Twilight in Margaritaville
The parrots have all gone quiet.
EDIT: This article was originally written yesterday, but, when I tried to publish it, I continually recieved a network error that persisted up until the morning, necessitating that I copy-paste the entire thing into an entirely new article. Not sure if it’s just Substack’s rather questionable coding or something… else, but, regardless, as of this writing, the subject is a day out of date. So much for timely content.
As of this writing, minority leader Mitch McConnell froze up while addressing a live audience.
This is his second episode, as they’re calling it, in as many months. What exactly these episodes are, only McConnell’s doctors can say. Brain bleeds? Strokes? Just a run of the mill senior moment? I’m of the opinion it doesn’t really matter. The man should not be in the position he’s in, though - and this may be controversial - I don’t think that it’s so much his age that should disqualify him, but his general competence. Or, in this case, lack thereof.
After all, I’m quick to remind people that advanced age is not always an immediate disqualifier for quality leadership. Cincinnatus - who, I will admit, may have been a mythical rather than historical figure - was said to be in his eighties when he was asked to return and serve as the tyrant of Rome for the second time. There’s also Enrico Dandolo, doge of Venice, who famously conquered Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, personally leading the army despite being ninety-two years of age. And blind. Hindsight being what it is, I think we can all agree his decision to sack Constantinople at that time was one of histories biggest bruh moments, as the kids might say, but, at the same time, ya gotta give the old codger credit where it’s due - that’s pretty fucking impressive.
Similarly, you can say a lot about Winston Churchill and his foibles, but the man led Britain through some of its most trying days at an advanced age, only retiring as prime minister at the ripe old age of 81 - the same age as Mitch McConnell, at present. Stepping down once you know you’re beginning to slow down, mentally and physically… what a novel idea.
Similarly, his war-time ally Charles DeGaulle served as president of France well into his 70’s. Much like Cincinnatus, he was also called upon by the French people to run for president after retiring from politics, because they fucked up pretty much everything he put into place as president during his first term the second that he left. They did the exact same thing the second time he returned to the position, too, but at least he had the small mercy of dying a year later before he could see everything he worked for dismantled and his country reduced to a glorified rump state of the American Empire, which was pretty much exactly what he wanted to prevent.
The point I’m trying to make here is that I don’t know if age has anything to do with the failings of McConnel and fellow geriatric fuck-ups currently wasting away in our hallowed halls of government. After all, as many people are quick to point out about Biden in particular - the guy was always fucking stupid. He didn’t need to get old and go senile to be an incompetent, bumbling boob. The man was infamous for being a gaffe-machine. The fucker couldn't open his mouth without his foot being magnetically attracted to it. During one of his many ill-fated stabs at the Oval Office in 1987, he was caught having plagiarized various speeches, which, frankly, should have disqualified him from ever putting his name in the hat afterwards.
Quite frankly, I find it sick that we not only allow these increasingly senile geriatrics to hold the reigns of power when they should be in nursing homes, but the fact that their families and inner-circles - all of whom benefit from these people being in their positions - aren’t being tried for elder abuse. As much as I despise Biden, Feinstein, Pelosi, and McConnell, they should be in placed in homes, where they will slowly waste away. Where they can’t pose a threat to anyone and can no longer hurt anybody except for the poor sod who has to change their soiled nappies. I know some people would accuse me of letting them off lightly for the many, many crimes they’ve committed not just against the American people, but people across the world, yet, at the same time… well, that judgement is not ours to pass. That lies in the domain of the divine. And, if there is any ultimate justice - and I believe there is - there is no punishment that we could inflict upon these people that would be more cruel than to let them wither away, little by little, in some remote nursing home far from the public eye, alone and grappling with the fact that, soon - maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even a year, but soon - the last call will come, and they will get to reap the consequences of their actions. And it will not be a pleasant harvest. Letting them sit there, rotting, allowing them to marinate in mortal dread as they are forced to acknowledge that they know damn well exactly where they will go and who they’re gonna be meeting when the lights finally go out and the curtain is drawn…
Well, let’s just say I think that other evil, geriatric mother fuckers that have already (and thankfully) shuffled off the mortal coil like John McCain and Harry Reid are saving them a spot in the great hereafter. I’d say they’re keeping some seats warm for them, but there’s no need for that, because, I mean - c’mon.
They’re all going to Hell. That’s what I’m saying.
But this isn’t about Biden. This isn’t really about McConnell, or Pelosi, or any of these other miserable, decrepit ghouls haunting our country.
And, before we continue: yes, I’m aware that Mitch McConnell - born in 1942 - is technically not a boomer, as he was born during the war and thus before the baby boom for which the generation is named, nor were Pelosi, Biden, Feinstein, McCain, or others. But they do represent the ossified, sclerotic bureaucracy that the boomers set up and have since set into place with industrial-grade adhesives. These people were, by and large, put into office and kept afloat by the boomer generation. Even then, I’d make the argument that, even if these people did predate the bulk of boomers by a few scant years, they are culturally, ethically, morally, and in all meaningful ways, identical to boomers.
But the thing is… the Boomer World Order is coming to an end. Slowly but surely, piece by piece, it’s falling apart, slipping away into the pages of history, consumed by the hungry and insatiable sands of time.
Perhaps nothing has illustrated this clearer than the passing of a genuine boomer icon -
Passing away at the age of 76, born in 1946, Jimmy Buffett was among the first boomers.
Now, I will admit - I am not a big Jimmy Buffett fan. I don’t dislike his music, but I also have never felt particularly compelled to revisit much of his material after giving each of his albums a full listen, as I do for most artists. Still, his better songs and bigger hits, such as Margaritaville, and, my personal favorite, Cheeseburger and Paradise, are dumb, fun, catchy, and something I find myself coming back to every now and then - especially in the right context. Namely, when I'm on the beach. I remember my mother showing me his music back when I was young and, even though she wasn’t a massive Jimmy Buffett fan herself, she did really enjoy some of his songs. I remember her telling me - I wish I had the kind of problems that Jimmy Buffett sang about. Hell, when I woke up this morning, the first thing I saw on my phone was a text from her, delivering the bad news that Mr. Margarita himself has gone to get his cheeseburger in paradise.
Even Joe Biden commented on the passing, which only adds proof to what I’m about to say.
In my opinion, very few individuals or figures spoke to the boomer generation or encapsulated their mindset more than Jimmy Buffett. This is illustrated by the massive and devoted following he cultivated. Dubbed Parrotheads, these fans, much like the Grateful Dead’s deadheads, religiously followed Mr. Buffett while he toured, many attending multiple concerts, if not all of them, on any given tour. They have a whole thing about pre-gaming in the parking lots of venues, a weird list of rules, and, really, it’s one of the stranger subcultures I’ve encountered in my time.
This may sound a bit harsh, but they seem like a less dignified variant of the Juggalo, which, for those blissfully unaware, are similarly dedicated fans of the rap duo The Insane Clown Posse. If you want to see how the average Insane Clown Posse gathering goes, I invite you to watch a bit of the video below.
You may be wondering why I’d say a bunch of sixty-somethings in Hawaiian shorts and parrot paraphernalia are less dignified than people who are very visibly on welfare dressing up like clowns and rapping about murder. And, the answer is simple. The Insane Clown Posse proudly present themselves as actual scum in human shape, even though I will say that the actual duo behind the act are rather philanthropic individuals who, all things considered, seem to be somewhat decent people when they wash off the clown make-up.
Look, I said decent, not smart, okay?
Their lyrics are profoundly grotesque, disgusting, and purposefully shocking, with their professed genre of horror-core being the musical equivalent of schlocky B-movie slasher fare.
Hocus pocus, abra-cadabra, pokin’ holes in your face when I stab ya.
Charming, right? But, at the same time, they're liable to put out one or two catchy tracks, like the song above, which, degenerate as it is, I can't help but like the same way I like a movie like Halloween or Hellraiser.
When it comes to being filthy, disgusting, violent, and basically everything the Insane Clown Posse represents in their music, the juggalos put their meager money where there painted mouths are. You can say a lot about them, but they are not posers. Many, if not most of them, really are meth-addicted trailer trash, petty criminals, and generally what Marx would refer to as the lumpen elements of society.
Contrast this with parrotheads. Here’s a cute little graph of how to spot a parrothead, depicted by two-figures who appear to be two whole standard deviations below the mean of the age of the average parrothead.
We’ll touch on the difference between trailer-dwelling clown hooligans and the parrotheads in a moment, but, first - more on the man himself.
Now, I don’t think Jimmy Buffett was a liar. If anything, I think what made Jimmy Buffett such an endearing cultural figure was the fact that he was exactly as he appeared to be on the outside. No frills. No bullshit. What you saw was what you got. He really was that guy, for a lack of a better word. But, as Walt Whitman said - Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
And Jimmy Buffett was a man who contained multitudes, and contradicted himself, for I genuinely think he was both the tanned, careless beach bum, contradicted by the inner drive of the business-minded boomer.
Mr. Buffett didn’t start as a beach bum - in fact, he’s from Pascagoula, Mississippi, which is on the Gulf Coast, but, uh… well, my mother actually lived there, for a while, and if there’s two things she remembers about it, it was the smell of rotting wet dog food that a local factory had buried under the sand at the beach and had to be dug up because it was a health hazard, which made the entire town stink of decomposing dog slop, and the giant, flying roaches that she could hear bash against the windows at night.
The sugar-sand beaches and tropical paradise of Mr. Buffett’s idealized Florida, it is not.
Mr. Buffett actually started off as a country artist in Nashville before relocating to Key West to busk on the streets, at which point he fell into the easy-going, sun-and-surf beach bum persona we know today. After having floated around from places like Hattiesburg, New Orleans, and other locales in the south and the Gulf Coast, I don’t doubt he really did embody the lifestyle he found while playing for chump change in Key West bars. I would find it difficult to believe a man living the life of a nomadic drifter in Key West wouldn’t end up internalizing part of the place’s breezy island atmosphere into himself.
As a brief and interesting aside, Buffett was also friends with singer-songwriter Jim Croce, and took his spot as a touring act for the record company Croce had belonged to, which helped kick-start his career after Croce’s untimely death in a plane accident. I’m probably biased because Jim Croce wrote and performed some of my all-time favorite songs, but I would have probably taken fifty years of Croce over fifty years of Buffett.
Sorry, Jimmy. Nothing personal, but Fins and Son of a Son of a Sailor can’t compete with Leroy Brown and Time in a Bottle.
This isn’t to speak ill of Mr. Buffett. As I said - I genuinely think he embodied the Florida beach-bum lifestyle.
But he was also a boomer. And if he embodied anything else besides getting blind drunk on tropical cocktails whilst lounging in a plastic chair on the white sand beaches of Florida, it was the boomer corporate mindset.
Mr. Buffett didn’t just embody the lifestyle of a beach-dwelling alcoholic - he sold it. He built a fucking empire around it. It wasn’t just merchandise he sold. Oh, no. Jimmy Buffett was not content to sell t-shirts. Jimmy got a taste of the sweet life, living as a sun-baked, careless busker on the sunny streets of Key West. And for a modest price, he’d sell you that experience. For a low sum, you, too, could get the keys to the gates… of Margaritaville.
You’ve probably heard of Margaritaville before. The restaurant, I mean - not the song. The first was opened in none other than Buffett’s stomping grounds of Key West, Florida, all the way back in 1985, and has since expanded to 23 locations, including entire resorts and hotels, spanning from Los Angeles to New York, and counting.
Not even a month ago as of this writing - and perhaps prophetically - YouTuber Eddy Burback embarked on a cross-country odyssey to dine at every Margaritaville in the country, which turned into something of a viral sensation.
It's well worth a watch, if you have a spare hour and a half.
Now, I, too, have been to various Margaritavilles. My friends and I would make a yearly sojourn to San Antonio, which, one of the last times we did, we ate at the Margaritaville location on the San Antonio Riverwalk, which I’d always been curious to try, but, for many of those years, my friends and I were too young and broke to justify spending twenty bucks on reheated fish and chips (no, really, watch the video). When I finally got my opportunity to dine there, I have to say that Mr. Burback's assessment of the fare on offer is spot-on; any flavored margarita outside of the bog-standard house variety is far too sweet, while the food is simply acceptable. You could get comparable food at your local Chili's for half the price. I also remember getting my margarita in one of those fucking souvenir blender cups and my dumbass left it sitting on the table.
And yes - I'm still mad about it.
Very recently, I went to Houston for a family gathering, where we ended up going to the newly minted Margaritaville resort on Lake Conroe. Now, I've had family that has lived on Lake Conroe since before I was born, and the suburban sprawl of North Houston, for as much as it sucks, is basically my home away from home. I remember the resort that Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville colonized struggled for years, switching between various owners and themes, catering to both persnickity, well-cultured and wealthy Houstonians as well as the more… simple folk of South Texas, never quite finding an audience and constantly changing throughout my life… until Ol’ Jimmy came along post-COVID and slapped a candy-colored, tropical paint-job on the place.
Believe it or not, there isn't a Margaritaville restaurant at this place, despite it being a Margaritaville-branded resort. The restaurant was a “Landshark Grill”.
Now, Landshark Lager is Buffett's endeavor into the beer market. Even though it's brewed by “Margaritaville Brewing”, that, in turn, is owned by Anhueser-Busch. I'd say that you shouldn't drink it for that reason alone, but…
For reference, Rainier - the local piss beer of the Pacific Northwest - has a 66%.
The food was crap and the service was worse. I think we were there for a total of, like, four hours, waiting on our food and drinks and generally being miserable. But I'm not here to take Mr. Burback's spot as resident Margaritaville expert.
Oh, and, for the sake of transparency - my family does own a Margaritaville-branded frozen margarita machine. And yes - we have gotten our money’s worth out of it, and more.
The thing about Jimmy Buffett - and by proxy, the parrotheads - is that they represent a distinctly boomer phenomenon. They portray themselves as being laid-back, relaxed, no-stress, no-problems, possibly - no, probably alcoholic sun-and-surf fans… but they are ravenously entrepreneurial. Vehemently expansionistic. Always looking for more, more, more. Look at Mr. Buffet; it wasn't enough to be a musical superstar. He needed a restaurant. A hotel. A beer. There's more I'm not mentioning because there's simply so much crap he slapped his name on that I couldn't even hope to list it all off.
And I hate to say it? But most of it is pretty mediocre. It’d be one thing if Margaritaville was offering a Michelin-star experience, but, for the most part, it’s all very mundane fare at the kind of inflated prices that - to be fair - you’d probably expect to pay at a resort town or locale. Now, I know, I know - but YakubianApe, it’s about the experience, not the food! And, hey, I get it. If you’re about the experience, that’s fine, but, to me, the experience just felt like Chili’s with a nice coat of paint. And yes, that is a compliment, because if I wanted to be truly disparaging, I’d say it was more akin to Applebee’s.
And look - I'm not knocking the guy for it. Not really. I don't fault anyone for trying to make a buck. We all gotta eat. I get that. What gets me about the Jimmy Buffett Empire and the parrotheads, though, is the duplicity. Buffett sold this tropical, sun-drenched fantasy. Aggressively. Despite “aggression” being a foreign concept to his easy-going persona.
Likewise, parrotheads portray themselves as happy-go-lucky, good-natured, sun-and-fun types… and yet, they're all rich, wealthy boomers. The bulk of all parrotheads, if my research is anything to go off of, come not from Florida, but Ohio and Michigan, which, weather-wise, might as well be Mars compared to Florida.
The parrotheads seem to be, by-and-large, Midwestern lawyers, doctors, professors, and other such high-paid professionals that are, at best, retired and spent the winter months in resort towns like Panama City or Destin, or, at worst, live vicariously through Buffett's songs, listening to Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude to keep themselves warm on a cold Minnesotan morning, dreaming of a tropical escape, where none other than James T. Buffett himself would hand them a frosty schooner glass filled with tequila, sweet-and-sour, and just the right amount of lime juice.
This is where I was going with the juggalo comparison. The average juggalo lives a rough-and-tumble life not far off from the world of absurd, garish violence the Insane Clown Posse raps about. But the parrotheads? Dave the Divorce Lawyer from Columbus, Ohio, is about as much a Florida beach-bum as Frasier Crane, or Nanook the Inuit spear-fisher. When he puts on his straw-hat and flowery, tropical shirt, and maybe a fake parrot on his shoulder for good measure - it's cosplay. That's what it is. It's no different than the sped who dresses up like Kirito from Sword Art Online or an e-thot who shimmies into a replica of Asuka's red latex plug-suit from Evangelion. It's just dress-up. It's an indulgent fantasy. Literally dressing up as a fictional character from a reality that doesn't exist. Mr. Buffett’s Florida is about as real as Camelot or the video game virtual reality of Sword Art Online.
Now, I may sound overly critical of Buffett and his gaggle of flower-wreathed followers, especially as a person who doesn't see cosplay, conventions, and fandom as inherently bad things. But, I've also been quite vocal about my disapproval of the state the boomers are country in, and the parrotheads are largely the demographic that enabled what we're seeing today to come to pass, and let it all happen while they sipped fruity, tropical cocktails and were content to trade away a stable future for a luxurious present - never a good bargain to make. Nothing epitomizes this sense of political negligence and due-diligence than Mr. Buffett’s stumping for the Democrat party. Perhaps this is an unfair assumption to make, but actively raising funds and campaigning for the benefit of people like Clinton and Obama kind of seem like making a statement akin to, “Yeah, man, go, uh - drone strike them kids in Pakistan or Yay-man, or whatever, just lemme get back to the beach, already.”
But, despite it all, I don't hate the parrotheads. I can't hate them, as goofy and silly and ridiculous as they are. I can't hate anyone for finding solace from the everyday grind in a fantastical fantasy; that's why the idea of fantasy exists. I don't hate Jimmy Buffett, either. None of this comes from a place of hatred or disdain. In fact, the reason I'm writing this is because I have very fond memories of listening to his music with my mother while we were on vacation in Florida. No - I am not, myself, even as the enlightened and ascended being that I am, immune to Mr. Buffett’s siren songs of cheeseburgers and tequila. If you watch the Eddy Burback journey, you find that he, too, comes to a similar epiphany after two straight weeks of dining strictly on Margartitaville food. I remember Mr. Buffett in the same vein of Elton John, Billy Joel, or AC/DC, as music my parents would play while we were in the car at various formative points of my life, and even though those other artists would become much more important to me over the years, Mr. Buffett always had a small spot in my heart as being the soundtrack to our vacations to that part of the world, and a constant staple of my childhood on those psuedo-tropical getaways in the Florida panhandle.
And, ultimately, whether or not Buffett was the beach bum he wanted to sell himself as is irrelevant. What's most important about Jimmy Buffett is what he represented to the boomer generation - the end.
Buffett's music was the soundtrack to the long-suffering Midwestern lawyer's eagerly awaited vacation to the coast; an escape from the boring, hum-drum gray and white existence office toil to the colorful tropics, where the sun chased away the gray snow clouds of winter and parrots and macaws sang in glorious harmony. His songs were what you'd hear at the bar after a long day at work, when you'd finally get that cold beer you'd been jonesing for during all those boring meetings and phone calls. He didn't sing about problems like being unable to afford rent, or divorce, or being unable to connect with your child, or being fired - Jimmy's biggest problems were drinking too much and getting a shitty haircut. Like my mother said - Jimmy Buffett made a career singing about problems that people wish that they had.
And, at the end of the day, whatever there problems the average parrothead might have been suffering through… Jimmy was there, waiting, happy to sell them a slice of Margaritaville once the working day was over. He was the friend who'd be patiently biding his time for you at the bar when you got off work, keeping a seat saved for you when you were ready to join him. After all - one of Mr. Buffett’s most famous songs, despite it being written and performed by Alan Jackson, was Five o’Clock Somewhere - right when the working day ends, for most folks.
The word “escape” comes up so many times, surrounding Mr. Buffett. Even in that parrothead diagram above, the first point says that the priority is a desire to “escape” to an island or a beach. That what Jimmy Buffett sold; an escape. A getaway from the dreary and mundane to the colorful and tropical. Jimmy Buffett was the psychopomp that guided millions of boomers away from the ordinary and into the blessed, idealized paradise of a sanitized parody of Florida, a veritable tropical theme park, where the drinks were always strong, the glasses always frosty, and the sun always shining.
Jimmy Buffett symbolized the great reward that awaited the boomers at the end of their work, toil, and labor. For all their hustle, for all their blood, sweat and tear, spent wasting away in some god forsaken office in Toledo or Pittsburgh or Rochester, at the end of it all, Jimmy promised them that, one day, they could step away from it all and enjoy that Cheeseburger in Paradise. He was the promise of watching the sunset in a plastic chair of a beach, somewhere far away from home.
In the end, Mr. Buffett’s Grumman G-44 didn't crash into the blue curecao-waters of the Caribbean. His many boats didn't sink, sending him down into the depths with so many sailors before his time. It wasn't even the liquor that did him, either. It was something as mundane and impartial as skin cancer that ultimately brought a premature end to the eternal beach party of Margaritaville. In the end, he passed away not on the sunny beaches on Florida, but his home in Sag Harbor, New York.
And perhaps nothing more epitomizes Jimmy Buffett's inner-boomer is the fact the he, as Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd fame put it, “died with his boots on”. He never stopped working. He never stopped touring. His last performance was in May of this year, 2023, in San Francisco. Despite a prolonged and private battle with cancer, he never stopped touring. He was on the road damn near ‘til the bitter end. You see similar tenacity in other boomer acts. The Rolling Stones, The Who, AC/DC, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, even my personal favorite, Jeff Lynne and the Electric Light Orchestra - the surviving members of these acts and many, many more still perform to this day, despite being well past the age at which one would expext them to. In the past few years, I saw both The Who and AC/DC with my father, and I can confidently say that, despite being in their seventies and eighties, I can only hope that I have as much energy and vigor as men like Roger Daughtry, Pete Townsend, Angus Young, and Brian Johnson when I reach the ages at which I saw them. And hair, too, for that matter.
And, honestly, I understand; asking a musician not to perform is akin to asking a bird not to fly or a fish not to swim or a pig to not wallow in shit. But, these men - these boomer icons that defined a generation - they don’t stop. They won’t stop. They can’t stop. They don’t know anything else.
It brings to mind this line from Top Gun: Maverick.
The boomers can't stop because they know nothing else. It's not just what they do - what they do is who they are, and when they stop… what's left?
Jimmy Buffett died doing what he loved. He died a wealthy man. And while I'm confident that he had his moments of respite and rest, he never stopped working. He never had his day to sit down and put it all aside and simply “be”. Like so many boomers, parrotheads and otherwise, they fantasize about an end that they won't allow to come. Maybe one that can't come, for some of them. Maybe it's pride. Maybe it's just plain industriousness, as, for all their faults, boomers are nothing if not that. But there's no stop. No rest for the wicked. Not until the most bitter and undignified of ends.
I think that Jimmy Buffett's passing is, in an abstract way, the end of an illusion for the boomer generation. There will be no cold drink on a tropical beach. There will be no cool lagoon surrounded by palm trees, festooned with colorful, tropical birds. The time of the Boomer is coming to a close, quietly slipping into the night to mundane maladies like cancer, diabetes, and other such very plain and very human conditions.
The boomers were assured that they had seen the end of history.
Yet, as more of their icons quietly slip into the night, and their leaders freeze and seize and shudder and die - on live television, at that, if McConnell’s increasing fragility is anything to go by - it's becoming dreadfully and frighteningly apparent that history hadn't ended. Margaritaville maybe be going dim, but history? It’s just getting started again, after a long, patient break by the pool-side, biding its time until the iron grip of arthritic boomer power slipped away and it would be let off the leash to do what it does. With Jimmy goes that boomer dream of the reward of that cold drink at the end. With Jimmy goes the vision of the boomer Valhalla in Key West.
Soon enough, Margaritaville's resorts and beaches and pool-side bars will close. The chairs will be put up on tables. The neon lights, switched off for the last time. The name Margaritaville will be changed and remain as nothing but a faded imprint on the stucco exterior of a tower, while another sign if erected in its place. The set-dressing, swapped out. The boats, returned to harbor, and many listed for sale, and the fishing rods returned to their racks. All the colorful parrots will fly away into the westering sun to see it rise on another beach, and the last man out of Margaritaville will hit the lights.
What's most interesting, perhaps, are the parting words of the eponymous song upon which Mr. Buffett’s corporate empire was built.
So much of boomer's complaints about society has hinged on laying the blame of all the country's ills on literally everyone and everything other than themselves, yet, I’d invite them to revisit Mr. Buffett’s flagship song. Mr. Buffett, grappling with a tequila-induced hangover, after trying to pin the consequences of his own bad decisions on everything from women to booze, takes a long, hard look in the mirror, and admits the truth with a resigned sigh:
But I know… it's my own damn fault.
This one's for you, Jimmy.
As a native Floridian I can tell you that I have personally seen what often comes of that Boomer dream when actualized. In the worst cases the beaches consume them; the self-indulgence and love of ease becomes an addiction in itself, demanding greater amounts of intoxicants to stave off boredom, until they are homeless and sleeping in the dunes. For most, in my experience, they simply drift around aimlessly in golf carts, playing bingo and such, doing nothing, talking about nothing, utterly idle and obsessed with trifles. They will tell you that life is about being happy, but their idea of happiness is perfect freedom to do what they want, untethered to any sort of responsibility, and what they want when achieving that freedom is childish amusement. Their problem isn't that they are old, it's that they never grew up.
Really good piece. I wonder what it must be like to identify with one’s job so much they never want to leave it. It’s understandable that a rockstar or musician would feel that way, but a lawyer or an accountant? It’s wild to think people identify with such professions and don’t just treat them as a means to an end. It’s admirable in a way, but I suppose it’s also the result of coming of age in a time when those professions GUARANTEED a really good living. That’s hard to give up.