When you get old

[Doc]

I watched Bubba Ho Tep a good while back, I was impressed, it was a good movie.

I just sat down and watched it again. Lately, I have felt the crushing weight of my age creeping up on me.

With that thought in mind, the movie took on a whole new meaning... Especially the part where Elvis is talking about how people don't take the elderly very seriously, and everything is some sort of amusement. The old are disposable in this culture that values only youth.

And with that in mind, I realised how brilliant the movie is.

I have also realised, age be damned. Elvis, in the movie, started feeling younger when he started thinking and acting younger. He started thinking clearer.

It is quite a metaphor to think about... Old age creeping up on us, sucking the life out of us, bleeding us dry. But it can be beaten. Oh, we may still die, but we can die with a mind clear and free of the doubt that so often seems to come with old age.

I dunno about the rest of you here at the Lounge that are hanging around the half a century mark, but I plan to watch my cornhole.

And maybe install D2 again for some good old fashioned game time.

[pakman]

Cleopatra does the nasty and they replaced my brain with a bag of sand and dyed me this color!

[Rhydderch Hael]

One of the more poignant images I recall from the movie came from Elvis looking over the mementos of his deceased roommate. One was a photograph of a young soldier in Paris with a girl on each arm. It was a piece of time, a piece of memory, and as this world spins around the sun and people live out their lives, that particular image—that moment—could very well have been taken yesterday. Sure, the photo taken yesterday would have been of a different man with different girls (and may not even be in Paris), but the moment would have been the same.

Sixty years from now, someone will pull that moment out from the top drawer in a rest home dresser and throw it into the trash.

We can't avoid it. Even the youthful cannot, because youth fades. You can escape, as Elvis did, but escape implies having been inevitably caught in the first place.

It will come. What you do with it defines you.

[--Pete]

Hi,

We can't avoid it. Even the youthful cannot, because youth fades. You can escape, as Elvis did, but escape implies having been inevitably caught in the first place.

From another movie, which I found somewhat deeper:

Through early morning fog I see
visions of the things to be
the pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see...

[REFRAIN]:
. . . that suicide is painless. It brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

I try to find a way to make
all our little joys relate
without that ever-present hate
but now I know that it's too late, and...
[REFRAIN]

The game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
so this is all I have to say.
[REFRAIN]

The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I'm beat
and to another give my seat
for that's the only painless feat.
[REFRAIN]

The sword of time will pierce our skins
It doesn't hurt when it begins
But as it works its way on in
The pain grows stronger...watch it grin, but...
[REFRAIN]

A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied 'oh why ask me?'
[REFRAIN]

'Cause suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.
...and you can do the same thing if you please.

Life's a bitch, then you die -- and sometimes you're actually given the choice.;)

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

Hi,
From another movie, which I found somewhat deeper:
(*M*A*S*H theme song lyrics)
Life's a bitch, then you die -- and sometimes you're actually given the choice.;)
--Pete

The James Dean corallary to that postulate is

1. Live fast<>
   
2. Die young<>
   
3. Leave a good looking corpse.<>
   [st]On point 2, we all die young . . . when compared to Methusalah, and if we are good, per Saint Billy of Joel. :P
   
   I've never seen a corpse I'd call "good looking." (Not a necrophiliac)
   
   So, live fast, or as my old German friend Reiner used to quip:
   
   "Life is too short to be miserable."
   
   Under the Anderson-Tull theory of ambiguous longevity
   
   "Too old to rock and roll, but too young to die"
   
   Keith Richard is neither, and at least anecdotal evidence that Anderson-Tull's theory belongs in the fields with the fertilizer.
   
   Occhi