Today, too, a counterculture exists, very much alive and gaining members every day. The uniform is rather easily noticed in a crowd: severely spiked hair, fierce follicles sporting rainbow colors and supported by super glue; tattered clothing with sewn-together sleeves, strategic rips and tears, adorned with safety pins holding dramatic black-and-white patches depicting scenes of revolution in the style of film noir; multitudes of piercings, accoutrements that regularly set off metal detectors, embedded in the flesh of their ears, eyebrows, noses, lips, nipples, and other, generally unmentionable, body parts.

These people, deliberately preposterous, dress and present themselves in this manner for different reasons. Some do it to prove just how shallow the average person is, to disprove the stereotypical opinion that simply because someone fits a certain image (i.e. a punk), he or she must be a drug-addicted anarchist delinquent. Others simply want the attention, and certainly receive it. Still others desire to be unique, and have decided to express themselves through piercings and patches.

Of course, not all members of counterculture are quite so zealous about their clothing and intentional maimings: they simply spike (and perhaps color) their hair, don Dickies, polo shirts, and Converse All-Stars, wear black-rimmed glasses, and offer an outward appearance that screams "emo kid." This is popular now, for it is seen as rebellious and chic. In teenage culture today, it's cool to be uncool. The carefully cultivated not-too-nerdy-nerd look is in, oddly enough. It's fresh. Hip. Unique. Or is it?

When the counterculture becomes too popular, it becomes the culture itself. When singular fashion loses its singularity, it is no longer unique. What determines normality and abnormality? Normality is whatever the majority of the population considers to be normal, logically enough, and in this era those aforementioned "emo kids" are quickly outnumbering the "normal" people. Thus, one could say that the weird ones are those whose hair does not defy gravity, whose clothing is intact and unadorned by pins and rivets, those who do not wear Chuck Taylors and listen to rock, punk, emo, or screamo bands, or any number of other groups who are quickly turning (sometimes against their will) from indie to pop.

True, the ballers, and preppies are still distinct factions unto themselves, but who is to say how long the values and protocol of those cliques shall remain, with their last bastions slowly decaying and eroding as counterculture slams its subversive ideals (or anti-ideals, as the case may be) into their defenses? Of course, there are still those who do not subscribe to any of the lifestyles mentioned above, who stay outside popular trends altogether, and are either labeled "unique" or a "nerd" for doing so.

Nevertheless, current high school culture is at war, whether it is apparent or not; which group shall inevitably emerge as victor? The proponents of counterculture are avant-garde enough to catch people's attention, to be sure, and have many members of Skaterdom on their side, but the advocates of Ballerism and Preppies, Inc. are willing to fight for what they believe in as well. Who shall win when all is said and done, when the fat lady's final, triumphant, booming note dies and the tremulous silence once again takes the reins? Who could know? All that we can do is wait until the dust settles and smoke clears, when the rubble will at last reveal who is whom: the quick, the dead, and the "so last week."

[Exit Orpheum.]