Elderism #58

“If you are an old man and you go into a bar wearing pajamas, people will buy you drinks.”

-A resident of the Duplex Nursing Home, as quoted in the book,  Duplex Planet

Viva vecchi!

Some weeks ago, my book about the wisdom of old folks, “How to Live”, received a lovely three-page write-up in the magazine section of Italy’s lefty newspaper, La Repubblica, for which I’m entirely grateful. I’ve been remiss in acknowledging the story, though, because it is written in, uh, a language I don’t read or speak. But finally today I realized that– though it is fast and loose and entirely unprofessional to do so–I could plug the article into one of those free online translation sites. The results are, how you say, bracing.

As for my publisher’s decision not to put the picture of an old person on the cover of my book, I tell La Repubblica,

“‘They chose for a dog with the wrinkles. From the birth.’”

We also discuss my book’s title. Given the non-scary, if not rosy, picture of death that some of my interviewees offer–people like “historians tromboni Harold Bloom, or the dramatist Edward Albee, author of cult Who has fear of Virginia Woolf”–I say of the title,

“‘Little it is ironico,’ relieves he, one taken to us in turn of the handbook of self-help, or the aphorisms from paper of chocolates.”

But, my amico, let’s get down to the tacks of brass here:

“It has talked about sex in the interviews? [To which I respond:] ‘Certainly that yes. They do it! In the hostels occupied from the generation of elderly come Viagra there is the new problem of sexual transmission of aids. In the houses of rest they repeat themselves the dynamics of the colleagues.’”

Capisce? And, lest we all labor under the preconception that humor does not translate, let the record show that, when the La Repubblica writer trotted out a term I’d not heard before to describe my peers who face old age reluctantly–Baby Gloomers–I fired back with a witticism that only improves with free online translation:

“The sole pain for them was to burn itself the tongue with the swills of Milk Mocha Starbucks”

–yea, even topping it with the absolutely boffo,

“They should draw the chairs to rollers with the reloading for the iPod.”

The truth, she is universaling.

More Gloria Vanderbilt

A little something from page 5 of Obsession: An Erotic Tale, the new novel by octogenarian Gloria Vanderbilt, mother of newsman  Anderson Cooper:

“I have filled a bowl with warm, sugared cream ready to circle my breasts, exciting them to swell into the size you most favor for biting. Knowing they were fair bursting to be treated less gently you held back until I couldn’t stand it a moment longer and had to beg mercy before you gave me surcease with the mercy of your teeth. You never deny me. How can I not crave more?”

Elderism #57

The writer Ellis Weiner’s mother, to him:

“Hip is shit!”

Elderism #56

Groucho Marx, to a chatty bore:

“You must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle.”

Elderism #55

In her new novel, Obsession: An Erotic Tale, octogenarian Gloria Vanderbilt allows as how one can slather oneself with gardenia oil and a touch of honey aphrodisiac such that one

“can let loose shaking onto the breasts a goodly amount of chocolate sprinkles, which will adhere prettily.”

Dawn’s End

From The Golden Spur, comic novelist Dawn Powell’s last book, published in 1962, when Powell was 65:

“But you had so little time left, and it seemed as if you dared not stop running for a minute. You didn’t run to win the prize as you did in youth. Indeed your dimming eyes could not tell if you’d passed the goal or not. You went on running because in the end that was the only prize there was–to be alive, to be in the race.”

New Old

On other blogs:

-Alex Littlefield reveals Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak’s favorite-ever book title. (It’s not I Married Adventure. Nor is it My Wicked, Wicked Way or even Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard.)

-There’s a new season of Old Jews Telling Jokes, which includes yuks from notables like Daniel Okrent (journalism avatar and founder of rotisserie baseball) and former NYC mayor Ed Koch. Would it kill you to take a look at it?

-Over on Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, Caleb Crain is selling all his blog posts–some of which could have been ripped from the pages of the New York Times Book Review or any of the other august places Caleb writes for–as either a PDF or a book. Has this been done before? As we say on the farm, How modren!

How I Took a Former Gang Member to See the New Broadway Production of “West Side Story”

There are few more amusing sights to me than that of gang members who erupt into a frenzy of Sondheim lyrics and precision choreography. So a couple months ago I had the somewhat nutty idea that it would be fun to take an actual gang member–or a former gang member–to see the new Broadway production of West Side Story to witness the reaction to same. I got in touch with the public radio show Studio 360 and, several thousand e-mails later, found myself at the Palace Theater with Bruce George, a former member of the Bronx gang, Kaos Krew. The piece airs this weekend–you can hear it here, or find your local station here. I’m not sure which of Bruce’s reactions I like better–when he told me, “The people I’ve seen getting shot, they didn’t sing tunes,” or his reaction when I busted his chops for checking his e-mail during the Jets and Sharks’s rumble.

Gavelinas

There was an interesting article in the Times the other day by Neil A. Lewis re whether female judges judge differently from male ones. The issue has come up not only because of the Supreme Court nomination of  Sonia SotomayOR (I’m emphasizing the last syllable in the way it’s meant to be pronounced because the National Review called the pronounciation “un-American”), but also in re the Savana Redding case. Savana Redding is a 13 year-old girl who was strip searched at her school on suspicion of harboring ibuprofen pills. Some of Ruth Ginsburg’s eight male colleagues on the Supreme Court said they weren’t troubled by the search–Judge Thomas laughed heartily while telling of a locker room incident in which “things” were stuck in his underwear–but Ginsburg countered that 13 is a very sensitive age for a girl, and added that Redding had been directed to stretch out her bra and underpants for inspection.

Although I’d like to think that judgement and wisdom are, or should be, gender-neutral, certain instances suggest otherwise. Justice Ginsburg recently told USA Today that her comments are sometimes ignored in the justices’ private conferences until someone else–a man–made the same point. A recent study of male and female judges found that, while gender played no role in the rulings on cases involving disability law, environmental issues, and capital punishment, it did in sex discrimination cases, in which female judges were more likely to decide in favor of the plaintiffs.

In the end, not to get all NPR on you, but I guess we can’t really generalize on the “Do women judge differently?” front. Each individual rules differently–which is why diversity is king. Or should be.  SotomayOR.