Happiness is being young or old, but middle age is misery
People are most likely to become depressed in middle age, according to a worldwide study of happiness. The team of economists leading the work found that we are happiest towards the beginning and end of our lives, leaving us most miserable in middle years between 40 and 50.
The results, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, showed that people’s levels of happiness followed a U-shaped curve, a pattern that was remarkably consistent in the vast majority of countries the researchers looked at, from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe.
I’d say God Bless Brazil & Australia, but apparently he already did. What makes this noteworthy is that the Brazilian men are so obviously NOT oblivious to the camera and its focus on their swimsuit bulging. Several of the models in this are fully aware & showing off for the camera, readjusting for maximum protuberance, including showering while the camera lathers its way across their body – as they try to look their most appetizing. Several of them make repeat appearances, and one even changes trunks & adds a hat. That kind of showoff doesn’t impress me. It does seem to be a source of national pride and a sport in Rio.
The other shots of insouciant bystanders who may not know they are being recorded for posterity are priceless. However, having lived in a beachside community where people who were obviously not at the beach for sun tanning purposes show up (long sleeve shirts and long pants with camera in tow like some unruly child) who pull out their recording device and try to take shots on the sly – are creepy! Yet here I am watching his booty, the not-so-buried treasure he has found on the shores of some exotic locale. I’m a voyeuristic pirate of sorts. Having worked in Television Production, I know the drill, and somehow seriously doubt whether this person “Chris Geary” got signed waivers for all of these men. Indeed without their knowledge many of these men are being beamed around the globe and watched by thousands, if not millions. That doesn’t make me feel very good as a viewer.
It is harmless fun, and recreates vividly the experience of a day at the beach, and most of the time we don’t even get the pleasure of seeing the face – just the crotch shot please. Which is how I remember a day at the beach anyway. A scant few are talking to their girlfriends or some stray female in what seems to be an ocean of men in thin lycra (or TACTEL® |COOLMAX®|SUPPLEX®|CORDURA® et al…) completely unaware that the camera is zeroing in on their naughty bits like a heat seeking missile. Do they mind? Would they mind? Why on earth do I care?
When I lived in Miami Beach, as I said before, this sort of thing was common. Geeky and maladjusted people would make it a game, like stalking wild prey – since women there often went topless it was an invasion of their privacy, and they would do their best to sneak up on them and capture the shot. We always kept a watchful eye out for these losers. This was before the internet. I imagined them in whatever little dark cubby hole in the Midwest they lived in salivating over these shots. It was harmless. Now that sort of thing has to be shared, communally, and while people are still enjoying it in the solace of their homes, but are able to multiply that to what seems infinity and in perpetuity is amazing.
At least in Australia, the beefcake has a purpose for donning their ultrathin man made materials – saving a life. It isn’t all vanity. As a young man one of the books I bought at my first job in a bookstore was a photo chapbook of these champions in all their glory. I still have it, and if I had to think of one reason why I would endure a 24 hour flight, it would be to see this in flesh. But why bother now – I can look at the low resolution pixilated-grainy version on my widescreen laptop – like some 1980s porn tape that had been viewed too many times. Decidedly LoFi, but does the trick.
They find ways to express their uniqueness and achieve maximum speed by rolling the material right into the crack of their ass. Full plump round buttocks on display – so much so it look like hot cross buns in an English pastry shop. Obviously they earned these muscles through hard work training to be the ultimate in service, saving people from the life-threatening waves Down Under. I can’t think of better reason to get there and forget how to swim or to play chicken with the undertow. Mouth-to-Mouth never sounded so sweet. Fantasies aside this video is set (rather poorly by about a millisecond in editing terms) to “Eye of the Tiger” which of course triggered all the nostalgia, since that song was popular about the time I bought the book. It is now sadly out of print, but still available from Amazon – used. For as low as $5, we have come very far indeed. Hello – Queenscliffe, Bondi, Manly & Bronte – I can’t wait to gaze upon you with my idealistic eye after 20 plus years of filling my fantasies.
Let’s hope I find it worth enduring what seems to me to be a nightmare – a full day spent in a plane with screaming babies, drug-resistant TB passengers, and a few peanuts for the coach passengers. I’m thinking I have to go to the Left Coast first, stay there for a while, then try hopping over there. Seems wise given that I wouldn’t want to have them land in Fiji because I flipped out en route. These days one has to be careful – the anxiety about flying can be misinterpreted into the global war on terror.
If Andy’s 15 minute concept, as hackneyed as it is, is truest in the guise of YouTube (general) and Xtube (pornographic) – what can follow next? After we are all famous? Albeit brief as 15 minutes is. Do we then check into {15 minute} Celebrity Rehab (my new favorite show, mostly because of my crush on Dr. Drew-not the loser D-list celebrities)? Do we hire assistants, P/R people, and get ourselves a really good lawyer? No, we just cherish the moment & milk it everyday by telling people who we’ve just met – ‘Yeah I’m the guy in the video everyone watched on YouTube, you know the one swallowing the banana whole, showing people how it is done” – ‘member? I even made the local news.
My favorite quote (in true PoMo fashion) is Trevor Horn on the beginning of a Grace Jones Remix saying – “Like Edif Piaf use to say…Use your faults, use your defects, then you’re going to be a star” – well the world is following this quote right off the cliff! Each time I see some new trend, silly video, or whatever – I wonder how will they top this? How can we collectively reach even lower depths than the ones we find ourselves gorging ourselves on? It is a true testament to the human spirit that we always find a way. Like the kid who threw a party, made it onto the telly, and wouldn’t answer the phone when his parents called or remove his glasses for the prudish newscaster. He’s been arrested, next stop – rehab, or wait – $10,000 – to promote parties – at 16. This is what the world is coming to.
Enjoy it, I know I will.
I put these at the bottom, because if you started viewing them I’m quite sure my writing would never be able to capture your attention or keep you from getting lost in a sunny day at the beach or would be rendered irrelevant as such:
I have told people I’m 43 already today, and then quickly realized I’m 42. Actually from here on out I am just saying I’m 45 for the next three years. Age is an arbitrary number anyway. There is very little difference between how I felt age-wise last year & how I feel age-wise this year. It is all the same. I tend to only keep track of the “milestone” years anyway: 20,25,30,35,40,etc…
Of course there is a big difference between how I felt 10 years ago & how I feel now. Slight shifts and seismic ones as well. When I feel tired, it is age, when I don’t have tons of energy, it is age, when something is forgotten, it is that ageing (soon2bfeeble) brain. You know that new trend in trying to build brain strength with word games and other teasers. Well they just make me feel older & more stupid. The frivolity of youth has always been that we think we know more than we really do. I think the realization in our mature years is that we really don’t know shit. That is when we can either act out our youthful regrets or move into an enlightened state of being that is just called curmudgeonly. Continue reading →
astound me: D.A. Królak 
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