WHO WANTS TO LIVE TO BE 150-YEARS OLD?

BallPoint, The Beaufort Observer
Allen Ball
June 27, 2009

With the advancement of medical technology comes the prediction that people may live to be 150-years old in the future. Whoop-dee-doo! That's just wonderful! If you live to be 150, instead of having a few nieces and nephews who ignore you, you'll have many nieces, nephews and many great-great-great nephews and nieces who ignore you. And instead of swallowing 14 or more prescriptive medicines a day, like my parents do now, in the year 2005, when you're 150, you lucky scamps, you'll probably be scarfing down 40 a day.

I don't want to live to be 150-years old. Here are a few of the reasons why:

The entertainment world ignores everyone over 30. With the exception of the O, Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and Norah Jones, in the last four years, what new music is there for adults to listen to. I mean, when was the last time your grandmother bought a Snoop Dog CD? When was the last time you saw your parents boogie down to an Eminem song on the radio? What new movies can they watch at the movie theater?; they are all aimed at a teenagers and people under 30.

I was born in 1948 and I was privileged to witness the Golden Era of pop music, television, and the tail-end of the Golden Era of Hollywood. Today's world of entertainment for adult audiences is pathetic. Thank God for Stephen Spielberg, Woody Allen, and Clint Eastwood who, among a short list of others, make wonderful movies for adults looking for culture and intelligence in cinema. When I grew up the following mega-superstars of music, art, and the silver screen were living: Picasso, Stravinsky, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles, John Wayne, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, James Stewart, James Cagney, Ava Gardner, Katherine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Charlie Chaplin, Betty Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe .... It was a wonderful time.

With the appearance of Elvis, but more importantly, The Beatles, on the world-wide stage, came a consumption explosion among teenagers. With unparalleled prosperity in America, parents now had more money to dole out to their children so they could "have what we didn't have when we grew up." Young boys and girls and young adults alike started spending millions of dollars on music provided by English musicians and bands that were part of what was dubbed the "British Invasion." The success of The Beatles became the inspiration for not only new British bands but many new American bands, as well. The impact on world-wide culture was phenomenal and everlasting, ushering in and influencing new fashions and styles of dress, new art forms, psychedelic music, the new drug culture, and a "do your own thing" mentality.

Influential singers of protest songs, most prominently Bob Dylan, now had a huge platform from which to address controversial world issues. These artists and their music imbued the younger generation with a sense of empowerment from which grew an activist movement among young people which theretofore had never existed.

That new generation and the ones which have succeeded it have continued to grow significantly in power in terms of how the market place caters to their needs and desires. So, the rest of us old fogies over thirty must resort to listening to our favorite old songs and singers, over and over again, at home and tune in to TCM and AMC on cable-TV to see our favorite old movies with John Wayne, James Cagney, Maureen O'Hara, Sophia Loren ... And, since I already despise 99% of contemporary pop music, 99% of contemporary films and 99% of all television programs, and about 99% of all country music, I can't imagine how repulsive music of tomorrow will be, to me. I cannot fathom what it will be like if I lived another 93 years! to be 150-years old!

Since the 1950s civilians have become increasingly uncivil, forsaking the Christian world for the material world. Jesus slept in the hills, by the rivers and under bridges while present-day televangelists own the hills, build million-dollar homes by the rivers and oceans, and drive BMWs over the bridges.

News broadcaster and commentator Paul Harvey predicted in the early 1990s that, due to the enormous influx of Hispanics, the color of America will be tan, by the year 2050. After 9/11, a militant Muslim, on TV, had the gall to lay the blame of that horrible disaster on the Jews and Americans, proclaiming that, "in 100 years from now, America will be a Muslim nation!

Adapting to cultural changes would be a traumatic experience for any of us who managed to live to the ripe, old age of 150, as the medical community has predicted.

To put it all in perspective, imagine you were born in 1861, the year the civil war began, and you lived to be 150-years old, to the year 2011. You would live through the Civil War, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the invention of the telegraph, automobile, airplane, radio, and television. You would live through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the development of the atomic bomb, the invention of the computer, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the first landing on the moon by a manned spacecraft, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers, the attack on the Pentagon, the related airline crash in Pennsylvania, the war in Afghanistan, and the War in Iraq (the beginning, if not the end).

From a musical perspective, you will grow up to the songs of Stephen Foster (who died in 1864, three years after you were born) -- songs like "Camptown Races," "Oh, Suzanna," "My Old Kentucky Home," and "Beautiful Dreamer."

You will be 46-years old before Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "God Bless America," and "White Christmas" are written. You will be 56 when Igor Stravinsky's controversial Rite of Spring makes its debut in 1917; 63, when George Gershwin debuts his classic Rhapsody in Blue, at Aeolian Hall, at 34 West Forty-third Street, February 12, 1924, and you will be 100-years-of-age before the Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan show, in the early '60s. You will witness the emergence of jazz, swing, bop, rock, disco, rap, and hip-hop music.

You will hear music from Stephen Foster to music by performers and songwriters Al Jolson, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kerns, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, Sr., Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, and Eminem. In 2003, the year country singer Toby Keith becomes a super star, you will be 143-years old, singing along with his big hit "I Like This Bar."

In art you will see the emergence of Picasso and Cubism. In movies and television you will see all the greats from Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn, Lawrence Olivier, Jackie Gleason, Clark Gable, Jack Benny, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Ava Gardner, Betty Davis, and Marilyn Monroe to Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Jerry Seinfeld, Tom Hanks, Clint Eastwood, Steve Martin, Paul Newman Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford and Woody Allen.

Politically, you will live through the years from the administration of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of George Walker Bush and the first three years of the administration of the man or woman who succeeds him in the White House.

Who needs or wants to live to be 150-years old. Not I; I get tired just thinking about living through all of that. Just give me my 80 years or so -- or as many years as I'm happy and healthy -- and then let me go quietly into the bye and bye.

--From Earthlings Are Crazy As Hell, by Allen Ball-- Saturday, April 16, 2005


Reader Feedback

Life and Death Decisions
July 02, 2009 | 10:45 PM

I wouldn't want to miss the 1940's and the 1950's. I was born in 1935 but I loved the music of the /20's and 30's (heard often because my father was a piano player.) You've outlined my kind of music -- especially my all-time favorite, Bing Crosby. On the issue of living longer, you might want to look at the piece I did for HubPages: http://hubpages.com/_wft/hub/Life-and-Death-Decisions

William F. Torpey

Bing Crosby
June 28, 2009 | 12:55 PM

I enjoyed this article and it's good to see Bing Crosby get some recognition. He was certainly great!

Lachlan



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