it creeps up on you

[sergebroom]

I just reead a short article saying that Sean Connery won't be back in the fourth Indiana Jones movie. When the article mentionned that Connery is 76, I did a bit of math and went ohmygoodness because, in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, he was only 6 years older than I am now, and Harrison Ford was 6 years younger than me. Aging, it creeps up on you, doesn't it?

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Yes it does. To misquote Tom Lehrer, when Mozart was my age he had been dead for 16 years.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

And then we look at what we've accomplished and find ourselves thinking "This is all I have to show for it?" But I think that my wife, my friends and my dogs think I've done plenty of important stuff. Maybe not grand-scale, but, still, important stuff.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I think so too. I'm now in the middle of annoying publishers (a very different business in the academy, you have to follow a specific set of rules to submit proposals -- rules intended to weed out as many cranks as possible) about what I hope will be my second published book. That's not much on the big scale of things, but it's more than most people accomplish.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

As I often say, my wishes don't bend Reality, but that doesn't stop me anyway from wishing you the best.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[kathryn-ironic.livejournal.com]

As my favorite verbal-optical-illusion goes:
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

One marker of time I can choose to watch is actresses my age switching from playing beautiful people to beautiful moms to grandmothers to obscurity. Although, admittedly, for most actresses these transitions happen at 21, 25, and 30.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

"...actresses my age..."

Hmmm... You make yourself sound like you're about to become 'past it'. If I told you how young I think you are, you'd probably laugh at me. So I won't tell.

Anyway, yes, I know exactly what you mean, being an ardent viewer of Turner Classic Movies. Time is not kind to women, especially in movies, because (sarcasm routine kicks in) after all the most important criteria by which to judge a woman is her appearance (sarcasm routine kicks off) . One old-time actress who managed to keep at it for a long time was Katharine Hepburn. Among more modern actresses who haven't fallen into obscurity is Ellen Burstyn, last seen in The Fountain. But most of them probably literally fade away.

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

I know I'm a youngin, but I have this experience constantly in the classroom. I'm running into a loop where what I consider current cultural context is before their living memory. It's bizarre.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. My boss was born the year after the first Moon-landing. Then again so were most of the people I work with.

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

As was I. Errr....several years after.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Oh, I had figured that out quite some time ago, but I wanted to see if you'd 'fess upto being just a kid who should always listen to the wisdom of her elders.

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

Provided it is in fact wisdom I'll listen to anyone. :D

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

That's the problem with today's kids. They should always assume that their elders are wise, but they don't. Tsk...

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I, on the other hand, listened to it on radio. Radio Rebelde from Cuba, as a matter of fact.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

And was Cuba as excited as the rest of the world? I expect they were. When the Moon-landing happened, I was still living in Quebec City, about one month short of turning 14, and just out of my one and only attempt at summer camp (hated it). I was literally glued to my tiny black&white TV set. My family couldn't have cared less, being who they are, but it certainly mattered to me.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

They sounded pretty excited as I recall.

BTW, it seems that Canadians may be related to Vulcans: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6733203.stm

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Doesn't surprise me one bit, and not just because Leonard Nimoy was a Canadian from the town of Vulcan...

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That's true, except that Nimoy is from Boston....

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... It seems that whoever wrote that was bamboozling his readers, or was seriously misinformed himself/herself.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I see! Of course, Shatner is Canadian... But Kirk was no Vulcan. Tim Russ is from Washington DC, Jolene Blalock is from San Diego, and Mark Lenard was from Chicago. Obviously, they are or were all Secret Canadians.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

"Secret Canadians" sounds like the title of a wingnut best-seller. Or a Cold War thriller, except that you replace Communists and space aliens with Canadians, which is much scarier...

The Secret Canadians... They're everywhere. They look like us, but they're not like us. Our women aren't safe from their slimy alien grasping claws...

Someone had better arrest James Doohan, Lorne Green, Raymond Burr, Pamela Anderson, Donald Sutherland and me. Oh wait. The first three are dead. The fourth one is just plain weird.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Hehehe!

Pamela Anderson might just be an alien....

Donald Sutherland, now, is a superb actor.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Strictly speaking, she is an alien if she's kept her Canadian citizenship.

No argument about Sutherland.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I suppose she would be! I, on the other hand, was thinking that she belonged to a different species, but then I think the same thing of David Hasselhoff.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I will proudly and truthfully say that I never watched a single minute of any episode of Baywatch. I will have to confess to watching one full episode of Baywatch Nights. 'Bad' would not be an inaccurate way of describing it.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I have never watched a minute of either. I don't think I've lost anything thereby. Knight Rider was enough to put me off Hasselhoff.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Ah, KnightRider... Another thing I never watched any part of. Not sure why. Maybe it was the premise because Hasselhoff isn't someone I can work much dislike for - total indifference, yes. Anyway, I'd rather watch reruns of My Mother the Car...

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

You weren't living in a country with one TV channel at the time, I expect. I was.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

When I moved into my own place, in Quebec City, I immediately got cable, which meant finally having access to American TV. Before then, my parent had access only to three channels, all of them Canadian: one local station in French, and the CBC's French and English channels. Not quite as dismal as your own situation, that's true.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

True. Now, of course, they have multiple channels (mostly cable).

Moon Landing

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

We heard it on the radio while living on Guam. No television there in 1969.

It's funny, though. I've seen that clip of Armstrong stepping off the ladder so often that if I didn't know better I'd swear I'd seen it as it happened.

Re: Moon Landing

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know what you mean. You were a navy brat?

Re: Moon Landing

[(Anonymous)]

"Junior," sir, "junior." Army brats, Navy juniors.

Yeah, it followed my freshman year at U of Az and I was home for the summer. We'd moved there 3 days after my HS graduation in Virginia in 1968.

Re: Moon Landing

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

My apologies!! That must have been one hell of a culture shock.

Re: Moon Landing

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

Guam? Culture shock? Compared to the Washington DC suburbs we'd lived in for the previous six years?

Nothing of the sort. Other than the jungle, the windy two-lane roads, the ocean view from the road up the hill toward our Navy housing, and the lack of much of anything non-military related, there wasn't much difference at all. Nope.

Re: Moon Landing

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

*Chuckle*

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

The technical term for this is 'adulthood'. Welcome to the work crew.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

So that's what this 'adulthood' thing is that I keep hearing about.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Well, yes...