May 28, 2024:
That cringeworthy phrase — "muscular adonis" — has echoed inside my skull for 45 years. Signal and synecdoche for a hateful and hated culture, where our rebellion was in straightforward ways against an entire society of unselfconscious mediocrity.
Radical elitism. Contempt for conformity. Mutiny from stern to bow.
In all honesty I'm not all that much older now.
So that the trivialization of our experience, including our failure and the way our hubris contributed, by the two smugass ironist professors pisses me off.