Salon has an interesting take on the movie The Rocker with Rainn Wilson.
Can Generation X grow old gracefully? Now that nearly half the generation that gave us grunge has turned 40, the question of whether slackerdom can mix with maturity looms. Adulthood implies many of the things this aging bunch has tried to reject, or at least question: marriage, parenthood, responsibility, authority. … Fishman, aka “Fish,” typifies Gen X’s Peter Pan-ish unwillingness to play by the established rules of growing up. In 2006, he’s a 40-ish loser doing telemarketing for a Cleveland insurance company. He is unmarried, unkempt and unemployed. He loses his apartment and has to move in with his sister.
This touches on precisely what I address in the latter half of my book, Slackonomics. Sandeep Kaushik, whose personal story is in Chapter 12, calls it “Delayed Onset Adulthood Syndrome.” Here is one quote from his story:
I thought me and my friends, we were really special. We were touched by the gods. We were so clever and talented. In this effortless way, we were going to live the life without having to lift a finger. We were going to hang out on the porch, drink beer, and be incredibly successful. I was sure of it. It was a given. There was no thought about how to map this out. I just assumed, being who we were, having whatever skills or talents we had would take us there. I didn’t realize smart people are actually a dime a dozen. A lot of people have talents. But do you know how to develop a career? Do you know how to make your way in the world?
While Fishman goes into a 20 year tailspin, Sandeep’s struggle lasted about 10 years, which he pulls himself out of in a more typical if less dramatic way than becoming a rock star: Sandeep embraces a profession he enjoys even if it doesn’t lead to a lot of fame and fortune, and as a result, grows up a bit and finds it’s not so bad being married, having kids and owning a house in Seattle:
I always thought of myself as having one foot in adulthood and one foot in adolescence. I never thought I would end up so conventional, but I like what I do. I completely love Seattle. I go out drinking too much, but that’s just because there’s always someone to get a drink with. I’ve always been a restless sort, but I’m probably going to be here for the rest of my life and it doesn’t seem that bad.
A Gen X Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy? [Salon]
The band most associated with Generation X — in the cliche version of the term — is of course Nirvana. But I think Beck is much more representative of the Gen X experience. His career resonates beyond the music world, revealing interesting twists and turns as one very successful and talented person has bridged the analog and digital worlds.
In today’s Times, a feature about Beck touches on the main point I make in my book Slackonomics:
The paths taken and not taken have brought [Beck] to another valedictory point in his mercurial career. On Tuesday, his 38th birthday, Beck will release “Modern Guilt,” his eighth major-label studio album. … The completion of his contract with DGC Records, which has since been absorbed by Interscope Geffen A&M Records, could be a climactic event, occurring as the music industry continues to implode. Beck could now seek a new deal with a major label, an indie or a concert promoter, or he could go it alone, as contemporaries like Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead and Tori Amos have done [all Xers, it should be noted]. Or his label could decide not to sign him again.
The title of this piece is, “In A Chaotic Industry, Beck Abides,” which is essentially a neat little summary of the entire premise of my book. Creative Destruction (in the subtitle) is an economic phrase to describe the process by which old economic arrangements and cycles get upended by new ones as a result of innovation and technology. Generation X has essentially been the middle demographic of the middle class in this current era of Creative Destruction.
The result is an entire generation having to adapt in its formative years and beyond to two very contradictory forces: economic insecurity on the one hand, but great potential for entrepreneurial and creative fulfillment on the other. So even as Beck has gone from a “Loser” to musical valedictorian, he still doesn’t know where the music business is going to be in six months.
That is the story of Generation X. But we’ll always have two turntables and a microphone.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I love the concept of a slacker superhero. MaryAnn over at flick filosopher (who I interviewed for my book Slackonomics) loved the idea, too (”He’s cranky. He drinks too much. He’s not particularly sensitive to the needs of anyone but himself.”), but she didn’t think it was true to itself all the way through. She still recommends it, though:
“So here’s the thing: Can you tolerate a Great Idea that doesn’t entirely pull itself off in the execution? Can you forgive a movie for starting off awesome and ending not quite so awesomely? I’ve decided that I can.”
So I’m in LA doing book promotional stuff when I have a very LA moment. At the local coffee place in West Hollywood, suddenly there’s a buzz about a celebrity in our midst, which turns out to be Samantha’s humping dog from Sex in the City. So I stop to pet the dog and snap a photo so I can tell people about my little celebrity encounter, but later decide to google the dog. Now I think this is more of an LA moment that I first bargained for; Gidget the Dog is, according to one blog, a New York doggie actress, and of the various photos of Gidget on the internet, they don’t look so much like the dog at Marco’s cafe! Was I suckered about the celebrity status of this dog?! You decide.
UPDATE! I have official confirmation that this is indeed Gidget from her owner/manager, Mary, who was in LA on a biz trip (that’s her feet in the photo, with the identifying dolphin tattoo). She counts this as Gidget’s first paparazzi moment! See the link here for Gidget’s diary, and comments below.
For five years I’ve lived on St. Marks Place (a street in the East Village famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page). I’ve taken many photos of random street life, and sifting through them, it’s clear that a lot of activity revolves around creative pursuits. Of course, this isn’t a surprise to anyone who lives here, but only recently have there been attempts to actually quantify the creative economy.
One fascinating look at how the creative economy works in New York is the book, The Warhol Economy, written by my friend and USC prof. Elizabeth Currid (which I also wrote about here).
More recently, the National Endowment for the Arts released an important study titled, “Artists in the Workforce, 1990-2005,” which Janet Babin reported on for Marketplace and quoted me ever so briefly (listen to the piece here). This time period coincides exactly with the the entrance of Generation X in the labor force, and is therefore a chronicle of the impact that Xer artists have had on the creative economy. It’s huge. Representing 1.4 percent of the labor force, artists represent a larger group than the legal profession (lawyers, judges and paralegals) and medical doctors (physicians, surgeons and dentists). Aggregate income is about $70 billion. Of 
course, this includes all generations of artists, but the median age of almost every category of artist profiled in the study falls within the demographics of Generation X.
The NEA study confirms what I write about anecdotally in Slackonomics: Compared to other workers, Gen X artists tend to be better educated (twice as likely to have college degrees) and are more entrepreneurial (3.5 times more likely to be self-employed). Despite the fact that artists are not as well compensated given their education levels compared to other professionals (about $6000 less), and are chronically underemployed, the number of Gen X artists has grown at the same rate as the total labor 
force. So clearly there’s a payoff that’s not measured in dollars.
Artists are also highly concentrated in urban areas, a fact that Currid not only documents but explains: artists are much more likely to live and work in close proximity to each other because social interaction is necessary to develop ideas, make contacts and bring creative products to the market.
As the report points out, “There is no way to understand the new American economy without recognizing the role of its two million creative workers.”
Photos, top left to right: a film being made on St. Marks, a trumpet player in the Howl Parade, and a writer typing on an old-fashioned typewriter on the sidewalk at night; from top to bottom: dancers in the Howl Parade, a painter at the Fringe Festival, and a photographer doing a fashion shoot (click to enlarge any of the pics).