Your 75th Birthday

// Last Minute

By Jordan Childs .
04.25.10 // Your 75th Birthday

View Comments / Apr 25.10 / Your 75th Birthday / by Jordan Childs

// Grandpa’s 75th Birthday

By Matt Spicer and Chris Stephens .
04.25.10 // Your 75th Birthday

Written by Matt Spicer & Chris Stephens.

Make-up by Joyce Kuan.

Thanks to Joey Ianno for being Doctor Ojos.

View Comments / Apr 25.10 / Your 75th Birthday / by Matt Spicer and Chris Stephens

// A well-seasoned steak.

By Ben Cheney .
04.25.10 // Your 75th Birthday

By the time I turn 75, I like to think that I’ll be over getting gifts. If I receive an average of three gifts each birthday, that means I’ll receive about 222 birthday gifts through my 74th birthday. And that doesn’t include any Christmas gifts I get throughout my life. Basically what I’m saying is that by my 75th birthday, I won’t want any more butterscotch candies or ShoeDinis.

AND I was thinking earlier today that a 75 year old person is like a well-seasoned steak. And as we all know, well-seasoned steaks shouldn’t be left sitting idly on a plate (regardless of the presence of a heat lamp), nor should we gift to that steak parsley or socks.

So, here’s the deal. I don’t want any gifts for my 75th birthday. Instead, I want a gift on my 70th birthday that will serve as the impetus for a gift that I will give to one hand-selected individual (possibly a grandchild or other young soul who would truly benefit from such a gift) on my 75th birthday. I want this gift to be an old, yet unused Moleskine reporter notebook with a blue cover and graph paper. And I will need an old sock too, that will be its dust jacket.

Over the next five years, I will write things in it that only a well-seasoned steak, like myself, would know. It will be a journal of all the things I deem important and will serve as a handbook to life, written by an old man. It’s contents will be impressive at times, ridiculous at others, and possibly illegible in some instances. But, no matter what, NO MATTER WHAT, it will be best served with a side of mashed potatoes and asparagus.

View Comments / Apr 25.10 / Your 75th Birthday / by Ben Cheney

// Master of None

By Joey Camire .
04.23.10 // Your 75th Birthday

Today I am 25 years old.  It’s not my birthday, but that is the number of revolutions I’ve made around the sun. I am a third of the way to my 75th birthday.  As most any 25 year old dude would tell you, I’m pretty confident about making it to 75.  I don’t think I’m invincible, of course not, but I exercise and eat pretty well and as of yet I’m free from the clutches of any debilitating diseases.  I’ve got a pretty good Vegas spread to hit 75.

With that said, I wanted to look back at my life thus far, and try to imagine what a tripling of that time would look like. For sure there are going to be things that I am fully unprepared for like spawning little mutant clones of myself, 401Ks, a diversified portfolio, and a swollen prostate. But a lot of the coming 50 years will probably have a somewhat familiar ring to it.  I’ve already built and fortified an identity, and while it will undeniably flex and shift some, I don’t believe I will be having any kind of rebirth or crisis of identity.  I kind of like what I’m working with right now, however pretentious that may sound. I like who I am.  Therefore the question becomes what have I filled my life with so far, and how will that look as I get older and amass more similar experiences.  What type of life will the more august version of myself tout?

As I sat, introspectively pondering my existence, I realized that the only truly consistent thing in my life has been curiosity.  The rest of it has been mostly fleeting or transient as a rule.  I played about every major sport as a child; football, baseball, soccer, Tae Kwon Do, wrestling, Brazilian jiu jitsu and none for any truly extended period of time.  I skipped through hobbies like a stone on a pond from baseball cards, rock collecting, and small machines to chemistry, poetry, and bicycling.  I’ve never really been one for favorites in any regard.  I don’t have a favorite band, movie, TV show, ice cream flavor, or anchor of MTV news.  I majored in psychology in undergrad only to switch to neuroscience half way through.  Then I decided I would go to graduate school for mass communications.  I dabble in writing, videography, kinetic type, programming, science fiction, music, film, mullets, politics, activism, medicine and philosophy.

I don’t think mine is a particularly uncommon or interesting case.  I’m certainly not the only person with such a frenetic style of involvement.  The truth is, I think it is something that is becoming more and more commonplace.  There are many people who can’t seem to find their singular niche and therefore settle in to become experts of nothing.  And that’s a truthful description of myself, I am not an expert at anything, but I know enough to be dangerous at most things.

So where is this schizoid style of living coming from?  Well lucky for you, armchair hypothesizing and theorizing is another one of the pastimes I like to dabble in.  So here goes…

In the past several decades the number of people who have been afforded an education has exploded.  This is both in regard to opportunity for basic education but also the number of people who seek higher education.  However, the current educational system is based on vertical specialization.  You earn a specific degree which makes you a low level expert in a particular field of study.  Over the past few decades we’ve been pumping out people who have an extremely focused expertise, who then go off and work in a specific field for a long time, only further focusing their knowledge base and potentially narrowing their view of the world.

While many truly brilliant people have greatly advanced their own individual fields with their work, in recent history there have been very few who have casually crossed the lines of multiple disciplines.

The Renaissance, and the overlapping Enlightenment, were characterized by explosions in both education and discoveries.  However, many of those great discoveries came from people who crossed the isle, so to speak, into new fields of study amassing a knowledge of many things.  They were then able to put seemingly disparate things together from different specialties and push not just their own field but entire nations’ world views forward by leaps and bounds.  Our very own Thomas Jefferson, the father of the constitution on which we base our entire way of life, was one of those people. Some call them renaissance men or polymaths, I would just call them interested in diverse fields of study (oh, and brilliant).  Today, more than ever, we need these types of people to put together all the random and brilliant discoveries of the last 50 years that were made in specific disciplines and make something bigger of them.  We need people to put all the puzzle pieces together.  What we need are Modern Renaissance Men (and Women).

I know that, in brutal honesty with myself, I am nowhere close to people like DaVinci, Leibniz or Jefferson in terms of true genius and ability or general disposition.  In fact, it is probably beyond pretentious to even make the comparison.  But I would like to think, maybe, I share a common spirit with them, a curious nature about all things and a desire to make sense of it all.  And maybe that will amount to something.

On My 75th birthday, I want to be able to look back at my life and recount a story of varied interest and richness of experience.  I want to be able to say that I bounced around making sense of all the strange questions of the world, even if they are truly trivial in nature.  On my 75th birthday, I want to be able to give myself the gift of a lifetime spent as a modern Renaissance Man.  I may not solve the truly pressing problems and I may not invent an entire field of theoretical physics, but if I can look back and say that I lived like a Renaissance Man I know at the very least my life will have been truly interesting.  And I think that would be the best gift I could ever give myself.

View Comments / Apr 23.10 / Your 75th Birthday / by Joey Camire

// Not Gonna Happen

By Chris Ray .
04.23.10 // Your 75th Birthday

I was asked today about my life expectancy.

“What is your life expectations Chris?”

“My expectations or the average life expectancy?”

“Your life, where will you be 50 years from now?”

“In the ground.” I replied without pause.

After an hour and a half of chatter regarding everything from my outlook, to my lifestyle, to my overall attitude of negative energy(which I personally think is just them not accepting their own mortality and being jealous) I replied with a conversation-ender. I’m serious, this was an “STFU and get back to work” from the usual eager bullshitter.

“Since you plan to live forever I give you the responsibility of delivering my birthday licks from here to eternity. Its a tough job. I expect you beat your fists on the dirt piled 6 feet high above my head till you hands bleed.”

After the laughter faded I was subsequently invited to church and advised to get married and start a family, as these things would turn my life around and help me live longer. This was a shocker to me. Not because I was unaware a positive outlook and successful marriage increase your life expectancy, but merely surprised they would even bring that up. Do they not remember the conversations we had about religion and marriage? I was pained to realize they must not listen to me when I speak or perhaps their minds have gone soft with old age.

In retrospect I could have misheard them. They may have been asking me if I planned on making my current job a career. Perhaps my sarcasm and negative attitude steered that conversation into something morbid.

View Comments / Apr 23.10 / Your 75th Birthday / by Chris Ray

// Because then it wouldn’t be a party.

By Talia Ledner .
04.22.10 // Your 75th Birthday

If you don’t make it to 75,
I don’t want to make it to 75.

View Comments / Apr 22.10 / Your 75th Birthday / by Talia Ledner

// Mark Your Calendars

By Alex Aloise .
04.20.10 // Your 75th Birthday

I will turn 75 years old on March 13, 2060.
That is, if anyone turns anything anymore by then.
By that time the human race may have been wiped out and replaced by Ape-People.
Either that or Apple will have released its iFinity gizmo and stopped the aging process.
My birthday will be on a Saturday.
That means I’ll be able to throw one doozy of a b-day bash.
My wife and kids and grandkids will be there, and my friends will be too.
And if anyone can’t physically be there, they can “Holo-show.”
For my 75^th birthday party, we’ll do all of the things I loved to do when I was 25.
We’ll play Rock Band, but we’ll have to play on EASY, on account of the Arthritis.
Then we’ll watch Anchorman, and ooooh how we’ll laugh.
My grandkids will look at Will Ferrell then like I look at Bing Crosby now.
After the movie we’ll slow dance to classics like R.Kelly’s “Echo.”
Even the cake will be classic. Cold Stone Ice Cream Cake-flavored pills for everyone!
There will be a retrospective shown of my life.
All of the highs. All of the lows. It will be a beautiful reminder of a full, happy 75 years.
Everyone at the party will watch it on their 3D HD LED Eyelids.
My 75th birthday party will be on March 13, 2060.
It’s a Saturday.
You’re invited.
If you’re alive.

View Comments / Apr 20.10 / Your 75th Birthday / by Alex Aloise