THE LOUNGE GENERATION

When twentysomethings embraced '50s fabulousness, they didn't realize that, in the '90s, even kitsch can be cheapened. By CARINA CHOCANO Illustrations by Brian Biggs cheez lounge: The Mega Fad. It's spilled into the '90s like an overturned banana daiquiri on a Twister mat. The girls are strapping on girdles and sparking up imported cigarettes. The boys are slicking back their hair and huffing hand-rolled cigars. Everybody's mainlining Cosmopolitans and gargling Kir Royales. The kids have been dipping into the era between World War II and Nancy Sinatra's last album for the next, newest thing, tossing it all in a cocktail shaker and shouting "Conga!" And if billboards and bus shelter ads are any indication, they're not the only ones. Every trend is eventually co-opted by the market, but this assimilation seems particularly ironic. Space-age cocktail culture was once toppled by the '60s revolution, and American youth has been dutifully rocking out ever since. Those of us in our 20s waded through our teenage years in a torpor of late-'80s-we-are-the-world-saving, watered-down Ben-and-Jerry-Garcia and for-profit '60s revivals, all the time being spanked for our complacency and lack of initiative. The musical innovations of our generation (punk, rap, grunge) were characterized as stupid, self-centered, destructive, violent and disaffected by those who, in the same breath, exalted their own once "revolutionary" music -- the music that toppled space-age cocktail culture. Suddenly, we're listening to music that should make most self-respecting Baby Boomers cringe, if not rise up in revolt, and not a peep has been heard in resistance. In fact, it's just peachy with them.

Next: Everyone eventually turns into his parents.