Let's Light This Candle!

Hello, future Rustheads!

It is my pleasure to officially announce the launch of our podcast: The Rusty Playground!

Mattyman and I have worked hard on this venture; planning future shows, writing scripts, stealing our neighbor's cable, and saying things we probably shouldn't. But after the initial glut of work, we are finally at the fun part of this whole thing...putting it out to the world.

We have been friends for over 30 years and have always kept in touch even if we didn't get to speak to each other due to distance, family obligations, or prison time. When we would reconnect it felt like there was no time that passed at all. Or it could have been that, when you get to our age, years feel like months.

One night while shooting the stuff on the phone, we said "Man, if only we could tell people about our experiences and what it was like growing up in Generation X!", which was really odd that we would both say the same thing at the same time like that. Accidentally overhearing our conversation on her recording device, my wife suggested "You guys should do a podcast."

"COOL!", I thought really loudly in quotation marks.

"That will be easy and awesome and take no time at all," I foolishly said out loud, taunting the universe.

As a Gen-Xer, had I known just how much work it was going to be, I would have blown it off. But, once we started, there was no turning back. We wrote down as many subjects as possible, broke them into sections, chose a few, and wrote the scripts. We have no idea what we are doing and can only imagine what the podcast will be like in a year, but in all honesty, it's been a blast. I would suggest that YOU try it, but we really don't want the competition.

The point of all of this for us is to tell the story of Generation X; what it was really like, who we are, what we have in common, and how in the world we are still a thing. Over the years my generation has been boiled down to certain cultural elements: the mullet, awesome music, lack of oversite, and doing what we want. And those things are true. But there was much more about growing up in Generation X than what you see in Stranger Things. A lot more. And we are here to tell our stories, to share our experiences, to put them on record, and enlighten the other generations as to what it was like being us as well as remind fellow Gen-Xers just how awesome it was growing up in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

As Mattyman once said, "The point of this is to tell you just how awesome it is to be us, not how much it sucks to be you. Everyone is welcome on the playground."

And all I can say to that is: "Word, homes."

See ya on the playground.
Vannyboy