Gen X is never beating the allegations

Luke O'Neil

10 Apr 2025 • 13 min read

image by Tyler Littwin

Maybe the ICE cops snatching toddlers out of finger painting class and breaking in the car windows of abuelitas on their way to clean hotel rooms have a rich inner life and backstory that makes their motives seem less black and white? Maybe they're going through a divorce? Maybe they have ADHD or IBS? You ever think of that? Not so evil now right?

I can't wait to literally see a bunch of movies about this being made in a few years. Shooting and crying genre undefeated.

I had a few new shorts go up at Flaming Hydra earlier this week. Paid subscribers can read one down below in here today. Plus a brand new one I just wrote and am very excited about despite the subject matter hitting a little too close to home.

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My new book is slowly but surely attaining form. I believe it will be available for order in a month or so. Still gotta figure out what the title is whoops.

Hey check out some of the type of art that will be inside of it made by our man Tyler Littwin.

I have some good news and bad news for the music-appreciating segment of the Hell World audience. In a very cool surprise there are new Stereolab and Pulp albums on the way for the first time in around 15 and 25 years respectively! Both of the initial singles – Stereolab's Aerial Troubles and Pulp's Spike Island – are as good as you would want them to be. The bad news is both videos were created using "a.i." I do not care if it's a characteristically cheeky commentary on using "a.i." as may be the case with Pulp or if someone wants to argue the "futuristic" aspects are in line with Stereolab's whole deal it fucking sucks either way and we hate to see it.

As we've covered in here "a.i." is the tool of and the prevailing aesthetic of fascists leading us to a world devoid of meaning or art. I would have hoped such savvy artists themselves would understand this but I guess Gen X is never beating the allegations.

Which reminds me of something else I just saw about my ignominious cohort.

Even the Boomers can see the writing on the wall. I hate to use hyperbolic language here but I have no choice but to give all of this a big "come on man."

On the other hand everyone's beautiful nephew MJ Lenderman finally has a video out for Wristwatch – one of my favorite songs of 2024 – and aside from what appear to be a few CGI basketballs in one scene it's real human shit. And unsurprisingly funny as hell too. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that the clip was made by legendary music video and comedy director Lance Bangs of Jackass fame among many other things. Here's what he said about it in a statement:

"I had been drawn to make things with Jake for a while, and spent the late summer listening to the songs that would make up Manning Fireworks. The imagery of characters caught in persistence without progress that has recurred in his writing was there in 'Wristwatch,' and that song was the one I went back to the most while listening to the batch of recordings. I had seen low-clearance bridges in this part of North Carolina in my past travels, a mismatch between the train trestles that were built in the first half of the 20th Century and the modern 13ft height of most tractor trailers. Durham has a notorious one called the “Canopener” that is featured on a website and Youtube channel 11foot8.com by Jurgen Henn, who has captured 186 crashes since April of 2008. I took measurements and designed plans to add a few more crashes to Jurgen’s tally."

We have those regular bridge crashes in Boston too where they're known as a "Sturrowing."

Ok now I'm thinking about how great Jackass was. Maybe Gen X isn't all bad. We're back baby!

This next thing isn't especially funny – despite the flood of Weezer lyric jokes everyone is making about it – but it does sound like something you would enter a few prompts into "a.i." to devise a News Story Luke Cares About.

Jillian Shriner, an author and the wife of Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, was involved in a situation with police that resulted in her being shot by law enforcement and subsequently arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The incident occurred on Tuesday afternoon in the East LA neighborhood of Eagle Rock, when officers attempting to track a suspect of an unrelated hit-and-run were in the rear yard of a residence and observed a woman in a “neighboring residence armed with a handgun,” an LAPD news release read. The woman was later identified as Jillian Shriner.

“The officers ordered Shriner to drop the handgun numerous times; however, she refused. Shriner then pointed the handgun at the officers, and an Officer-Involved Shooting occurred,” the release read. “Shriner was struck by gunfire and fled into her residence. She later exited and was taken into custody.”

Now obviously I don't know what happened here but it is always best to approach any kind of story involving the police with one basic principle: they always lie first and lie as badly as they believe they can get away with. Oftentimes they don't even seem to care if they're going to get away with it.

Say it again with me:

Police lie. Constantly. If there’s any point at all I’ve managed to convey with this newsletter over the years I hope it is at least that. And they could not spread those lies so effectively without the help of the media and in particular local news who far too often consider themselves duly sworn deputies in the public relations branch of law enforcement.

One more music-related thing before we move on. Friend of Hell World Dan Ozzi's new book FAHRENHEIT-182 – a memoir co-written with Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 – is out now!

I haven't dug into it yet but if it's anywhere near as good as Dan's last book SELLOUT: The Major Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007) which I interviewed him about a couple years back then it's going to be great.

Coincidentally Dan last showed up in Hell World writing about his favorite Weezer songs.

It's not often you're going to hear me hand it to anyone in the Trump administration but at least they have this loser pegged.

“I have been in the same room with Elon, and he always tries to be funny. And he’s not funny. Like, at all,” says a senior Trump administration official. “He makes these jokes and little asides and smiles and then looks almost hurt if you don’t lap up his humor. I keep using the word ‘annoying’; a lot of people who have to deal with him do. But the word doesn’t do the situation justice. Elon just thinks he’s smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it, even when it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Musk has gnawed at the patience of an array of high-ranking administration officials, to the point that — according to this official and two others — Trump lieutenants have walked out of meetings and earnestly asked one another if they thought Musk was high. Administration officials joked to one another about subjecting Musk to mandatory drug testing, which Musk himself has said would be a “great idea” for federal employees. (A lawyer for Musk has said he’s “regularly and randomly drug-tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test.”)

“Talking to the guy is sometimes like listening to really rusty nails on a chalkboard,” says the senior Trump administration official, who adds that Musk is not much of a team player, either. “He’s just the most irritating person I’ve ever had to deal with, and that is saying something.”

Read this one from the other day that touches on just how much this fucking guy fucking sucks if you missed it.

I thought this piece in The Nation was good.

After the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, Biden, a lifelong fanatical Zionist, embraced a policy of nearly unconditional support for Israel’s war effort. This continued even as Israel unleashed on Gaza the most intensive slaughter of civilians in the 21st century. When mass protests broke out against his policy, Biden repeatedly condemned the activists as violent and antisemitic, responding to outlier actions that didn’t represent the movement.

Biden’s slander of pro-Palestinian activists helped splinter the Democratic coalition during the 2024 election, giving Trump a potent wedge issue. Once elected, Trump had ample grounds for attacking pro-Palestinian activists, knowing full well that Democratic Party leaders such as Senator Chuck Schumer would respond not with a full-throated defense of free speech but with mealy-mouthed equivocations.

Schumer’s statement on Khalil’s detention—issued after a considerable delay—opened with a declaration of his abhorrence for Khalil’s “policies and opinions,” revisited the canard of antisemitism, and concluded with an insipid legalistic demurral to Trump’s “wrongheaded action.” Even after Trump denied Columbia funding on the pretext of combating antisemitism, Schumer agreed that “the colleges had to do something, and a lot of them didn’t do enough.”

Paid subscribers keep reading for a couple of new short stories/poems from me that may or may not make you feel like shit. Thank you goodbye I love you.