9:19 pm - Sun 4.05.2009
Hodgepodge

(I often write thoughts down on post-its, meaning to get to them in here at some point. It rarely happens, but the following entry is based on some thoughts I wrote on a couple of those post-its. I thought it might be a refreshing change from what I've been writing of late)

"I don't feel old. I feel like a young man that has something the matter with him."

- Chuck Jones -

I don't know about the rest of you old-timers - the ones who, like Yours Truly, are closer to being dead than being born - but that really nails how I feel about the aging process.

Most days, I don't feel like a middle-aged man; I feel like a really tired, beat-up twenty year old.

Naturally, I assumed she was referring to her body, giving me permission to act like the proverbial "kid in a candy store".

It was the hottest thing a woman had ever said to me.

Then recently, I saw a clip from The Omen, a horror film from the 70s (For the record, I've never seen the film in its entirety).

In the clip, I think we're at a birthday party for young "Damian", when we notice a woman on the roof of a building, with a rope around her neck.

She joyfully announces to the assemblage, "It's all for you, Damian...", then steps off the building and hangs herself.

She's Damian's nanny.

And Damian is the Antichrist.

And now I kind of wish I hadn't seen that clip.

"It's all for you, Jim..."

(For the record? I'm pretty sure I'm not the Antichrist - If I were, I think I would have made my big move by now. And I'd live in nicer digs. And probably have had a lot more sex. But anyway...)

Two reasons I'm worried about my brain:

1. While writing or typing, I've always made mistakes - misspelling words, leaving words out, using the wrong form of a word, etc (For example - I used to frequently, when referring to something I was "excited" about, end up saying I was "exciting", an amusingly "Freudian" typo) - but lately, on more than one occasion, I've used the the wrong word entirely, something I don't recall ever having done before.

(It's typically a word with the same first letter as the one I was going for, but that's the only thing they have in common.)

2. The part of my brain that recalls actresses names seems to have died - On at least five separate occasions now, I've been watching a movie or tv show featuring an actress I've known for years...and not, for the life of me, been able to recall their name.

Normal, aging-brain stuff?

Or...something else?

(For the record, the actresses in question were Rosario Dawson, Marlee Matlin, Annabella Sciorra, and Sally Kellerman; there was a fifth actress, but ironically, I didn't write down her name, and have forgotten who it was.)

In one episode, the high school football coach, after working after-hours with an injured player to try to get him back to full strength (and into college), has pulled strings to get that player seen by a particular university.

As they walk onto the university football field, where a practice in in session, the coach tells the player in question, by way of inspiration, "Right here, right now, God has placed you to do what you know how to do best - Go all the way".

And that, in a nutshell, is why I wish I were religious, and that I believed in an anthropomorphic God - It would be lovely to believe that what I want to do out here in LA is sanctioned by God himself, that it's "destiny", and not merely something I'd like to have happen.

Instead, I have to say, "Jim, right here, right now, you've placed yourself to do what you know how to do best - Go all the way".

It doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

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