So now do you feel old? Well, do you...punk?

My friend Frank recently posted on his Facebook page this photo of TV's MASH characters Cpl Maxwell Klinger, now 83, and Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, now 80.  (The title is a nod to 87-year-old Clint Eastwood if you didn't catch it.)

And if you're curious, Marilyn Monroe would have recently turned 92, Neil Armstrong would have been 88, Elvis would have been 83, Sophia Loren is 83, and youngsters Raquel Welch and Roger Staubach are 77 and 76 respectively.  Yikes!  And to add insult to injury, this year will mark the 50th anniversary of me being honorably discharged from high school.  These are things you don't really think much about, until you think about them.  Then it's like, "Sumbitch, where has the time gone?"

This is not meant to be a downer post.  Just the opposite.  I've seen some pretty amazing things that Generation XYZer's might have only heard about on Twitter, maybe.  I DON'T envy them at all.

Now consider this:  The average American today lives to be 78.7 years old, which has dropped recently and is below the 80.3 year average of other OECD advanced nations.  Some of that is due, they say, to poor lifestyle choices, and some due to lack of adequate healthcare.  Regardless, all of us are one day closer to kicking off today than we were yesterday. 

All the recent prescription drugs that are advertised on TV got me to thinking.  One is a treatment for those who have non-small-cell cancer that has spread.  It says Optivolumovoriousoptomoline (marketed as YippieJuice*) can "give you a chance to live longer".  That concept, "living longer", baffles me. Why does everyone want to "live longer"?  Is that some great virtue?  Why would you want to squeeze out a couple of more months/years of feeling like crap?  Just to prolong the inevitable?

We seem to put way too much time and effort in trying to hold on.  Just think of Max, Hot Lips, Marilyn, Elvis, Sophia, and all the rest of your childhood icons as forever young.  Then just live right, be kind, help those you can, hurt no one, and go on about your business.  What's gonna happen is gonna happen. ;)

S

* Now don't go running to your pharmacy asking for some YippieJuice.  I might have just made that name up.

"Always get married in the morning."

"Always get married in the morning.  That way, if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted the whole day."

Ha!  That from the recently departed Mickey Rooney, who was married 8 times during his 93-year life.  Of course I know who he was, but I was never a big fan.  The childhood actor's heyday was long before I was born, and in his later years he was a successful Broadway actor, a medium I never much cared for.  Still, based on his wit, I think I like him.  :)  RIP Mickey.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something a bit more thought provoking:  I saw one of those "The seven most..." lists on the internet, so of course I had to read it.  (I'm a real sucker for those.)  This one was about the seven wealthiest present or former NFL players, and includes names like Joe Montana, John Elway, and Brett Favre.  Number one was Roger Staubach, worth $600M.

Roger was / is a very stand up guy, a former Naval Academy scholar-athlete who played for the Dallas Cowboys back in the 1970's.  But his money didn't come so much from football, but from real estate.  While he was still playing he worked in the off-season learning the commercial real estate business.  

After he retired from football he started his own company, hired some sharp people, and thrived.  A few years ago he sold his business for $640M, and now I learned that at that time he only owned 12% of his company.  Over the years he had given the other 88% equity interest to his employees.  

It just goes to show that you can be a good guy, reward and acknowledge those around you, and still get rich yourself.  It's such a nice contrast from those who want to pay their employees coins while they're raking off mega-millions of dollars for themselves.

Which leads to this segue:  I don't understand greed.  I know it's one of the seven deadly sins and all that, but I don't get it.  Why do some people go to the lengths they do to acquire as much as they do?

I mean, I love smoked sausage.  We had some for dinner last night.  If I was more affluent I'd have a freezer with a dozen rings of sausage in it.  And if I somehow hit the financial mother lode, I'd have a thousand rings of sausage.  And if I won the lottery, I'd own 10,000,000 rings of sausage. 

Wait....what?  Why would I do that?  It would be more than I could ever eat in 10 lifetimes.  What's the point?  Why do some people stiff others just so they can put another billion dollars in the bank, along with the other billions they already have?  Does the concept of "doing good" ever cross their mind?  With a few exceptions, I'm thinking not.  

I certainly believe in enjoying the fruits of your labor, but at some point it just gets ridiculous.  I don't understand greed.

S

Youth and vigor are no match for old age and treachery

Do you recognize her?  I'll bet not, unless you read the same obscure "Where are they now" article online I did yesterday.

I've never been too conscious of age, or birthdays, or getting old.  It's gonna happen anyway, so just roll with it, right?  Wrinkles happen, hair takes a vacation, sometimes teeth take up residence in a glass in the bathroom overnight.  It's all good.

But that article yesterday really got me to thinking about how old all the sports / entertainment / news icons of my yoot are, or would have been, today.  Yikes!

Elvis, had he lived, would have been 79.

Captain Kangaroo (Bob Keeshan) would have been 89.

Paul Newman would have been 89 also.  Paul Newman!

 

Sophia Loren is 79.  Lemme say it again....SEVENTY NINE!

Henry Winkler, aka Fonzi, aka The Fonz....68.

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, would have been 88.

Roger Staubach (Dallas QB) is 72.

 

Raquel Welch is 73.

  

Diane Sawyer, the TV news anchor, is 68.

Frankie Avalon is 73.

Little Richard is 81.

This old geezer is 63.

Chubby Checker is 72.

Terry Bradshaw (Pittsburgh QB) acts a forever young 65.

One of my main teenage crushes, Leslie Gore, is 67.  (Unfortunately for me I wasn't "her type".)

And this beautiful lady, whose picture adorned many a young boy's room back in the 1960's, is the same as the first photo shown above....79 year old Bridget Bardot.

Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick....just roll with it.  

All my "beautiful people" are....umm....still beautiful. ;)

S