A bridge to the 2012th century

On behalf of Weather Guy Industries (“the He Hate Me of college meteorology” — Spin magazine), welcome to Princeton University! A special congratulations to the women of the Class of 2012, as your eggs have now skyrocketed in value into the low five figures. Ladies, at 200,000 eggs per ovary and two ovaries per freshman, your net worth is roughly five trillion dollars. My suggestion: Buy gold.

Anyway, tiny Weather Fans, come up to the roof of Fine Hall (Pride Rock) and survey your kingdom (the Circle of Life) with me (Mufasa). After all, just four years ago you were first basin’ it in the top row of “Jeepers Creepers 2,” rocking your eighth-grade pseudostache and collecting 50 points for hitting deer in Cruisin’ USA. Today, you’re about to watch the last episode of “Destinos” (Will Don Fernando sell La Gavia?? Will Raquel learn vocabulary for six different kinds of tapas??), poised to join the prestigious Club Baby Tigers and future classmates with the kid from the cover of “Nevermind.” Look at you. Who’s a pre-frosh? Yes you are!

Still, Class of 2012, to be frank I can’t help but feel there’s a distance between us, a stark cultural divide that I am anything but jiggy with. Many of you met your bf/gf on the Best of Both Worlds Tour feat. The Jonas Brothers, which as rock purists know, are ripping off the beautiful girl hair of Hanson. Some have never known the joy of 60 free hours of AOL 2.0, nor been rocked to sleep by a gentle hymn of dot matrix printers and modem noise in the summer breeze. To these folks, let me just say: dooooooo, bip bip boopboop bipboopbeeeeep, [pause], deedledeedledeedledeedle, khhhhhhhhhhhhhh, [key change] kkkkkhhhhhhhhhhhh.

It’s not that change doesn’t happen at Princeton. Four years ago, Butler College, carved from a solid block of fine Italian asbestos in 1963, glowered over lower campus. This red-headed residential college has since been replaced with a Super WalMart (under construction), while the site of the original quad has been salted so that no dorms may ever grow there again. We just cling, perhaps bitterly, to cherished institutions like our “historic” eating clubs, which somehow grow more “historic” every year. Each club has its own uniquely distinguished past; for instance, Colonial Club alum Pete Conrad ’53 walked on the moon, and Tiger Inn boasts notable comedian and silent actor Fatty Arbuckle, Class of 1909, among its former ranks. And we can’t have you mucking this up.

To tell the truth, ’12s, I find your culture weird and scary, and not for the obvious reason that it makes me feel old. Across a broad slate of metrics — pop rock, TGIF lineup, sugary breakfast cereals — your generation has presided over real declines in the quality of trash culture, and I think that makes you more likely to be the kind of people who reply-all to the ECO 101: Introduction to Macroeconomics e-mail list. You’ve come to Princeton to learn, right? Then learn. Rock out to the crunchy riffs of the Blue Album, delight in ALF’s cat-consuming lust for life and trust the hard-hitting journalism of Kurt Loder. For on the day you can deftly juxtapose the number of murdas that occurz in N-E-W Jerz with the quantity of hits that New Kids on the Block had*, you will have gained not just knowledge, but what is more, wisdom.

Do you agree? Good. One day, all this will be yours. Except for the Friend Center. You must never go near the Friend Center.

Peace, love, and =W=,

The Weather Guy