So last week I turned 41.

This is kinda mind-blowing to me, as I am now officially “in” my forties. I’m no longer just 40. Oh, no. I have now fallen off the cliff into being middle-aged. That nebulous time when we’re supposed to be all grown up but we still don’t really know what the hell we are doing and we spend all of our time trying to get everyone around us not to see that.

It’s fun. No, really. I also enjoy playing the “what hurts this morning?” game and having to squint when I read small print. It’s just lovely.

I wasn’t inspired to write this post because of angst over my current age bracket, though. What actually got me to blow the dust off the old WordPress server was the decision to come clean about a few things.

You see, folks…In many ways I’m not your typical member of Generation X.

Oh, sure. I listened to Nirvana and wore combat boots, shorts, and a flannel shirt in 90 degree Florida. Let’s not get crazy here. Still, there’s a lot of things about me that apparently don’t jive with the rest of my generation, and I figured it was time for me to out myself and let the judgement of my peers rain down upon my shiny bald head.

Or, you know, I just felt like putting down a bunch of random shit about myself. However you want to read it, that’s cool. Many of the items below are related to music, but considering how much my generation was defined by the music we listed to I think that’s appropriate.

• I never listened to Bauhaus, outside of the obvious tunes that were played in heavy rotation at the clubs I went to. Beyond their cover of “Ziggy Stardust” and (of course) “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” I couldn’t name a Bauhaus song. I recently went to see the “Mr. Moonlight” tour where Peter Murphy did nothing but Bauhaus songs and I was bored stiff. I’m a much bigger fan of his solo work.
• I really enjoy the music of Phish, but I can’t stand their live albums. I’m actually this way about most live albums. The only one I really give a damn about is Warren Zevon’s Learning To Flinch, and that’s mostly because of the personal hell I went through getting to see him on the tour supporting that album. That’s a story for another day, though.
• I have never actually seen the movie Say Anything, although I’m very familiar with the whole boombox over the head scene. For that matter I’ve never seen Reality Bites, Suburbia, River’s Edge, Boyz N The Hood, or Friday.
• I liked New Coke.
• When “New Wave” music was popular I thought it was lame. I wouldn’t have been caught dead listening to Simple Minds or Duran Duran. I’ve now done a complete 180° on the matter. I couldn’t tell you the last time I listened to Iron Maiden or Ozzy Osbourne.
• I’ve never seen an episode of 21 Jump Street.
• I have never owned a pair of Doc Martens, nor have I ever owned a real leather jacket. These are both things I would still like to acquire at some point.
• When I was a teenager I had no idea why some guy named Frankie wanted me to relax.
• Despite the fact that I spent just about every weekend at seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the AMC Midnight Movie Express for the better part of a year, I have not seen The Wall or Wizards. I have seen Heavy Metal, but I had that on video and…umm…next subject.
• I have never had a crush on Alyssa Milano or Molly Ringwald, although they are both doing some pretty cool things these days and are, in my not-so-humble opinion, much more attractive now than they were when they were supposedly the hottest girls on the planet. I did have a crush on Anna Nicole Smith, though. While I didn’t care for her music, I was also overly infatuated with Madonna and the fact that seemingly every girl my age was dressing like her kinda drove me insane.
• My father was not, actually, a Vampire Hunter. This is, I realize, not a common characteristic of Generation X but I used to tell my friends that when they asked where my Dad was when I was in Elementary School. I figure if I’m confessing things I might as well come clean about that as well.
• Oh, hell. I didn’t have a girlfriend in Mississippi, either.
• I was never a Goth or a Punk, although I listened to both Goth and Punk music. This is largely due to the fact that style was a large factor in whether or not one was able to claim the title of Goth Or Punk, and I wore sweatpants and t-shirts every day. I can legitimately claim to have done the Grunge look for a while, but that was largely due to the fact that by the time Grunge came around I had lost a lot of weight (the first time I dropped over 100 pounds) and could actually fit into clothes I could buy at a thrift store.
• To this day I have no idea what the hell was happening in either Aeon Flux or Akira.
• I did not actually watch Star Trek: The Next Generation when it was being aired. In fact, I thought it was really lame (probably because I DID watch the first few episodes, and they WERE really lame).
• I actually got along very well with my Mother (and I still do), although I did spend a lot of time alone or with babysitters because of her work schedule.

Wow. Feels good to get all of that off of my chest.