If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and a rock concert experience. It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

Have fun!

(found this idea on "A Pig's Tale")

In this age of blogs, it seems almost redundant to have a bulletin board. We've had three and you'd think we'd learn our lesson by now. We felt like we should make it somehow relevant and active, but it just never happened. In fact, it became so overrun with spam that we decided to just close it down. But ater some reflection, we decided to take one last stab at it.

We installed a new bulletin board system but best of all, we thought about how to extend the discussion here on the Baby Boomer Homepage. So rather than just responding to posts, we'd like to give you all a chance to share a little of what's going on in those great big graying Boomer heads out there.

Because of the spam problem, we've had to force registration, but heck, we haven't sent out a mass mailing from our list in three years - so don't be anxious about signing up for fear you'll be deluged by unsolicited e-mail.

We're especially excited about the brag forum, where you can wax poetic about your children, or dare we say it... grandchildren!

Check it out here

I'm really hurt. Seems like the NSA is not monitoring my communications, electronic or otherwise. I just feel so left out now that anybody who is anybody is being tapped, collected, and analyzed. I mean, what more do I have to do to get noticed?!

It's not like I haven't tried:

I had a friend 30 years ago whose parents were from Palestine.
About ten years ago, I bought an Afghani war rug on eBay. In fact, I own several afghans--doesn't that count?
I've downloaded subversive music like old Tom Lehrer songs and Country Joe and the Fish singing about Viet Nam.
I'm pretty sure I have some clothes made in Korea--and it could even be North Korea for all I know.
I once rented Thief of Bagdhad from the video store.
I used the word 'Iraq' in Scrabble just last week.
And we all know what a hotbed of dissent this website is too.

But yet again, we fail to make the (NS)A List.

We received this inquiry from Fuji TV Network News. Interested Boomers, g'head and make contact. You could be a star on Japanese TV:

Fuji TV News is looking to produce a segment for its prime-time news show about aging baby boomers in the US. FYI, Fuji TV is the ABC-affiliate, and highest-rated network, in Japan.

As you may know, Japan has its own baby boomer generation (known as the "dankai" generation), although it is mostly considered to be people born from 1947~49. "Dankai" means "the massive group." Given Japan's aging society, this is a hot-topic in the news right now, and so naturally, they are looking to the US to see how our boomers are handling their impending retirement age.

We are looking for a Miami, FL-based baby boomer to profile (male or female) for this segment, and would like to do a 'day-in-the-life-of' type story about them. We are most interested in former hippie types (Woodstock attendees a plus!) who are now avid hobbyists of health (sports, excercising, etc.) or technology (keeping up with the latest computers, etc.).

Our deadline for this story is Feb 7, so we are hoping to conduct a half-day shoot on a date most convenient between Jan 30 and Feb 7. This segment will air only in Japan.

If interested, please contact me immediately (the lucky boomer will be selected on a first come first served basis).

Thanks!

Ken Silverman
Fuji TV Network News
P: 212-702-0412
C: 646-942-2991
E: ken@fci-ny.com

From the LA Times, January 22, 2006

Mike Males is talking about his generation. They think they're going to live forever, he's complaining. They're in unbelievable denial about their vulnerability. Look at the numbers: dying of drug overdoses in this state at more than twice the rate documented in 1990. Fastest-growing age group for felony and violent felony arrests in California. Biggest demographic for HIV and AIDS cases. One in three not just overweight but obese.

He sets aside the pile of papers he is grading in his apartment near UC Santa Cruz, where he teaches. The street below bustles with young people, but they're not the issue - teenagers' markers of trouble have been declining for decades.

"No one wants to hear it," says Males, a gray-bearded sociologist whose latest project is a book tentatively titled "Boomergeddon," "but we're having a lot of problems with the middle-aged."

Read the eniire article here.

Yikes, I've done it again. Perfectly nice journalists call us and ask perfectly reasonable questions and I manage to sound like a jerk. Maybe we're not 'better' than old fogies, but we Boomers sure perceive ourselves to be a different group of um...elders?....old farts?....aging hipsters?

Anyway, Rebcca Nappi, in the Spokesman-Review , asks a good question--what will we want to be called as we approach senior citizenship?

Woo-hoo, ABC is doing a story on Baby Boomers turning 60. In typical television fashion it was 30 seconds of stuff we already knew. Titled "boomer Breakthroughs," the story tonight dealt with Baby Boomers challenging the accepted notion of retirement.

Just so we don't feel scooped by the big boys, here's a rundown of what we already knew (and wrote about here):

Retirement
Aging
Boomer Health

Baby Boomers who are still working have apparently weathered the last of the corporate downsizings. But as a group, Boomers are still under attack from corporations downsizing or eliminating pension plans - that's a different topic.

The real winners here are the generations directly behind us - Gen X and Y. While Gen-X was whining about their own career stalemate and retirement liquidity (which they've blamed on us) what they didn't realize is that over the next few years, all those plum jobs we Boomers are leaving behind will need to be filled.

Corporations will use this "natural" downsizing to eliminate many jobs, but some of the best are there for the taking. But there's a problem.

As Virginia Galt points out in her recent article for the Globe & Mail: "perhaps because they thought incumbents in the top jobs would never leave, many Gen Xers and younger Gen Ys have not given much thought to advancement, and are ill-prepared for leadership roles..."

According to Robert McGovern, a former executive with Hewlett-Packard Co. and the founder of the on-line job site CareerBuilder.com, "a lot of the Gen Xers and Gen Ys are living their careers . . .experience to experience. They do something as long as they enjoy it, and then go looking for the next thing,"

"But that's really a way of ending up in a dead end. You have to think a couple of steps ahead about where you want to go," warned McGovern, the author of Bring Your "A" Game: The 10 Career Secrets of the High Achiever.

My criticism of Gen-X isn't really a secret here on this blog. But once again Gen-X, quit whining and get in the game. It's your's for the taking.

The Mature Market had a release awhile ago about something which is making me gag, and no, it's not eating brussel sprouts. Apparently, someone named Neil Doherty is putting on an expo of some sort--what he calls a Baby Boomer show--in New York this coming Spring.

According to the release:
"...The theme of the show will be to focus on those products and services that are now important to members of this great generation of people. And, to allow the attendees to obtain answers and information for many of the questions that they may have to allow them to continue living full and productive lives."

Continue living full lives?? Is this man mad or merely hyper-entreprenuerial? It's as if to say we're so far out of the mainstream that we need special products and services that don't apply to normal people. What? ergonomically correct hash pipes? Or does he perceive us as so doddering that we need custom wheel chairs and organic prune juice? Apparently, based on the exhibitors list, we need help managing our finances, booking a vacation, doing arts & crafts projects (what--macrame Depends?), and basically getting out of bed in the morning.

Usually I find the rush to market to boomers amusing. But, if I weren't so old and incompetent and such a 'special interest group,' I'd grab my walker and picket the damn thing.