"Lather" came up in the "Rock Mix" that Spotify made especially for me today, as I was smiling — babywide? — on my morning run today, the day after my birthday, my 71st birthday, or as I like to put it, the first day of my 72nd year.
Lather's friends in the song — who've "stopped being boys" — are 33 and 27. I mean one (the banker) is 33 and the other (the commander of his "very own tank") is 27. They're not each 33 + 27. But I can see that those numbers add up to 60, and I am 11 years old than that. "Lather" is a song facing the confusion of becoming 30ish. Lather himself has just turned 30, and he seems to be clinging to outright babyhood, as the band suggests maybe that's just fine... or good enough for Lather anyway.
It's a whole other matter breaking into the decade that begins with a 7, which I like to come out and say is the 8th decade of life. Speak plainly! And look for what is good. Some people — the glass-half-empty folks — say that as you get older, with more of your days behind you, each day is a smaller percentage of the total time you have lived, and thus, the days seem insubstantial and short. But the other way to see it is that is that each day now is a bigger percentage of the time you have left. Today might be 1% of the rest of your life. It might be 100%! Are you giving today what it deserves? It is so much.
As I listened to the old rock songs that Spotify had strung together for me, I visualized myself — I was running through the woods — looking over at the me who existed at the time I first heard a particular song — it was "Too Many People" — and I waved at myself in the 70s and sent the message that everything will be fine when you are in your 70s. You'll be able to run — in the woods! — and you'll have this music in your ears because a computer — an "electronic brain," as you call it — will know you like it and will pump it directly into your head.
And you won't care so much about your birthday, because 2 days after your birthday will be something called your "bloggiversary." There will be something you do for the first time on January 14, 2004, and you will proceed to do it every single day for 18 years and counting....
Althouse is productive, you know....
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71 is younger than Biden and Trump were at inauguration.
That is weird! It was on my Youtube suggested list just yesterday when I was playing a Split Enz song. It wasn't that version, but one that had the album cover as a static picture in the video.
Hey nineteen
That's 'Retha Franklin
She don't remember the Queen of Soul
It's hard times befallen
The sole survivors
She thinks I'm crazy
But I'm just growing old
Hey nineteen
No we got nothing in common
No we can't talk at all
Please take me along
When you slide on down
Wilbur turns 68 in about three weeks. I figure I'm about halfway through my run. The males on my father's side all lived into their mid to upper 90s.
Good health, no ED, good golf game ... life is good.
Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday! I hope it feels rewarding to still be having an impact on lots of people's lives at 71.
A belated Happy Birthday. Had you told your 57 year old self that you were starting something that would continue daily, every day, through and past your 71st birthday, despite any goings on in your life or the world...I'm not sure even Ann Althouse would have believed it. Oh wait. On second thought, I suspect 57 year old Ann Althouse would have smiled at the idea and go for it.
Still can't believe you do what you do, every day. No substitute hosts. No weeks off in July. It has to be some kind of record for blog productivity.
This may be your best post since I first began following the blog these past ten years plus. Thank you for it.
When 'Lather' came out I had a ways to go to 30. I knew exactly where I was going in life, knew exactly what I'd be doing at 30, and harbored none of Lather's quandary about it, which in fact was a puzzle to me. The song's subject and point inexplicably bothered me, nevertheless. Frankly, it seems more pertinent to me at my current age, which I guess I'm not quite as insouciant about as you, enviably, manage to be.
The Elizabethton era was popular in songs and festivals back in the late 60's early 70's. Puffy shirts, macrame and beeswax candles made by loving hands deep within Topanga Canyon.
My father always said that when he was N years old it was his N+1st year. And he said decades begin with a year ending in 1.
18 year reader here. Off and on at times but always coming back. Blessings.
The big 71. Congrats.
That's the age when people start thinking deep, wise thoughts. Like this one:
They're not each 33 + 27. But I can see that those numbers add up to 60, and I am 11 years older than that.
Deep. Deep.
(To be clear, I'm just funnin'.)
"Had you told your 57 year old self that you were starting something that would continue daily, every day, through and past your 71st birthday, despite any goings on in your life or the world...I'm not sure even Ann Althouse would have believed it. Oh wait. On second thought, I suspect 57 year old Ann Althouse would have smiled at the idea and go for it."
Just for precision: I was 53 when I started the blog. If someone had told me there will be a writing form that you will be able to instantly access and publish to the world, with no one doing any editing or gatekeeping and it will turn out to be exactly the form of expression you've been looking for... then the additional part — you'll do it every day for 18 years and more — would not have surprised me.
I'm very pleased to have left behind all the other forms of writing (and working). My birthday this year was also the 5th anniversary of retiring from lawprofessordom. It was great to be a law professor, but even better to be in a position to leave that way of working and only to blog.
Happy birthday.
One of the lamest bands to come out of the '60s.
'We built this city on rock 'n' roll' is a candidate for worst song ever.
Thank you for the inspirational post. Happy Birthdays!
Dig that Grace Slick Brandy Glass effect.
Happy birthday and (soon-to-be) bloggiversary! Your artistic perseverance has enriched all of us.
Happy Between Two Birthdays Day.
The demographers say that on average we will live longer than our parents did by one year for each ten years which they lived before we were born. So if my parents were 27 and 29 when I was born I'll live 2.8 years longer than they did. If I'm average. Sometimes I think that if watching the Sixties turn into disco days didn't kill me, nothing will. The only thing I'm sure of is, I won't die of an average, it'll be quite specific or it won't work.
But take the sunrise. The more of them I see, the more I know that there is a mystery even in what's plain as day.
The Jefferson Airplane were awesome and stupid, at the same time.
'The Jefferson Airplane were awesome and stupid, at the same time.'
But mostly stupid.
Joe Smith: what's it like being a miserable Cunt? Asking for a friend.
'Joe Smith: what's it like being a miserable Cunt? Asking for a friend.'
Fucking glorious.
But that's rich, handsome, far right-side of the IQ bell curve cunt to you : )
Far out man, far out!
Grace would be canceled today for having performed the song in blackface. She once told me she was a "belter," that she could not sing softy which disappointed her when it came time to sing lullabies to her baby daughter. "Lather" would be an odd lullaby, but it shows Grace can sing softly.
As I played the video, two elementary school boys, Teddy and Atticus, stopped at my open door and listened. At the end, Teddy asked, "What was that weird song?" I told them and asked if they like it. Both enthusiastically nodded their heads with one saying, "Yeah!" and the other, "That was so cool." Then they off on their skateboards.
Hadn't thought of that one in decades--soft enough for the Smothers Brothers. I must have seen it then, but am not sure.
Sergeant Dow Jones. Good one, we smirked.
"We Built This City" was Starship, who were worse than Airplane BION.
I loved that album. They tried so hard to be San Fran, but in the end, Grace and Marty just wanted to sing love songs with a little sex. I am just about two years younger than you.
I used to give my 17 y/o self lots of advice. He never listened, never bet on the 69 Mets or bought Walmart or Intel stock or refrained from that stupid comment to the woman who looked pregnant. I stopped talking to him years ago. He's a hormonally-crazed spaceshot. Who cares whether he would have approved of Current Self or not?
I started blogging in January, 2001, some time in the middle of the month, so this could be my 21st blogiversary.
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