Love of the Common Zan

I accidentally started reading Less Than Zero last night. (No, I’ve never seen the film either.)

It’s making me equal parts happy I’m no longer in my late teens/early twenties and sad that books no longer mention Prince, Joan Jett, and Tom Petty in the same breath unless they’re trying to be something they’re not.

Unrelated, or possibly related: Last night I met up with some old friends at an old haunt in the old East Village. We talked about the things people presumably talk about when they get older: mortgages, cats, preferring the gig at venues with curfews, and, hopefully, a free seat in the balcony. I drank a ginger ale.

Then I read more Bret Easton Ellis on the subway on my way home and came to the following conclusion: we didn’t invent apathy; the generation before us did. Apathy is now thirty years old and getting tired of going out to the East Village on weeknights.