Counter culture

Reading about the demise of Lollapalooza, I can't help but wonder what is counter cultural anymore. I mean, if dozens of piercings, tatoos and blue hair aren't out there enough, what is?

To reset just a bit -- Lollapalooza is the big alt-rock festival that tours across the country. They used to get acts like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and draw huge crowds in the early 1990s. But now no one is buying tickets. What happened to the popularity of alt-rock?

It got too popular. That's right. Something as blatently and forcefully counter cultural as grunge of the early 1990s can survive a lot, but not its own popularity. Maybe Green Day killed all the momentum. (Someone queue up that song... you know the one.)

So what's counter culteral now? I mean, even Manson is more socially acceptable than Newt Gingrich, right?