Stop the insanity! I wish I could yell this loudly at the world sometimes. And in the 90′s Susan Powter was out there yelling it at us and for us. Stop the insanity! Now, instead of having Susan shout it at us, we have Glenn Beck. Yes, I’m calling out Glenn Beck on channeling his inner Susan. Everything from his hair, to his anger, to his penchant for chubbiness screams of knock-off Powter. Unfortunately, he still seems to be considered relevant to the world by a loyal audience (of which I’m not included) and she is relegated to a publicity Twitter feed.

I prefer a strong angry white woman with a shaved head telling me a fat over an angry white man with a shaved head telling me the worlds going to end.

Susan Powter Before And After Photos | Susan Powter Pictures

Carol doesn’t like dogs but the kids want one. Frank reminds them that it’s a good way to teach the kids responsibility.

I can only imagine the laugh out loud moments the writers felt around the writers table writing this episode. Just plain, Suzanne Somers fun.

We’re also a bunch of people who are nostalgic for John Hughes movies, boomboxes, and Pop Tarts.

Much of this blog attempts to explore things of interest to generation qwerty…how do we, the generation that followed the ambitious baby boomers, choose career paths, Kindles, and dinner menus? We, like all generations before us, are different than the groups that preceded us. We blog. We believe in global warming and gay marriage. We have jobs in consulting. And, most of us are either lactose or gluten intolerant.

We’ve been told we’re special. But…are we? What, save for Mark Zuckerberg (sheesh, can we stop talking about THAT guy), have we done that’s so amazing?

The guy in the video below is a cross between Bill Nye, Alton Brown, and Ryan Seacrest. He’s also super passionate about keyboards and explains where the term qwerty actually came from.

Around the :33 mark he states that if qwerty were an actual word, it should mean “outdated and purposefully designed with the intention for inefficiency.”

That statement, in a nutshell, sums up how I feel about generation qwerty. We’re a distracted bunch of multitaskers whose cachet doesn’t amount to much beyond our brand loyalty, trend spotting, and likes on Facebook. After years of evolution, the biggest asset our generation brings to the table is our ability click on a thumbs up sign.

But I’ve always been a Negative Nancy, so I could be wrong.

P.S. Is it just me or is that Bill Nye/Alton Brown/Ryan Seacrest fella kind of attractive? Single flirty qwerty over here may have a new nerdy crush.

Any which way you’ll have it, I believe this commercial is the root of the craft beer industries rise in recent years. Here’s the trajectory:

Because this commercial exists, I hate society. Because it was funny once, I hate society. Because America latched on to a corporate campaign to indoctrinate them, I hate society. Because we are all commodities, like the phrase what’s up, I hate society. Yet, it still made me crack a smile thinking of my grandma saying, “Wasssup”. Mostly, I hate mass produced beers because, like Budweiser, they are crappy beers that have semi-commical commercials that somehow manage to make drinking beers, like Budweiser, acceptable. Quality craft is the movement of sophisticated Qwertys.

Here’s your Wasssup flashback to make you want to drink your sorrows away with low quality beer. And yes, still yet, I do drink Budweiser at ball games, at the pool, and even at bars.
PS How many S’s does a Wassup need?

One other epic historical moment happened in 1995 that would shape every Qwerty’s college cooking experience: The George Foreman Grill.

Knock out the fat!

I could be drawing a grandiose conclusion here, but this simple kitchen gadget changed our generations relationship with food – especially our male members. As we reached our independence, be it college or just plain old figuring things out in a grungy apartment lifestyle while we pursue our most hedonistic dreams, we all had one of these suckers enter our place of living. Our parents bought them for us as a right of passage, our friends borrowed them from us as a right of friendship, our landlords accepted them gladly over fire-threatening charcoal.

We were now ‘cooks’. Young men grilled up ground chuck, pork chops, and even steaks. Young women put their veggie burgers and turkey burgers on it to sizzle and sear. Even toast could be made in desperate times.

After months of neglect and an alarming amount of blackened sticky meat goo layered the non-stick grill, we let our George’s fall to the wayside. We blamed our roommates for the disgusting mess and cursed the damn thing for not being dishwasher safe.

But Qwerty kids learned something from this experience in two divergent ways. We learned to have a relationship with our food and we conditioned ourselves that everything, home or out, can be fast. It was fast cooking, but it was somewhat healthy. It was prideful and it was our first ‘adult’ appliance. While two-thirds of Americans are obese or over-weight, and we struggle daily to fight the mass-production of fat America, Generation Qwerty fights for locally sourced foods. Generation Qwerty fights for community farms yet still stops to snack on cereal at home. We know the meaning of free-range chicken, but we still love Chick-Fil-A.

And we’re being marketed to in the exact formula as the Foreman Grill commercial below. One-third of us are already obese! We have a relationship with our food but it’s not necessarily a healthy one. The marketers have figured this out and we’re gobbling up every ‘gluten free’ labelled meat product, every ‘organic’ potato chip, every ‘soy’ ice cream. Even the Mayo Clinic describes marketers as capturing our generation in a way that’s making us fatter. We outnumber Baby Boomers, and they are not going to miss an opportunity to latch on to our quick-fix, craving induced eating styles.

So I remind us, in the words of our great food leader George Foreman to: Knock out the fat! And don’t let marketers steer your food decisions. . . but the bun warmer option on this grill is enticing.