PEACE, LOVE AND NYAH NYAH

An open letter to my two children, ages 18 and 15:

As you have pointed out many times, I am old. I am so old I was actually at
the original Woodstock.

But today I am young again. Invigorated. Naked with abandon. Flushed with
joy. It is as though the "brown acid" has finally kicked in.

Hey, kids. This is payback time. Didja hear what happened at your
"Woodstock '99" Sunday?

Your generation tried to show you were every bit as coolly disaffected as
mine, every bit as saturated with love and tranquillity and an appreciation
of the transcendence of music as a unifying force for peace and oneness and
beatific harmonious munificence and thus such.

Here's what happened, as summarized in news accounts: "It ended in a
destructive melee. There was looting. Marauding bands of shirtless,
bellowing men set fire to twelve trucks and . . . "

Hahahahahaha.

This is payback for the way you laugh at my geezerdom when I refer to our
home computer as a "machine," as in "Don't bother me, I'm on the machine."
This is payback for the way you make fun of my hair, which I choose to wear
au naturel, in solemn homage to the '60s, but which you say looks like an
asphyxiated rodent. This is payback for the way you imitate me when I stand
up and my joints pop like a manatee thrashing on bubble wrap.

Used to be that when my joints popped, it was because of seeds. I was not
always a human petroglyph.

When I went to Woodstock, I was accompanied by my roommate, whom I will
call Hieronymus to protect his identity. Hieronymus was addicted to Darvon,
which was, among serious drug users of the time, the skankiest addiction
possible, like being addicted to formaldehyde. He once stole my camera and
sold it for Darvon.

I read today that many of the Woodstock '99ers breathed Vicks VapoRub into
each other's noses for a "high." This makes Hieronymus look like Baba Ram
Dass. I also read that the '99 partygoers paid $150 a ticket, $4 for a
bottle of water, and that many signed up for "Woodstock commemorative"
MasterCards.

Hieronymus and I, together, arrived at Woodstock with $12 in our pockets,
which we spent immediately on Sugar Smacks and Pixie Stix. We "camped out,"
which meant we slept in the mud, in a tent constructed from a clear plastic
drop cloth. We hung it from a tree and fastened the corners to the ground
with forks we stole from our college cafeteria. The tent was airless and it
concentrated the August heat like a convection oven. I remember crawling
out into the driving rain in my underwear at one point on the theory that
if I did not do so, I would actually die. Our tent was among the finest
accommodations available.

We had neither money nor common sense, Hieronymus and I, but we had music.
We had Ten Years After, which sounded acrid, like madness, and Richie
Havens, who sounded growly and grave, like the sound of a heartbeat as
heard by the gut, and Canned Heat, which sounded like weeping and hiccups,
and Jimi Hendrix, who sounded like Jimi Hendrix.

You have Limp Bizkit.

I have heard Limp Bizkit, but my views are irrelevant, poisoned as they are
by insane generational chauvinism. Instead, I shall quote an in-house
Washington Post rock music expert: "They are an assaultive meld of rap
attitude and beats and metal menace and volume, guaranteed to set sweaty,
generally doltish young men to jumping around as if the floor were a giant
trampoline until they notice the song is over."

He is too kind.

I am sorry. This is cruel. But I would like to reiterate that while my
Woodstock ended with naked exhaustion, your Woodstock ended with police in
riot gear. The "Peace Fence" was torn down and fed to the rioters' bonfire.

Also I would like to point out that, instead of a peace sign, at Woodstock
'99 your generation flashed each other the finger. I personally have no
quarrel with the presentation of a middle finger as an expression of
contempt (though I prefer the New York Italian variation, which conjures a
more invasive act). However, at Woodstock '99, the raised middle finger was
so ubiquitous that it lost all significance, like a word reduced to
meaninglessness through repetition. It was every bit as imbecilic as that
thumb-linking handshake popularized some years ago by men with pompadours
and cowboy boots.

Also, I would like to point out that you have recently made fun of my
tendency to raise the volume on the television to a level you contend,
without foundation, is evidence of advancing deafness. This plants within
me a small carbuncle of fear which you then maliciously prod at the dinner
table by moving your lips in speech but remaining soundless.

Okay, kids. Read my lips:

My generation may be old and slow.

But we're not lame.