Today's my birthday!

For more information on my forthcoming senescence, please consult Superhero Decadence and Superheroes as Senior Citizens.

Today's the last day of my twenties. Tomorrow, I am old, as depicted in the following synopsis-of-my-life Spiegelman comic that was given to me by Amalle when I passed my exams:



Now entering panel four. Banana peel approaching. Abandon all hope.

We're off to sample Detroit today. While we're waiting for showers to finish here are a few links I never got around to yesterday.

* Dollhouse 2.3, which I haven't seen yet, ticked upwards in the ratings, managing this week to beat reruns on ABC. Related: Ten TV Spin-offs That Were Better Than the Original Shows includes Angel—I agree in the main—Daria, Xena, DS9, and, The Simpsons. Also related: Flashforward is falling fast, endorsing Bill's thesis that the show is blowing it. Related and ridiculous: "Is science fiction becoming feminized?" Mary Shelley will be heartbroken.

* Josh Marshall on the Nobel: [T]he unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration. More from Steve Benen.

* Something, something, something, Detroit.

* The big Moon bombing appears not to have gone so well. Did the aliens step in?

* Iceland, an epicenter of the last financial crisis, looks to recover with data centers that offer free air-side cooling.

* The L.A. Times discusses the Fantastic Mr. Fox directing controversy. (via)

* Some bad news: Universe To End Sooner Than Thought.

* And more bad news: time has not ceased its unrelenting march.

When I was younger I would sometimes be seized, usually at night, by sudden intense depressions I usually thought of as "darkness." I haven't felt that way in a long time, not since before I was married, and I'm certain a lot of that has to do both with Jaimee and with the way my life has generally improved in all categories since I was younger. But tonight I feel something like that feeling, except totally benign, a kind of overpowering sense of nostalgia that has been caused in varying degrees by:

* my high school reunion, in process tonight a mere 600 miles from my current location;
* the fifth anniversary of my cousin Andrew's death, which puts his phantom self as old this year as I was when he died;
* a new diet that seems to be having immediate and positive effects on my energy and concentration;
* yesterday's rereading of Jimmy Corrigan;
* some eerily on-the-nose "nostalgia rock" recommended by Jacob B;
* my obsessive attention to the youth rebellion in Iran and hope at least for one night that the arc of history bends towards Utopia.

I feel nostalgic and hypercontemplative, but not sad, except insofar as we all only live life once, and the portions are too small.

They say time is the fire in which we burn: 'Old age begins at 27.'

Apropos of my birthday, this post from Kottke on "timeline twins."

When I was a kid, "oldies" music and movies seemed ancient. Even though I'm now in my 30s, the entertainment that I watched and listened to in my youth still feels pretty recent to me. Raiders of the Lost Ark wasn't all that long ago, right? But comparing my distorted recall of childhood favorites to the oldies of the time jogs my memory in unpleasant ways. For example:

Listening to Michael Jackson's Thriller today is equivalent to listening to Elvis Presley's first album (1956) at the time of Thriller's release in 1982. Elvis singles in 1956 included Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, and Love Me Tender.

Lots more examples in the post and in Kottke's comments. Surely every generation experiences this to some extent or another—but it seems to me there really is good reason to think there's more cultural distance between Hound Dog and Thriller than between Thriller and now. (Though I must admit that to my comfortable perch on this side of thirty Thriller doesn't seem especially fresh.)

First, the political, cultural, and technological revolutions of the '60s and '70s really were far more radical than anything that has been experienced since. Not every set of 36 years is identically tumultuous.

But the way we consume media has also changed in a way that has tended to ensure continuity, in two senses—first, technologies like the explosion of niche cable networks, DVDs, MP3s, YouTube, etc. allow media-cultural events to have cultural vitality for far longer, and second, repeated quotation and citation as both self-referentiality and nostalgia (famously characteristic of postmodernism) has in general helped keep these things alive.

Against future shock, call it future drag: things no longer seem to change, time no longer seems to pass, the past is always at our fingertips.

I also like the analogy improbable makes to oil painting:

Lots of other fields have the same property of developing rapidly once the technology is there. We've had oil paints for how many centuries? The first few decades saw rapid innovation, and the grand masters are from not long after that.

So music back then really was newer, fresher, and better. That's why we're still listening: it's still the best there is.

Today I'm older than I've ever been: 29. Give or take a few months, I'm now the same age as my father the day I was born, which gives me the peculiar sensation of having lapped myself. (I dare not speculate what he must be feeling.)

I both do, and don't, feel old.

Stay cool, Scorpios.

This year's freshmen are the last group of students I'm likely to have that are older than 1991's Nevermind. I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.