{"id":22431,"date":"2025-09-08T14:51:34","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T22:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=22431"},"modified":"2025-09-08T14:51:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T22:51:34","slug":"as-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2025\/09\/08\/as-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"As For Me&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m just totally weirded out about getting old.<\/p>\n<p>No, scratch that, I&#8217;m just totally weirded out about being 72.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to let you in on a little secret. Almost all my contemporaries are in denial. They are over 70, but they&#8217;re acting like they&#8217;re in their forties, if not their thirties, as if they&#8217;ve got a lot of runway ahead of them, and we don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Classic rock stars are dropping like flies. Rick Davies. I&#8217;m a huge Supertramp fan, I saw the last tour, sans Rodger Hodgson. It&#8217;s sad, then again Davies was 81. Not a bad run. My father died at 70. The Big C got him. That&#8217;s what people don&#8217;t realize, you can just be wandering through life and BAM!, cancer gets you. You&#8217;ll say you&#8217;re eating right, as if that really matters, but Neil deGrasse Tyson points out the fallacy in that argument here:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" cite=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@hasanminhaj\/video\/7532113904072215821\" data-video-id=\"7532113904072215821\" data-embed-from=\"oembed\" style=\"max-width:605px; min-width:325px;\">\n<section> <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"@hasanminhaj\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@hasanminhaj?refer=embed\">@hasanminhaj<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>\u201cScience!!! Matters!!!\u201d Neil deGrasse Tyson<\/p>\n<p> <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"? original sound - Hasan Minhaj\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/music\/original-sound-7532114224223472398?refer=embed\">? original sound &#8211; Hasan Minhaj<\/a> <\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In caveman days, half of the people died by age 30. In 1840, it was 35. They were all eating organic, eating free range meats, but it wasn&#8217;t until science came along that life expectancies increased by so much.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what Tyson says, many people will disagree, on both the left and the right, as if beliefs can undercut science, they can&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>So where was I&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah, getting old.<\/p>\n<p>I ask my contemporaries if they died tomorrow would they feel ripped-off. Most say no, that there are things they want to do, but if they passed they&#8217;d be satisfied with their lives. Not me! There&#8217;s so much more I want to accomplish. But that requires I stay healthy and alive. And you can be alive and be hampered.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Can I tell you I saw a video of the Who on TikTok? Of Roger Daltrey, who&#8217;s gone on record he can barely hear or see, waiting to hit the high note in &#8220;Won&#8217;t Get Fooled Again&#8221;? With Pete Townshend standing nearby, waiting for the synth part to end to begin playing his guitar once again?<\/p>\n<p>I was struck by one thing and one thing only, how old they both were. Both in their eighties. It&#8217;s a pact between the acts and their fans, we&#8217;re supposed to suspend disbelief and think everybody is young and chipper and still as good and will live forever.<\/p>\n<p>But we won&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe you caught the video of Paul McCartney at the Oasis show. Maybe you notice he&#8217;s shrunk a bit. That&#8217;s a feature of aging, it happens to all of us. But the truth is Paul&#8217;s voice is shot. Or nearly shot, depending upon where you want to draw the line. You heard him on the SNL anniversary show&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>BUT YOU CAN&#8217;T SAY ANYTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT PAUL MCCARTNEY!<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not the point. Can you stand back and see what is going on? We&#8217;re all fading into the woodwork, and no one has all their faculties, skills and looks.<\/p>\n<p>But you can try and cheat. Did you read that &#8220;New York&#8221; magazine article about facelifts?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Forever-35 Face &#8211; The face-lift is better than ever and everybody wants one. Deep inside the uncanny world of the surgically ageless.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/apple.news\/Ao2CAADOBTaOArhJxEUIdKA<\/p>\n<p>Ozempic and plastic surgery. You can present an image to the world. But it&#8217;s just an image, your insides don&#8217;t know any better. Never mind lying about your age.<\/p>\n<p>Now this is coming across with the wrong attitude. I don&#8217;t care if you love seeing the dinosaurs or get plastic surgery, all I&#8217;m saying is time is marching on and you can&#8217;t stop it. So what do you want to do with the rest of your life?<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re certainly not going to be remembered. You realize that as you get older. As far as possessions? I was always creeped out how the aged ended up in one room in retirement homes, sans all their crap. I completely understand it now, most of that stuff you never use. And if you&#8217;re trying to impress people with what you&#8217;ve got&#8230;you don&#8217;t know that that&#8217;s a young person&#8217;s game, no one cares.<\/p>\n<p>So what do you do with your time?<\/p>\n<p>You can travel. But that&#8217;s weird too. Because you can no longer go everywhere. You&#8217;ve got to pick and choose. And take a good look around when you&#8217;re there, because chances are you&#8217;ll never be back.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to ski at every area in America. That ain&#8217;t gonna happen. Nor every mountain in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>But what&#8217;s important to me, what are my priorities?<\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s books and movies and TV shows&#8230; I know people watch stuff multiple times, but I don&#8217;t get it, there&#8217;s still so much I haven&#8217;t seen!<\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s politics&#8230; There could be massive change before I die, we had a Black president and legal marijuana, which were unfathomable in the twentieth century, but chances are it will just be push and pull and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>You start to realize, I&#8217;ve started to realize, that people just can&#8217;t get along. Hell, Rodney King is dead. There are going to be wars. As for people like Putin&#8230;I don&#8217;t understand it. Who wakes up and says they want to be a rich dictator in a corrupt system. I mean money and power are nice, but why this desire to lord it over people?<\/p>\n<p>These are questions I think about all the time.<\/p>\n<p>Kind of like when I talk about music business stuff, if money was made the discussion ends there. You can&#8217;t criticize, can&#8217;t even analyze something if money is being made.<\/p>\n<p>So you become further and further isolated.<\/p>\n<p>And the separation between people, people you know, who all started from the same line. Some made something of themselves, others didn&#8217;t. Fine. But then there are those who didn&#8217;t who have contempt for those who did. So what do you do, hide your achievements or hang with those who&#8217;ve had similar successes?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the nature of life. You start to become more and more detached.<\/p>\n<p>When you turn 60, you&#8217;ve seen the trick, you know the game, you&#8217;re no longer beholden to the hype. If a movie or product is good, you&#8217;ll find out about it when it&#8217;s in the marketplace, you&#8217;re not going to get all excited and waste time in anticipation.<\/p>\n<p>70? That&#8217;s when you realize you&#8217;re not going to be here forever.<\/p>\n<p>But almost everybody I bring this up with gives me a blank stare. Tells me what they&#8217;re doing, as if they&#8217;ll be able to do it forevermore. But they won&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, your buddies will die. And then what&#8230; You&#8217;ll just keep on keepin&#8217; on.<\/p>\n<p>So what do you do with your time?<\/p>\n<p>I certainly don&#8217;t want to waste it. I don&#8217;t want to spend time with people selling me, which so many want to. Let&#8217;s talk on the phone so I can convince you to help me make money!<\/p>\n<p>Or those who don&#8217;t want to talk about the deeper issues.<\/p>\n<p>Or those who can never challenge their preconceptions.<\/p>\n<p>Like that David Brooks piece in the &#8220;Times&#8221; last week, &#8220;Why I Am Not a Liberal.&#8221; http:\/\/bit.ly\/3Ke7Rtq I&#8217;m all for a social safety net. But is Brooks right, that some programs just don&#8217;t lift people and ultimately it&#8217;s culture that creates change? I&#8217;m not sure, but I&#8217;ve been thinking about it, even though his piece is contrary to liberal orthodoxy.<\/p>\n<p>Orthodoxy&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Kamala was a good candidate. Trans kids should be able to play in all sports. Sabrina Carpenter is a talent for the ages. Question precepts and you&#8217;re a pariah.<\/p>\n<p>So what do I do with my time?<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s another piece.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m just totally weirded out about getting old. No, scratch that, I&#8217;m just totally weirded out about being 72. I&#8217;m going to let you in on a little secret. Almost all my contemporaries are in denial. They are over 70, but they&#8217;re acting like they&#8217;re in their forties, if not their thirties, as if they&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-5PN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22432,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22431\/revisions\/22432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}