30 SOMETHIN'

Now that I am in my 60th year, I find that my whole pathetic day-to-day existence is wrapped up in 30-something people (note: just as the 1960s ended in 1974 when Nixon resigned, so, in 2012, "30-something" means age 27 through 35). Let me count the ways: my 32-year-old son, the successful mystery novelist, bursts into uncontrollable laughter at our bimonthly luncheons at Veselka when I attempt to relate my geriatric problems.

His wife, the genius attorney who resembles Marcia Brady, ignores me because, after they eloped to Key West last year with my hearty approval. I didn't attend their second wedding in St. Louis, on the grounds that, according to the New York Times, they were already married.

My 33-year-old squeeze, a genius painter and sculptor whose career I have been promoting on the down low since 2010, just moved into a new studio with some hack male geometric painter and cut me off for while, but now she and I are lovey dovey again. I've got two art-journalist 30-something types at the New York Observer who are so busy that they only phone me when they need their weekly favor, and two more super-talented and super-cute go-getters, here at Artnet Magazine, also half my age, one of whom treats me with total props and the other who ignores me (you decide which one is right!).

Then there's my best friend, San Francisco artist and recent Artnet Magazine contributor Sherry Wong, age 33, who saved my life when my colon burst in 2003, and who is like a daughter to me. Nevertheless, deep down and surrounded by narcissistic Woodstocked 60-somethings, whom I hate even more, I kinda dislike the 30-somethings and, when the thermometer hit 90 degrees last month, I entered the CC Village East Cinemas at 11 am when I can flit from theater to theater in AC comfort and alone, for catharsis.

The Chernobyl Diaries, Blair Witch with radiated dogs, in which three cute, tech savvy and otherwise clueless 30-something couples get devoured in what is supposed to be wasteland Russia, but looks more like New Jersey, provided some satisfaction, but The Five-Year Engagement, in which dickless sitcom meatball Jason Segel dresses up like a wild dog (don't ask) to court some duck-faced Brit chick, is far more horrifying.

Journeys back-and-forth to the loo, to both horrible films, to tip the large black woman for a coke at the counter and to see if films had started in the other theaters for my demented early morning freeload (nope) brought my 30-something dilemma into focus: I mean, they all have to be more desperate to seek me out than I could be to depend on them. Have you seen out gay icon Neil Patrick Harris pretending to be a hetero horn dog on Jason Segel's sitcom, How I Met Your Mother? Gender confusion is to the generation born with President Reagan what contact highs and hippie sex were to mine.

Well there must be someone who can bridge the gap between the late Steve Jobs and young Faceman Smuckerberg (surely it is not me!). Ah yes, that would be Dronekiller Obama.

CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).