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That is why one example of the game that really rocked Generation X’s brains in early 2019 was when someone pointed out that Wil Wheaton is now the same age as Patrick Stewart was in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Another came when someone pointed out that Eddie Vedder is now four years older than Neil Young was when they recorded their intergenerational grunge album Mirrorball in 1995.

Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

So it is time to face some facts, Generation X. Dave Grohl turned 50 a few months ago. So Did Jennifer Aniston. Kurt Cobain would be coming up on 52. Our Kid Liam Gallagher is 46; Ethan Hawke is 48; Damon Albarn is 50; Pamela Anderson is 51, Brad Pitt is 55, Sandra Bullock is 54, Richard Linklater is 58. Had he not killed himself, David Foster Wallace would be 56, while Douglas Coupland, the one who pretty much started it all, is 57.

And then there is Beverly Hills 90210 dreamboat Luke Perry, dead last month at 52, killed by one of those old person things, a stroke.

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Everyone agrees the world is going to hell in a handbasket, that things are getting worse all the time. We’re leaving our kids a broken political system, a wrecked economy, and a poisoned planet. It’s harder than ever to be young, isn’t it? That’s why the creedal whinge of the current It Generation, the Millennials, is that they are “the first generation to do worse than their parents.”

Millennials — the leading edge of whom are now coming up on 40 — have been complaining about their fate for a while. A 2011 issue of (the now defunct) Alberta-based Unlimited Magazine said: “There’s a lot of speculation that Generation Me, the Millennials, will be the first generation to do worse than their parents, because they’ve always been provided for. They don’t have anything driving them to do better.”