Where's My Youth?

Apparently Right in Front of Me, but it Feels, and Looks Much Different.

“Always hopeful, yet discontent,
he knows changes aren't permanent,
but change is.” --Rush Tom Sawyer

I amble out to the kitchen like John Wayne. The cats have told me it’s time for them to eat. My arches are sore; there’s an annoying tightness in the musculature of my legs that won’t go away, and my joints hurt.

The morning after a tough workout? I wish. This is most every morning.
Max says hello in cat language and promptly leaps to the top of the refrigerator. Maybe he said, “I’m 50-something in cat years and check out this vertical leap.”
Anyway, I’ll loosen up in a couple of hours, and then I’ll go buy some better running shoes for my screaming feet. Maybe, as Indiana Jones said, “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.” I was a competitive distance runner from ages 11 to 25, and now I lift weights like a madman.

For two months a shoulder inflammation reduced my lifting capacity in my left arm by 50 percent and thus mandated that I not only alter my workouts, but that I alter parts of my life. I had to watch how I picked up briefcases, how I opened doors, how I put on clothes, and I had to take a pass on picking up and playing with my friend’s kids.

Uncle Sean was no longer a human jungle gym. I didn’t have this problem at 25, which was…over a decade ago.

Really?

My 50-something friends laugh at my ailments and ask, “How’s your prostate?”

What? Why?

My 60-something friends speak of calcium deposits, back surgeries, and arthritis of the knee.

Should I gobble glucosamine and research the benefits of yoga?
Perhaps.

Should I reduce my salt intake and give up beer?

That, my friends, is crazy talk.

I don’t sweat these things too much, though. If Lance Armstrong can still finish third in the Tour De France and Dana Torres can still out swim 18 year-olds at the Olympic Games, I think I’ll be fine. I may be real close, but I haven’t actually hit my forties yet.

Besides, there are too many of the standard de-evolvements in popular culture that remind me that my early youth was a considerable time ago. Every generation endures it.

Michael Jackson is gone. Patrick Swayze is gone.

The songs I enjoyed in high school are being remade by new bands. The other day I heard a version of George Michael’s Careless Whisper by a rock ensemble called Three Days Grace. Although the tune was originally a ballad, the singer was kind of growling out the lyrics and sounded not unlike Cookie Monster. In fact, most of the rock songs I hear now the vocalists indeed sound like Cookie Monster. Put on 100.3 FM and wait. You’ll see.

Speaking of my googley-eyed friend, Sesame Street is still around. Tried and true. However, Cookie Monster is now Veggie Monster. My God, what does it say about our nation’s lack of nutritional discipline when one has to alter my favorite puppet icon? Cookie demurely nibbling a carrot is by no means the same as him devouring a bag of chocolate chips yelling, “Om yom yom!” as cookie shrapnel crumbles out the side of his fuzzy mouth. Must Sesame Street teach us how to count and eat?
Is Snufalufagus still on the show? Did his sleepy-eyed delivery and the fact that only Big Bird can see him suggest hallucinogenic drug use and thus get Snuffy kicked to the curb?

I blame not Cookie Monster. Times are tough. Former CEOs are now bagging groceries to make ends meet. If Cookie needs to shred a Cobb salad instead of a box of Chips Ahoy to stay employed, so be it. Reading Rainbow went off the air due to lack of funding. LeVar Burton is home, unemployed, and cashing his dwindling residual checks from Star Trek the Next Generation.

It’ll be fine. These changes aren’t permanent.

To make matters worse, the bulk of my favorite action heroes are altering their careers and aging out of the genre.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Schwarzenegger was flexing through the jungle pleading for his comrades to be airlifted to safety.

“Get to da choppa!”

After three lackluster movies, he finished strong with a third Terminator and then became the Governator. Some of these ole fellas, though, have been donning their guns, gloves or fedora once again, but the running theme appears to be one last blast.

Die Hard changed the landscape of action flicks, and Bruce Willis gave us one more on July 4th 2008, Live Free or Die Hard. He was bald, looked, of course, like he was in his 50’s, and he pulled off the snarky, very physical role of John McClane effortlessly in a film that did not look as dated as the franchise—probably thank Generation-X director Len Wiseman for that.

Clint Eastwood took time out from directing Oscar-winning films like Mystic River and Changeling to once again protect a neighborhood with a handgun and whispered words of toughness, but I think that is the last we will see of him in that kind of role.

My brother had a Gran Torino, but it was paintless and had a roll cage. Eight cylinders is a lot of cylinders. We almost died in that thing. Yes, I wanted to paint it red with a white stripe.

Stallone. There’s a guy a Gen-X guy—or any guy—can count on.
After directing an admirable conclusion to the Rocky series that harkened back to the independent-film feel of the original—“Take it back, Doo, Doo, Doo, Doo.” Yeah, I said it. I actually sung it while I wrote it, “Doo Doo Doo Doo.” Stallone followed Rocky Balboa with Rambo, which did not necessarily finish as a conclusion to the series. Basically the Green Beret vigilante employed minimal dialogue while launching the viewer on a sundry adventure of abhorrent violence, the sheer magnitude of which made me wince and then say, “Awesome.” I mean, heads turned into pink mist and limbs helicoptered through the air. Stallone had a bow and showed a bunch of mercenaries how to kick it old school. It was like the 80’s series was updated and re-loaded.

Currently Stallone is wrapping up the filming of The Expendables, a large-budget romp starring him, Jet Li, and former on-screen nemesis Dolph Lungren (Ivan Drago from Rocky IV) pitted against, among others, wrestling hero “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

Here’s one thing that hasn’t changed.

I saw a publicity photo of a shirtless, 60-something Stallone whose physique is virtually identical to the one he sported in Rocky IV. So what if he has to inject the human growth hormone his body no longer produces? It’s not illegal, and thus I could care less. I am not here for ethical deliberation; I am here to desperately cling to the icons of my youth. By the way, both Schwarzenegger and Willis make cameos in that film.

Harrison Ford.

He’s Han Solo. He’s Indiana Jones. He’s John Patrick Ryan. He flies his own helicopter, works a ranch in Wyoming, and he pretty much does whatever he wants, including making The Kingdom of the Krystal Skull.

Did he look old? Yeah.

Did he care? No. He refused to dye his hair.

Did he do most of his own stunts? Yup, the part where he was sliding in and out of moving cars was particularly inspiring.
Where I have issues is the suggestion that his young co-star, Shia Labeouf, is arguably earmarked to inherit the series. First let us focus on the boy’s name. I come from a time and a place where even “Sean” was a suspect name because it is kosher for use by either a boy or a girl. Many an unsolicited physical engagement ensued over my name alone.

How is it that Shia appears to not have a single scar on his cherub mug? Make-up or CGI? I think not. Me thinks the lad is that handsome and has never made a fist in his life. As the end of the film neared and Indy’s hat tumbled off his head and rolled to Shia’s reaching hand, my inner, less-than-sane Sean screamed “No! Harrison, go get the friggin’ hat. This visual metaphor shall not pass!”
Indy went and snatched his hat back and smiled.

Whew. All is right in my world.

Old-man rant complete

I will watch the The Expendables. I’ll live if there’s not another Rambo or another Indiana Jones. I will enjoy bands like Three Days Grace and one called Breaking Benjamin, but I will also detour off Interstate 40 in North Carolina to travel to Lake Lure Inn and visit the Veranda Room. Then I’ll pull my baby out of the corner and have a picture taken as we dance in the gazebo of Firefly Cove. Hopefully, somewhere, Swayze will smile. Hopefully, age is just a number.

My ratio of content to discontent in terms of popular culture has been pretty even, and I embrace change, if only because one can’t relish the past until things are different.

Also, know this, glucosamine is rather pricey.

Sean Patrick Smith is freelance writer in Moore County.