Although still a dewy young thing in her 30s (for a few precious, precious weeks, anyway!), Historiann feels a slight chill in the air when she contemplates these harbingers of old age and mortality:
- Kelly Bundy has breast cancer. (Seriously–send good wishes to actress Christina Applegate, who is being treated for breast cancer at age 36. Breast cancer is never good news of course, but being diagnosed before your 40s is very alarming.)
- Brandon Walsh is seriously pushing 40. (He turns 39 at the end of this month!) Donna Martin graduates! Donna Martin graduates! Donna Martin graduates!
- Check this out: Marcia Cross (“Bree Van de Kamp/Hodge”) and Kristin Davis (“Charlotte York Goldenblatt”) used to play bad girls, and Courtney Thorne-Smith (of According to Jim) used to have attractive male co-stars! (You tell kids that today, and they just won’t believe you!)
- Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth got her AARP card in the mail five years ago! Sigh. (See this new history of the band: David Browne, Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth, just released in hardcover in May.) Rock-and-roll band biographies are a really strange genre of writing–written by and for superfans, with very few clues or ways into the book for anyone who’s not a superfan. (Kind of like the most hagiographic biography you can imagine!) But, if you want to spend 15 minutes laughing and shaking your head, look up “Love, Courtney,” or “Lollapalloza 1995” in the index and go straight to those pages. Ahhh, my misspent (sonic and otherwise) youth!
Historiann 
Okay, I was fine… right up to the thing about Kim Gordon. Jeebus. Kim Gordon has an AARP card, and I have sciatica. I’m not frickin’ ready for this. Not by a long shot.
LikeLike
These are all spring chickins, I swear. I was scrolling down frantically, hoping to find a name I recognized! According to a piece I read in the NY Times yesterday, though, Patti Smith can still climb out of the back seat of a limo… Although the pictorial evidence makes it seem like possibly a close call. (Aug. 6, The Arts, p. E7).
LikeLike
This is your official invitation to the 39 Forever Club. My membership is about to expire, but I can renew it if I drop 15 lbs soon.
LikeLike
Being in your forties rocks! Trust me.
LikeLike
Older or colder are our only options, I’m afraid. Forty is not a scary birthday for me–although one must pause at the number of years behind me already. I get it now why people in their sixties and seventies say, “I still feel like a kid.” After all, these zero birthdays are just random clicks on the odometer of life. I wasn’t intimidated by thirty, because I accomplished everything I wanted to in my twenties. I feel the same about my thirties, so bring it on!
But, maybe I’ll take out a provisional membership in Rad’s club. Sounds like you need a running buddy, Rad! My latest running buddy moved away in May, sadly, and there’s no one on the horizon…
LikeLike