Funny Thing: Kids Today

Time for another "funny thing happened" anecdote. This one highlights the truly sublime nature of intergenerational change.

I have a colleague who was recently in an elevator with a 13-year-old girl and a few 7-8-year-olds. No, no, not like Michael Jackson; he was just in the elevator with them.

The younger kids were discussing their distressing lack of phone signal in the elevator and the 13-year-old turns to my colleague and says without irony "Wow, what's happening these days? When I was 7, I didn't even have a cell phone! Today's kids are just ridiculous. Right?"

PS - I am flabbergasted by the woeful lack of perspective that some kids have these days, although I am quite sure that I came off this way a bit when I was a kid -- "You had to have big ICE BLOCKS delivered to cool the refrigerator?!" Still, I didn't have a cell phone until I was 37, much less seven years old. Oh, and "Amsterdam" by Guster is download-worthy, kids; now playing on iTunes.

5-4-Fri: Facebook Lists

The time-suck that is known as Facebook is endlessly seeking to keep you from doing anything else with your life by coming up with ever more applications, all cleverly centered around its core value proposition: you talking about you. The latest is making and posting a list of 25 things...wait for it...about you. Here are the first five of my list:

1. I worked with a colleague who was in Playboy.
2. I introduced a woman I was casually seeing to another woman I was casually seeing and they dated each other for 2 years.
3. My favorite band is R.E.M.
4. My favorite number is 2.
5. I have run 2 marathons.

PS - Because you have been a good boy/girl/transgendered/gay/lesbian/straight little reader, here are the other 20 entries in my list:

Elvis Presley and I have the same middle name.
I have a personal blog.
I own a recreation of Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel.
Two of my ex-girlfriends in a row dated the same guy immediately after they broke up with me.
I have met Alex Trebeck.
I have had 3 surgeries.
I collect first edition novels by Ross Thomas.
My Master's Thesis is on a play written by British dramatist, Tom Stoppard.
My high school cross-country team won the state title eight consecutive times.
My father taught at an historically black college.
I have lived in Chapel Hill, NC: Westchester, NY; Philadelphia, PA; and Fonteney-sous-Bois, France.
I kissed my first girl as a Sophmore in college.
I did not drink in college.
My blood type is the universal donor.
My favorite film is "Fifth Element."
I have seen every episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
I saw "Grease" six and a half times in the theater.
I have three cowlicks.
I have served on my parish counsel at church.
My first crush was on Olivia Newton John.

Oh, and, "Jai Ho" from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack by A.R Rahman is on my list of engaging songs; now playing on iTunes.

Do It: Watch Jason McElwin's Basketball Game

At Greece Athena High School in Rochester, NY, one day the profoundly autistic but highly-functioning team captain, Jason McElwain, was put in for the last several minutes of a Trojan's basket ball game. His coach thought he was just rewarding Jason for dedication to the team with a symbolic 2-point basket; what he got was a star performance. This joyful video has been making the rounds on Facebook, but you should take the time to see it on CBS News' own site

Watch the game. Do it!

PS - I have a friend with a kid who is, woefully, autistic and she lost it when she saw this video. It really is a pretty heart-warming, inspiring watch. Oh, and "Dare You to Move" by Switchfoot is inspiring, too; now playing on iTunes.

Facebook Lexicon

I've noticed that the classic Facebook status update is creating a grammatical legacy. Originally, the status bar only allowed you to add information about yourself after the fixed construction "Your Name is:". (Information such as how you were enjoying a delicious hoagie or that you were rejoicing that the Heels just scored or that you were, at midnight, ready for a lie-down.) Forgetting the need of your social network to know your every move, many people simply treat the "is" more as a jumping off point than as a present tense verb with any implications for the words that follow.

For example, just yesterday mi amigo Zain posted that she "is tra-la-la." Another friend says she "is you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." It has become somewhat hip to simply ignore Facebook's forced sentence construction and go for it. In fact, Facebook--never far behind its facebookers--now even lets you delete the once-obligatory "is" (although it still discreetly suggests it, like a butler hoping that the young gentleman is not going out in public wearing just his undershirt as a top).

It seems to me to be its own example of language evolution, analogous to a form of functional shifting; some moral equivalent of turning Google into a verb, such as "I googled that hottie."

In any case, when I obsessively check on the statuses of my own friendses I am reminded of the awesomely woeful '80s fashion of storytelling. Remember how everyone used to say, "She was like, 'no way,' and I was like 'yes way' and then she was like 'nuh uh!' and I was all like, 'YUH huh!' and then Bruce was like, 'Dude, its true.'" Those were, like, the days.

PS - In fact, I think the Facebook status update should force you to relive the '80s. "iClipse is like: this coke is tasty." Oh, and "I Gotta Move" by Ben Kweller is catchy like the herps; now playing on iTunes.