Mac laughs at this (frequently, and with disbelief, I’m afraid), but I am strangely attracted to …antiquarians. Alan Alda on Scientific American is awfully cute, and he’s, what, seventy? And I think Patrick Stewart is running neck and neck with Sean Connery these days in the field of distinguished relic hottiness. (How bizarre that 007 is older than my grandma.) Richard Peck I practically stalked at a writing conference one year, and I got all swoony when he smiled at me (He was probably thinking, “Where is there a house line so I call security? There’s a short Colored girl following me…)(and YES, “Colored” is probably from his era [Negress? – that one always makes me think of tall white birds!], though I am joking. He probably thought I was someone’s kid wanting an autograph.). Yes, my bad boys are all old boys recalling their glory days, maybe that’s why I like them… at least it means I won’t stray when Mac is old and wrinkled (ha! Which I shall be BEFORE him, I am sure).
Another of my favorite old men is …Garrison Keillor. He’s not really old enough yet to be on the Old Men of Awesomeness list, but he’s …Garrison Keillor, which is enough. If you haven’t gone to his website for A Prairie Home Companion, you’ll at least want to check out his Writer’s Almanac which this month has a daily poem, and lists birthdays of the greats, and comes in a handy podcast.
This snippet of Mr. Keillor‘s thoughts on attitude of artists (and poets in particular) makes me laugh.
Conviviality is no small achievement. Back when I was young, most major American writers seemed to be alcoholic or suicidal or both, and we students absorbed the notion that the true sign of brilliance is to be seriously screwed up. The true poet is haunted by livid demons, brave, doomed, terribly wounded, and if one was (as I was) relatively unscratched, you concealed this and tried to impersonate doom.
The prime minister of high culture was T.S. Eliot, who suffered from a lousy marriage and hated his job and so wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a small, dark mopefest of a poem in which old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers. This poem pretty much killed off the pleasure of poetry for millions of people who got dragged through it in high school. The first line of “Prufrock,” as you may recall, was “S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse” — he opened with six lines of a language 99 percent of his readers do not understand! How better to identify yourself as a serious poet than to be incomprehensible?
When I grew safely past adolescence and started getting published, my mother actually 
encouraged me to be weird. Every strange hat or striped and spangled pair of tights my mother would nod and say, “You look just right. Artistic.” I’ve had people take me aside and exhort me never to let Mac cut his hair or lose his piercings. “Don’t tame him too much,” has been the (elderly person) comment. How bizarre that some believe we must be ponderous and obscure to serve Art.
Equally how bizarre that some people are living vicariously through our weirdness, but that, friends, is another post entirely…
ps – There is one cute old man in this picture. It’s not the Gubernator, despite the fact that he, too, is older than dirt.
Hey, Jacques Pepin ain’t half bad. And everyone knows Patrick Stewart is a hottie, baldness and all…
No, you’re waiting for him to get wrinkles. It’s the wrinkles that do it for you, I’m pretty sure, especially the ones that come from smiling. I have inside information on this.
No, you’re waiting for him to get wrinkles. It’s the wrinkles that do it for you, I’m pretty sure, especially the ones that come from smiling. I have inside information on this.
No, you’re waiting for him to get wrinkles. It’s the wrinkles that do it for you, I’m pretty sure, especially the ones that come from smiling. I have inside information on this.
I didn’t “forget” Jacque Pépin. EVERYBODY knows about my Jacque and Julia obsession by now.
And Ming… is too young for this post. Shamefully young. I am waiting for him to mature like a fine wine.
Yes, there’s one of the Iron Chefs in that picture – and it’s a shame that I can name him (Michiba), and that we’ve watched the real Iron Chef since before we were married. It’s been well over a decade since we started watching this old man on Fuji TV, subtitled in English, on a cast-off black-and-white television. So, it’s been a long-lasting infatuation.
She left out Jacques Pepin. There’s another oldie. Notice that they’re mostly chefs? What does this say about us?
Don’t let her fool you: she’s pretty sweet on Ming Tsai, as well. She’ll deny it vociferously, of course, but it’s true.
(I wish they’d bring Furuhata Ninzaburo into English, as well – Furuhata the Dective was also subtitled on Fuji TV, and was broken into two halves sandwiched on either side of Iron Chef.)
Yes, there’s one of the Iron Chefs in that picture – and it’s a shame that I can name him (Michiba), and that we’ve watched the real Iron Chef since before we were married. It’s been well over a decade since we started watching this old man on Fuji TV, subtitled in English, on a cast-off black-and-white television. So, it’s been a long-lasting infatuation.
She left out Jacques Pepin. There’s another oldie. Notice that they’re mostly chefs? What does this say about us?
Don’t let her fool you: she’s pretty sweet on Ming Tsai, as well. She’ll deny it vociferously, of course, but it’s true.
(I wish they’d bring Furuhata Ninzaburo into English, as well – Furuhata the Dective was also subtitled on Fuji TV, and was broken into two halves sandwiched on either side of Iron Chef.)
Yes, there’s one of the Iron Chefs in that picture – and it’s a shame that I can name him (Michiba), and that we’ve watched the real Iron Chef since before we were married. It’s been well over a decade since we started watching this old man on Fuji TV, subtitled in English, on a cast-off black-and-white television. So, it’s been a long-lasting infatuation.
She left out Jacques Pepin. There’s another oldie. Notice that they’re mostly chefs? What does this say about us?
Don’t let her fool you: she’s pretty sweet on Ming Tsai, as well. She’ll deny it vociferously, of course, but it’s true.
(I wish they’d bring Furuhata Ninzaburo into English, as well – Furuhata the Dective was also subtitled on Fuji TV, and was broken into two halves sandwiched on either side of Iron Chef.)