this trip felt like a necessary experience I had to do to “catch up” so to speak. I hate using the term “bucket list” because it sounds so dire and corny, but I felt left behind having not seen things like the Colosseum or the Cologne Cathedral live in person.
As I’ve mentioned previously, traveling combines everything I hate into one nasty package–being forced into confined places with strangers, having to stay in hotels, having to eat out, spending money, having to stand in long lines, dealing with government officials, and being in unfamiliar places where I don’t have control over where I am and where I’m going and 100% access to a bathroom at all times. Then there’s the people. I’m an introverted marvel, so being forced to interact with people constantly drains me severely. Traveling overseas only magnifies my discomfort exponentially. But I made myself do it anyway as a way to force myself out of my comfort zone.
As an aside, everyone is doing “therapy” today. But I feel that sitting down and rambling to some stranger (and paying $125 an hour for the “privilege”) is a colossal waste of time and money. True personal development and growth comes from TAKING ACTION–doing things, not navel gazing about your problems. You don’t have to travel thousands of miles, of course. You can learn a new skill, read a book, take up a new hobby, hit the gym (that’s a big one), or just go for a walk. Really, diet and exercise factor a lot into mental health, but these days it’s far easier (and profitable for certain companies) to pop a pill. I call this the “Ozempification Culture,” which is downstream from the much rampant “Enshittification of Everything” that everyone talks about.
It’s like that line Hank Hill says from King of the Hill —
“Why would anyone do drugs when they could just mow the lawn?”
Why would anyone waste time with “therapy” (aka hiring a rent-a-friend for an hour) when they could just go to the library or the gym? I could go on about this, but it’s a topic for another article.
I’m not saying traveling in a bus crammed with foreigners speaking different languages will fix all your problems, or that standing in front of the Pantheon will somehow make you a better person. But at least it will expose you to a lot of historically significant sites and help you appreciate the genius that went into making such magnificent architecture. It’s good to “expand your horizons,” as they say, as it gives you a good sense of perspective.
As an American, it’s also good to see how other parts of the world live as well. I know many people travel to Europe and come back raving about how wonderful the continent is and how much “better” it is than the U.S. Usually this is something people say who already had anti-American sentiments to begin with. For me, it’s quite the opposite. I love America. When I travel, I miss my country from the moment I leave until I return, and no matter how impressive some aspects of Europe are, they’ll never top the nation of my birth.
Americans tend not to travel overseas, as it is cost prohibitive. However, many Americans do travel a lot within the country, just as many Europeans freely move across country borders. My half-brother, for instance, just completed a fall road trip to all the lower 48 states in a rented Tesla. Which is quite a feat.
German architecture has a unique beauty.
Anyway, this year, I again went through the tried and true vacation listing site TourRadar.com, as I did last time for my trip to SEA. Tour Radar provides a massive source of different vacation packages put together by different touring companies. I went with an outfit called Europamundo, which, aside from sounding like the title to a Pixar film about anthropomorphic furry creatures galavanting through the Middle Ages and getting into madcap adventures (not a bad movie idea, actually) does guided bus tours throughout Europe. Because I hadn’t been to Europe before, I decided on a package that would take me through seven countries to see as much as I could while I was over there. Trying to get the most bang for my buck. My work schedule is quite generous with time off, so I was able to secure nearly three and a half weeks away from the grind. I used the beginning and end of that time off to see family in the U.S., but that left me a nice two-week chunk in the middle to get my Euro groove on. Two whole weeks to see as much as I could. How awesome is that? Hey, I wasn’t about to travel all the way overseas in stuffy economy seats “just” to see one measly country like Italy or Germany or something.
This turned out to be a big mistake, actually, and one of the reasons while I’ll never take a trip like this ever again. I want you to really think about how hard it is to see SEVEN countries in only two weeks. Because it’s not just hard, it’s virtually impossible. That’s barely averaging two days per country. You can’t experience Italy in 48 hours. You need at least a week. Same with big countries like Germany or lively hot spots like Amsterdam. This is especially true during the Christmas season.
But much like Neo that first time in the Matrix training program, I sat back, slid that steel rod up my brain stem, and said “More.” Unlike Neo, though, I did not get a lightning fast primer on Judo or Tae-Kwon-Do, nor did I get to spar with a big friendly black mentor guy. I got instead a blurry halucinogenic haze as I whizzed from one end of Europe to the other.
I’m not going into the minutiae of every place or attraction I went to, nor am I going to relay some amateur selfie-laden slideshow wherein I extol my experiences whilst being all wide-eyed and gaga. There are plenty of Instagrammers and travel vloggers/bloggers who can shoot those vicarious wanderlust vibes up your veins if that’s your bag. I think most of them were in Europe with me matter of fact. I couldn’t go any-fucking-where without tourists preening for selfies and groups shots or glamour shots for their Instagram reels. It was like being on the worst gameshow ever trying to duck out of shots and freeze before getting into the frame of some smooching honyemooners.
Actually, I didn’t even take many photos or videos as I find it mentally exhausting. I mean, am I traveling for myself or for a bunch of randos on the Gram? I try to make the effort to stay in the moment when I travel places and let things truly soak in. Hard to do that when you’re whipping a big glass rectangle and snapping photos like a junior paparazzi. Doubly so for when I visited religious sites, of which there were many. I don’t like taking interior pics of holy sites, as it feels sacrosanct. There were enough gawking iPhone-wielding goobers doing that, all while coagulating in the pathway everywhere. But if you want, you can check out my short videos on YouTube for a sampling of what I saw.
Christmas window in Rothenburg, Germany.
My itinerary took me across Italy, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, and finally the Netherlands. Due to a missed flight in Dublin that forced me to stay the night, I wound up getting a “bonus” eighth country in Ireland, though I didn’t have a chance to see much or get out so I’m only counting it on a technicality.
Look, Rome is a hell of a city. What is there to say that hasn’t been said already about its magnificence? I did not have the chance to really see much anyway. Due to the rapid-fire nature of this tour, I only had about maybe two hours to walk around on my own after getting a brief overview of the Colosseum and the donwtown area. Because the Sistine Chapel is in such demand, they only had room for eight people from our group, and I missed the cut-off. Rome is definitely not a city you want to just skirt through, as opposed to, say, Camden, NJ. But of course I managed to get the requisite Colosseum selfie shot for my personal records.
Following Rome, we went to Florence, which is another city you really want to immerse yourself into for a day or two at least. Florence is world renowned not just for its architectural beauty and history, but its leather. Italy makes some of the finest leather you’ll find in the world. There was a market there that I strolled around on a tactile investigation, and all the leather products felt as soft as silk. I no longer wish for a Comfort Sleep bed and a down feather quilt. I wish for a hammock made of Italian belts.
After Florence we were off to Venice, and before you ask it, no, I did not do a gondola ride, as it was raining, and sitting in one as a singling felt kinda weird to do. If/when I ever go back with a fiance or wife, I’ll probably do it then.
The majority of the members of the tour seemed to be married couples, with a few families. I’m pretty sure I was the only American, actually, which was something that only intensified my homesickness. The demographic breakdown was primarily Indian and Chinese, and some Spanish citizens. There was one Australian mother with her teenaged daughter traveling together.
By the way, out of everything I saw, by far the strangest was a t-shirt worn by a little kid belonging to a family of four who I think were British or something. They were White, but had European accents I couldn’t quite place. Anyway, their son, a six-year-old, took off his jacket at a table and he was wearing–I kid you not–an Ice Cube Straight Outta Compton t-shirt. This was not some “urban” White family, mind you. This was your well-to-do everyday suburban fam you see in NFL commercials advertising bowtied luxury vehicles. I had no idea Ice Cube was still so relevant in Europe, much less to a family with young kids who probably only know the gangster rapper as an actor in mostly bad comedies. Just odd.
The Rhine River.
I did learn that all gondolas have to be painted black due to some conformity law in the city. Venice is also sinking a few centimeters every year into the sea. Like in Rome, our tour got about two hours to walk around on our own, but I had to use most of that time to eat lunch.
Which brings me to a recurring annoyance in Europe–you have to pay to use almost all public bathrooms. The fees are usually seventy cents to one Euro, which comes out to almost $1-$1.25. Cheap enough for once in a while, sure. But when you’re out walking around everywhere day after day, that can really start to add up. Bathrooms have a turnstile and coin machine like you see in subways, and will take either coins or card. One time I didn’t have change so I had to use my debit card. I had to swipe my card to use a urinal! Maddening, and somewhat of a culture shock if you’ve never seen it before. Of course, restaurants and cafes and other places would have bathrooms, but you had to buy something to use them. And no, you can’t just sneak in. Often there were attendants posted outside bathrooms standing guard.
I harp on the bathroom thing not just because it’s a curious idiosyncracy but because it reinforces the pressing sense of REGULATION that weighs on you around Europe. Everything feels very tightly controlled, apportioned, and restricted. It’s like walking through a giant open-air museum. Supermarkets and highway convenience stores have a designated entrance with turnstiles and one designated exit with sliding security doors. Our bus driver had very strict break times he was mandated to use during our trip. During these break times, we had to disembark so only he was inside. Tipping is included in the food bill under gratuity, so there’s no need to tip a server at a restaurant. Then there are the portion sizes. Everything is SMALL in Europe relative to America. At my hotel breakfasts, I’d get coffee out of self-serve kiosks in these tiny mugs, so I had to keep going back and forth getting three and four refills to get a “normal”-sized amount coffee that I typically drink every morning. This became even more frustrating buying coffee in cafes because even a large is like a small, but you still pay for the “large” price as you do in America. This is true for food portions, too. I probably ate out like twenty times, and in almost every instance the serving sizes were meager but full-priced, of course. So, if you’ve got an American appetite, you’ll never feel like you’ve eaten enough, and you will feel ripped off.
An offensively small cup of coffee for 3.50 Euro.
In Europe, everything is small and expensive and feels very controlled, and there is a gasping sense of confinement that can make you feel claustrophobic. This is understandable, as there are priceless attractions that are thousands of years old everywhere you go, and tiny cobblestone roads that were not built for gigantic automobiles. You feel the weight of history and the significance of surrounding buildings press down on you. There are cafes in Italy that are older than America and still owned by the same family. As an American, this does require a big adjustment. We are used to having tons of space, huge portion sizes, massive big box stores on every block, and mostly free bathrooms.
Because this trip took place over two weeks to see seven countries, we were constantly on the move. And sometimes this involved long road trips of hundreds of miles (okay, kilometers). After Italy, we headed north through Austria. Now, if there was ever a place you really want a nice, slow road trip, it’s there, because you get to drive through the stunningly majestic Alps. We had stops in Innsbruck and Salzburg on our way. Salzburg is the birthlplace of Mozart, and in fact his childhood home is still there on the main road. Salzburg also features the Fortress Hohensalzburg, which requires a lift up the side of the mountain to access. Definitely worth seeing for the views alone, but also for the interactive museum gift shop.
The next leg of the journey took me from Vienna through Budapest, Hungary, and then back westward into Slovakia and finally into the Czech Republic. During this time, I encountered a recurring theme in the many history lessons we received on our tours–the lasting effects of the Roman Empire. It goes without saying that the Romans defined Europe and made it what it is today, as they conquered it for almost 1,500 years. But it’s one thing to read about it or see it in documentaries, and another to physically witness the extent of the empire’s reach. For instance, the Danube river separating Budapest into two cities (“Buda” and “Pest”) served as the border. Later on, we took a cruise on the Danube and passed by the breathtaking Parliament Building.
We only made a brief stop in Bratislava, Slovakia to see one small Christmas market, but it was enough for me to make a peculiar observation–nearly every woman I saw looked like a supermodel. And I don’t just mean the girls staffing the shops in the market (who, of course, are likely hired for more than their congenial personalities), I mean just about all the ones I saw walking around. Granted, it’s a small sample size, but it was enough to make me wonder what’s in the water. There must be some evolutionary reason for how that particular territory tended to favor smaller, angular faces, slimmer bone structures, diminutive noses, and clearer, porcelain complexions–features that are generally associated with attractiveness. Perhaps it’s the colder temperatures, or something to do with the migratory patterns of the Slavs, and how that may have influenced selective breeding. It could also just be purely subjective.
I have some history with Slovakia. While traveling back from Israel in 2001, my layover was again in Frankfurt, and it was there I happened to get into a conversation with a Slovakian woman who sat across from me. This was so long ago that I can’t even remember her name, or what she looked like (probably attractive, given the apparently advantaged gene pool), only that she was quite friendly and conversant. I don’t even remember what we talked about. It was odd how she seemed to pick me in particular, though it was probably because I looked blatantly like an American, and even odder how comfortable I felt opening up to an absolute stranger like I did (which I don’t think I’ve ever done since) for an hour before my flight took off. I think about that interaction once in a while. I hope whoever that woman was, she’s okay where ever she is.
Anyway, I’ll need to investigate further into the Curious Case of the Enduring Hotness of the Slavic Female. If any universities or governments are funding grants for research projects on this topic, I’d be very interested in signing up for a lengthy study.
Prague. Wow. Just wow. Without a doubt the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited, made even more so during the illuminated Christmas season. This is another city you want to spend a week exploring, not a mere 48 hours, as I did. The downtown area alone is worth an entire day. There is something truly ethereal seeing Prague Castle lit up at night during the holidays. You also have the famous Astronomical Clock, and the many bridges, including the famous Charles Bridge.
I also have some history with Prague that made the experience somewhat bittersweet. An ex-girlfriend of mine was obsessed with the city, having been there as a child for some time, and wanting to return and spend a year there. Though she invited me to join her on this journey, I had to decline due to needing to return to work. This was after my return to school to finish my degree. So, we wound up splitting up. To be honest, the relationship had been heading south anyway, but then again it’s hard to compete with a city like Prague. I can certainly see the allure. I’d like to visit again and spend more time there, and only when it’s warmer.
After Prague we went through Germany, including Frankfurt and Cologne, went on yet another cruise on the Rhine (I can’t even remember how many boat rides I was on but there were many), before finally arriving at my last stop–the “Venice of the North,” Amsterdam.
Cologne Cathdral.
Let me back up a moment to devote some much-needed text on what is the most magnificent building I’ve ever seen, and what I consider possibly the greatest structure in the world–the Cologne Cathedral. “Awe-inspiring” doesn’t even begin to describe this building that took over 500 years to build. And that’s just the exterior surface. For years, I thought the stones were naturally black, but that’s actually due to the smoke from the bombing during World War II that seeped into the microscopic pores. As our guide Jose explained, the Allies used the Cathderal as a reference point in their bombing, which is why the cathedral was thankfully not harmed during the war, but it didn’t escape the soot and smoke from the many explosions. The inside is even more amazing, containing massive stained glass windows, flawlessly arched ceilings, the Shrine of the Three Kings, and various gilded and silver-line tombs. The Cologne Cathedral is worth a day on its own–it’s the most visited site in all of Germany–so, definitely make plans to visit it while you’re there.
Back to Amsterdam. Now there’s a city that’s worth spending a week exploring. Amsterdam is famous for its canals, in which some people have parked boat houses where they actually live full-time. Amsterdam is city that demands to be seen during the springtime, as it’s also famous for its tulip season, as well as bike riding. There are more bikes in the city than cars. In fact, cars are another thing that are heavily taxed and regulated throughout Europe to the point that unless you have money it’s probably impractical to own one. But unlike in America, which is, of course, car-centric, Amsterdam is built for bicycles. Or just walking around.
Downtown Amsterdam.
And, yes, Amsterdam is also famous for its red light district. I did walk through there, but to my surprise, there weren’t scantily clad women waiting luringly in crimson-lit windows beckoning you forth. It was mostly restaurants lined up in there. What viewing rooms there were were all empty. This might be a seasonal thing. You obviously can’t have a bunch of dickhead tourists gawking at the women in the windows, and taking photos, of course. I guess if a gentleman wants time with one of the ladies, it’s arranged online beforehand. I have no idea how any of that works, but my point is the red light district can satisfy more than just one type of appetite.
That brings me to the end. I whizzed through so many places and attractions, and I know I’m giving them all short thrift in this brief chronicle. But it felt like I was on a zipline the whole time. Like I mentioned, I will never do a trip like this again. I will only see one or two countries so I can take the proper amount of time to enjoy them. I don’t even know how comfortable I’d be getting on a tour bus again. I chose the Christmas season thinking it would be less packed, but that proved faulty reasoning as the busses I traveled on were maxed to capacity.
I was honestly so overwhelmed by everything I saw that it took me almost a week when I returned to feel back to my normal self. It was absolute sensory overload, and by the end I couldn’t wait to get home. I’ve never been so thankful to sip a (full-sized) cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. I “enjoyed” it, yes. I would certainly travel to Europe again. But due to the breakneck speed of the trip, I felt disoriented the whole time.
Finally, here are some factoids/highlights/tips/pointers and other observations I’d like to put out there for anyone thinking of traveling to Europe:
— You can avoid extra charges for checking luggage if you get a carry-on bag that fits under the seat and a small suitcase for the overhead compartment that is no bigger than 22x14x9 in size. Because I had stops in Houston and Philadelphia before and after my Euro trip, I had eight flights in total, so avoiding extra fees where necessary was mandatory for me. At about $75 a bag per leg of the trip, this would have been at least an extra $300. A 22x14x9 suitcase, granted, is not that big, but you’d be surprised how much you can fit if you are judicious about what you pack. I had enough space leftover for souvenirs and gifts for family members.
— Be prepared to have to relearn common activites like doing laundry. Almost none of the hotels I stayed at had laundry machines, or if they had a laundry service it would have taken too long before I had to leave. So, I had to find a local laundromat on two occasions. But unlike in many American laundromats where the machines are often coin operated, the ones in Europe will use a central machine or kiosk that controls all the machines. This can be a little frustrating and confusing at first. At one laundromat, I had to use a card, and it even prompted me to enter my email address.
— Restaurant service in Europe is…lax, let’s say. If there’s a downside to waitstaff receiving a “living wage” as they supposedly do, it’s that the service is generally subpar. They don’t have to worry about not receiving tips since gratuity is already baked into the menu prices. They also aren’t in a hurry to give you a bill. I had to hunt down my waiter on several occasions so I could check out and get going. Wait staff also tends to disappear, or you end up with someone else altogether by the end. Then there’s this little oddity I noticed in Hungary and the Czech Republic–when they bring you your drink, they only fill your glass halfway and then leave the bottle.
— Try to get a layout of the airports you’ll be traveling through, and the official procedures you’ll have to undergo. For instance, I assumed that I would have to go through customs when I arrived in Rome, where my trip began. In actuality, I had to get stamped in my layover stop in Amsterdam in order to get to my next departure gate. This can be problematic if you have a connecting flight and are short on time. This bit me in Dublin during my return. My flight leaving Amsterdam was delayed for over two hours due to fog, so by the time I arrived in Dublin I only had about 45 minutes to get to my next gate. No problem, I thought at first, thinking it would be a quick jaunt across the airport. Except, because I was bound for the U.S. I had to go through U.S. Precheck, and that involves standing in THREE LINES. There’s an initial line on the first floor where they scan your boarding pass. You have to wait in that one until they let a bunch of people go down the escalator. But that only leads to the MAIN LINE, where you have to present your passport and go through TSA. Then afterward there’s a third line. It was the third line where I caught a break. For non-Americans, it’s another long line. But there is a narrow lane for Americans where there were few if any people. Unfortunately, on my first attempt I only got to my gate right after it closed and the plane had just departed. But fortunately, Aer Lingus, an Irish airline I’d booked with, was very gracious about setting me up in a nice hotel right by the airport and booking me a seat on a flight the next day. They even gave me a meal voucher for the restaurant in the hotel. So, good on Aer Lingus.
— Europe loves its croissants. I, however, am not a fan. I find them flaky, tasteless, and unfilling. Give me a normal bagel anyday. I actually found most of the breakfasts disappointing. The eggs and bacon–two pillar breakfast staples–consistently tasted rubbery and off, and so I was often left with yogurt and granola, toast, or pastries and other things for a makeshift breakfast. As a 180 pound six-foot-tall man, this was not ideal. I’m not even a big eater and I found myself constantly underfed during my trip. I’m very particular about what I eat, and the inadequate food options I ran into became a recurring irritation. I know, you’re thinking because it’s Europe food shouldn’t be a problem. Except at many of my hotels there were limited restaurants nearby. In the case of one in Italy, there weren’t any accessible, so I had to instead go to a nearby supermarket and buy a sandwich from the deli section and whatever else I could. Plus, because of severe time constraints, I didn’t exactly have the luxury of finding the “right” restaurants nearby. I had to grab whatever I could. Or, because it was the holidays, and many places closed early, I had to eat what I could from vendors. Christmas Eve in Frankfurt, I wound up having to eat at a McDonald’s, just for sustenance. Do you have any idea what kind of a nightmare that is for me as a certified McDonald’s-hater for life? A big one, that’s what.
— Again, be sure to carry several Euros in change for the pay bathrooms, so you don’t find yourself in any uncomfortable or messy situations. If you’re a man, you likely won’t find too many lines to the toilets. If you’re a woman, God help you, especially around the big touristy spots. I’d find lines wrapped around the block going to the ladies room. Europamundo was pretty good about bathroom breaks, and telling tourists where to find them, but you always want to be proactive. And of course, if you’re given the chance to go before getting back on the bus, ALWAYS GO, because you could be on the road for hours for all you know.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading. Here’s one final pic of my favorite Christmas tree. There were a lot of great candidates, but this one in Amsterdam with the red and gold color scheme and the crown really won it for me.
Recently, I completed the first draft of a slasher novella I’ve titled CUTTHROAT that I began in early September.
The premise is stupifyingly simple, though, like many of my works, it’s riddled with satiric malice and dark humor:
A group of job applicants arrive at a sleek highrise for a coveted position, but find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives against a psychopathic assessor known as Cutthroat, who wields a briefcase full of nasty weapons and is out to kill all of them.
This first draft clocked in at around 31,000 words, and it proved to be both exhausting and grossly liberating at the same time. This was one of those “cutting loose” sort of writing experiments, where I didn’t feel bound by the ordinary constraints of storytelling. Though there are two character arcs, a strong mid-point shift, a late reveal, and a twisty plot with some inventive kills. Thematically, it’s centered around the tortuous difficulties attendant with job hunting, with the whole ugly process personified in the form of a psychopathic killer known as Cutthroat, who poses as a job recruiter performing interviews, only to hack his unawares applicants apart. I really tried to go for the economic malaise zeitgeist’s jugular here that mainly desperate jobseeking Millennials and Gen-Zers are suffering through or at least might relate to. Armed with briefcases filled with all kinds of nasty weapons, Cutthroat sadisticallly plays his own twisted “assessment” games with the group of twenty-somethings, and it’s up to the protagonist to figure out a way to stop him, or at least escape with his life.
Writing a slasher is brutish work, to say the least. I’ve written my share of horrors, such as The Devil’s Throne, released a few years ago, but a slasher is another beast altogether. Slashers, obviously, are less known for their elegant exploration of human themes through a lens of supernatural or psychological chills like traditional horrors, and more about delivering a certain graphic and visceral effect on the reader/viewer.
Cutthroat is sort of “Terrifier in a business suit,” as I’ve come to refer to it as a means to sum up its ethos in a pithy “elevator pitch” manner. The slasher franchise set around Art the Clown is a real phenomenon for its cult following. Walk by any Hot Topic store in a mall and you’re bound to see Art T-shirts and other merch. He’s as big as Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees were in their day. I’ve only seen the second film and the first half of the first one. That’s literally all I could stomach. From a writer’s perspective, I found them shockingly bereft of any “story,” even for a slasher series. The Terrifier films are more a bunch of gory vignettes strung together. A bloody highlight reel of makeup and special effects. Even Friday the 13th, with all its clumsy and meandering “plots” had a semblance of mythology what with Jason and his mommy issues. Not so for Terrifier, which seems content to just freak out audiences with new methods of bodily mutilation. Hellraiser seems tame by comparison, which seems not possible.
Honestly, I found writing my first slasher disappointingly mundane. How many ways can you really butcher human beings on paper? I found myself straining to somehow “make it more interesting.” I did this by interjecting a backstory for the villain in order to make him believable, and by adding humor wherever possible. At one point I gave up for a few days, put off by the whole thing. Only to return days later determined to finish the task.
Now that it’s done, like often happens when I’ve finished a writing project, I find myself wracked with a post-partum malaise. Though there is always the long and tedious editing process.
I remember reading about how John Carpenter, while struggling to write Halloween II (1981) hit some bad writer’s block. I wondered how in the hell could that happen. We’re talking Michael Myers here. Pehaps the most simplistic masked killer there ever was. Just set him loose in a school so he can stalk another group of dumb horny teenagers. How hard could it be, right? But after writing my first slasher, I can see where he was likely coming from, and how unfulfilled he probably felt trying his hand at the sequel. It’s no wonder he wound up throwing in the bogus development about Laurie Strode being Michael’s sister as a way to liven things up and add motivation. Something he later regretted adding to Michael’s “mythology” due to its inherent silliness. The whole point of Michael Myers is that he doesn’t need a “motivation.” That’s what makes him scary. But I can see how sheer boredom probably drove Carpenter to want to throw in anything, no matter how nonsensical, to make the writing process more palatable for him. At least The Thing had the intricate puzzlebox mysteries of “Who’s the Thing and who’s not?” “Who can you trust?” With Halloween, it’s more just about coming up with new ways Michael can kill people.
On the surface, writing a slasher is “stupidly easy,” sure. Kind of. We’re not writing a dense Cormac McCarthian Western here, even if Anton Chigurh is like a Mexican Michael Myers with a shotgun. But it takes a piece of your soul. There are also the tricky mechanics of coming up with a bigger than life villain. Something iconic. A Nightmare on Elm Street, to me, is the gold standard when it comes to slashers. It’s probably the most intelligent of them. Certainly it’s the best high-concept horror idea. A killer that stalks you in your dreams. The kind of idea that makes you go, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Overall, I enjoyed attempting the slasher genre, though it’s not one I’d quickly want to return to. Technically, it’s not actually my first stab at it. I handwrote a short story about a group of masked killers stalking a school way back when I was a teenager in high school. It was a story obviously ripped off of Halloween as I’d just seen that film on cable, though I added a “clever” twist by not having one, or two, but three killers. Genius, obviously. With this latest attempt decades later, I like to think I’ve grown and matured. I feel I made Cutthroat suitably gory and satisfied the demands of the genre with all the requisite tropes, while putting my own touch on things and bringing something new. If anything, it was a fun writing exercise that felt perfectly appropriate with Halloween right around the corner. 🙂
For some reason, this movie popped into my head recently, and I just had to rewatch it. I don’t know why. I seem to recall seeing it in theaters while on a beach vacation in Ocean City, Maryland back in the summer of 1998. Though the film actually stayed in theaters for over a year.
Films did that back then. Now they dip in and out in like two weeks before hitting streaming oblivion.
It’s weird watching something from the ’90s, as it is basically a period piece anymore. This film is nearly thirty-freaking years old! It is as ancient to modern audiences today as something from the mid-’60s would have been during its premier.
There’s Something About Mary is a screwball romantic comedy about a guy named Ted trying to reconnect with his old high school crush–the titual Mary. Mary Jensen, that is. Following a catalysmically awful prom date that goes sideways in the film’s second most memorable sequence when Ted gets his dick and balls stuck in his zipper after arriving at Mary’s house. Poor Ted spends the next 13 years still pining (borderline obsessing) over Mary, until he gins up a scheme to sick a private detective on her to hunt down her whereabouts. Finding her in South Florida, Ted takes off to reconnect with his old flame, encounting a series of mad-cap adventures along the way. But competing with him for Mary’s heart is the greasy private detective, an old college boyfriend, a slippery pizza delivery guy, and even a famous football QB star. Will Ted, the ultimate nice guy, win Mary’s heart in the end?
Of course, the film is BEST remembered for its “Is that hair gel?” scene when Ted and Mary are preparing to go on a date. Believe me, that line was the height of bawdy comedy in my high school during that year. Between that and the many Monica Lewinsky jokes flying around (and there were many), my junior year was beset with semen-based hilarity.
In fact, I’d say there has likely never been a time ever in human history when male ejaculation centered so prominently in the cultural psyche as it did in the year 1998.That’s all thanks to Monica and Mary.
There’s Something About Mary is beset with a hideous amount of ’90s anachronisms, both technologically and cultural. Things that just wouldn’t work in today’s self-aware uber ironic entertainment landscape. The ’90s was all about being okay with looking stupid. It was the decade of Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey, and wacky attitude-y cartoons like Animaniacs. Weird toys like Gak. Very stupid and cringey TV shows. And lots of bright neon colors.
People nostalgia-gazming hard on the decade often forget how damn silly the ’90s really was. And that’s probably the best way to describe Mary. Silly with a capital ‘S.’
The entire conceit of the film falls apart in the age of Facebook and Google. Now it’s not only easy to look someone up from high school, you likely can’t even get rid of them anyway if they follow you on Insta or Facebook.
Then there’s the whole stalking angle. What Ted does is technically kind of creepy. While he does sorta pay for it when he’s forced to confess at the film’s “All is Lost” beat, and is consequentially kicked to the curb, true love conquers all of course in the end.
There’s the idea of a bunch of men fixating on Mary as a sex object in a predatory way that would be seen as “problematic” now. The film gets away with it mostly due to its unflinching cartooniness. The Farrelly brothers were at their peak. The story has heart, though its punctured by a lot of slapstick nonsense.
There’s Something About Mary really is one of those films that wouldn’t be made today. It’s an odd time capsule of a film. A relic from a very niche era of cornball humor that couldn’t be replicated. A perfect representation of what the ’90s was all about.
It does have some classical elements, too. The recurring motif of the singers reminded me of the singing muses often seen in Shakespeare plays or Greek epics. The crude sexual humor harkens back to the stylings of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata. There are some borrowed elements also. The police interrogation misunderstanding feels lifted from 1992s My Cousin Vinny, for instance. But overall it’s a funny original story with a handful of memorable scenes beyond the hair gel one. The fish hook gag, as an example.
Ben Stiller stars in one of his early big roles. At the start of his early 2000s tsunami of comedy hits like Meet the Parents and Zoolander. Cameron Diaz plays the lovely and lanky Mary. And there is the adaptable Matt Dillon as the greasy private eye with the porn stache.
Need some ’90s flavor in your life? Who doesn’t, right? Check out There’s Something About Mary.
Medium continues to be a massive disappointment this year. Due to either an algorithm change or some kind of shift in how it distributes traffic, I barely get the engagement in years prior, and substantially smaller payouts and fewer followers, consequently. Though some of my articles caught on in Google’s rankings, I see zero money for non-Medium members who read my stuff. That’s really frustrating, as some of my “stories” (as Medium likes to call them) have caught tens of thousands of views.
It’s not that I soullessly write for money. It’s just that I would like to see commensurate compensation for when I do write something that lands.
Still, I’ve kept plugging away. Either foolishly or just out of stubborn persistence and the desire to maintain stasis. Medium is a solid platform, for sure. But it has a low ceiling. Whereas a platform like YouTube will (assuming you are monetized) at least pay you for ALL the views you get, not just Medium members. As such, YT has basically uncapped potential, though it too has its issues.
YouTube
As much as I love YouTube and the idea of being a YouTuber, I don’t know that it’s the right venue for me, either. Nor do I care to contort myself into the tortuous content creation pretzel shape that YT demands if you want to have a shot at gaining traction. YT seems to favor TikTok-style shorts anymore, and such snappy, soundbite quippings are not in my wheelhouse. The few videos I’ve posted this year are long, thoughtful, and reflective, which is not really conducive to YT’s dazzling discothèque guppy-attention-span content that seems to predominate on there.
I’m a writer at the end of the day. A fiction writer, specifically. I try to be. While I like dropping spicy op-eds from time to time, Medium and this whole “content game” thing often just proves a procrastinative distraction and a futilely unfulfilling endeavor. I get so little satisfaction out of writing even a “banger” article that gets a good traffic spike it’s not funny.
Whereas, a good fiction writing session puts me on cloud nine.
I don’t care to just crank out a bunch of noise, trying to surf the trend waves. I’d rather spend the time on my books. I have a lot of them in various states of editing, and I have a lot of ideas for more.
My latest will be out soon.
Conundrum
Which brings me to the conundrum. To be a successful fiction writer, you need a platform to help market your work. But to get a platform, you have to play the mind numbing algo/traffic/pretzel twist game I just talked about. A successful writer is a successful salesman, not just a good tapper of keystrokes. Like many writers, this rustles my introvert jimmies. I hate “putting myself out there,” though I’m not a wallflower by any means.
I see many other writers, especially self-published ones, market themselves via YouTube and social media, either by book or movie reviews, or by being (usually godawful) cultural critics and posting daily ragebait commentary on whatever headline caught their ire that morning. I don’t care to waste the time being a “culture warrior.” That’s very cringy to me. And there are frankly certain audiences I just don’t care to attract.
I will never be a fucking “writing coach.” I will never sell a fucking course or some bullshit consulting like so many of those hustlers out there do. No. Just no. I will never make “writing about writing” my thing. Never going to happen. I don’t care to waste the time, and I sure as hell don’t need to do it for the money.
I could see doing long form book or movie reviews, however.
And even though some of my finance-themed articles have actually performed the best, I think I’m done with that niche. Save and invest your money. Stay out of debt. Control your spending. Slow and steady (i.e. boring) compound gains will make you wealthy, not get-rich-quick crypto/stock/real estate/side hustle schemes. Stop listening to stupid influencers and their bullshit products. There, what the hell else needs to really be said?
Conclusion
As a compromise, I’ll keep posting non-fiction stuff, but likely just focusing on books, movies, and shows. Since Medium has proven near pointless to continue with, I may just go old school and post stuff on here exclusively instead. I blogged a lot way back in the day, and I see that era of the internet returning. Content has become far too siloed on digital slave farms like Facebook and other social media. It’s time for it to decentralize like it used to be. A.I. slop has ruined a lot of content sites also. In fact, I think A.I. is part of why the algo machine has completely broken down across the web.
I’ll invest more time interacting with social media in a qualitatively productive manner. I’ll also continue to experiment with YouTube. Perhaps there are actually people out there who’d rather look at my face and hear me talk than read my stuff. Hey, it’s possible.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I’ll have more updates for you soon, including my latest book. See you in the sun. 🙂
I had to go out of town recently for a dentist appointment as medical service providers are few and far between in the great stupid state of North Dakota. Since there was nobody in network in my town, and my previous dentist office hardly ever has an actual dentist on staff — just hygienists and one moron office manager— I had to drive three and a half hours to go to a new dentist for X-rays and a cleaning.
Yes, I had to stay over night in a hotel, rent a car, and drive halfway across a state just for a one hour appointment. It’s insane, I know.
But that’s nothing compared to a completely fucking insane billboard I saw while I was down there.
I was parked at a Wendy’s eating my actually not bad spicy chicken sandwich when I looked across the road and I saw a big yellow billboard for a jeweler in town advertisting payment plans for engagement rings for as long as 48 months.
What??? I almost dropped my sandwich in shock. Who the fuck is financing a diamond engagement ring for four years? Good Christ, most marriages don’t even last seven years. You might be getting divorced by the time you pay the damn thing off.
My mind was blown. I was utterly floored. Are people — “men” — actually doing this, I wondered. I couldn’t believe it. Then I began to think about the many, many imbecilic male slobs I’d encountered in my life. Slovenly creatures in backwards hats, flip flops, scruffy beards, cargo shorts, forearm tattoos, fast food afficionados, fantasy football betting, sports-enthused, vape-toking, video game playing, Monster Energy drink sipping Neanderthals — yes, I could totally see many of these specimens going “Hur dur, happy wife, happy life,” and walking into that jewelry store ready to sign up for basically car payments on a twinkling rock for their idiot girlfriends.
Am I the only one who sees how insanely stupid this is?
How dumb do you have to be to sign up for four long years of debt just for a rock? There are a million better things to spend money on in a new marriage than a piece of bling.
Dear men, stop doing this to yourselves. Seriously.
No woman who truly loves you and wants to be with you would want you to finance a rock for four years. Only a gold-digging Instagram thot who takes seflies at the gym in her booty shorts would demand that, not someone truly worthy of years of your sacrifice and financial hardship.
A worthy woman would want you to put that money toward a house, furniture, a car, baby things, or other practical purchases that really matter and help build the foundation for a successful marriage and family. Not a shiny stone.
An engagement ring is just a symbol. She didn’t win the fucking Super Bowl, gents. Buy her something modest and within your budget, and move the fuck on in life.
In fact, this makes for a good litmus test. The bigger the rock she expects, the bigger the undeserving asshole she likely is.
This simp epidemic has to stop. I mean, think about the underlying misandry of that billboard’s message. It reflects a societal expectation that men go out and financially fuck themselves royally as a traditional precursor to marriage.
Now imagine the message, but directed at women. Imagine that billboard was offering payment plans on appliances like washing machines, dishwashers, and dryers that women go buy so when they get married they can be good little stay at home housewives. Or imagine it was advertising payment plans on BOOB JOBS so hubby can have a nice set of flesh pillows to bury his face in after a hard day’s work. Imagine all the outrage at that.
Well, it’s the same thing with this silly and frankly asinine expectation that men burden themselves for years for a stupid rock.
Fuck. That.
I could see dropping like $5k on an engagement ring. Maybe even $10k if it’s within your budget. But only if you can pay that in cash and it’s not going to force you into indentured servitude for the length of a presidential term.
Marriage is tough enough without additional and unnecessary financial burdens. Why make it needlessly harder on yourself?
I wouldn’t care if it were Sydney Sweeney. I’d rather be single for life than finance a rock for ANYONE.
I truly believe that in the year 2000 our timeline somehow got diverted into the Shithole Dimension in which we currently reside.
How? I blame Y2K. We were supposed to let that supposed “glitch” play out, not “fix” it. Instead, we collectively ctlr+alt+deleted our way into this nightmare world.
That, or the gods simply hated those stupid “00” New Year’s Eve glasses everyone was wearing celebrating the Millennium, and decided to punish us with two and a half gray mushy mash no identity decades. What is the difference between the year 2003 and now? Seriously. None. If you stuck me in a Delorean and sent me back, I’d hardly notice any changes. The clothes, the tech, the political scene — all virtually the same.
We left the “Go-Go 90s” or the “Gay 90s” or “The Decade of Peace,” for the “Oughties.” Or is it just the “Zeroes?” Or the “Two-Thousands?” Boring and WTF either way.
Even IN the ’90s, we used to say, “It’s the ’90s, baby.” On New Year’s Eve of 1999, I remember partying with some coworkers at a popular resort named after a Roman emperor to Prince’s song “1999” the moment the ball dropped. It was awesome. It was like we knew we’d reached an Apex of Cool and the universe had serendipitously rewarded us with our very own anthem for the year with a song written way back in 1982. How’s that for a pre-expectation of good times? People were excited for the ’90s already in the ’80s. Who the fuck was looking forward to 2009? 2013? 2017? 2023? The current year?
“This the ’80s and I’m down the ladies.”
Then just today I’m driving along and I hear the classic 1989 song “Funky Cold Medina” by Ton-Loc, which includes the line I quoted above. The previous seventies decade may have been the “Me Decade,” but even in Ronald Reagan’s America people were ready to get down. And that was with the Cold War still going on. The “Swinging Sixties” were turbulent, sure, but defined by great music, social changes, and apparently swinging. It was a decade marked by sexual experimentation and liberation. So like the ’70s, ’80s and ‘90’s, it had a certain sex appeal. Then before that you had the “Rockin’ Fifties.” Also known as the “Fabulous Fifties.”
It wasn’t all fun and fornication, of course. You had the “Fighting Forties,” due to WWII. The “Dirty Thirties” thanks to the Great Depression. But before them you had the “Roaring Twenties,” because of the skyrocketing stock market.
Meanwhile, the 2000s, or “Oughts” or “Zeroes” has no real nickname. The “War on Terror Decade?” Too negative. “The Age of Premptive Strikes?” No, too cynical. “The Bush Years.” Come on, man.
Okay, forget the 2000s. Onto the “teens.” Or “twenty-tens.” Or “twenty-teens.” This decade doesn’t even have a proper numerical designation. Can we hope for at least a halfway decent nickname? I’m drawing a blank here. The “Troublesome Teens?” The “Tiresome Tens?” Oh, I know. the “Transformative Teens.” Kind of a catch-all. Plus it subtly alludes to the whole transgender craze starting during the latter part of the decade. And it was a transformative decade, for sure.
Which finally brings us to this decade. The twenties. We’re halfway through and I’ve yet to hear any kind of a definitive nickname. I’ll refer you to my suggestions up at the very top. The “Terrible Twenties” sounds too dramatic. The “Trumpy Twenties” is too specific.
Besides —
We don’t yet know how the next five years will shake out. For all we know, we’re all of us gifted with unicorns that piss gold coins and shit Godiva chocolate in this decade’s latter half. In which case we’d be the “Enchanted Twenties.”
It could maybe be the “Twitter Twenties,” if it hadn’t become X. I like “The Spendy Twenties” best as it alludes to high inflation and the costs for everything getting completely out of control. I went to the supermarket recently and eight chicken wings cost $18. Eighteen dollars. Fuck it, I’ll just eat carpet.
I’m not ready to write off this entire decade just yet. I’m willing to give it a chance. But unlike the ’90s or ’80s, the twenty-twenties has got no vibe. It’s got no aura. No zip. No rizz, as the kids like to say. Frankly, I’m embarassed to be living in it. Especially when I’ve had better. Way better. That’s not good. We need to reset those computers back so they just read two digits again, so we can spring out of this bizarro pocket dimension of identity-less decades and back into our old reality. We should have had the “Duuude-Thousands,” then the “Terrific Teens,” before living smack dab in the middle of the “Friendly Twenties.” Instead, we are lost and adrift, and without a name.
Despite not having any kids, I’ve become intrigued lately by all the doomsdayers out there raising alarms about birthrates and replacement rates. Elon Musk, who has 14 children with five different women himself, talks about it almost every day on X. Recently, he retweeted a user who shared some shocking graphs:
Source: OurWorldinData
Then there’s this one:
Source: National Statistics Offices
Wow. That is what’s called a precipitous collapse. The West will be extinct before long at this rate.
Anecdotally, my grandmother had eight kids. My biological father had seven. My mother had four. I have two half-siblings who have two kids each. My youngest half-sibling has none, as do I. Only a few of my cousins have more than one child. I’ve witnessed in my time a severe narrowing in the number of kids couples have over the generations. Marriage rates have also gone down. The average age people marry has gone up. And the number of children people have who happen to get married or cohabitate has shrunk across the board.
Not so in Africa, according to the graphs above. Especially countries like Nigeria, which actually has a population explosion that is projected to reach over 400 million by 2050, according to the World Bank. The United States’ population is currently 340 million for comparison.
So, what’s going on? Why can’t the West reproduce itself? I’ve heard all the excuses: expensive housing, cost of living, the job market, etc. However, according to a recent study that looked at the population trends in the African country, “income does not play any significant role in the demand for children in Nigeria.”
The 2022 study is titled “Fertility and Population Explosion in Nigeria: Does Income Actually Count?” You can check it out at this link here.
There are some key takeaways aside from the obvious ones involving increased life expectancy, declining death rate, and high infant mortality. Nigeria has seen improvements in both those areas over the last 59 years, though its infant mortality rate is among the highest in the world, and correlates with the higher number of births.
But if it’s not income or medical care that’s keeping the West from reproducing, what is? Culture, mainly. Take a look at Nigeria’s attitude toward children in general, and see if there’s a marked difference with the West’s.
From the study:
Children are viewed as a future investment and given the uncertainties of them having a brighter future, a poor household can produce more children to try their odds. That is, out of the very many children, some could have a chance to become prominent individuals in the society. Apart from that, some traditional Nigerian households views greater number of children as a strength to the family in terms of providing family labour at the subsistence level.
There are other cultural factors at play, which I’ve broken down here:
early marriage
universal marriage
prolonged childbearing
low contraceptive use
cultural emphasis on large families due to fear of lineage extinction.
I bold-faced the last one because it ties in with high infant mortality.
Fear of extinction fostered increased reproduction in the face of perceived high child mortality with the expectation that some of the births would survive to carry on the lineage.
It also is what most differentiates Nigeria from the West. Those few who procreate here in the U.S. do so within a bubble of relative security. It’s never been safer or easier to have kids from a medical point of view. Yet families in the U.S. remain largely fractured and small. Members are often adrift from one another. Who fears their family name dying out who isn’t named Trump or Musk?
Meanwhile, Nigerians reproduce as if they have a gun to their heads. Is it mostly due to the infant mortality rates? I don’t think it’s that simple. I get the sense that even if infant mortality were to suddenly incline here, it’d be met with indifference. Most women support abortion rights and put off having children until their 30s. Few men want to become fathers. Fertility and parenthood are not treated with celebration but looked at like nuisances. As obstacles to having fun or achieving life and career goals.
People are staunch individualists, focused intensely (selfishly, even) on their career and capital acquisition over reproductive relationships. We’re a culture obsessed with entertainment, dopamine fixes, and endless sensory distraction. To put it crudely, women would rather strip on OnlyFans or sip mimosas at the bar with their girlfriends on Friday nights, while men would rather play video games and jack off to internet porn, than do something as backbreaking like start a family. Much less a family above the replacement rate.
Sex education starts young, with a heavy emphasis on contraceptive use. We all remember the condom and banana demonstration in fifth or sixth grade. Sex ed also pounds on this idea that getting preggo is basically the end of the world. While out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy is obviously not ideal, that anti-natal sentiment carries on into adulthood. Fewer people marry, and hardly anyone marries young. In fact, the idea of getting hitched prior to age 25 is seen as absurd. Your twenties are supposed to be for “experimentation,” and screwing around, not getting serious with anyone.
None of this is to say Nigeria’s population explosion is an ideal to aspire to for the West. Severe poverty persists. Excess population is a drain on resources. In fact, the baby boom is considered a crisis in the country. The study states in its conclusion:
Population control is therefore sacrosanct to save the nation from peril.
Nigeria’s high infant mortality rate also continues to be a problem. By reducing that, in addition to better sex education, the country may be able to reign in its population.
In fairness to the West, medical technology may help extend life spans and quality of life far beyond what’s typical. Many people continue to work into their seventies and beyond, and not just our politicians, either. Plus, our infant mortality rates are extremely low (5.6 deaths per 1,000) compared to Nigeria’s (72.2 deaths per 1,000) and other African countries.
It is possible that a birth rate below replacement is a natural and inevitable byproduct of a modern, developed civilization. But it’s odd and disquieting that even in the face of imminent extinction, our collective response is nonchalance. At what point, if at all, does self-preservation kick in? For many Millennials and Gen-Zers, it will be their social media accounts that will serve as their final legacy, not their genetic progeny. A sad state of affairs.
I found this study fascinating because it helps dispel the myth that income and cost of living are the biggest factors in why few in the West want kids or want many of them. It’s not a financial issue, it’s a cultural one. I don’t see those trends reversing anytime soon, if ever. We’re never doing away with sex education. We’re never going to tell our teens to shack up young or put off college to have a family. We’re never going to be anything but workaholic, screen-addicted, materialistic pleasure-seekers who only seem to have families by accident instead of intention. What modern woman aspires to having kids period, much less four or five? What man would choose breadwinning over fantasy football and e-thots? Face it. We just hate kids.
To quote a meme I recently found on X: “We traded bedtime stories for higher GDP.”
No, seriously. Why? Why does Harvard, a name synonomous with ultra elite education; a bastion of uber smartypantsism; the university whose name you have to say with the proper inflection(it’s HAH-verd, not HAR-verd) or else you’re glanced at askew with disdain — need desperately to suck President Trump’s nipples for that sweet federal funds milk?
According to Axios, the Trump Administration is freezing $2.2 billion in funds due to “diversity, equity and inclusion practices and alleged antisemitism.”
Wait a minute. Is this not the same university that once saw the likes of boy wonder tech wizard Mark Zuckerberg grace its halls? The Zuck who hacked into the university’s computer system so he could steal photos of female classmates and rank them according to their looks for his website Facemash? The same Zuck who would go on to found Facebook, now Meta?
Last I checked, Zuck’s networth is almost $200 billion. $2.2 billion is like chump change to him. Why doesn’t Harvard just call The Zuck up and ask him to spot them a few billy? Did they lose his phone number or something? What if they made an account on Facebook and tried to “poke” him? Is poking still a thing?
(Plus, Zuckerberg is Jewish. So him handing his alma mater a gigantic check would help dispel the whole antisemitism thing. Two birds with one stone.)
Or what about President Obama? He graduated Harvard Law School. He should know all kinds of loopholes and tricks. He’s a lawyer, afterall. Even if he couldn’t help, he might know someone else who could. He was the Commander in Chief. He probably has a big network on LinkedIn he can tap.
Or what about calling JG Wentworth? Doesn’t Harvard remember the slogan? “It’s my money and I need it now!” Just call 877 CASH NOW. So easy.
Meanwhile, Harvard is shitting its pants about losing their few billion. University president Alan Garber says:
“For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals, but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.”
This guy Garber should change his name to Gerber. As in Gerber baby food. As in he sounds like a big crying baby. This is Harvard, dude. You have the smartest, the best, and the brightest people on the planet within arm’s reach! There’s no need to get hysterical. You swing a cat and you’re gonna hit someone making the next trillion dollar tech start-up.
Harvard getting its panties twisted over this is like Lex Luthor freaking out that Superman might fine him for jaywalking. If I were a student or graduate of Harvard I’d be embarrassed.
I’m sorry, but if Harvard can’t figure a way out of its little $2.2 billion problem, then I don’t see it being any better than your local community college.
I’m a recovering “beat-em-up” fan. Back in the day as a teen I used to love those terrible Steven Seagal films like Above the Law and Marked For Death. Or Jean-Claude Van Damme stuff like Bloodsport and Death Warrant. They were constantly on rotation on USA and TBS and other freemium cable channels in the late ’90s. Films that were passably entertaining for immature adolescent minds, but in retrospect are ridiculously cheesy and absurd. But hey, if you haven’t seen Seagal break a Jamaican dude’s arm in half or Van Damme roundhouse kick a guy into a furnace, you haven’t lived.
Nowadays, Jason Statham is your go-to macho man face puncher and bad guy beater downer. Strangely, actors even higher up the talent totem pole have had a go at their own fistacuffs franchises. Bob Odenkirk is Nobody. A-lister Denzel Washingtonis The Equalizer. And of course Internet Jesus Keanu Reeves is John Wick.
Everyone wants to kick ass these days! Who can blame them? Have you seen the prices of things lately? Going to the grocery store anymore is like going to a Fuck Me in the Ass Parade.
The latest is A Working Man, where Statham plays a former blacks ops soldier turned construction guy who has to return to his face-stomping roots when his boss’s daughter gets kidnapped or something. I’ve not seen it, nor will I ever. Just like I didn’t see Statham’s last flick The Beekeeper, which had pretty much the same plot. The latest edition of Statham Beats Up Some Guys interests me about as much as hanging around a bunch of backwards hat-wearing dude bros talking about their fantasy football picks.
(No man should have a hobby with the word “fantasy” in it. Like, are there sparkles involved? Pink glitter? GTFO of here with that.)
Anyway…
What is pretty cool (and surprising), is that A Working Man is based on a book. Which is part of a book series, actually. By a real author. Not some A.I. trained on Seagal and Van Damme flicks. Chuck Dixon is a prolific author known mostly for his work in the comic book industry. He co-created Bane, aka the villain who broke Batman’s back. So, this guy is well-experienced in creating characters that know how to kick the crap out of people.
Dixon’s series is called Levon Cade, and features the vigilante going on various quests involving revenge and likely crushing a few throats. There are twelve books in total. The first, titled simply Levon’s Trade, premiered in December, 2021. The others came in rapid succession, sometimes as little as three weeks apart, over the course of 2022. The eleventh published in August, after which Dixon took a sabbatical before dropping the twelfth and final (?) in February, 2024. Not bad. Guy banged it all out in roughly a calendar year.
Look, these are not labyrinthine literary feasts like A Game of Thrones. These stories are Fisher-Price simple and Neanderthal stupid. No shit. But when you get down to it, there are really only two genres — “Man with Gun” and “Girl Bangs Guy.” That’s about it. James Bond, for all his British sophistication, is just another “Man with Gun” story. Titanic is the ultimate “Girl Bangs Guy.” The classics usually combine the two in interesting ways. Double Indemnity, for instance. There are some exceptions, often seen in experimental or prestige award stuff, but nobody cares. People only pay attention when someone’s fucking or getting murdered. Can you name the book that won the Nobel Prize for Literature four years ago? No? Have you ever heard of Fifty Shades of Grey? My point exactly.
I am not a fan of simple vigilante series, in either book or movie versions. I read Killing Floor once, the first Jack Reacher book, a long time ago, and the experience was akin to tattoo gunning my eyeballs. I am a fan of writers, however. Especially ones who put in the effort to carve out their own success, in whatever genre they choose. A Working Man has likely done well enough at the box office to merit a sequel. Who knows. It could even be a franchise like John Wick. I have no idea. I’ll never see the films anyway. I outgrew the need for them a long time ago. But I do appreciate them and the writers who make them.
Dean Brooks 