Down the brightly lit isles of food and product I travel. Happy! Happy! Im not really paying attention because Im humming along with the muzak:

“Hum de hum da huming, almost hum de two
Humma you were leaving, like you do, you do

All my dreams came shoo badoo, all my shopes and gears
All my dreams came shoo badoo, in tears, in tears”

I stop dead in my tracks and look up to the ceiling. I realize that Im humming along to the muzak. The muzak is playing a mutated string quartet of ABC’s Be Near Me. PAHfffffssshhhh! I feel my 20s drop away from me like a booster rocket, twirling hotly into the ocean of memories miles below me. Ladies and Gentlemen, we are oldly floating in space.

To have one of your ultimate favorite songs mangled into Muzak was a defining moment. It made me realize that soon I would be hating youth culture like my parents do. Soon I would be laughing outright at young 20somethings wandering around with their fauxhawks and buttshowing lowslung jeans. Soon I would be saying things like “Didnt Le Chateau make that back in the 80s?” With Sharkboy saying “Yes. You showed me a picture of you wearing it.”

Morressey’s words become a prayer for me: “Sir leads the troops, jealous of youth, same old suit since 1962.”

As more and more commercials rape my past via the culture I was brought up on to sell their cars, cookies and crap, I become more angry. Then last night happened…

Last night was pretty much the same scene as before. Standing in line at a check out with my purchases, humming along to the muzak. This time I recognize the song within a few bars: The Scissor Sister’s Laura. Not a fruity limp version but the original song. I kid you not.

Okay I may have been living under a rock here but in my mind, the Scissor Sisters are still pretty much an “underground” group, right? To use the rocket analogy again, their music was like little thrusters on my ship, giving me the last little booster thrill ride. Then this…then the fizzle out. I havent even downloaded all their songs yet and here they are being played over the Muzak network.

I guess the rule applies that when someone over 35 stumbles across a good chunk of youth culture and somehow makes it known to others that s/he likes it, the youth drop it and it shatters into obscurity. Like any rock band who does a Bond movie theme: Off the charts within 6 months. Think of it… Garbage – World is Not Enough…*poof*. Duran Duran – View To a Kill…*paff*. Madonna – Die Another Day… well. She comes back like wicked acid reflux. Exceptions being Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones.

I digress.

I can imagine that in the future, when three or more people stumble upon something “cool” the nanobots in their blood, placed their by Saatchi and Saatchi, pooling just inside their pleasure centres, will contact each other by WiFi, assess the coolness of the thing and then contact the mother hive base and the commercialborg will spring into action, assimilating that culture groove, and spitting it back into our hapless faces.

I, Paranoid.