When iconic bands like Tool go on tours the good tickets land onto scalping sites almost instantaneously. Well, a middle-aged CFO with uber-eclectic cultural tastes is used to it: the same is true for Radiohead, Kanye West, The Cure, Wilco, Florence and the Machine, etc., and The Met charges scalping prices in its own box office. The biggest concern is handling the crowd: you want to be on the floor, but you are too old to fight off the crashing violent tendencies and the crowd-surfing of the young fans. It's fine to be in the front row of the GA pit at the Radiohead concert as there is no pushing and shoving, but the Tool audience may get carried away in the pit.

So, when fate brings an assigned-seat concert (the audience rocks standing close to their ticketed seats) and as near as East Rutherford, NJ (Tool have not given a full performance in NYC since 2006), you thank the blessed benefactor for the floor tickets and go. After all, who knows if you can summon the courage for the next time.

I guess, the front-man, Mr. Maynard James Keenan, who is mere 3 years younger than me, for a hot second felt middle-aged as well. The sentiment was rather of the nostalgic than the physical nature: he looked as robust as ever and his voice did not loose an iota of its incredible beauty and strength. But this is what happens: you get to a place and a memory of seeing Van Halen there 25 years ago hits you – fuck, I've been alive for quite some time already.

So, Maynard addressed the audience as if it consisted 100% of younglings born before his experience of the band with the most #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. This was absolutely unjustified – to my quick eye the distribution of attendees was pretty much even over a broad spectrum of age groups, from 19 to mid-50's, with slightly higher density of late 20s to early 30s. But as I said, he felt like it, so he promised us that the band will "try" to perform some tracks that they have not touched for some time… as long as they "don't forget" what they are supposed to do, because they "are old". "So," he said, "if you see us wondering away in search of mashed potatoes…"

This made me laugh. Not because it was funny (Maynard is capable of better jokes), but because it reminded of me of myself always telling younger people how "the most brilliant I've ever been was at the age of 25-27, when I was writing my dissertation," and how "I used to have a near-photographic memory, but it's not the same anymore," and how "when you get older, the expertise replaces originality," and so on and so forth.

Pretty much the same coquettish crap that Maynard was trying to feed us right before him and his band-mates pulled off a set to die for, a performance one can never forget (there was a woman next to us who said that she saw Tool eighteen times and this was THE BEST CONCERT EVER!). Indeed, they were rocking like fucking hell, testing the reality and the nature of humanity with their existential lyrics and mind-blowing visuals. Their force transcended all ages; the generations converged and disappeared, chanting in unison the haunting lyrics of "Forty-six & 2" and "Aenema."

You know what? We, boys and girls born in the 60s, the so-called Generation X – the first generation conceived with The Beatles and The Stones playing in the background, potty-trained with the Pink Floyd's accompaniment and hit over the head by puberty while Led Zeppelin was hitting the Big Time, we should really stop this self-deprecating bullshit.

Nobody bought Maynard's "old-age" tirade, just like nobody buys my "I am not the same" crap. I just wrote a book full of novel ideas, I still enter companies and within a few weeks uncover their weaknesses, embarking on solving their problems and quickly coming up with solutions.

Is anybody going to think of Quentin Tarantino (1963) or Richard Linklater (1960) as "middle-aged" directors? How about Eddie Vedder (1964) or Thom Yorke (1968), would we qualify them as "middle-aged" rockers? If the beloved Kurt Cobain (1967) did not act on his disdain for human existence and kill himself at the age of 27, would we think of him as "old" now? C'mon, his fucking widow (1964) still acts like a juvenile delinquent. I can go on and on.

For better or worth, we are made differently. We count our years and we think, "Oh, I should be changing," but we are not getting "old" and we don't want to. And I don't think we will. 25 years from now, if the world is still in one piece, I intend to be at a Tool concert and expect Maynard to rock his hardest ever.