Generation X

In showcasing its new Echo vehicle at auto shows around the country last winter, Toyota Motor Corp. used in-your-face posters of pierced, head-shaved Gen-Xers to draw attention to it. But young adults who might have considered the bubble-shaped car were put off by the edgy ads. The experience taught Toyota--a reliable, slightly boring auto maker favored by baby boomers--about the dangers of trying too hard in its budding courtship of first-time car buyers.

The smoky stench assaults the senses first. Then the raucous rock music. A parade of silver balls hanging from the ceiling leads visitors past the penthouse room and down a stairwell decorated with rum bottles. Purple backlights give everything an ultraviolet glow. The full-length bar dominates the scene. Welcome to church. Saturday nights, the main floor of this downtown L.A. nightclub is filled with drunken, pawing men and women dancing and grinding the night away.

Their names are Oblivious Child, Agnostic w/o a Cause, Will Work for Pay, and Spent the 60s on a Slip and Slide. Their favorite topics include "Home Sweet Shoebox," "The Revolting Yuppie Excess I Witnessed Today" and that perennial favorite, "Wage Slave, Slacker, or What?" For nearly a year now, they've been ragging on baby boomers and commiserating over their own putative impoverishment. They come from all over the country. Most of them have never met.

"Reality Bites" executive producer Stacey Sher couldn't have been happier. There she was, buying CDs at Tower Records, and the tousled-haired clerk bagging cassettes behind the counter--the hippest guy in the room--was proudly wearing a "Reality Bites" button on his shirt. When Sher mentioned she'd been involved with the movie, the Tower clerk exclaimed: "Oh my God, that's so cool! I've listened to the soundtrack about 4,000 times." Then one of his co-workers jumped in.

A lonely air base transformed virtually overnight into a teeming tent city where Generation X rock 'n' roll fans gathered for a weekend music festival alongside runways where B-52 bombers once came and went. While baby boomers returned to hallowed ground at a Woodstock anniversary concert in New York, a mostly younger generation of tie-dyed music lovers convened Saturday for a two-day Phish jam, called Lemonwheel for the thin-sliced citrus garnish, in a remote corner of the country near Canada.

They hang out on the side streets of the overcrowded Shibuya district, bathed in the blazing neon of a thousand bars, game arcades and fast-food stores. They send coded messages to each other on pagers and worship the heroes and heroines of their favorite video games. They love to drink beer and sake, sing in shoe-box-sized karaoke rooms and have their palms read by old ladies in the dim light of paper lanterns. Call them Japan's Generation X, its Junior Boomers.

Westwood attorney Tom Dempsey thought he had them pegged. He was arguing a personal injury case on behalf of a middle-aged woman who had wrecked her shoulder bouncing down an inner tube ride at a Palm Springs water park. In the jury box sat a couple of Generation Xers--barely into their 20s, not exactly fresh-faced and eager, but still ready to try their hand at this civic duty thing.

Kalle Matso and Scott White, both 26, have been film critics for the Beach Reporter, a weekly newspaper, since August, 1992. In their column, "The Reel Deal," they chat back and forth about their opinions of the movies they're reviewing--sort of a Siskel & Ebert for the twentysomething set--though they would like it to be pointed out that they have not been to film school and don't profess to know more about movies than anyone else.

Lydia Ramos, 24, sips mango tea while she chats about her active life--one with no time for slacking. She works full time at USC as a high school recruiter. On Sundays she teaches at an East Los Angeles church. In the evenings she researches her idea for a consulting business. While driving around town, she soaks in audio books, not Pearl Jam. Clearly, Ramos--surrounded by other twentysomethings one recent evening at Downtown's trendy Cafe Troy--is not your aimless and angry Generation X clone.

To the students at the only school in the Los Angeles Unified School District to bear the name of John F. Kennedy, the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was another sad page in the history books. Just don't ask them to write it. At John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, student reaction to the former First Lady's death on Thursday was long on inaccuracies and short on knowledge, although many expressed the Generation X version of sadness.