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?”
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
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.
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?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
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.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
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.
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