A Cellarful of Nose - Future Shoes

To the Kilroys of the world, locked into an outmoded mode,
the mask of the salesman, the new way looked like a generation
of spoiled brats. What have they got to kick about? They didn’t
have to wait out the Depression, or slog through Guadalcanal. I'll
never forget Dean Martin dissing the Rolling Stones, drink in
hand, on his variety show. One roll of those handsome bloodshot
eyes said it all – “These guys are going to replace me?” He
envisioned the future and it was punk.
What's it mean? It means that the first world was on the brink
of trading one defense mechanism (the stiff upper lip, the
Cagney) for another (the curled lip, the slacker). The former
seems a whole lot more adult, but – former things usually do.
A decade ago George Harrison died. Over the course of his
not-very-long life, he matured a good deal. His music certainly
took a sharp turn, away from dourness and low expectations and
toward a vision of bliss and positivity. But people generally were
not fooled. He remained a dour and dyspeptic character – just a
better sport about it.
The Greek poet Hesiod, well before Homer, was among the
first to observe that human history, far from evolving into
something brighter and finer, was a history of slippage, of
devolution. Things were not only getting worse, but we were, too.
For Hesiod and Homer it was the descent from a world
populated by gods to one led by heroes to one inhabited by
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