Jack

UPDATE--July 29, 2017: This post is written about an actual person, but his name is not Jack.  I don't know if the real Jack has ever read this, but I am no longer comfortable speaking so critically of him in such a public forum.  He probably is still an insensitive jerk, but I no longer wish to be one also.

The original post with names changed to protect all jerks follows:

I recently went out for dinner and drinks with a group of people most of whom I went to grammar and/or high school with. It was a rather odd mixture of people for various reasons that I will perhaps ruminate upon at another time, but what struck me was how everyone was aging in such different ways. There was graying, balding, plumping (a lot), wrinkling, sagging and even some transcendence into being distinguished looking (which didn’t apply to the women. Does it ever?) Oh, did I mention widening? (Our group actually couldn’t be seated in a booth because we didn’t fit. Really!)

But there was one person who stood out in my mind: Jack. First off, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not protecting his identity by leaving off his last name. Everybody knows Jack simply as Jack. He and his lifetime antics have so stood out amongst the people who know and know of him that his last name is no longer needed. He is now just “Jack.”

Jack and I were close friends in junior high and high school, often hanging out together and playing sports. It was easy since we lived about 100 yards apart and both had a strong affinity for sports and being obnoxious. We even went to our high school prom together (with our long-time girlfriends of course.) However Jack and I began to grow apart after going to different colleges, and the fissure was completed during a very unpleasant two weeks when Jack came to stay with me and my girlfriend in LA where I was spending the summer as a law intern. (This was a different girlfriend than the one I took to prom—that one was in the process of becoming a lesbian. And NO! I didn’t feel responsible for her new predilection.) Unbeknownst to me, Jack had become a full-fledged coke fiend by this time and was simply unbearable to be around.

But this isn’t about our long ago boyhood friendship or its deterioration. Rather it’s all about Jack--just as he likes it—and his lifelong odyssey with drugs and the effect they may have had on him physically. I have no idea what quantity of drugs have passed through his system, but suffice it to say that it was enough to lead him to commit a variety of felonies, spend time in jail, lose his professional drivers license and means of earning a living, pimp out his girlfriend(s) and spend who knows how many months in the hospital as his body broke down.

But to Jack’s credit and in spite of the abuse he put his body through, Jack actually became more handsome as he aged. He went from being a good-looking 20-something guy to being George Clooney-handsome in his 30’s. It seems that no matter what Jack did or regardless of how much his health suffered as a result of his vices, Jack looked great. And since he spent most of his money on drugs instead of food, Jack also lost a great deal of weight and looked Hollywood-lean. No gym, vitamins or plastic surgery for Jack. His secret was physical self-abuse via drug addiction.

I saw Jack on and off through most of his forties and he somehow maintained his Clooney looks. But fairy tales don’t really exist do they. A few years ago Jack came to town and we arranged the usual get-together whereby anyone with nothing better to do would meet up and spend a day or evening listening to Jack tell us that he was finally straight and planned to do this or that or something that we had been told who knows how many times in the past. But while the staging and script were pretty much the same, this time the actor had changed. “Jack Clooney” had been replaced by Hans Moleman (the hard-luck, though equally tough to kill character from the Simpsons.) Jack was now a little old man, slightly hunched over and with too-thick glasses that enlarged his eyes ala Mr. Magoo.

The fact that everyone loses their looks as they age is certainly no secret, and is another one of those painful aspects of aging which demands an ever increasing amount of self-delusion to deal with. Personally, I have never been comfortable with my limited ability to self-delude. When I look in the mirror, my mind’s eye doesn’t see me as I looked when I was 25 or any other better-looking time; I simply now see myself as a 50 year-old guy. And though on a good day I’m still able to pass for 48, I realize that the day will come when I wake up, look in the mirror and am steamrolled by the realization that I look OLD. (Hmm, maybe the Magoo-vision is actually an adaptive mechanism crafted by humans over the ages to give a much-needed assist in deceiving ourselves.)

But hey, I don’t look as old as Jack, and in fact I was carded yesterday while buying beer at Jewel. Carded! Yes, me. I must say I was feeling pretty good as I started to walk out of the store, a 12 pack of the new Goose Island Ale in hand. But my delusion of youth quickly faded as I noticed that the sign that used to say “we card under 35” now simply read……”we card EVERYONE.”

Denial, Delusion, and Dilbert...OH MY!

Scott Adams, the creator of my favorite strip, Dilbert, also turned 50 recently. Here's a comment from his blog......."When I was 20, I wondered what it would be like to be 50. None of my guesses were close. I assumed that “aging” was automatically bad, so I didn’t look forward to it. No one told me that having more friends and fewer zits would feel like a good tradeoff. And if you told me I could have my twenty-year old body again, but I had to take my twenty-year old brain with it, I’d pass."
Hmmm, I'm not so sure I'd also "pass" on my 20 year old body, but of course, I may simply be delusional now about what my 20 year old mind was actually like then. Would you go back and redo things knowing you're going to make the same stupid mistakes and have the same painful experiences?

I am 50!

Well, it finally happened--I turned 50. In all honesty though, it was really quite anti-climactic as I feel no different now than I did a month or year ago. If you’re wondering what I did to celebrate, nothing much really; I played baseball that night and had some beer and a cigar after the game. The only real difference was I also had some delicious homemade bday cake courtesy of my resident baker, Dyan, and got to show off Bobble-Mike (also courtesy of Dyan.) Yes, I now have my own baseball bobblehead, as if anyone needed any further proof that I truly am my own child.

....in the meantime..........

For those of you who have graciously come back, I'm sorry to inform you that I haven't written anything new for awhile. Though I have a bunch of ideas, I haven't been able to turn any of them into something I like and consider reflective of my irreverance.

So for the time being, I have resorted to showing pictures of scantily clad women. I'm not proud of utilizing this cheap tactic, but apparently it doesn't bother any of my guy readers..............go figure.

It's just like REAL baseball.....

Though I have played golf on and off, mostly off, during my life, I don’t consider myself a golfer and never have. I don’t like the game and can’t even bring myself to call it a sport. It’s often times boring, ridiculously expensive and many people who play take themselves way too seriously. (For them to think that anyone cares how they played a particular shot during one unforgettable round on some hole or other is simply unimaginable to me. I’ve always thought that golfers pretend to listen to these anecdotes simply because they hope to build up credit with others so they too will pretend to listen to their incessant relating of forgettable golf shots. After all, no one else, whether in their right mind or not, could stand to listen to these stories without some compensation. Which brings up an idea for someone considering a new career: golf prostitute. These people would be paid to listen to golf stories and pretend to be interested and amused. I didn’t say it was a good career, just a new one. )


Nonetheless, and yes I am finally getting to my point, I always planned to “take up” golf when I got older. Tennis too. After all, most of my friends play golf and have been doing so for decades and seem to really enjoy it. I always assumed I’d join them some day even though my real interest remained drinking beer and driving the cart. But here I am, approaching 50 and I am no closer to taking up golf than to dressing in women’s clothing. Okay, maybe a little closer than that, but you get my drift. So does this mean I’m not “older” yet? Sadly no, I’m there alright.

The main reason I still haven’t taken up golf is simple; men’s baseball. You see I still play baseball and continue to be able to satisfy both my need for competition as well as my desire to continue playing a real sport I love and which reconnects me to my childhood. In hindsight, its clear that my expectation from decades ago was simply wrong; that I would no longer be playing baseball, basketball or anything of the kind at this age, and I would be stuck with choosing between inactivity and something that old people play like golf. But thanks to the intrepid and self-gratifying nature of the boomer generation I am not only still playing baseball, but playing more than I ever did when younger; last season playing in over 100 games.


A brief history.
Men’s baseball is another of those many ideas that in hindsight is obvious, but as fellow player and men’s baseball pioneer Dave Schultz says “came along right ‘when it was supposed to’ aimed at boomers, the first generation that prioritized fun and recreation for themselves and had the time and money to go for it.” While there is some controversy over the origins of the current adult baseball phenomenon, my understanding is that it was an outgrowth of the Randy Hundley fantasy baseball camps* which first began in 1983 in Arizona. The concept was simple: a bunch of grown men (or perhaps more accurately, children in grown men’s bodies) donned Cubs uniforms and were given some basic instruction by childhood heroes such as Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ernie Banks, and then went out and played baseball. Magic was created, and having had their baseball spirits revived, a group of Chicago area guys proceeded to start playing hardball again. It wasn’t long before this simple idea was taken national and leagues began to be created everywhere with the first Chicago area league being formed in 1987. According to the Chicago North Men’s Senior Baseball website (http://www.cnmsbl.com/), there were four teams; the Condors, Naturals, Redbirds and the Stars. From these humble beginnings the league has now grown to include 4 age divisions-25 and over, 35 and over, 45 and over and 55 and over-with over 40 teams and 600 players. Nationally, men’s baseball has experienced similar exponential growth. According to the national MSBL website there are approximately 3200 teams and 45,000 players, many of whom participate in the 30 regional and 6 national tournaments. Little league indeed.

Almost 20 years from the time I began playing hardball again, I still reply disdainfully to those who dare ask,”oh you play softball?” Grrrrrrrrr. For anyone who remains doubtful, we play HARDBALL. There may be a few extra rules to accommodate the realities of playing as middle-aged men such as liberal pinch running rules, but for the most part this is baseball, pure and simple, played for the same reasons as when we played as kids. Why people find it so incredible or even surprising that I still play baseball is surprising in and of itself to me. After all, there have been numerous instances of professional players playing well into their 40’s with one legendary player, Satchel Paige, allegedly playing pro ball until he was 60. Currently, the oldest active player is Julio Franco who will be 49 this season and of course eligible to play in our 45 and over division. Perhaps the surprised and amused reactions from most people are because they still think of baseball as a kid’s game. And maybe it is and always will be, and just maybe that’s why so many of us hang onto it for so long. For if you were to come and watch us play, you’d quickly realize that there truly is a hidden force that compels us to fight through injury, incapacitation and the never ending nagging of spouses to come out and play baseball.

The best way I have been able to describe what we do is this: it’s just like real baseball, except played in slow motion. And to the many of you out there who remain curious and wonder whether you can still play, my advice is to put away those golf sticks and take a few swings at a ball that’s still moving when you try to hit it. Golf will always be there when you’re older; and I promise that one day I’ll join you, so long as I get to drive the cart.

* My deceased friend Mitch Levey was the first person I knew to go to the Cubs fantasy camp. During his brief life he often was a trendsetter, including his ultimate act of defiant trendsetting when he preceded all of us out death’s door at the age of 32 leaving all these musings, concerns and headaches about aging to others.
The picture above was taken in 1993 at the annual Mitchell Levey Foundation golf tournament; my batting glove helped me win the game with a score at least 20 points higher than everyone else.

Whaddya live in a cave?!

Last week I went out with a group of friends to celebrate, yes you’ve got it, someone’s 50th birthday. Actually two somebodies as these friends, Tom and Greg, were born just hours apart. While we drank good alcohol from around the world, gorged on a dozen different kinds of beef and meat products at the fine Brazilian steakhouse, Fogo de Chao, and then stuffed ourselves with Dyan’s home-baked cookies and other rich deserts, someone else we all know, not personally, but know OF, was also spending his birthday somewhere. Osama bin Laden turned 50 on the day we all went out, March 10th, and I couldn’t help but be struck by the irony of the situation and also wonder how he was spending this milestone day. Somehow I doubt he was feasting, celebrating or even drinking anything beyond some lukewarm tea. Its also quite likely he didn’t even bother to celebrate the day, or even know it was his 50th birthday. I also suspect that he doesn’t consider this to be the midpoint of his life, nor does he miss hanging out with buddies and eating deliciously grilled beef. But I also can’t help but wonder whether despite the glaring differences in our lives, the hardships he has chosen to live under and the distorted reality under which his brain functions, he was just as happy in his little cave-world as were my friends and I in ours.

MY NEW DREAM JOB

MY NEW CO-WORKERS!!

As you learned from my recent post, I am a little concerned about the fact that I no longer work or have a steady source of income. On top of this, I have come to the realization that I may indeed live a lot longer than anticipated and will therefore need a lot more dough in my twilight years. So imagine my surprise, and outright delight, when the very next day I was advised by a letter addressed to me that “SOMEONE WANTS TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU” and get this, that there was an income opportunity waiting for me in the porn business as an actor. Yes, ME! They need ME, apparently because “the porn business is tired….and they need new blood,” like ME!
From what I can gather, I was referred to Eden Video by one of their sex scouts who thinks I will be perfect as one of a few select guys “who want to have sex with beautiful XXX STARLETS and get paid for their time.” All I can say is, COUNT ME IN!! When do we begin filming?
Wait, there’s more. According to Max Eden, the women I’m going to be “working” (I added the quote marks here because obviously this won’t really be work for a stud like me) with are “fresh, barely legal girls (at least 18) trying to prove they are adults,” in addition to nymphos and “older gals trying to live out a fantasy.” And best of all, I’m going to get paid for this.

As any respectable job seeker would do, I wanted to learn about the other benefits of the job of having sex with XXX STARLETS, nymphos and the like. Well, for one, there is no mandatory retirement age. Apparently, I can work well into my golden years with this being my dream job until I decide to retire. Indeed! My fear of being forced into the fast food service business as a “mature adult” has proven to be unfounded. In addition, I will be allowed to pick which girls I’ll “work” with, and I can “work” as much or as little as I want. (Kinda like when I was beer vendor at Wrigley Field-what I had previously considered a dream job until now.) Imagine that. After decades of having to seduce, connive and persuade women to have sex with me, I now get to PICK and CHOOSE!

Its funny the way things always have a tendency to work out. One day I’m about to don my headset and begin practicing the art of taking orders for burgers and fries, and the next I’m ready to choose which porn starlet I’m going to be paid to have sex with. Ah life, ain’t it grand. Well, I don’t want to delay much longer. I’m going to go share my good fortune with my live-in honey, Dyan, and as soon as she signs off on this and gives me the thumbs-up, I’ll be heading back to “work.”

THE POWER OF A SPONGE BATH

“Never underestimate the power of a sponge bath.”

So said my lifelong friend Steve Abelman after I had related to him the story of my dad’s love affair at the age of 84 with a woman half his age.

To say I was caught off guard by my dad’s late life romance is my understatement of the year. After all, my dad had never once given me the impression of being susceptible to romantic inclinations, and rarely even seemed capable of displaying any affection at all. He is a crusty WWII vet who wants things done his way, makes no attempt to follow social protocol and niceties, and gives the impression that people are expendable and a burden to him. (My dad got into a fight with his only sister when they were in college and they never spoke again. Now that’s a FAMILY feud.) Add to this mix the fact that Marilyn, his love interest, is a short, rotund, pie-faced woman whose too tight clothes left no roll of fat to the imagination. Marilyn also has that attitude of entitlement that can be repulsive even when worn by the young and beautiful. A looker, she ain’t. A manipulator, apparently she is.

I originally hired Marilyn to care for my mom who had mid-stage Alzheimer’s disease at the time. Marilyn was to take over the caretaking duties that my dad had valiantly performed for 3 years, which efforts led to his falling ill and being hospitalized. Upon my dad’s release, he too came under Marilyn’s care, though really, I think spell would be the more accurate term. Within weeks, I could sense a shift in my dad’s demeanor and attitude and it wasn’t long before he expressed a desire to “help” his new family with money. RuhRow. Despite my parents still being married and living together, apparently my dad, with an unknown amount of encouragement from Marilyn, was making plans to move in with her and at some point get married. MARRIED! My dad WAS IN LOVE WITH this repulsive troll of a woman and wanted to toss aside his sick wife of 50+ years (MY MOM!) to be with her. My dad, in LOVE?? It simply couldn’t be; I had never once heard him even use the word in a sentence let alone express his love for another person. Yet here he was, at the age of 84 telling me as matter of factly as if he were ordering a corned beef sandwich on rye at Pumpernik's, that he was in love with Marilyn and wanted to marry her. HUH!?

Now don’t get me wrong; deep down I’m really a softie and have had my moments of romance, both good and bad. I recognize the crazy like qualities and behavior that can result when one falls in love and have done some really stupid, and in hindsight, pathetic things while in the throws thereof. But having gone through that stage of life and now being settled fairly comfortably in middle age, I had developed the belief that I and most others were much less susceptible to again falling victim to acting like an idiot in love. Obviously I was wrong since the person I probably had heretofore considered the LEAST likely to fall in love was now IN LOVE.

So what happened you might wonder; was there a happy ending? Um, no. Things got kinda ugly at this point. I stepped in and had my parents declared incompetent and incapable of handling their own affairs, and I essentially took control of their lives. While my mom didn’t understand what was transpiring, my dad was understandably a bit peeved. So much in fact that he stated he’d like to have me killed in front of a roomful of people including the probate judge deciding his immediate fate. (It was not a great strategic manuever on my dad's part, but like I said, he was peeved, and had found himself at an incapacitation hearing for a very good reason.)I also filed criminal charges against Marilyn and did my best to run her out of my parents’ lives.

Looking back on what has transpired, it’s still impossible to know if I did the right thing or acted selfishly in denying my dad a last chance at love. For while I lorded over my parents with the self-satisfying belief that I was doing the right thing, my poor dad was heart-broken and pining away for his lost love. After all, despite the complications created from my dad’s new affair, love comes sparingly, if at all, especially late in life and, as they say, it’s what makes the world go round. Maybe in my haste to keep my dad from giving away my parents’ estate (and my inheritance!), I lost sight of the fact that being in love is something to cherish and perhaps was actually a rare gift to my dad after a very loveless and painful life. Maybe. Though the fallout from this series of events has proven to be very painful and disturbing to my father and I on many levels, I can't help but recognize that there is a very (obvious) life-affirming lesson to be learned here. Its one that has to do with both aging and love and surprises in life:



If you don’t have any kids, they won’t ever meddle in your affairs.

Living to 100; the new 80.

The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you'll grow out of it. Doris Day.

I’ve long resisted admitting that I am middle-aged. Among other things, that would conclusively close the door on being young. However, as I approach turning 50, there can be no denying that I am in fact, middle-aged. Sheesh. But other than the fact that 50 is a very round number, what is it about this age marker that has such resonance, and for me at least, is the absolute and incontrovertible demarcation of being middle aged? It’s not as if this is the middle point of my life. Or is it?

As I ponder what direction to take after ending my trading career, be it a new business (too much work), charitable work (yah, right), an actual job (yah, right again), I am faced with the very real possibility that I may in fact have another 50 years to live. No longer does it appear safe to assume that life will begin to fade out beginning at 70, and be over at 80, give or take a few years. 100 is now a very distinct possibility. (Good thing I’m not superstitious.)

My dad is now 86; my mom 88, and neither exercised a day in their adult lives. Nor did they get regular checkups, watch their cholesterol, take vitamins or even wear seatbelts. But here they are, still kicking and screaming (sometimes quite literally) and heading to 90. What my parents did do apparently, is inherent some genes that have caused them, for better or worse, to live long lives with no end in sight. So where does that leave me, the sometimes health-conscious inheritor of my parents longevity genes? My guess, barring an unwelcome random act of bad luck or deadly gene mutation, is that I’m on my way to 100. Sheesh again.

Mind you, I’m just guessing at 100 and rounding off for convenience. Who knows, I may be being overly conservative. For a little guidance, I’ve looked through some statistics. While my life expectancy as a male is a mere 27.9 years, that doesn’t take into account the facts that I’m white, educated (if going to class but not paying attention counts as education), of above-average means, and a nonsmoker. On the other hand, I have a big mouth and often tend to rub the wrong people the wrong way. (Not a good combination for a long life.) To this longevity lotto, add the fact that scientific breakthroughs are occurring everyday, cures for previously deadly diseases are being discovered on a regular basis, and I now eat my vegetables, brussel sprouts included.

Factually speaking, the chances of living longer nowadays compared to years past are so overwhelmingly in our favor as to be all but a given. In 1900, life expectancy for men was 49.7 years; by the middle of the century, men could be expected to live to 65.6 years of age, and now its up around 72. I won’t bore you with too many facts, but suffice it to say, everything is pointing to 100 being the new 80 by the time my contemporaries and I get there.

But wait, there’s much more, and though much of the new thinking seems closer to science fiction, many believe it to be a plausible reality. For example, there are some who believe that sometime within our lifetime, we will conquer our biological limits and humanity will attain immortality. One such believer is Ray Kurzweil, who has been called the modern Edison and won the 1999 National Medal of Technology Award. Kurzweil relies on his belief in the “exponential nature of technological advance” with knowledge doubling every year. Naturally, there are doubters, myself included. One Yale bioethics professor acknowledges Kurzweil to be a genius, but concludes that “he‘s a product of a narcissistic age when brilliant people are becoming obsessed with their longevity.” Hmmm.
(Do let me know if that ever applies to me; the obsessed part, not the brilliant.) Other more “reasonable” estimates of future longevity are in the 140 age range. Can you imagine proudly dating a woman 25 years your junior who is still a dried up prune of 110? Yuk.

I will leave it to the social ethicists to debate and ruminate upon the possible implications of and impact to our society should we start to live well past the century mark. (Think being married to the same person for 100 years!!) For now all I’m concerned about is what’s this all mean for me? Well obviously, barring the unforeseen, I AM middle aged (and can no longer leer at young women and think about what it would be like to have sex with them. Well, I CAN, but I try not to.) With the extra 10-30 years of life expectancy, I also now have a much better chance of seeing the Cubs get into the World Series, though this could just be one of those freakish sports anomalies that no one, no matter how long they live, will witness.

But perhaps most importantly, the possibility of living a lot longer than anticipated is a reminder that we do sometimes need to look ahead and plan a little. And while I’m now career-less and enjoying the freedom to write and go to the gym everyday, and play baseball five times a week in the summer, I also need to make sure that when I’m pushing ninety or so I’m not forced to utter the six words which would prove to be my living hell: “may I take your order please?”

Beauty and the Creep

It’s really all so sad, the death of Anna Nichol Smith. I can hardly drag myself out of bed. As a matter of fact, I believe that was the case with her 2nd husband, J. Howard Marshall II, who was a mere 89 when he wed poor Anna in 1994. See their happy wedding photo above.

I dare anyone, anywhere, even those with the purest of hearts to tell me with a straight face that this was a match made from love. And I don’t mean love of big tits and hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean the romantic kind of love, the kind that makes you feel giddy when you're with that someone special and miserable as soon as your honey dares look at another person, where you have trouble being away from your beloved for more than a few minutes. In view of the fact that poor Anna Nichol took off for a vacation WITHOUT J. Ho on their wedding night, I’m a’thinking that she was not feeling the sting of Cupid's arrow.

But what about J. Howard? What about his feelings and intentions? We’re all so quick to jump to conclusions about Anna being a gold-digger, which very well may be dead-on correct. But so what? Let’s say we’re all right; Anna Nichol was in it for nothing but the money. What is so bad about this if poor old J. Ho was also aware of Anna’s motives and was a-okay with kanoodling with a young, hot 26 year old gold-digger in return for a few unneeded assets? What the hell was he going to do, at the age of 89, with $1.6 BILLION dollars anyway? If anyone is entitled to some fun and to enjoy the spoils of his labor, it’s this old schnook who was on death’s door while sitting on an incredible fortune. For Christ’s sake, once Anna came along, J. Ho got to live THE DREAM; having a Playboy Playmate of the year as his little cuddle bunny and loving spouse.

Granted, J. Ho no doubt could have gotten a lot more bang for his buck, so to speak, had he done a little more comparison shopping. (There’s gotta be a website like Froogle for gold-diggers, and if there isn’t, well there needs to be to protect mega-millionaires everywhere.) But what difference would saving 10 or 20 million make at this point, other than to his heirs. J. Ho landed a hot one, and he didn’t care if he paid full sticker price.

But why is this story, and the many others like it, still so creepy and bothersome? One reason is because J.Ho IS creepy, or at least, creepy looking. And when sitting next to a hot, young Playboy bunny, well, he looks even creepier still. (Happy as hell, but still creepy.)

Of course it goes beyond just appearances. Other than the creep factor (him), and the jealousy factor (us guys who would have loved to kannoodle some with Anna N), and the miscellaneous righteous indignation (most women) about some hussy getting a ton of money just because she’s got some rather distinguished characteristics, what really lies at the heart of all the tsk, tsking is that many of us guys see a little bit of ourselves in J. Ho, and I for one, am none too pleased at what I see.

Its not that we can’t be with Anna, as we never expected to be; its not that our moral code is so strong that we can’t bear to see someone taken advantage of. No, what I find so troubling here is that in this really creepy old man with the hot, huge-titted bunny wife, I can maybe see myself in the future when I too am just a creepy looking old guy who no decent looking woman wants to look at, let alone touch, and with no hope of having a hot chick look my way ever again. EVER.

Face it, if you were in the support shoes of J. Howard Marshall II, wouldn’t you have been tempted to say fuck it all and live your last few days and months with Anna Nichol, even if you knew that when she gazed into your cataract-riddled eyes, all she saw were dollar signs?
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For the record, J. Ho died with an estate worth $1.6 billion; a Texas state court ruled that Anna was NOT entitled to receive anything from the estate. A Calif. bankruptcy court subsequently determined that she was entitled to $475 million, an award that was later reduced to$88.5 million in damages from the now deceased stepson of J.Ho. These last decisions were recently overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, God love'm, which returned the matter to federal court where it stands now.

Turning 50-who me?!

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
Kin Hubbard

To commemorate turning 50 this year, I have scheduled trips with 2 different sets of guy friends, all of whom will be turning 50 years old sometime during 2007. The first trip is with a group of friends and acquaintances from high school (Niles North class of '75.) This tightly knit group, known in our youth as the B-Jocks, accepted me as an honorary member somewhere along the line. We will be going to Las Vegas to do I'm not sure what. Celebrate? Commiserate? Just get away from spouses with a halfway decent excuse that won't be thrown in our faces at the first glimmer of an argument? (For the record, I don't have a spouse, but I do have a wonderful live-in girlfriend, Dyan. Also for the record, I am NOT trying to get away from her. No, really!)

Later this year, I'll be taking another turning-50 guy trip with the Dahlgren group, so named by me after the spiritual center of the gang, Greg. Though Greg and I went to college together for 4 years, and he knew OF me as a result of one of my classic stupid pranks which entailed giving away a car during my dormitory radio shift, Greg and I didn’t actually meet until being thrust together in the same corridor of our law school dormitory. (Greg, by the way, happens to be about the only person I know who remains virtually unchanged physically from when he was 25. This is not necessarily a compliment; he wasn’t in shape then either.) Our destination for this trip has not yet been determined. I do know it will NOT be Vegas since we go there every year; I do know it will be only GUYS.

So why the hub-bub about going away to mark our turning 50? After all, I've been trying to get a lot of these same guys to go away on guy trips for years (I'll leave the defining of a guy trip to another post), but its only happened on a large group participation scale like this once before; when the B-Jocks turned 40. And yes, we went to Vegas then also. I still think the go-away-with-a good-excuse reason holds more water than most will admit. "Honey, the guys and I are taking a trip to celebrate the summer solstice" just doesn't seem to cut it. But I digress (which I will do often in the course of my writing, though I will attempt to refrain from digressing from my digressions.)

We are going away because turning 50 is a big fucking deal, and like it or not, its something to embrace and deal with in whatever way that makes us happy and helps us cope with the inevitable. My guess is that some of us are going on the trip to let loose; others to feel young again; some to get away from their wives; some to screw around and act silly; or a combination of all of these or maybe none at all. The thing is, it doesn't really matter because we all have our reasons and meanings that we attach to the trip and being 50 damn years old.

Don’t get me wrong; I'm not angry about turning 50, though I'm certainly far from happy about it. Its more a case of being surprised, as in "how the hell did this happen so quickly?!" One day I was beginning another career at the ripe age of 30, and the next moment I find myself making plans with my OLD (literally) friends to numb some of the pain of becoming 50.

So what are my reasons? For me there's no great mystery about why I'm going; it’s a chance to get away from Dyan. Ha, kidding. REALLY! I'm going because it’s a rare opportunity to spend time with friends with whom I have both a bond and history with and ordinarily don't get to see very often. People who were important to me and with whom I shared a part of my life with at various times starting as far back as kindergarten; guys whom I got to know when I was 5, 15, 25 and now, happily still, am still getting to know as we approach 50. And for me, it’s a history that cannot be duplicated or replaced by others who have come along and entered my life at later stages. There’s just something about friendships that were created when we were young and stupid that makes them irreplaceable, and for me at least, invaluable

So I guess I can answer my question after all; what's the big deal and why are we going? We're going because having friends, and especially ones that you've grown up with and struggled with and continued to care about is something to celebrate and cherish. So what if we need to use the excuse of turning 50 to get away and spend some time together. We're doing it, and in our own way, I think we're all doing it for the same basic reason.

Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age.

William Feather

My first blog entry.

This respresents my initial foray at blogging. It may last 5 minutes, it may become a required part of both my day and yours. Likely it will be somewhere inbetween, hovering closer to the 5 minute mark. I do promise that it will get better over time.