This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

from The Times today:

Analysis: Prince is taking back control

Who would have predicted that a member of the royal family would take grooming tips from Jason Statham, Ross Kemp and the UK’s community of nightclub doormen? Yet the Duke of Cambridge has, without warning, joined their chilly-scalped gang (writes Hattie Crisell).

It probably feels like a seismic change to Prince William, but visually it’s not dramatic, truth be told: in recent years, the close and ever-diminishing style he sported was more of a nod to the idea of hair, a dream of a memory of hair, rather than anything substantial enough to be considered hair itself. Now Prince William has taken back control, with a shaven head that makes baldness into a decisive choice, not an ongoing source of hilarity for his wife and brother.

And thank heavens he has. He looks better, more modern and younger with it; it’s a style fit for the kind of future king who gives warm interviews to Ant and Dec, and speaks out on matters that previous generations of monarchy might have avoided, such as mental health. The fact is, the majority of men with thinning hair would be better off biting the bullet so bravely.

it’s a style fit for the kind of future king who gives warm interviews to Ant and Dec

rummages in the kitchen for guillotine wax

the performative groaning made me laugh. getting up and going holy mother of god or “not again”, or just leaning on the kitchen counter staring at the toaster for what five minutes in the evening when i was about to do something else but got distracted by fatigue.

I was a little 'wtf @ this performative groaning thing' and then I climbed onto the bathroom counter to clean the mirror and groaned pretty performatively and realized that yes this is probably a thing I've done for a while without even realizing (old).

One time I was carrying lots of groceries up the stairs (all on my one good arm, natch) to our 5th floor apt and the little girls who live across the hall literally laughed at my exertions
I like that memory

I feel pretty good too. My only exercise though is walking about 7000 steps per day plus climbing 11 flights of stairs a couple times a week. I have a salad as part of every lunch and try not to drink during the week.

Never mind, in Hexadecimal I'm only 39

i used to think the ageing process was slow, but all the elastin in my skin seems to have fucked off overnight

Slough off to the shed thread I guess

Was talking with friend about how impossibly old the Traveling Wilburys seemed when they released their music in 1988. I've listed their ages at the time. For some perspective, three of them are no longer alive. Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think. pic.twitter.com/eoPTmgwz1K

— Neal Brennan (@nealbrennan) January 24, 2018

jesus
that's depressing

holy fuck at george harrison being 45 with the wilburys, that doesn't seem possible

Huuuuuuuuh.

Welp.

I find myself doing that all the time. I see someone in an old movie or TV show who seems like a capital-A Adult, an elder if you will, and then discover, yeah, I'm older now than they were there. Sheesh.

i try not to think about it but it was super cool of this person to call it to our attention

Dylan in particular there does that for me. In the '80s when I was in high school and college, he seemed so ridiculously OLD. He'd been through like five different careers. But for nearly the whole decade he was younger than I am now. (There's a "My Back Pages" joke there somewhere.)

Though of course with my couple of career changes and divorces and a kid in middle school, I know I am myself ridiculously old.

As it happens, I was born exactly 30 years after Bob Dylan, so I have an ever-present reference point here.

I'm right between Harrison and Dylan in that picture.

Jeff Lynne still looks exactly the same

i guess i didn't realize Orbison was only 52 when he died

So, going by 2017 numbers:

<pre>DYLAN : 47 : DMX</pre>
<pre>LYNNE : 41 : RICK ROSS</pre>
<pre>PETTY : 37 : GUCCI MANE</pre>
<pre>ORBISON : 52 : DR. DRE</pre>
<pre>HARRISON : 45 : BUSTA RHYMES</pre>

"Old Man Tries CSS on HTML Machine, Film at Eleven."

DYLAN : 47 : DMX

LYNNE : 41 : RICK ROSS

PETTY : 37 : GUCCI MANE

ORBISON : 52 : DR. DRE

HARRISON : 45 : BUSTA RHYMES

in other oh fuck we're dying fast news, twitter informs me that "Girl You Know It's True" is thirty years old.

:(

I just heard "handle with care" in the grocery store the other day for the first time in ages and immediately though how three of them are dead now. I had no idea that Tom Petty was only 37 then, they all seemed so ancient.

I think about this a lot in context a lot of those 80s network tv dramas from the 80s that I knew of but never really watched when I was a kid. Magnum PI and Matt Houston were both my current age (43) or younger when those shows were on but they looked SO OLD and I refuse to believe that they aren't like 50 years old in pictures from that era:

http://dtlon6z3v1kfl.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/19155710/Aloha-Shirts-Tom-Selleck-Magnum-portrait1.jpg

http://www.davidhedison.net/hedison/galleries/gueststar/Matt_Houston/Matt01.jpg

omg i totally forgot about matt houston

I had no idea that Tom Petty was only 37 then

Petty didn't seem that old to me at the time. i was really only familiar with his MTV era songs when the Wiburys hit and i guess he didn't really start charting until his late 20s. wasn't until he died that i realized he was the same age as my mom. he certainly seemed a lot more of my gen than hers.

the rest though def seemed like grandpas.

I had no idea that Tom Petty was only 37 then, they all seemed so ancient.

and yet bowie was older and didn’t. perhaps the wilburys were just strange.

Petty def the youngest one and always the weakest link in the Wilburys but sorry, I’ll duck off and take it to some TW thread

But yeah I’ve lapped the fools and the bartenders at the bars by a factor of at least one and it’s amusing as hell

I realised recently that had I had kids as soon as feasible (lets say at 21), I could now easily be a grandma if my daughter did too. Ack.

yeah i know someone younger than us who’s solidly a grandfather, meanwhile we almost owned a cat once

I was looking up people from my grade school, and a girl who was in my class IS a grandma.

Maybe I should share that the next time someone tells I'm young and have plenty of time to have kids.

This has come up already OTT but my grandma was 37 when I was born.

how can you tell whether you have lower back pain in the morning because you old, or it's just time to replace your "2nd cheapest from Sears" mattress you bought 8 years ago?

I broke out into a little sprint yesterday but had to stop almost immediately because of a incapacitating twinge in my left knee.

sarahell, does the pain manifest itself while in said bed, or shortly after getting up?

I think that if a mattress is the problem you'll be aware of it throughout the night, not just in the morning. Back pain specifically in the morning is probably more about your body complaining about what you're asking it to do (namely, get up and deal with shit). Back pain also very famously associated with stress.

I get a twinge of morning back pain sometimes; it arrives about 7 AM while I am feeding people breakfast and radiates downward into my thighs. Sitting on a heating pad for a while eases it tremendously. A heating pad is a great thing to have around anyway.

Of the four distinct flavors of pain I get, it is probably the most benign because it's treatable. (The others are gouty arthritis, Lyme arthritis, and a nonspecific wandering arthritis.) I don't do a lot of performative groaning (at least I don't think I do), but I do do a lot of stoic wincing.

another holy shit i'm dying moment: Snow's "Informer" is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month.

A choccy gum gum now?

xxp - it's less of a pain, and more of a dull ache that goes away after I've had coffee. It was pretty minor this morning -- I moved more towards the center of the mattress last night when sleeping, so the mattress theory seems more likely atm

Reginald Perrin is a grandfather at 46, perfectly normal.

I'm getting that loback pain too..

lower back pain : do some 'planking'

i try and do about 60-90 seconds a day to keep my core muscles in action.

since i started, it has cleared up my reoccuring lower back spasms/muscle sprains.

Do I have to plank in a public place and post a photo on social media in order to derive lower back pain benefits, y/n

Hmm, worth a go

Next question, how I get go elsewhere of warts on finger 🖕

In the Signals household, "planking" is childhood patois for a meal of pancakes.

Is "planking" the thing where you get in push-up position but don't actually do any push-ups?

yes
it's very effective for building strength and you can do it anywhere!
http://www.yogawiz.com/images/yoga-poses/dolphin-plank-pose.jpg

Why not just do push-ups?

I think I "planked" once at a party. Someone was explaining it to me, and I did it, but I was also very drunk. From that experience, I believe that it is something you should not do while drunk.