Day: August 26, 2015

Turns out after a certain distance of years students stop recognizing adults as even being human. I think I will call this the Peanuts effect, though I am certain an actual trained psychologist uncovered the age disparity conflict and I just don’t know it. It reared its ugly head in class today when my students were getting to know each other and having conversations about subjects they felt only pertained to them and I actually understood.

Minds blown.

They were talking about dealing with roommates and figuring out meals and the uncomfortable necessity of what, in the John Hughes days, was known as the sock on door compact. You would think they forgot I ever went to college or had roommates or even understood the basics of person to person physical attraction.

I’m 40. I’m not paleolithic or anything. Moreover the conflicts they are talking about are timeless. It doesn’t end there though. Often 18 yr olds describe 25 as ‘ancient’ often using other more heinous terms to describe the thirties and anything over that doesn’t even compute. I was likely the same way, assuming these oldies were so far removed from my reality that they had no concept of what it even looked like.

Now I’m living on the other side of that reality and wondering why and how the young bucks can e so very stupid. But is it stupid at all?

They orbit a set of activities and organizational elements that are indeed foreign to me. I don’t use tinder. My pintrest is woeful. I have never have and never will acquire a snapchat. I think Juicy J is an idiot. Drake is powerfully overrated. I live in the haze of B.I.G. and remember when Jay-Z was still just that wack dude that everyone ignored.

I recognize that Tupac is actually dead.

Now I know I’m belittling an entire generation in some ways by making my stuff sound better than theirs but that too appears to be part of the generational gap. Our stuff is always better than their stuff. Its better than the new and better than the old and entirely ours. This is perhaps the insular situation that creates a sense of dismissal of past generations and often an abject distaste or disregard or disappointment (I’m about them D’s today) when thinking about the ‘next generation’. I remember when one past generation called itself the ‘best generation’. What kind of madness is that. So, for the rest of creation you guys are the pinnacle? It is all downhill from there?

Somehow every generation seems to feel that way for a time. Somehow every generation forgets that their elders went through a lot of the same stuff and dealt with it in a lot of the same ways. I wish more of us saw that and more of us communicated. Maybe the generations would be closer.

Maybe we wouldn’t be quite so worried about the kids screwing everything up.

I found a few minutes this evening to sit down and test out the new Madden 16 on the PS4. I chose the Giants, because thats how I roll–at least it was until I played them. I think Madden got it right with the team, trading the excitement of Beckham’s energy, ability, and personality for the lack of all three emanating from the G-men’s O-line. Still, sometimes realistic is just a bit too realistic and I’m left to wonder if Madden is good or just accurate. Either way, the game is one more thing: over the top.

The Ps4 version has been rebuilt from the ground up. I spent some time in the beginning forced into a strange tutorial that picks up early in a Steelers v. Cardinals game. At key moments in the game I was directed to try to catch a pass or intercept one and other in-game promises that read like a who’s who of world class game element design. The stuff they put in isn’t only good, it feels crucial to the two plus decade old franchise that birthed it. Still, the presentation of the add on’s felt forced and non-engaging, if only for the reason that I have no desire to walkthrough with a team I’d never be playing with on my own.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the franchise. I only had time for one regular season game, a brutal thumping courtesy of the Cowboys. I did enjoy the level of competition, though it exposes my many weaknesses in trying to move from a three to a four.

Time and practice will make perfect.