Poor out some slime tonight

I would like to start off tonight by taking a moment to remember the passing of a true television icon: Les Lye. Everyone reading this knows who Les Lye is. He was the adult on You Can’t Do That on Television. He passed away on Tuesday and his contributions to television should not be forgotten. It is a shame that his death actually was by firing squad. Either that or he finally ate one of his own Barth Burgers.

Seriously, I lose a piece of my childhood every day. When Walter Cronkite passed away last week that held some pretty significant meaning for me. I grew up in a CBS news household. Every night I would sit in front of the TV and watch Walter Cronkite present the news. Maybe as a six year old I did not understand everything that he was discussing but he was as much a part of my daily existence as Big Bird. Every day we seem to lose someone who was part of my early years and I have to face the fact that I am now most certainly an adult.

(And yes, even as a six year old I watched the news every day. That was just the way my family worked. In the evening we had the news on and there was no debate. I still claim that I learned to count via the Iran hostage drama in which every night they would list how many days the hostages had been held (444 in total, which I remembered because I thought it was a cool number.) We also always had newspapers and National Geographics around for us to read. I will always state that my parents never pushed me to excel in academics; they simply provided me with all of the tools necessary to love information and learning.)

It is tough for me to come to grips with the fact that I am getting older. When simple realizations like a teenager today has no idea what a cassette tape is cross your mind you just feel like sitting down for a while. I still don’t feel old and I definitely don’t look it (distinguished gray hairs notwithstanding.) I can still get carded for alcohol and can confuse people about my age. And it is not as though my life has settled down in some boring, humdrum pattern. In fact, it is more exciting than it has ever been. But with all of that I am constantly reminded that I am aging.

I’m going to fight the good fight against growing old. This doesn’t mean that I am going to start dressing like a teenager. I didn’t dress like a teenager when I was one and by no means am I going to start now. But I will always try to stay on the cutting edge in terms of media and culture and technology. I will try my best to keep my body together as things start to slow down and weight begins to accumulate around my middle. Mainly I will just keep on enjoying life. Do that and age really doesn’t matter.