Is the World Going to Hell or is It Just You?
Many years ago, before I hooked on with Barstool Sports, back when my life wasn’t all filled with magic and wonder like it is now, I had a different writing gig. Yes, it’s true. Before I discovered the Stool and my life became all lollipop forests, chocolate waterfalls, unicorns sliding down rainbows and cover models talking to me at parties without reaching for their pepper spray, I wrote a sports column for my town newspaper.
It wasn’t a bad opportunity actually. I got me used to writing. And as a means of expressing your opinions, it beat calling WEEI or standing on the street corner and screaming at passing cars. And as a benefit, every once in a while someone at the town Transfer Station would tell me they liked my last column while we stood there sorting our recyclables. It wasn’t quite up there with having a 24 year old smokeshow allow you inside her defensive perimeter, but it was something.
My column was on the Op-Ed page. It basically consisted of me trying to write something moderately sarcastic and funny about the Boston sports scene without using the word “ass,” which, after years of operating under the Stool’s non-existent editorial policy, I would find impossible today. On the page with me was a lady who wrote about gardening (and always got twice the column space I did), a MILF from up the street who wrote heart-warming stories about the important things in life, and two old guys.
The old guys are still writing there. And just like when I shared the page with them, every week they employ one of the following topics:
1. Everything was good back in my day.
2. Things aren’t as good as they used to be.
3. Back in my day, things were better than they are now.
That’s it. The entire gamut. From A to B. Every week it’s the same. In their day people were nicer. Kids were smarter. Radio was better than TV. Your neighbors were considerate. Then when they got old, everything went all to hell. It’s an old guy thing I guess. I try to understand it, honestly I do. We all remember our youth with fondness. And I imagine it’s only natural to look back at the days when you didn’t ache all over and your penis responded to your every command and think the world was a better place back then.
But was it? And if so, when exactly did the world peak? 50 years ago? The Middle Ages? Cro-Magnon days? The Ice Age? Or the first time amino acids combined in the primordial ooze and formed the proteins that would become the basic building blocks of life, was it all downhill from there?
The Hell in a Handbasket crowd always looks back at the positives and conveniently forgets the negatives. No one ever writes an Op-Ed piece for their local paper saying “I miss the kids in their polio wheelchairs.” They won’t mention the moms dying in childbirth or the dad’s dropping dead from exhaustion at 40, they’ll just say how swell it was that nobody got divorced.
Call me a cockeyed optimist (actually, don’t call me a cockeyed anything) but it seems to me that things, generally speaking, improve. Life evolves. Systems get refined. Technology advances. That 6 billion people, if allowed to make a million decisions a day about what for them is best, make the world... better. Not in every instance, but certainly most. Take for example:
The news. The Globe, the dominant news outlet in Boston for over 100 years, is in bankruptcy’s on deck circle, put out of business by their own arrogance and the utter impracticality of charging someone for day-old news. In it’s death spasm, the Globe keeps finding people who piss and moan about how they’ll miss holding the paper in their hands. But anyone who’d rather wait 24 hours for someone to write out what’s happening in the world on big sheets of paper then sell it to them when it’s all available instantaneously for free, is like mourning the passing of cave paintings and smoke signals.
When did it peak? Today
Boston sports. Believe it or not, I still know plenty of older guys who long for the good old days. When you could buy Fenway tickets the day of the game and see Mickey Mantle play for a buck, blah, blah Bob Cousy, blah blah a hot dog was a nickel, blah, Milt Schmidt, blahbitty blah. Of course it was so pissah back then that all four teams played in half empty, run down rat holes and with the exception of the Celtics, they all sucked. Without a doubt, we’re living in the golden age of Boston sports and there’s no end in sight.
Peaked: Today
Cars . I’ll confess I’ve never been a car guy. To me it’s just transportation. I’ve never spent a minute of my life wondering what the guy in the next lane thinks about my awesome whip. But it seems to me that cars used to be better. Check out the antiques the hardcore car buffs enter in your next 4th of July parade and tell me they don’t have the kind of indefinable cool you don’t find on the road anymore. Back when cars were carved out of a solid block of steel and America was the Land of the Chrysler 440 cubic inch engine. When they got 8 MPG but had the horsepower of Ron Jeremy’s balls and could tow your house up Mt. Washington. Today we traded all that in for... cupholders.
The 50s.
TV. Forget for a second Hi Def and the DVR. Just in terms of content, I can’t even bitch at my kids about watching too much TV because I was doing the same when we had five channels (plus PBS which never counted) and at least half of everything on was pure crap. I have no idea how many stations we get now, but at any given hour of the day at least 100 of them are better than any options I had. When your 13 year old is watching a History International show about Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, how are you supposed to complain when at his age you spent five hours a week watching “The Munsters”?
Peaked: Today
Comedy. I’m biased because I see a lot of very talented, original, funny comics working the circuit right now. But it’s hard not to look at all the guys who came up 25 years or so ago like they were the 1927 Yankees. Eddie Murphy, Sam Kinison, Dennis Miller. Boston alone produced Jay Leno, Denis Leary, Anthony Clark, Lenny Clark, Kevin Meany, and Lenny Clarke to name just a few. Plus Steven Wright once told me I was funny, so he had me at “hello.”
Peaked: The 80s.
Movies. This is a tough call because it’s such a broad category. I’ve got too much nerd in me not to be giddy about the current spate of superhero movies. And I take a back seat to no man in my love of the Will Ferrell/Judd Apatow/Paul Rudd genre of comedies. But it’s hard not to look at a decade that started with “Patton” and “The Godfather” and ended with “Animal House” and “Caddyshack” and had “Jaws” halfway in between and without thinking there’s your Golden Era.
Peaked: The 70s.
Communications. Please. This isn’t even a contest. Only the most backwardsass Luddites are still fighting this battle. Explaining emails to my mother-in-law is still like Marty McFly trying to explain the future to Doc Brown. “You mean if I click on ‘Reply’ it will send a message back to you?!!!” When was the last time you heard someone complaining about teenagers texting all the time? Like it was ever preferable to listen to the little hormone imbalanced freakshows talk.
Peaked: Today
Sex. Old guys love to say things like “All this sex today leaves nothing to the imagination... We got more out of Lana Turner raising her eyebrow than all this smut combined.” Right. The porn industry made $10 billion (Note: I have no idea if that’s true; I’m too lazy to look it up so I just made up a figure) last year. How much did Lana Turner’s eyebrows make?
Peaked: Today
Obviously I could go on, but this is all space allows for. But I will say that the day if fast approaching when I’ll be hiking my pants up under my armpits, wearing a fishing hat and calling my Irish Rose “Mother” while I drive slow with my blinker on to the Ft. Myers Waffle House for the early bird specials. And when that day comes, I hope I’m still writing a column somewhere and I’ll try to keep in mind that maybe the whole world didn’t fall apart. Maybe just I did. And hopefully I won’t mind just so long as my penis is still working.