Aging Like Fine Whine
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
A couple of nights ago, I started to watch The Hunt for Red October (Actually it was early April when I noticed this phenomenon but I had to let it ripen in the vast wasteland of my mind).
It occurred to me there was something odd about Alec Baldwin, he looked like he was, well, young. He was slim, hale (whatever that means) and quite handsome for an American. Alec was in another movie a week or two later and he appeared to be in his 60s, which, as a matter of fact, he is 66.
When I looked at the TV channel promo, the Red October movie came out in 1990, thirty-four years ago. Most of us, well not me fortunately since I have been blessed by the youth fairies, but the rest of you have aged and not always for the better – especially you. I’m sorry but someone had to say it.
Fear not there are several anti-aging creams on the market guaranteed to make you the spitting image of Jennifer Aniston, which is fine if you are a woman, a man not so much.
There is a problem when we age, I’m sure you have noticed the rest of the world ages with us. But we assume everyone else is maturing (a nice way to put it even if it isn’t true) at the same rate. We also think everyone thinks and remembers things the way we do.
‘Au contraire’ as they say in Montreal and a few other godforsaken places where decent people never go. Others may not have progressed at all, or if they did it was not on the same path to perfection as we who have made it. This aberration shows up often in what we watch on TV. For instance folks who watch zombie movies are rapidly regressing to the mentality of the cave persons of centuries past.
Sometimes our development is reflected in our clothes. For example, Mary mentioned this morning that I really must like a particular T-shirt since I wear it a lot. I do. It is a fine shirt and well-made since it is still in good shape, as am I, and both of us have been laundered and hung out to dry hundreds of times. The message across the front is ‘He’s dead, Jim – you grab his tricorder, I’ll get his wallet.’ Any Star Trek fan will know instantly that Dr. ‘Bones’ McCoy is talking to Captain James Tiberius Kirk. Whether or not what they are doing is quite ethical is neither here nor there, but the guy had gone to his reward so to speak and we can always use another tricorder and someone else’s wallet, so I say go for it.
But what about the rest of the population, poor, sad, souls they must be, who never followed the voyages of the Starship Enterprise and instead wasted their time watching some other crap where the audience wears costumes and runs down the aisle shouting, ‘Pick me, pick me’? Would they even recognize this timeless message from the past, or are they so clueless they think Jim and McCoy are simply swiping some dead guy’s watch?
Star Trek spawned a whole whack of Star Treks, including one where the Captain was bald, which I thought was going a tad too far just to appease those citizens not blessed with hair follicles that really work instead of just lying there taking up valuable space. One show even had a woman in charge if you can imagine. Personally, I never thought women should have the right to vote.
So many of the things introduced on that show are commonplace today, the cell phone and iPad are just a couple of the technical advances we use every day. The transporter is a little slow in coming unfortunately and we still have to line up like sheep at Pearson for hours just to board a plane and pay a fortune for the privilege. If someone can invent one, I would gladly take the chance that all my parts would be re-assembled in reasonably good shape, although I wouldn’t be too upset if my 24-pack abs were cut down to a six or even less.
In the meantime I’ll put on my Star Trek T-shirt and stand in line with the rest of the losers.
(Image Supplied)
