The Hipster Mid-Life Crisis

Thank you Noah Baumbach, though I’m not exactly sure for what. I’ve seen the trailer for your new film “Greenberg.” Ben Stiller is an interesting choice to speak for we sourpuss Gen-Xers. He was, after all, the auteur of “Reality Bites,” the 1994 ode to post-grad melancholy that beset so many of us. We sounded like middle-aged kvetchers even back then. But now we have legitimate reasons for whining. Here we stand, our final decades before us and in our wake, the wistful recollections of our misspent youth (cue anthemic 1980s alt classic, preferably Morrissey or Kate Bush). “It’s weird, aging, right?” Greenberg asks his fellow furrowed-brow friend as LCD Soundsystem soars in the background. It is especially weird aging in Los Angeles, where this film is set. It is hyper-transient, poignant for the same reasons that it is the perfect place to reinvent yourself. And ideal for those who can’t bring themselves to grow up. I, for one, am staying.