"And you know that you're over the hill when your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill." From "Old Folks Boogie" by Little Feat circa 1977.
Sixty is the new forty I keep telling myself, but don't believe a word of it. My daily workouts do nothing for my love handles. They help keep me alive, but that spare tire is not going anywhere. Nevertheless, if I can buy myself twenty or thirty more years, the exercise routine will be well worth it. That's if I want to live that long. Quality of life is important, but the arthritis is starting to kick in. You start to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and yes, it's an oncoming train.
All the excesses in the 1970's and 1980's help contribute to "Senior Moments" on occasion. That pie in the sky fantasy of being on Jeopardy is just that, a fantasy. Some jaded pipe dream because I'm just not quick enough anymore. It's not that I'm slow, it's just that it takes a millisecond longer to process things. Millisecond is being generous. I lost my fastball. I haven't had a drink, smoked, or, done drugs (unless prescribed by a doctor) in over a quarter century, yet I am feeling the effects of the inevitable. Just like the aging athlete pining for another shot at glory, but given your walking papers because you can't beat Father Time.
Crow's feet, laugh lines, crepe skin, and more chins than a Chinese phone book. This is the world I live in, and I don't mind, either. If you are young, you may not understand, especially the manner in which youth culture is glorified in advertisements and any other visual media. I'm still alive, and that's better than the alternative. I'm not here to adulate the Golden Years, just report some of the vagaries in seeing the song and screen sirens of my youth donning the cover of AARP Magazine, or even worse, being used as clickbait for a "Whatever Happened To" feature on a Website. What can be even worse is when these bygone celluloid divas are forty years old. That was twenty years ago for my contemporaries. Just makes you feel ancient. What's it going to be like in 2040?
I live in Ithaca, New York, a small college town in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. Cornell University and Ithaca College are here along with a thriving community college. It's a young demographic with two kick-ass college radio stations, WVBR for Cornell and WICB at Ithaca College. The stations are fairly free form, so it's hit and miss with the DJ's, but when they're on my wavelength, I can listen for hours. I've preferred alternative or indie bands for the past thirty-five years. Trying to keep up with the music scene is a young person's game, but I can enjoy the music vicariously. I stopped listening to Classic Rock in 1979 when the CBGB sound and New Wave came into vogue. That morphed into alternative bands in the 1980's. I stayed with it. Led Zeppelin to a twentysomething today is like Bing Crosby was in the Jimmy Carter administration. A land far, far away.
I am not too nostalgic for the old days, but there are aspects of previous decades that I prefer over the current environment. For instance, when I was a kid, only the Marines in Vietnam carried assault rifles. Now there's a gun cult with zit faced cherubs mowing down high school classmates. Active Shooter Drill wasn't part of the lexicon. Something's got to give. There are other aspects of yesteryear that I long for, like fiction and movies, but that's just my personal preference. I still enjoy the movies, but not as frequently as I used to. I still read a lot, too, but haven't read a contemporary novel in years. In order not to sound like a grumpy old man, I am going to skim over this subject...for now.
Although it leans left to a fault (activists protested Hillary Clinton's fundraiser here in the last election cycle because she wasn't progressive enough), Ithaca and its surrounding area are a microcosm of the country. For every crunchy granola townie, there's a cracker with a Confederate Battle Flag and gun rack on his pickup truck just ten miles out of town. The same urban vs rural conundrum that goes coast to coast. From here to Portland, Oregon and Maine. What's that old line about Pennsylvania, "Philadelphia in the East. Pittsburgh in the West. Alabama in the middle.". I plan to use Ithaca as the main focus of this blog because not only is there a plethora of students, retirees are flocking here to take advantage of the cultural options of a college town without the inconveniences of a large city.
The brunt of these posts will be random observations about movies, books, music and contemporary society in a small college town. I don't know how many I will publish, or, how frequently. I've already done a few paragraphs, so that's a start. As the old Chinese proverb says: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.". Thanks to technological advances and Google Blogger, it costs me nothing but time to write this. For now, time is all I've got.
