The can is as radical a departure from traditional cola packaging as Generation X is from the Baby Boom. It features a deliberately rather plain font of "OK" against a white background with a narrow red border; a sloppily drawn oval-headed fellow looks out quizzically from in front of a wall and a little box of a house capped with an aerial. The rather casual shabbiness of "OK" is a shameless bit of pandering to the idea of Generation X; evidently we are so fed up with the kaleidescopic self-promotion and colorful hype of Pepsi and Coke that we are helplessly susceptible to the soft-pedal.

In an attempt at striking the distanced ironic pose that cultural commentators seem convinced is a hall mark of this mysterious generation, OK touts itself in small letters as "a carbonated 'beverage,'" with the last word in quotes--the hipsters who make "OK," one assumes, are too cool to use that technical word with a straight face. The slogan completes the pitch--no hi-strung shrill jingos here--"Everything is going to be OK."

And what does the stuff taste like? Some say "somewhere between Pepsi and Sprite." Others: "a cross of Sunkist and Tab." The etymylogically inclined: "about halfway between 'good' and 'bad'"

The general consensus? "OK" was, well, OK.

But then, just as suddenly as this bubbly abberation landed in Cambridge, the spell was broken. "OK" was promoted by a prime-time television commercial blitz. Is this low key? Would Douglas Coupland approve? Doesn't this undercut the whole idea of Generation X Cola? Yes.

But we shouldn't have been too surprised. After all, do you know who makes the stuff? Coca-Cola, of course.

This changed things somewhat. The little oval-headed man was no longer a quirky symbol of non-conformity, but a poorly drawn stand in for Coca-Cola's stable of cardboard cut-out super-star shills. And the once appealing casualness of "OK" marketing? Just another calculated effort at cultural hegemony that we overeducated, undermotivated Generation X-ers are supposed to so delight in detecting.

Everything OK? We don't think so!