Millennial Perseveres

Just a bit more than a year ago, young Emma Carmichael, a nice young person from Vermont, unwittingly became the subject of a much-used news photo: at her graduation from Vassar, a little hungover and a lot bored, someone snapped her picture and then it got licensed to a bazillion news stories about how there were no jobs for new graduates. “We were all destined for unemployment and my face seemed to say it best,” she wrote here a year ago: “Hungover and under-prepared, but I could fake contemplation and self-awareness with the best of them.”

Well, Barack Obama promised the young people that everything would work out for them — and it did! Over the weekend, Emma dressed up in clown makeup and “a new pair of aqua jean shorts” to go undercover as a Juggalette for Deadspin. In the course of her voyage to Cave-in-Rock, Illinois, for the Juggalo shindig, she may or may not have smoked opium, but definitely did not flash anyone her front parts, because she knows better. See? If I could tell the young people anything, it’d be this: just don’t bother with worrying about the future, you just can’t even imagine what magic and complications it might bring! All this to say: I enjoyed this travelogue.