🗞️ TSAR: Getting old again

Good Morning ⛅

Welcome to the third edition of The Sunday Andrew Review ("TSAR"), our new Sunday newsletter. They come out on, well, Sundays. What's the point? Choose one topic and go a bit deeper. I hope you like it. Suppose you don't? Well, then that's settled. 

In classic AA🍎 fashion, this still should only take a few min to read.  

On with the show... 

Getting old again 👴🏼

I miss my grandparents a lot. I know it's not very "be here now" of me but I do. The late Ann and Rex pop in my head upon the most cliched triggers: a good Sinatra tune, a cozy Ralph Lauren sweater, or a line of handwriting done in all caps. That was him. That was them. But lately I have been thinking more about how they lived their long beautiful lives, which started in the thirties, compared to how so many of us live now. More broadly, I wonder if we have too forgotten the past (elders, movies, music, customs of a bygone era) and instead chosen to proverbially throw the baby out with the bathwater. It was all shit and evil and now we must right their wrongs. And while I think every generation has a duty to build anew, to do so while seemingly ignoring the pretty parts of the past, to me, is an immense act of ignorance. 

Check this: a lot of people have been struggling as of late (let's say, really starting in 2007 when the iPhone came out). I don't have to go into why things changed around that period, because you're smart and you know why. I am not here to wax poetic on how they were happy and we are not - that's obviously not true, since everyone everywhere at all times is at war, whether outside or inside their own skull. Instead the point of this post is to list out, in short form, the things that older people did that we should be doing more of. You may read some of them and think Wow, what a jerk! He's so out of touch and pathetic! And plus: he sucks!!! and, folks, you'd be correct. I am all of those things and more. I love you, too.

• Skew toward overdressing, not underdressing, when you have company. My grandpa Rex had 30+ pairs of Khaki pants, numbered on their tags based on condition and occasion. On top, it was usually a hunter navy or empire yellow cable-knit sweater, with a contrasting collar from a polo underneath peeking out. Yeah sure, I admit it, he was white. But he always looked good and I gather it was because it was a sign of respect to not dress like a basement gamer or coked-up day trader. You're hanging with Rex? Ok, he's pouring you a cold cocktail, giving you the good chair, and he's gonna look fly as hell. I bet anything he's rocking the same sick fit up in the heavenly clouds right now.

• Write shit down. My dad and his dad and his dad all wrote things down. Often with a mechanical pencil; probably ones with cancerous lead in them instead of childproof graphite (lol). Between email, tv, and social media, you will NOT remember things and many of those things could have been mere trivia or a breakthrough that plucked you out of the matrix. Never know. Plus, it's cute to see an old lady at the grocery store with a handwritten list - know that there is a reason you find such an image to be cute. It's because on some level you long for a more analog world that's less complicated. Passing love notes during class is timeless in a way that sending a text is not.

• Catch yourself when you start complaining. Almost everyone on the planet had it worse than you. Never once heard my grandpa bitch about work, finances, or health. It doesn't mean that he didn't endure trying times; it just means he chose to take responsibility for his actions. Did he also never bitch about how his next door neighbors kept their yard unkempt? Well, that's a different story with my old man's old man :)

• To your friends, say things like, "C'mon, you, me, martinis, now. Two olives!" And hold up two fingers when you say the Two olives! part. Maybe the daily post-work pub culture in London is too extreme and the budding non-alcohol culture in Brooklyn is just as extreme, but my grandparents took their socializing very seriously (callback to #1 re: dressing to the nines for friends) and, for them, socializing always meant alcohol. They even remembered the specific drink preferences of their close friends... from college! In Ohio! A gazillion years ago! I offer no prescription here other than: if you've been drinking like a fish for a few weeks straight, take one off, and if you've been shelled like a hermit for a few weeks, go get a hangover with some people. A bit of beauty in the balance.

• Watch movies from the 1940s. Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Philadelphia Story, Double Indemnity... Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn. All very hot, a little too hot. Clever, smooth, and quick sexual innuendos coupled with romantic gazes that last three days. Compare this to a typical date-night at Carbone with the lovers entranced in their little square screens. Reinstate money lines like "I'm thinking about you every minute, baby. Aw shucks, I'm just crazy about you. My heart's as big as a house, baby!"

• Tell jokes. Dirty ones, too. Among people of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Make them mean. After all, it's a joke. My grandpa used to invite people into his corner office at the end of the workday to, first, pour them a drink (see a pattern here? jajajaja) and, second, tell jokes. Recall that this is before the concept of Donald Trump, fueled by the media machine, equated "locker room talk" with harmless joke-telling. American culture, on both sides, has become so sensitive that by choosing to play it so safe in social situations we gut said situations of any humanity. Because nearly every reader here has a WFH/white collar job, get this: do you think that garage men, policemen, and construction workers - comprised of all races, speaking different languages, differing ages - censor themselves when they're out on the job, in the sun, for countless hours? Ha ha ha ha!!!!

• Know where you came from. When my dad delivered the eulogy at my grandpa's funeral last year, I saw a different side of my father. A softer side, appreciative and proud of who his own dad was and the lessons from that 90 year life finally cut loose. Whether you like it or not, you have your grandparents and their grandparents in you. Genetically and in spirit. The good parts and the ugly parts, the true characters and the alleged (perhaps misunderstood!) villains, as well. You're a dizzying and brilliant kaleidoscope of monks and poets and heroes and heartbreakers - whether they were public about it or kept it a secret - dating back centuries and then millennia, all fantastically fucked up and hopefully trying their best. All of them you, and you them.

We are biologically getting older every passing second. A good chunk of this newsletter is devoted to staying younger metabolically, re-tapping into the oodles of energy you woke up with naturally as a younger you. But I also think that the aforementioned entries enrich our lives by relinking us to the past and its unforgotten roster. Plus, most are very funny. Like, I'm calling every cool person a "hot potato" from now on. That's all you're gonna get from me. Hell, even if you aren't cool: HOT POTATO. Just a miles-long line of hot potatoes. Here's to getting old again. 🍸

LMK what you think and I'll see you Tuesday the 5th. 

Happy Fourth folks, go blow something up. 

Andrew🍎

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