Ok, I’m a smart guy who can be very stupid at times. This is particularly true when it comes to physical limits. I know, for example, that enrolling in the ProAM Bull Riding contest would be a serious mistake. I know that. It would have been a serious mistake 20 years ago and there’s no reason to think it might be a good idea now. I know that   El Capitan is not in my future unless they build an escalator. I’ve figured that out…

So, of course, I made a wise crack to a guy 20 some years younger than I that the Mojave Free Press ought to enter a team for the Barstow Mud Run. Figured a leisurely job across the desert, splash through some forgiving water obstacles and then pick up a T-shirt at the worst case. At the best case, he’d laugh and say no thanks, he had to cover it for the paper. How hard could it be? What could go wrong?

Most things.

Well, the principal architect of that electronic fish wrapper is a guy named Charles Waybright. He’s a nice guy, but he either has a sense of humor more twisted than mine or he’s very stupid. Charles thought it was a great idea. So, there we were, Charles, Bruce Klein and me, surrounded by 1000 or so of like-minded lunatics set to take off across the desert to benefit the Barstow Veterans Home and the Barstow Kiwanis. Both of which are worthy of support for their services to this community which really needs it and more of it. Oh, the guys who bailed on the run so that Charles had to recruit Bruce but volunteered to video the thing and provide coverage for the paper, also bailed. Charles had his lovely wife worried that I might not show or be found and that she would have to pick up the banner. She was prescient enough to be glad to see me. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, sports by Mike Farrell
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I’m not going to start this blog with an apology about how rarely I blog. If I were hitting you everyday and apologizing each time, it would not change the fact that I hit you every day, would it? No. So let us just not speak of it at all.

I am one of those people who spends some time reflecting on New Year’s Eve. I don’t want to be. I have tried not to be. No getting around it, I just am. I’m not severe about it. I mean, I’m not kicking myself all night for not being who I thought I would be when I daydreamed in middle school. Much. Mostly, I take a quick inventory and try to motivate myself to go in one direction or another.

The first time I remember really putting any thought into it I was six months past college graduation and waiting tables at Cha Cha Coconuts. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, square one by Van McCourt by Van McCourt
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There is a dog room and a cat room. The dog room contains stalls and cages built into the walls along with large, wheeled fourplexes for the young and the small. Also in the dog room is an endless peal of barking, howling and scratching. The cat room is more like the section in the old Woolworth’s where they sold the goldfish and parakeets. Basically there are aquaria but with grillwork instead of glass and within the grillwork are tiny mewling bits of fluff, at this time all nameless. Little cards describe them briefly with a guess at their breed and a good estimate of their age which is given in weeks or months. In a dog cage in the cat room there was one enormous middle-aged creature who had already enjoyed a breadth of life far beyond what his cave-cat ancestors could have expected. His name was Arthur. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, getting older by Ken Watson
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“The biggest surprise in a man’s life is old age.” Thus spake Leo Tolstoy, who made it to 82.

It is hard to disagree, especially if you find yourself, as I do, on the cusp of three score and ten, the so-called Biblical age. Of course, old age is not surprising in the sense that it is unexpected, but rather that it turns out to be so different from what you may have expected. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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I was probably 9 or 10 years old? I was already working on our family’s vegetable farm full-time in the summer, and my cousins and I were making boxes (this process involves this big, stapler machine — at least for the ones that hold the heavier produce). Anyway, as we were working, we noticed that a baby bird had hopped  under the packing shed. This thing was little — barely could open its eyes — and we were worried that it would get hit by one of the forklifts. So, we found a small box, filled it with those cloth-like paper towels that come in a box (rag-in-a-box, I think it’s called?), and then maneuvered the baby bird into the little refuge we created for it. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, getting older by Sara W. Moreno
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10. A honeymoon bed with handrails

9. A defibrillator

8. A subscription to Penthouse

7. That new STD iPhone app

6. A copy of Kama Sutra for the Infirm

5. A collection of naked TSA photos

4. A tuxedo with a built-in adult diaper

3. A Viagra Pez dispenser

2. A Playboy calendar with only May and December in it

1. A Rascal scooter with a “Just Married” sign and tin cans tied to the back
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, getting older, trusted media & news by Bob Sullivan
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In discussions about art, we babble constantly about “quality” as if it is the determining factor in terms of what is “good” or “bad”. Some say that, for instance, Mozart was a better composer than John Williams could ever be. Or, we might dismiss Norman Rockwell (a mere illustrator) in comparison to, say, a VanGogh. We read a novel, and we nit-pick, saying: Steinbeck is sentimental; Dickens’s plots are too neat. A ballet choreographer might look at kids dancing for change on the street and he might say, “Unsophisticated. That’s not art. It’s ‘pop’ dancing.” But, in the end, what does all of this mean? As I have suggested lots of times, isn’t the measure of art in the way it directly affects us? How important is the “quality” of the work? One can (and I certainly do sometimes) marvel at an artist’s craft, but is great skill necessary for great art? Is skill necessary at all? [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, getting older by Chris Matarazzo
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I just learned that my great Aunt Molly, one of my grandfather’s remaining siblings, passed away yesterday.

It took some time to process this information after I received the phone call from my cousin. I would be lying if I said we were particularly close –- it has easily been a year-and-a-half since the last time I saw her, since her health began to decline and she went into an assisted living center.

But Aunt Molly used to be one of the regulars at the Adult’s table growing up, and a sense of importance and regality surrounded her and the fact that she somehow out-adulted my own parents. I am 27 now, but Aunt Molly always seemed to be the same age: old –- old enough to seem delicate, but never in jeopardy of dying. This though, comes with almost 2 years of decline since the last time I saw her -– between reality and the memories I kept carefully preserved from it. [Read more →]

Tags: all work, getting older by Sara W. Moreno
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my favorite week of the year – the start of March Madness, St. Patrick’s Day, and my birthday (the 19^th). I told my mom last night that if this happened when I didn’t have a child, responsibilities, a mortgage, and graduate school, I would have probably exploded into a fiery ball of beer, blarney, buffalo wings, and brackets. But alas, I am turning 35 years old, and indeed have a child, responsibilities, a mortgage, and graduate school. If I were to explode this year, it would be full of stress, bills, research papers, and a trace amount of beer and buffalo wings. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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I never thought I’d write a “kids today” blog — especially not in my 2nd blog out for this site. In fact, I had another blog practically written, one I anticipated polishing up once I got home last night until I happened to catch the earlier train  from work and happened to sit next to a group of high school boys so insulting, so incredibly ignorant, that I spent the rest of the commute composing this very blog in my head.

I am familiar with and accept the notion that “boys will be boys” — in fact, I sometimes am willing to let downright not-nice-crassness go because of it (with a blue velvet Virgin Mary perched above the toilet in my guest bathroom, who the hell am I to judge on crass?), but these kids went beyond even my limits. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, getting older by Sara W. Moreno
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