Recently, I’ve started to actually feel my age. And I don’t like it.
Last week, I posted a ridiculous video of myself in the shower. Calm down, it was a joke! I was making fun of people who’d made fun of me for being shirtless in a previous IG story. They said it was a “thirst trap,” which is absurd because I was just at the pool, where one is typically shirtless. Was I supposed to put on my parka before filming? Get off me.
[If you don’t know what a thirst trap is, go to Urban Dictionary. If you’re my dad, who subscribes to this newsletter (but only the free version wtf), please don’t go to Urban Dictionary.]
I am not a thirst trap guy, for multiple reasons, but everything else aside, I am way too old for that. I’m not fooling anyone anymore, least of all me.
I don’t know if it’s the cumulative effect of the stress of the past few years (the pandemic, politics, school shootings, Tua’s concussions) or lingering effects from the COVID I finally caught last fall, or just the fact that I actually am old, but I feel like I turned some kind of corner. I can’t stay up as late as I used to, my hangovers are much worse, I’ve got my gray in my scruff; it’s not ideal. I feel like Wilford Brimley! Though thankfully I don’t look like him, despite the fact that I am almost the age he was when he filmed Cocoon.
(Unsettling fact of the day: when Wilford Brimley portrayed a senior citizen who needed alien powers to revitalize his decrepit body, HE WAS ONLY FORTY-NINE YEARS OLD.)
They say kids are supposed to keep you young, but if you’ve been following me for any amount of time you know that’s a load of crap. Sure, it’s exciting to experience things through their eyes - at first; after a few years of experiencing the sunrise because they forced you to open your eyes has a way of replacing that childlike wonder with adultlike exhaustion. And now that I have an almost-teen, dealing with him is starting to age me at an exponential rate.
When I turned 40, I wrote a blog post about how I was no longer the ‘cool’ dad. Dads under 40 can be hip and young and cool, but your 40s are middle-age, and being a dad ceases to be exotic and instead becomes expected. Now I’m even older than 40, well past even sniffing “cool dad” and firmly entrenched in middle-aged and tired and boring and sad.
So no, I don’t post thirst traps. But thanks for thinking I might be young enough to!
Social Round-up
Pop Culture Stuff
That’s right, we were on vacation last week, in Montreal, and despite the fact that we took the train there and back (12 hours each way!), wi-fi wasn’t good enough to stream anything, so I haven’t seen much. We’re caught up on Succession, thankfully; that’s the one show I can NOT be spoiled on as it accelerates to the finale. But I’m behind on Yellowjackets (which is okay; started strong but it’s been relegated to background viewing for me), Perry Mason (you’re all missing out!), and Daisy Jones and the Six (which frankly keeps getting worse but we’ve gotta ride it out now). Barry is up next!
Movie-wise, I haven’t seen the hugely successful Super Mario Bros movie and I hope I never will. I’d rather go to Beau is Afraid if I can get to the theater, but I don’t think my kids are into that, and Mom and Buried won’t let me bring them to John Wick 4. This house is a PRISON!
Oh, we did watch one movie over spring break, the Denzel Washington/Chris Pine runaway train movie Unstoppable, because what better time to terrify your impressionable children with a movie about horrific train disaster than when you’re about to hop on one for a 12 hour ride! Anyway, they loved it, in yet another victory for Dad’s Superior Taste in Pop Culture Stuff. You’re all welcome.
To show your thanks, please recommend me some new music because I’m in a rut.
1) Hope that you enjoyed your visit to my hometown!
2) Song to which Iisten constantly, "Run away to Mars", by Talk. Also, try Mine Forever, by Lord Huron.
Recommendation for music - Just got turned on to Redlight King after reading a story about their song "Old Man" (done with Neil Young's blessing) and they have some really good songs, also Pop Evil's new album Skeletons (their old stuff is really good) - For TV shows after kids are in bed, BEEF on Netflix was really good