Tag: aging

The new old movies

McMurphy from Cuckoo's Nest
That Jaquandor fellow did this exercise: “For me, when I think of an ‘old movie’, my brain always defaults to Casablanca, which by the time of my awareness of its existence, had become a venerable classic movie. Now, when I was born, Casablanca was 29 years old. So here is a list of films that, as of this year, are as old as my brain’s canonical ‘old movie’.”

My problem is that my default ‘old’ movie was The African Queen (1951), only two years before I was born, because I saw it long afterwards. So the list generated would be too recent. I thought of 1939, but I’ve seen The Wizard of Oz so often, not to mention variations on it, it’s still new. So I finally decided on Birth of a Nation (1915); now that’s an old film.

1953-1915=38. 2013-38=1975

These are the movies of 1975, as old today as Birth of a Nation was when I was born:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Tommy
Nashville
Love and Death
The Stepford Wives
Shampoo
Jaws
Dog Day Afternoon

Lots more, of course, but these jumped out at me as films that either reflected the era, or are timeless classics. And the latter two I’ve never seen.

The difference between turning 50 and turning 60

When I turned 50, I could think, “Maybe I still have another half a lifetime left.” After all, the number of centenarians in the United States has been growing. Willard Scott, with whom I share a birthday, BTW, still announces the birthdays of those over 100 on NBC-TV’s TODAY show, as far as I know.

Now that I am 60, though, I have to acknowledge that I’m not going to live another 60 years, even if I move to Azerbaijan and start eating yogurt soup. (And if I’m wrong, which one of you is going to write to correct me?)

I note this, not with melancholy or dismay, but with a certain resolve not to waste my time with X or Y. I’ve already done a fair job in that I’ve largely stopped caring about the negative things people who aren’t friends and family say. It’s not that I won’t complain about them, and in fact, I’m even more likely to do so, probably in this blog; it’s that the anger and frustration don’t consume me, as they once did.

Once upon a time, every March 8 (the day after my birthday), I would play a particular Paul Simon tune. The lyric started:
Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life’s a mess
But I’m having a good time

I played that song annually for 20 years or more. I should get back to doing that again.

Have a Good Time – Paul Simon

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