"You're From The Sixties!"

There's a scene in the movie Field of Dreams that I just love. It's where Kevin Kostner invades James Earl Jones's house and belabors him until finally James Earl Jones beams, says "You're from the Sixties!" and starts to fog him with bug spray from a Flit gun. I think that scene is just pure genius, if only because I also have to occasionally fog emanations from the Sixties with a Flit gun.

The Sixties, I'm sad to say, died and got dumped in the dry wash behind my house. Every so often coyotes and other scavengers perturb the moldering carcass of the Sixties, and every time, great clouds of Sixties Insects rise up, fluttering and flapping and buzzing in clouds around my ears and forcing me to reach for my Flit gun.

There are, for example, the Dylan Flies that whine around my ears in flat, nasal tones and say "Man, Dylan totally spoke for the dreams and aspirations of an entire generation, man!" And there I am with my Flit gun, psht-psht-psht, drying to drive them away. Every now and then one gets the King Dylan Flies, which announce weird ideas like having Cate Blanchett star as Dylan in a movie about Dylan starring five other people as Dylan. Psht-psht-psht.

Then there are the Woodstock beetles, big green-tinted things that buzz around in wild loops and suffer from bad navigation, ricocheting off porch lights and bouncing off foreheads and saying things like "Man, Woodstock totally spoke for the dreams and aspirations of an entire generation, man! And I should know, man, 'cuz I was there!" Let's see. You were seven years old and you spent that summer on your uncle's farm outside Needles, California, but you went to Woodstock. Righteous.

But my least favorite Sixties Insects are the Alice Bugs that suddenly appear in your hair and crawl up and down your arms and buzzing out with their hind legs the message "Man, Alice's Restaurant totally spoke for the dreams and aspirations of an entire generation, man, and no Thanksgiving is complete without listening to it on FM radio at least twice, man." They say you can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant. Can I get this tediously long novelty song off the air, please? Thank you. The only thing good I can say about it is that it must certainly make Jim Stafford feel better about his work.

And now we've got the Dennis Hopper Sapsucker who is here to tell us, I guess, that people who think they were hippies in the Sixties still have their dreams, man. Along with their anuses, no doubt, and it's anyone's guess which are less savory. Aging Hipster Couple has a dream to "build an eco-friendly house in the desert." You want to build an eco-friendly house in the desert? Go build it in British Columbia and leave the desert alone because the desert never recovers. But how sad and bourgeoise is that? Mr. Hipster had dreams of peace'n'love in the Sixties, but now his dream is to build a house in the desert. That's just totally sad.

Psht-psht-psht.