There comes a certain point in time when you reach That Certain Age. You know the age I’m talking about– I’m talking about the age where you’re officially Too Old To Be At A Rock Show. It’s sad and embarrassing for the rest of us to see; I think you know it, too. I think you know that we know because of the caution with which you enter the club; the desperation with which scan the crowd from side to side in search of your other golf buddies; and then the temerity with which you quickly cluster together around a pitcher of light beer or six, a real Beercan Superman watching all the Freshman Hotties come by in their endless streams of panties and perfume and you think that you cannot be seen by us. We know you as you know you: Your thinning pate. Your polo shirts. Your shorts, closer to your balls than to your knees.

Your full-time job.

We know you. We see you.

We hate you.

Embrace your oldness, fogey. Pucker up and smooch Old Man Middle-Age square on its mediocre mouth in the back of your airbagged minivan, because watching you bob and twitch like some sort of spastic insurance salesman makes our toes curl up into little foot-fists of shame.

SHAME, I say.

So I give this to you, people of Earth: Fraction’s Am I Too Old To Be At The Rock Show? Formula of Mathematical Certainty:

2x (x/5) = Too Old For The Rock Show
…where x = Age at which virginity was lost.

For those of you still young enough to rock, I say ROCK to thee and I shall see you at the Rock Show. And for you too Old for the Rock, I hear MAD ABOUT YOU is about to start.

For women, make that, oh, (X/2) or so. No Rock Show is complete with out a few Old Ass Rock Slags.

(Matt Fraction, Poplife, 8/28/02)