Today (in case you don’t have US History at your brain’s fingertips or do not access the internet or are part of the conspiracy) is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

And there we have a start of a major avalanche of 50th markers — just think about next year, holy cow. The Beatles, Cold War ramp ups, Vietnam, start of major student protests — the 60s started in ’64 and it won’t stop there. The rest of this decade will be such an easy one for the media — they’ll just search free image archives for newspaper front pages from whatever event (Woodstock! Man on Moon! All the dead people in ’68!) and write some trite timeline pulled from Wikipedia.

I do have to allow that the JFK coverage has been varied and mostly interesting. However, being steeped in decades of cynicism and distrust of my government, all the swirling conspiracy theories about the shooting interest me not at all. Sure, it could’ve been an inside job, why not? My adorable government has done a heck of a lot worse in the intervening years. In my humble opinion! Please, theorist-crackpots, do not find my blog and get all crazy on it.

I’m actually not complaining about any kind of half-century remembrance. I remember when everything WWII started hitting the 50-years-after (starting with Pearl Harbor anniversary in ’91) and it was a very useful method to get my elders to talk about what they were doing, where they were, what they were thinking, when the shit went down. A 50th anniversary is a good time to seek out eyewitnesses to whatever event and get the lowdown. This is it! Starting next year, find every aging Beatlemaniac you can find and ask to see their scrapbooks and ticket stubs.

Next year I’ll be too busy for that, though. I will be otherwise engaged celebrating 50th birthdays from the start to the finish of 2014. Last year of the Baby Boom, and those babies are booming.