This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

i've never felt particularly interested in keeping up with what's cool which might make me a "cob nobbler" or a "lamestain" but i guess rather than keeping up i prefer to just go through life making discoveries randomly.

with music i actually use the ILM year end poll to discover what's good or rather what i like from the previous year. though i think i'm generally pretty good about keeping up with certain types of new music.

So sad right now that only someone in their 40s would pick up on your grunge insults.

I'm generally at least five years behind the curve on most 'hip' pop culture. I'm really not worried about it at all. Can't wait to discover fidget spinners sometime in 2021, though.

haaa i am in my 40s and i still didn't get it
tbh this is a lifelong issue for me that has only gotten more pronounced as i age, it's ok

i too prefer to skip my way through life enjoying what i enjoy & discovering things at my own pace

La Lechera otm. Enjoy what you enjoy; I believe that it's wrongheaded to regard "keeping up with ___" as a moral imperative rather than a taste / preference / lifestyle choice.

I used to wonder "How can my grandmother not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

And now I wonder, "How in the world can my kids not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

there's always a time to learn about something

my dad has always done this really REALLY annoying thing where I will show an understanding of, say, Busby Berkeley movies and he's like flabberghasted, and asks "how do you know about Busby Berkeley movies???" like I could only possibly know about things that have happened while I was alive, like that is even logical. he's done it since i was a teenager, it's so annoying! he still does it!

There are times when a casual onlooker might assume that I was unaware that mass media had continued to be produced after I was born.

Generally speaking, most people are best at appreciating and evaluating cultural products produced when they were aged 15-20.

Coincidentally, that's exactly when culture feels like it is of life-or-death importance; that's when your favorite band is likeliest to define your social group and your wardrobe and your self-image.

Of course there are always also people who are WAY into Buster Keaton or Duke Ellington or Emily Dickinson or w/ev from a young age; my hat is off to those people as well.

i'm pretty inspired by my mom, who is really interested in keeping up with new art and new fashion. she's 70 years old and lives out in the sticks far NW of Chicago. She follows fashion trends and likes to make her own clothes, and she listens to a lot of Sonic Youth. it's probably no wonder my folks got divorced (though they're still friends), my dad's the type of fellow who will visit and I'll fish for something he'd like to do and it's always like "oh you know me, i'm ok with settling in at Coffee Bean for awhile to read a book, maybe we can go find a sandwich somewhere..."

it's always "find a sandwich"!

but it's ok, i respect both their interest levels.

Your parents sound very cool

OL I love your mom!

my dad has always done this really REALLY annoying thing where I will show an understanding of, say, Busby Berkeley movies and he's like flabberghasted, and asks "how do you know about Busby Berkeley movies???"

Sometimes, I'll make some B.J. Hunnicutt reference at work, and someone will say, "HAHA The millennials don't know what you're talking about!"

And hell, I know all about the Honeymooners and Lucy & Ethel at the chocolate factory. I'll give millennials the benefit of the doubt about a show that went off the air the decade they were born.

OK yes but I've had to explain that Paul Newman wasn't just some salad dressing guy to more than one person in their 20s in the last few years so it does happen.

i also love my mom!

partially relating to being in our forties: she was having financial difficulty and there's no way in hell we're going to be buying a house in L.A. since everything here that's convenient is either 700K plus or a fixer or usually both (leading to feelings of financial inadequacy as people around us buy homes for 1.4 million and the like), so we bought her house for her so she could stay there and continue to live her life. so now we actually own a house, which feels very adult. it's just not *our* house.

In my 30s I'd say stuff like "I prefer darker roasted coffee" but now I say "At my age, I prefer darker roasted coffee." This is a good trick for seeming wise.

now I wonder, "How in the world can my kids not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

Listening to Bruce always struck me as highly optional. But at least I know who he is. By the same token, as a kid I knew, for example, who Jimmy Durante was, even though his career had basically ended before I was born.

your mom sounds super cool omar

Generally speaking, most people are best at appreciating and evaluating cultural products produced when they were aged 15-20.
maybe. but i feel confident saying that generally speaking, i am not most people :)

it's always "find a sandwich"!

your dad has got it together

When I was 15 I got super-offended when my aunt said I couldn't possibly understand the lyrics to "Purple Rain." Now I hear some contemporary music and am like "WTF are they singing?" :(

pretty much all specific bits of culture are highly optional.

I grew up with a sense that there was Essential Culture, but lost it quickly. When I got married, my parents were a little surprised that my wife hadn't been made to sit through all of "our" canonical movies. Nowadays we occasionally try to tell the children about Elvis Costello or the Go-Gos or Animaniacs. If they yawn and roll their eyes, we just drop it. Life's too short. They'll find what they need to find.

the only answer if you fear top baldness is to go - FULL mullet - so top is hairless, sides are partying. Like Ben Stahl

or john weathers from gentle giant

Essential reference for "top is hairless, sides are partying": Larry Fein
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Larry_Fine_in_a_promotional_image_from_1962.png/220px-Larry_Fine_in_a_promotional_image_from_1962.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFZTmglPKag

We are apparently newly and differently fecund at this age.

Our forties might be "the decline of fecundity and the beginning of something else: a fecundity of the imagination, an era when we become not creative, but creation." My latest, for @onbeing. https://t.co/qLkUkUxNwU

— Kaya Oakes (@kayaoakes) January 5, 2018

whole lotta things "might be" true

so . . . wanna see my fecundity?

whole lotta things "might be" true

I couldn't get past the fecund line tbh. You don't need to be in your 40's to eschew that type of Richard and Judy show level bullshit psychobabble, and know confidently know that your not fucking missing out on anything of use.

sorry i blew all my fecundity 20 years back

fecund sounds too fecal to me and I dont like the word :<

In re keeping up with stuff, I think it’s a sort of misleading concept. When you’re younger it’s easier to be aware of some strains of pop culture because your friends and social circles are likewise tuned in and you’re more likely to just kind of absorb things by osmosis. otoh you’re likely to be aware of a relatively narrow band of stuff just because it takes a while to discover everything that’s out there in the world. In my 40s I’m definitely less cognizant of youth culture than when I was in my teens or 20s, but I’m more aware of at least some stuff across a much broader range.

Honestly, On Being usually makes me want to throw eggs at the radio. I can't stand that show.

I used to wonder "How can my grandmother not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

My grandpa tried name-dropping him in a dinner table conversation once, but unfortunately he called him Bruce Springlestein by mistake

Shaving your head down is *almost* like hiding it but it's also saying fuck it, this is who I am.

this is massively massively otm. when i decided to shave it all off it was a single-fingered “fuck you” to my deviant cocking hairline. in general, balding people who clean-shave (imo) are people who take full control of unwanted bullshit.

Shaving my head worked well when I was living in a tropical country, but in the UK it just exasperates the "it's cold and there are no hats that I can now acceptably wear" problem.

I really don't get why "hiding" that you are bald by shaving is a problem for some people. Not on this thread, but I have actually seen people say that it's somehow cheating or deception.

The wonderbra of haircuts

XP Because people are massively, inexplicably keen to judge other people for everything they are and everything they do?

and who they do it for..

Taking back control - the bald by choice movement.

TBF, it's not really 'hiding' anyway, inasmuch as the perimeter of the stubble still clearly telegraphs your hairline.

I'd actually been clipping my hair down to nothing for several years before I started losing it, which made the adjustment to the haircut I'd have for the rest of my life relatively smooth.

No pun intended!

Taking back control - the bald by choice movement.

― Luna Schlosser

as opposed to the InBald movement, come join our popular reddit

I used to wonder "How can my grandmother not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

My grandpa tried name-dropping him in a dinner table conversation once, but unfortunately he called him Bruce Springlestein by mistake

― faust apes (NickB)

quick, somebody come up with a humorous mispronunciation of "brockhampton"

seriously this is the real '40s shit, i don't mind groaning every time i move (my wife insists it's performative, which it isn't, but there's no actual pain attached), but knowing that my brain function is degenerating is tough. i know more now than i did ten years ago and i'm learning more stuff all the time, but frequently i can't remember words, basic simple words like "shoe", and my typing has gotten a lot worse grammatically. i make stupid errors that i used to make fun of people for, like two/too/to and typing "grammer" instead of "grammar" and i have no idea why. and then i start leaving out connecting words so that when i write stuff it winds up not making sense (on top of the frequent logical incoherence, which isn't a new thing for me, i've always had that).

i decided long ago that alzheimer's is the one acceptable reason for me to kill myself, so i worry a lot about this stuff.

They say the memory is the first thing to go. I forget what the second thing is.

It's the memory.

Thanks. Dadjoking aside, I need words and language to eat (as I have no other job skills). Losing my grip on them would be a serious problem. It may be silly to believe in this, but I do hope that things like word games, crosswords, and Scrabble will help keep my wits about me.

xp Bruckprampton