
Paging through the latest, entirely lamentable issue of Rolling Stone (with Johnny Depp on the cover) this past weekend, I came across an ad for cell phone wireless service, T-Mobile. The full page ad featured two middle-aged dudes (both decked out in "I've surrendered" sub-J.Crew gear with paunches and recending hair lines) "crowd-surfing" atop a sea of heads (with one obligatory mohican) and arms throwing the goats at what is presumably supposed to be a happenin' rock show. The copy atop reads: "I checked my e-mail, I called my assistant...AND we realized that 40-year-old dads shouldn't be in a mosh pit!"
Hey T-Mobile: SCREW YOU!
Speaking as an almost 40-year-old dad, let me just say that at least we almost-40-year-olds and above are old enough to remember when "moshing" (initially dubbed "slamming," youngsters) was actually something genuinely new, fresh, exciting and -- dare I suggest it -- meaningful (it used to be a palpable reaction to the music, and not just some dumb, cliched ritual) not the bullshit, staid convention that's been adopted today by a youth culture too fucking complacent to come up with their own ideas.

HEY YOU KIDS, GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN!
Okay, so maybe I'm over-reacting. Sure, maybe the sight of a forty-year old gent in an ill-fitting Agnostic Front t-shirt wheezily attempting to stage dive is a tragic image. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not suggesting that the 40-and-ups should all go mobilize and start big flabby, sweaty mosth pits, I'm just lamenting the fact that people are still moshing! I mean, for cryin' out loud, it's 2006. Can't we move on? Can't someone come up with something new? Would that be such a crime?
And while we're at it, don't you think it's about time we retired the Mohawk? Seriously. Look, I am a helplessly massive fan of the otherwise indefensble Plasmatics and count Troops of Tomorrow by the Exploited as one of my favorite albums EVER (if you can't hear the brilliance of "Daily News" and/or "UK 82," you're dead to me), but let's face facts -- the shock factor of the `hawk is long over. They've become just as cliched, trite and predictable as the tools of the establishment those who initially sported them once sought to destroy. Hell, didn't one of those pompous jackasses in the band, Live, briefly sport one? If that ain't the death knell, I don't know what is. Oh wait, yes I do: THIS IS IT. Seriously -- out of respect for the late, great Wendy O. Williams, Darby Crash and the hair-triggered spirit of Travis Bickle, SHAVE OFF THE MOHAWK!
It's 2006. It's time to move on!

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