Robbed

The devil clearly wins the duel in Charlie Daniels' rendition of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

PopTrek: The Next Generation

Happy birthday Mr. Kanye West, 32 years old today. He was recently quoted as: “I look at our current superstars like legends in the making. Like Justin [Timberlake] is the new [Michael Jackson], Beyonce's the new Tina Turner, [Lady] Gaga's Madonna, Jay[-Z] is [Frank] Sinatra ... [Lil] Wayne is [Jimmy] Hendrix, Thom Yorke is Roger Waters, these are the champions and should be documented as such…” I assume he was speaking in all capitol letters.

The point he was making, I suppose, was that we’re entering a new golden age of pop, and by association, an age of big. This got me thinking about the last golden age of pop, the 1980s, and the pop wasteland that followed, the 90s, when genres ruled. The former produced megastars, the latter, Cobainian anti-heroes.

We were missing something, for all those garage rock years. Where was the scale? Where was the pageantry? Explosions, fireworks, Jon Bon Jovi flying around on wires. A show was just that, a show. Maybe it’s just one of my many nostalgias for a past I never lived, but I welcome the new megastardom and its accompanying scale and inevitable megalomania. I’m just waiting for Kanye’s rock opera. (rap opera?)

Michael Cera is responsible for Detroit's downfall

Declining sales, layoffs, bankruptcies. You’ve seen the headlines, you know the stories. The Big Three are out of touch; they just aren’t making cars that Americans want to buy, et cetera. The thing is, I don’t blame it on Detroit. American car companies haven’t changed their game, the American people have changed their tastes. Specifically, teenage girls.

Once upon a time, the relative “hotness” of a guy’s car directly affected his level of desirability with the ladies. Our teenage fascination with the automobile was synonymous with youth culture since the 50s. GM oozed style. When did the guy with the Trans Am become a douchebag? Enter Hollywood.

The sudden rise of Nerd chic is all around us. Awkward is the new cool. Poster-child Michael Cera: a person uncomfortable in every situation.

Mr. Cera’s appeal, the surge in popularity of cardigan sweaters in people under forty, vintage Sega Genesis systems, emo music; it’s all part of the same phenomenon. And it grants a bizarre kind of street cred to the hipster in the 1994 Toyota Tercel with 184,000 miles.

Is Detroit making cars Americans want to buy? No. It's too cool for a nerdier nation.