Dear friends,
I have my yearly cancer scan later today so I thought I’d spend the morning building myself up. Sometimes anxiety sets in—scanxiety as us survivors call it—so today I’m going to focus on how awesome I am.
I’m smart. I’m a pretty good person inside, or at least working on it. I’ve written some really, really good stuff in my life. I’m on the Substack leaderboard as we speak:
But what really makes me awesome is how young I look. Despite being 54, I look unbelievably young. I look like a Greek adolescent, chiseled in stone. I should be on the cover of teen magazines, my image pasted all over the internet.
But I sense some unease in you, friend. You are wondering why I am being so braggadocious. So vain. “It’s unbecoming,” you might be thinking, and also: “You are not that attractive.”
On the second part you would be wrong, and I will prove it to you. What follows is a list of wildly popular TV characters that I look younger than. I look younger, am in better shape, and can probably beat up all of these people (except Sipowicz).
For context, this is me, in all my beautiful glory, age 54:
Now compare me to these age-riddled relics:
Caroll O’Connor was 17 years old when he was cast as Archie Bunker. The combination of the character’s heavy drinking, smoking, and racism aged him prematurely. (Take note, Alabama.)
I am definitely younger-looking than Archie Bunker. For one, I am not a racist, and not being racist makes a person look a kabillion times better.
Mr. Miyagi was 14 when he started teaching Danielson. He was actually younger than Daniel LaRusso (played by Jon Hamm).
But grief aged Mr. Miyagi. Remember that scene where he got drunk and cried over his dead wife? Yeah, that was sad. RIP, Mrs. Miyagi, I bet you looked younger than your decrepit, drunken husband.
Andy Sipowicz had a full mustache at age 7. He fought in Vietnam at age 12. He became a New York City police officer at age 17 and a detective at age 21.
Sipowicz went on to a 207-year career with New York’s Finest, so it’s no wonder he looks worse than I do. But since he served his country in a losing war and then spent his life, as he once said, “getting killers and rapists and thieves off the streets,” he should look a little older.
Also, I could beat him at Scrabble.
Wilford Brimley looked 700 years old in Cocoon. He was 50. 50. He looks like my 85 year old stepfather just before he died. Even his mustache looks old. Like it’s barely hanging on. He looks like an ad for diabetes years before he did diabetes ads.
He should have been the one in the cocoon, resting up.
Norman Fell looked like a shiny leather jacket. Three’s Company was set in Santa Monica in the late 70s, so I assume his skin was smoked by SMOG and tanning beds and bigotry.
That show will age you even now. The outdated jokes. The obvious ways we have moved on as a society.
But that’s the good part. We’ve become more accepting. Only the bigots bat an eye at gay people, and no one at all cares if a man lives with two women.
And we look younger now. Not just me. We smoke less. Many of us drink less than the previous generation. There’s less pollution in the air. We eat better. We know more.
We have better healthcare. We have cancer scans and doctors who can cut the cancer out if they find some. We have better options and we live in a better country.
Or at least we did until some old, ancient, hoary, antediluvian, prehistoric, out-of-date, primeval, archaic and antiquated troglodyte waddled out of the primordial muck.
But this too shall pass, friends. I am sure of it.
As sure as the sun comes up on another good morning and sets on another fine day.
As sure as laughter, as making fun of your own small fears.
Thanks for being here.
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