Is Ma Kent Old?, by Martha Thomases
As I sit here, it’s Monday. TCM is kindly running The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca so I have snappy dialogue in the background. The sun is bright, my blueberry bushes are full of flowers, and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful week.
However, as you read this, a momentous event is occurring. It’s my birthday. I’m 55 years old. When I was a child (until I was 31, at least), I thought 55 was old. People I knew who were that age had grown children, and were either biding their time towards retirement or starting out on new careers. How could they do it, I wondered, when so much of their life was over?
It’s a good question. How can I do it? I don’t feel like I’m 55 (see Column #47). More to the point, I’m not sure what 55 feels like. I don’t know what it looks like. Do you see women of a certain age in the media? Yes, you do. However, most of them have had so much cosmetic surgery, or Botox, or hair-dye, or liposuction, that there’s no way to see what they really look like.
In fact, I don’t have the personal medical records of famous women my age. It may be that Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer, for example, just naturally looks the same as they did 15 years ago, with no gray hair and full cheeks, while Tom Brokaw gets white hair and laugh lines. For women, wrinkles prevent one from delivering the news. Goldie Hawn is older than I am, but you can’t tell by looking at her recent photos. (more…)
Action figures are always hot collectibles, but now they have shrunk! What’s the deal with these “minimates” and why are they so hot?
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There were rumors back in Fall 2007 that the next Mortal Kombat game would pit the Kombatants against superheroes from the DC Universe, but they were quickly scoffed at and ignored.
