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TUNE IN

28 October 2002, 04:16

I’m back. It’s been a while, but things have been busy. Have a new job, new duties, working on getting a new computer (I know, the current one is only months old), I cleaned the house, took some naps, watched all three Godfathers in a row (lordy, it took all I had to do that), renamed the dog Fredo…. by the way, how the hell does Michael Corleone know that Hyman Roth tried to kill him?

Working normal hours now like a norm, toiling in a real corporate kind of world, taking on grown up responsibility. So most of the time, now, I’m exhausted. I think it’s because my body is rejecting the adult shackling and the state of being awake in the daytime. Plus the TV isn’t any better in prime time than it was during wee hours of the morning when I was up watching. Less infomercials, though, so the brain rot I was suffering has slowed a bit.

Wonders of all wonders, I was flipping channels and what do I see but Night Ranger, crooning one of their songs from their heyday. And I was bebopping along with it and singing the words, making like I was a star, even though I looked more like a dink. But then, either the cameraman was blind drunk or dumb as a stump because he panned to each band member giving everyone a big, fat close up. Now, Grace Slick once said that she wouldn’t go back on stage to sing her old songs again because she thought it was pathetic for some middle aged rockers trying to recapture their glory and youth (or something like that). And as the camera zoomed in on each wrinkled waddle and receding hairline, I was reminded of her quote.When I see Mick Jagger hopping around I laugh. As his body shrinks, as all old people invariably do, it makes his balloon lips look giagantic. Jagger I laugh at, but this Night Ranger aging skin made me want to cry. Because this is one of the reminders of my youth, or to be more specific, an omen of my old upcoming shriveling. Whahizface says it’s nothing, and I shouldn’t worry about it. He’s eight years older than I am and he doesn’t feel old. A bigger case of living in denial, I have never seen. Poor guy. He’s ancient and doesn’t even know it. My bones creak when I don’t even move. Noises come from areas that never, until recently, spoke a word. That’s a bad sign when parts of your body become autonomous and active. The dogs will soon die of old age. Plus, recently, I saw Tom Hanks in and old series I use to watch when he was young, and unknown, and wearing women’s clothing.

Now, regular readers will know that I live in TV land. TV land is where no one goes to the bathroom, has embarassing bodily functioning in public, there is sex but its that good kind where nobody gets sweaty or explicit and you only see fumbling hands on faces wrapped in nebulous bedsheets AND most importantly, no one gets old. Or if they do, its very graceful or they die in a horrible accident that is never shown. Or possibly have acid thrown in their face and after extensive surgery survive to become a younger, different actor. It’s a place where everybody stays the same. It unhinged me to see Mr. Carlson leave WKRP to become a Maytag Repairman. Although Jane Curtain seems to still look relatively the same in Kate and Alley as she did in Third Rock From The Sun. Dick Clark though, IS a animatronic device. His skin is teflon and the Disney people come in every year to resheath him.

I still see the Late Lloyd Bridges as the guy in Airplane and not the 200 year old man jogging behind Seinfeld’s car, I still think the members of Duran Duran are cool, instead of middle aged poofs with the startings of prostate trouble, I still think the tonight show should be hosted by Johnny Carson dressed in wide ties and ugly plaid jackets. I remember Las Vegas as the one from the Robert Ulrich series “Vegas” instead of the horrid corporate conglomerations of light bulbs it is now. To me, there is something comforting to think of Vegas run by hordes of badly dressed Mafioso, than a bunch of brie eating, mayonaissey legions of yuppiefied CEOs. Now, there are some that get sexier when they get older. Sean Connery comes to mind, although, if you look close enough to the multitude of vericose veins on his bald head, it looks like a relief map of the canals on Mars. Also, Robert Redford is hunky, even though it looks like some serious erosion did a job on his neck. And time has not been kind to Ted Danson. If there wasn’t the crack team of makeup artists and reconstruction specialists working on him, he would just look like death. I saw him in an interview where, god help him, his face went commando (au naturale), and I prayed that he could just find out where he could get a portrait to hide up in his attic (translation for the literarily challenge: see The Picture of Dorian Gray).

I guess getting older isn’t really that bad. But it comforts me to fight it every step. I don’t miss being stupid like I was when I was younger. But I do miss the heavy partying that you can do without feeling like four kinds of death warmed over the next morning. Actually, I do miss being somewhat stupid when I was younger – I was more optimistic, lived more blissfully. Plus, I just don’t understand today’s kids and their damn music. I mean, when I was a girl, there were great bands, dammit – like Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Men Without Hats… now there was some music…. and what’s the deal with the hair.. uhhh.. what was I saying? You know, my memory isn’t what it use to be.

And I didn’t know that Al Pacino was such a tiny little guy…