The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

ANOTHER REASON I DRIVE TO KANSAS. “The Trump administration has begun firing hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration, including some who maintain critical air traffic control infrastructure, despite four deadly crashes since inauguration day,” reports the Guardian. “‘Several hundred’ workers received termination notices last Friday.”

MOSTLY LIVE FROM NEW YORK. My buddy G. decided to go in on getting the Peacock app and gifted me with a shared membership. Of course, with the timing, I immersed myself into the SNL 50th Anniversary flood. Frankly, SNL hasn’t been a personal go-to in decades but there is the sense of nostalgia and using this cultural icon as a benchmark tracking the unkind march of time.

In watching the three-hour anniversary special, I was reminded of a quote attributed to Lorne Michaels when he was pitching the show—it should feel like the television studio had shut down for the night and had been taken over by a bunch of kids. As the show unfolded, I started to notice that the ‘bunch of kids’ are as old as dirt. Steve Martin (79 years old). Will Ferrell (57 years old). Kenan Thompson (46 years old). Kristen Wiig (51 years old). Eddie Murphy (63 years old). Martin Short (74 years old). Tina Fey (54 years old).

Lorne Michaels (80 years old).

In 1975, he was 30 years old and Ackroyd was twenty-three. The kids are not in charge of the television studio anymore. They all grew up, had kids, bought houses, and became the very establishment that the original cast was mocking. Watching an 88-year old Garrett Morris sit center stage to introduce a Tom Schiller (75 years old) film starring Belushi from 1978 was a little bit like watching Biden try to debate or remember what day it is. Seeing Sir Paul McCartney (82 years old) strain to reach the high notes made me worry he might slip and break a hip.

Look around. The ghosts of giants shuffle through the corridors of power, rattling their dentures and waving their weathered hands, muttering that things were better when they ran the show. Maybe they were. Or maybe they weren’t, and nostalgia is just another drug—one that numbs the sting of irrelevance. Time doesn’t care about your legacy. Time doesn’t give a damn how many wars you fought, records you broke, revolutions you started. It grinds down all monuments into the same pile of dust.

That brilliant Schiller reel, entitled Don’t Look Back in Anger, featured Belushi (who was dead and buried at 33) gleefully dancing on the graves of his friends who outlived him by decades. In 1978 it meant one thing. In 2025 it means something very different. As the Book says, I don’t think this means what you think it does.

This is not to suggest that the elderly should somehow just hide in a closet, put away their toys, and give up the fight but it does occur to me, that in a near constant battle of culture that permeates our hobbled and limping political system, maybe those in charge of one of the most lasting cultural touch points in my lifetime might be served better with some thirty-year old visionary and his GenZ friends mucking things up. They need to move out of their parents’ basement first, so there’s that, but when the idea of comedic anarchy is run by folks who need naps and whose bed time is far earlier than the show time, the image of the old clinging to the glory days is depressing.

I don’t know. I stopped going to my high school reunions after the first ten year deal because it felt kind of awful and sad.

Good Christ… what a depressing take!

Okay. Let’s back up a bit. I suppose I’m coming to grips that my investment, on a day to day level, into the ongoing culture is less than it used to be. My investment in the political future is less than it used to be. We Gen X slackers were never entrusted with control of the steering wheel so there is less for us to cling to and, while not an old fogey sitting on my saggy ass barking at clouds and the crazy kids and their pronouns, focus as we age is necessarily about making the time better for us as well as paving roads for the kids to succeed rather than inject ourselves with whatever new chemicals promise to hold back the tide, surrounding ourselves with yes-men who tell us we’ve still got it, that the young should wait their turn. But turns are taken, not given. And the young don’t want to wait. They’re pushing, climbing, kicking down the doors and laughing as the relics shake their heads and mumble about respect.

And so it goes. The old make way for the young, whether they want to or not. They can fight it, but they’ll lose. They can whine about it, but no one’s listening. Eventually, even the loudest voices grow weak, and the hungry, snarling pack of the new generation steps over their fallen bodies, taking their place in the grand, vicious cycle. The only question is whether they’ll see it coming before the fangs sink in.

In the meantime, I’ll blissfully enjoy both the movies of my coming of age years and the movies made by that young kid with a dream this year, listen to the Beatles when they were moving the needle and appreciate the bands with twenty-year olds belting out their songs, enjoy that which came before while still appreciating that coming around the corner. That’s the best part of the whole getting older thing—I get to swim in all the ponds without demanding anyone listen to me.

As for SNL50, it was a fun reminder of all the show has brought to the culture but better is the four-part docuseries that dives in behind the history.

“A DICTATOR?” Methinks Mr. Trump has flipped into a Twilight Zone of mismatch. He meant Putin is a ‘dictator without elections',’ right? Ukraine is a hill to die on for any supposed resistance.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the two sides would “start negotiations immediately.” Zelenskyy had not been informed about the call beforehand. That same day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a speech in Germany that it was unrealistic to think Ukraine would recover all its territory, that it was unlikely to ever join NATO, and that future defense guarantees for Ukraine would not be provided by US or NATO troops. In some sense, Hegseth was only saying out loud what many had long been saying privately, but critics charged that he was effectively making concessions to Russia before talks even began.

After Zelenskyy said Trump was living in a Russian-created “disinformation space,” Trump responded with a Truth Social post calling Zelenskyy a “modestly successful comedian” and a “dictator without elections.” The Art of the Deal looks like throwing in with a truly fascist dictator in order to present as the Strong Man. Oof.

THE “BUT THEY WERE ALL SPEEDING, TOO!” DEFENSE. Diddy’s defense is moving to dismiss a federal charge arguing he's been subject to a racist prosecution.

“Mr. Combs has been singled out because he is a powerful Black man, and he is being prosecuted for conduct that regularly goes unpunished,” they claim in a new filing - CNN

It almost never works to point out the crimes of the amorphous they are doing it, too. Also, while there are likely plenty of sex rooms and orgies happening on the regular in Hollywood, most are not so planned out to have hundreds of bottles of baby oil available on demand.

America is finally being run like a business: a business acquired by private equity that’s being stripped for parts before being liquidated. — Jesse Brenneman

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS? Alright, gang, because many of my friends are both post-fifty and penniless with similar career paths as my own (meaning a zig zag of artistry and odd gigs to prop up the art thing) let’s talk about finding a job when you’re old—because apparently, the world thinks we all just crawl into a grave at fifty and call it a day. Oh, I’m sorry! I thought we still needed to pay rent, eat food, and NOT LIVE IN A BOX UNDER A BRIDGE! But no, the job market treats you like you’re a rotting dinosaur the moment you don’t know what a TikTok dance is!

You send out 200 resumes, each one lovingly crafted with years of experience, wisdom, and actual skill, and what do you get back?

NADA!

Not even a rejection letter—just silence—like the universe itself is laughing at your outdated Microsoft Word format.

Maybe—MAYBE—there is a job interview on Zoom (which is weird and distancing) and possibly an in-person sit-down.

You walk in, sit down across from some 24-year old hiring manager who still lives with his parents and thinks grinding means editing a YouTube video in his pajamas, he looks at you like, “Hmmm, I see here you have thirty years of experience… but can you work well under pressure?”

You mean like when I was juggling three jobs, raising kids, paying off a mortgage, and fixing my own car because mechanics now charge a week’s salary for a tune-up?! Is that what you mean, kiddo? And, sorry, I don’t have preferred pronouns. You can call me anything you want as long as there’s a paycheck at the end of the sentence.

And then comes the killer question:

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

“…dead?”

Apparently, if you’re over 50, you’re ‘not a cultural fit.’ My culture is about showing up on time, working hard, and not staring at my phone every 30 seconds! Sorry I don’t fit in with the ‘company vibe.’

So what’s the solution?

Lie your ass off. Go into that interview and pretend like you’re energized, adaptable, and totally comfortable being bossed around by someone whose entire management experience comes from running a Discord server!

You downplay your experience, pretend you ‘love learning new things,’ and smile while some Gen Z recruiter explains how work-life balance means never asking for a raise and being available 24/7.

Don’t give up— sooner or later, you’ll find that one company that still values real work ethic—or at least one that’s desperate enough to take a chance on someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

I’m relatively lucky in that I tend to land on my feet more frequently than fall on my ass (I reserve the ass-falling for my marriages) so trying to boost up the morale of my friends casting out resumes in digital bottles tossed into the sea tends to feel like a decently in-shape dude telling his morbidly obese buddy to just eat less and move more but, in my framework, they’re all just jobs. No families to join, no cultures to adopt. I do a thing, they give me money, I trade the money for goods and services.

As long as the thing they give me money to do isn’t degrading, it’s a decent bargain. If I find (and do find) work that I see as meaningful, that moves the needle from worse to better, isn’t that the bargain? It’s like hitting the lottery—looking forward to going in to work, grinding away at small bites and viewing improvement in your own space.

Hang in there, gang. There’s a city-killing asteroid heading our way in the next ten years and a coupla lunatics running the country right now. That box under the bridge is better than the bridge and no box, amiright?

I guess there’s no nuance in THAT statement…

STEALTHY RESISTANCE. If you give a blind man a loaded pistol and stand a hundred yards away, the only way you get shot is if you scream at him. Get to work resisting but do it like ninjas cuz freaking out draws the vision-impaired president and his sycophants’ attention.

While many seem to be in a state of fear that the blind king will shoot everything up, I’m still in awe of the Constitutional system created that has kept this country a democracy for 249 years. These clowns are going to do exactly what they promised to do on the campaign trail but we have an infrastructure designed to prevent the worst impulses of wannabe kings. Panicking people make bad decisions so determination to avoid panic is the best first strategy. Maybe I have those rose-colored glasses on but that’s why I’m just observing and finding the whole thing more entertaining than the SNL50.

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And there you go with the week! Hang in there.