Excuse me while I rant a while about feeling old. Yesterday I asked this kid what exactly the significance was of the askew ballcap, popularized, I suppose, by that corporate shill Avril Lavigne and her heart-of-Skittles Sk8erboi. He looked at me and said very matter-of-factly, "It's punk." That sent me reeling, because to me it looked more like Mickey Mantle and Fred Durst reached a stalemate in the peace negotiations and walked away. I longed for the halcyon days of hair abuse and self-mutilation, when being punk meant fucking yourself up--and if you weren't up to the task, someone else would be more than delighted to assist you by pummeling your brains out with a bicycle chain and spitting "faggot" in your face (ah, the '80s--you know, the real decade, not the VH1 revisionism). But now, I guess, all it requires is a half-assed attempt to put on your hat. Wish I'd known that in 1984; would've saved me a trip to Fistovia behind my junior high: "No, fellas, I don't really listen to punk rock. I was interrupted while adjusting my hat. But now that I have the time, I will return the bill to its rightful position parallel to my brow. I do not know who scribbled MINOR THREAT on my shirt, but he looks a lot like that motherfucker over there across the street." But now, of course, Minor Threat are cool, the Ramones are cooler, I saw a middle-aged woman in hospital scrubs walk out of a building with a Germs T-shirt, you can go into Wal-Mart and buy Husker Du's Land Speed Record digitally remastered with bonus tracks and liner notes by Dr. Phil, if Darby Crash were alive today he'd be teaching his kids how to drive the family minivan, and if you get your ass kicked after school these days you can sue your assailants for damages and certain cliques for defamation of character.

Plus, have you ever noticed that as you get older, old school gets younger? I was at Target on Sunday and saw a T-shirt that read "Know Your Roots." Hovering o'er this was a Nintendo controller. It bummed me out because I was too old. If I wore it, it would be a lie. My roots dug deeper. I think the Nintendo system came around when I was a sophomore or junior in high school, and we ended up with a Sega anyway (where I learned that as great a baseball player Reggie Jackson actually was, he didn't have interesting shit to say after you lost 10-3 to the computer). But prior to that, I was well-versed in the ways of Intellivision, Colecovision, and Atari. If you wanted to challenge me to Activision's Stampede, I would kick your ass, easy and advanced, ropin' black bulls like a motherfuck while you sat there like a mouth-open bitch. So if there was a "Know Your Roots" T-shirt for me, it would have a joystick, a tennis paddle, a complimentary Combat cartridge, and a roll of quarters. But that isn't even official old school anymore. Old school in 2004 covers everything that happened after 1988; anything before that is worthless ancient uncool history. I might as well be playing Frogger with Thomas Jefferson.

Hello. This is what the Latins call an "addendum," which means I have come in at some point in the future (which will be the recent past by the time you read this) and altered this post, but because I believe in purity, I left the above stuff alone, returning simply to add more beneath it. So for those of you who have read this post previously, here's a little something extra. This is a shout-out to my boy, Reverend Speats. I was at Borders a couple nights ago and saw the honkin' ad for Ray Charles' Genius Loves Company, Ray's mouth open, choppers exposed, ready to swallow the unsuspecting cashier. The Reverend is responsible for that title, and there's no more apt an epitaph for an artist of Ray's caliber. Goodbye again, Ray, and thank you, Rev.