This is a thread for ILXORS IN THEIR 50's

Not there yet myself dude. You might have to wait a while, wait for the return of Martin Skeedmore, who can out-[Controversial Moderator Edit] them all, whatever his age.

"ilxors in the '50s" would be a fun photoshop thread

ned at the sockhop

abbott being a sexy cold war scientist

huh

I got it, it wasn't hard to follow it was a simple piece of business.

i just want to see abbott as a sexy cold war scientist is all

I am a 53 year old ILXor in the Naughties. Does that count? My only time in the 50's occured when I was aged 0-5, from November, 1954 until Dec. 31, 1959.

did you see ned at the sockhop

NO

The sockhop ended some time before I entered high school in Sept. 1968. I was not inconsolable over this happenstance. I was a rotten dancer.

sept 1968 was like the gayest time to enter high school

everyone cool in those days were entering college

u cursed by the stars aimless

everyone cool in those days were entering college WAS GETTING DRAFTED TO 'NAM

yep -- that's where my pops was in '68 -- sent there two weeks after i got borned! booh hooh.

--a sometime ilxor in his 40s

everyone cool in those days were entering college WAS GETTING DRAFTED TO 'NAM WAS NOT ME, BY ANY STRETCH OF IMAGINATION! Skinny, geeky 13 year old, I'm just sayin'.

nED AT THE SOCKHOP OH MY GOD

aimless serious q did you at least smoke a lot of pot? and at least know a kid like trip fontaine?

if not you have destroyed any reason i have to respect actual early 70s HS kids

I am 10 years shy of 50 but this thread is making me feel old.

momus is almost 50

There's a Guided By Voices song about this.

nED AT THE SOCKHOP OH MY GOD

I really, really don't know how to react to this.

weve all reacted by blotting it out

Well I know that you're in love with him,
Because I saw you dancing in the gym
You both kicked off your Keds.
Oh, I dig that rhythm and Ned!

(I thought JBR's suggestion at first was an age progression of ILXors into their fifties and was thinking "oh it won't take much to imagine some of that.")

Ned, all you have to do is put on the socks. That's all. And we need a hardwood floor, and XTC's "Life Begins At The Hop". Now who will film this????

did you at least smoke a lot of pot?

I think the first time I smoked pot was roughly summer of 1970. Didn't do much for me. My friends included several 'heads', but I was just a dabbler. My older brother was into it pretty far by 1971. He still tokes up now.

I didn't really get launched as a pot smoker until college, where I spent most of 1974 stoned. Made my own bong from a glass lab beaker. I quit entirely around 1977 or so. I can't say I miss it.

and at least know a kid like trip fontaine?

Hard to say, because I don't have a clue who trip fontaine is. I did know a lot of druggies and hippies in the 70s. They were as common as daisies back then.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3Pgo2kaznFU/RqsBjrRCKMI/AAAAAAAAARs/7wAJzhaYC3A/s1600/964.jpg

that link 404'ed me

(xxpost) Trip Fontaine is a character from the book/film "The Virgin Suicides"

Start at about 3:30 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_smJP8oRnE

Btw, Frank Kogan, who posts to a couple of the rolling genre threads on ILM, is 54.

Also:
Most of the time I dwell in a state of unreality, where I have amazing superpowers. And I am 50 years old.

-- Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, February 5, 2007 12:29 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

Our cohort is few, but mighty.

abbott being a sexy cold war scientist

OH MY GOD WHY WAS I NEVER THAT

I remember Howdy Doody.

and i thought i was old for remembering leaded gasoline!

madonna, michael jackson, prince and ME -- i am now 50 and 1/2.

sept 1968 was like the gayest time to enter high school

everyone cool in those days were entering college

there is truth lurking here -- people in our sub-generation have a complicated relationship w/our older sibs, the 60s baby boomers. this usage of "gay" is uhm, anachronisitic, or something. (I entered HS in 72 FWIW.)

anachronistic! edgy, you mean!!1!

so is bimble part of this exclusive club?

I didn't expect to get shoulder and back hair this late in the game.

ha was wondering what you meant in the 40s thread

what's up y'all

had a cardiologist call me at 7am to cancel my appointment (snow)

this morning the dentist said that my teeth with metal fillings will all eventually need crowns; seems legit, the youngest of those fillings is 40+ years old

i went to the dentist for lots of work this past year, first time since forever, and it was all space aged nano whatever shit and i think the dentist and his assistant were legit smirking at my one old iron ore filling from when i was a teenager, fifty years ago, in an eastern bloc nation

oh hi, I'm 54 now

peeing takes a long time

backache is a thing

(knocks on wood)

As hinted above, I have a cardiologist now! My primary doctor, who has pretty amazing raw skills -- like hearing -- apparently, thought he heard a murmur in my heartbeat last month. GREAT!

It turns out I have an "unconcerning" prolapse which is a "2" (not a 3 or a 4), so it just has to be checked every year from now on.

Aging is a motherfucker.

I find that with groups of friends these days, some deliberate remembrance and invocation of the departed. It's good to share memories with other people who knew them, it keeps them more present for all of us. I know people who died 20 years ago who lots of us still talk about. Kind of a tribal memory, at a social level.

Yeah there's something to that. There are some friendships and connections that were very close and specific for me and I often feel like I'm the sole person remembering -- may not actually be the case. But then there's someone like stirmonster on here, or Kaleb Horton, and I know there's a lot of people who will carry their memories forward and it's good to be among them.

Certainly nice to see someone who I don't always see who knew someone deceased well and the shared memory comes up.

One place where it is painful is with neighbors whose family or others close to them I didn't know. Walking by the former houses of people who I'd wave at every day...their spouse is also gone and I don't know anyone who they knew...

An older friend and I were talking and of course a lot of the conversation revolved around our aches and pains and what’s wrong with our bodies. My buddy refers to these conversations as an “organ recital.”

so um where's the 60's thread? I forgot I'm too old for this one now

very sexagenarian of you to be unable to search for it

(these threads are hard to find what with not knowing whether it's 50s or 50's or fifties, the mass of threads about 50s music and the way ilx search treats apostrophes)

How did I get here?? (Thread for ILXors in their 60s and beyond)

Re invocating dearly departed, I often do this just to myself. My friend Cahl died some years back from cancer and I still think of him every time I pick up and use one of my good knives and remember him rousing on me and taking over my kitchen one birthday party of mine, saying I didn't look after my knives properly and "get out of the way let me do this". Whereupon he whipped up a japanese storm foodwise.
I think of everyone here as well, esp bimble.

Also my oldest kid is working on two different self-produced albums and this week successfully sold a beat to a rapper for $25.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Thursday, October 1, 2026 9:42 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

with these gas prices?! that's some shameful beat haggling.

My buddy refers to these conversations as an “organ recital.”

"One place where it is painful is with neighbors whose family or others close to them I didn't know. Walking by the former houses of people who I'd wave at every day...their spouse is also gone and I don't know anyone who they knew..."

Recently my dad switched mobile phones, which isn't earth-shattering news, but we suddenly realised that without the old phone he'd have no way to contact so many of his (and my) family, because we just have their numbers stored in the phone.

In particular he's gone for one of those old person big-number retro-style phones, so all of the contacts are stored on the SIM card rather than in The Cloud. The thought of losing contact with someone just because you didn't write their number down on a piece of paper feels like the setup to a romance novel from the 1930s, but it can actually happen in the actual real world today.

Luckily he had my uncle's address, so I wrote him a letter! Which means that I have now written letters to people in three different decades. Once in the 1990s, once in the 2000s... and once in the 2020s. I don't think I ever wrote a letter in the 2010s.

When I say "letter" I mean the physical kind, on paper. Obviously I didn't write it, I typed it. I deliberately didn't justify the text because that's not the kind of thing you do with a personal letter.

I got retinal laser surgery this year and now I know that if I see flashes and floaters I am going STRAIGHT TO AN ER.

When I actually went to the eye doctor I asked him a bit more about the best thing to do, because he admitted that unless the ER had an eye specialist there wasn't really much they could do there. He said now that I was registered as a patient with his practice if it happens again I should call them so they can see me immediately.

As for the rest, well... I made it to my 50s. My mother didn't. Like Christine, whatever may come I just want to see what happens in the world tomorrow.

This also belongs in "things I was shocking old before I learned", but yesterday I learned that Wilford Brimley was only fifty years old when he appeared in Cocoon. In fact he was only 49 when filming commenced.

So, I am officially the same age as Wilford Brimley, when he appeared in Cocoon, which is a sobering thought. And by extension this means that I'm actually older than Brimley was when he was in The Thing, two years earlier. I have less diabetes than Wilford Brimley.

This raises a horrible thought. When I make hilarious, flirtatious comments to the schoolgirls at the local bus stop, am I actually a fat pervert instead of a debonair man about town? Surely not.

To this day I haven't seen Cocoon: The Return. It's an oddity. It has the form of a direct-to-video film, but it has the entire original cast, including Oscar-winner Dom Ameche. The music was by James Horner and it was screened for Ronald Reagan, who presumably sat there thinking "fuck you, Don Ameche, fuck you". I haven't seen it.

Reagan looked great for man in the '80s in his seventiesw.

yeah that was a big revelation a couple years back: that Paul Rudd is currently quite a bit older than Wilford Brimley was in Cocoon

When I actually went to the eye doctor I asked him a bit more about the best thing to do, because he admitted that unless the ER had an eye specialist there wasn't really much they could do there. He said now that I was registered as a patient with his practice if it happens again I should call them so they can see me immediately.

Good to know and more reason for me to take the time to get admitted to an alternate practice. The place I got it done is a racket and I took all my records and got out of there but now I have to be a new patient somewhere else.

yesterday I learned that Wilford Brimley was only fifty years old when he appeared in Cocoon

the 'brimley-cocoon line' social media account just noted that all the spice girls are now older than he was in cocoon

I have realized I need an age appropriate mattress

I can recommend the Helix brand

Last time I was in NYC, I got to see a really special friend from high school. It was the first time I had seen him in person in years, even though we had kept in touch on Instagram. I was looking forward to visiting with him especially since I would now have someone to share some grief with.

Another special friend of mine died in 2017. And then another in 2021. There weren't any funerals, no big congregations of the old gang coming together to share some stories. Just these "Can't believe it" type text messages. Some real stunted expressions of grief.

I didn't exactly need a shoulder to cry on, but I did want to talk about some recurring dreams I had been having. The dreams were strange enough in the fact that I usually didn't have recurring dreams.

So we're walking up Ninth Street so he could pick up some cymbals (lol @ nyc), and I start talking about our mutual friend who went first. How I'll be at a party or a show, and I'll run into him. How he'll offer me a smoke, and when I tell him I don't smoke anymore, he'll say that It's ok. You can smoke here.

And when I wake up, I realize that "here" wasn't the party.

My still-alive friend walked beside me in silence before just going, Huuuhhh, yeah that's weird. "Wanna hear about my recurring dream? It's more of a recurring nightmare."

"Yeah," I say. "Of course. What happens in them?"

"Well, I'm usually running down the sidewalk, being chased by the members of Kiss from the Destroyer album cover. And right when I can feel Gene's hand on my shoulder is when I wake up."

Sometimes, you just gotta take the gut punch, I guess.

love it

what with all the talk of detached retinas, i went and got my floaters checked out and apparently it's nothing more serious.

(i found some specsavers spam on the floor, it had a link to booking site, local branch had empty slots that lunchtime, i went and had the usual tests and then told the optician the score and she had a better look. had the dilating drops that made everything fuzzy and all. was in there for over an hour and was charged £15 which i think must've been a mistake.)

((prescription has gotten better and worse in the last 3 years in that as you age, and the lenses flatten, your life-long shortsightedness improves for distance viewing and worsens for near vision))

if my shin even comes within one inch of a coffee table edge i wind up with an injury that'll take a year to heal

lol this weekend my GF was like 'what did you do to your leg?!', and I looked down and noticed these red bruises and scuffs on my shin and honestly have no idea where they came from, that's just what happens at this time in life

My shins look like I was beaten by secret police.

Just had an annual ophthalmology, having had a detached retina 7 years ago and a buckle put in there, and all is well. Typing this with a goofy strip of tinting between my eyes and glasses as the dilation wears off.

I've 8 weeks and change left for this thread. Will resist any potentially morbid thoughts and just add that things are fine so far. Made a career move and got my first degree (environmental health) that I finally achieved in 2020 (literally the week of the first lock down) and have been employed and feel better about my personal present than I had done working in kitchens for decades. And still live for playing hockey (just Saturday morning pickups but is still life-affirming)

Had my annual checkup today: 118/70 heart rate, good weight, low triglyceride/LDL levels. As good as I can demand at this age.

I mentioned a ways upthread that I had sort of tumbled into being in a band for the first time in 25 years. We have our first gig Thursday! Low stakes, it's an off night at the local indie-punk club, and the other band we're playing with is our guitarist/bandleader's son's band. Presumably the only people there will be whatever friends we can get to come out. We are not uh exactly well rehearsed, but I think we can kind of shamble our way through a very short set. I'm the oldest one in the band, the guitarist is I think 52 and the bass player and keyboardist are in their 40s. As is my wife, who is gracing us with her vocals on our only cover, a rendition of "Matty Groves" a la Fairport Convention.

<3

Exciting! What’s your band called?

Fairport Convention mentioned! <3

I've always wondered how it happens that people get bruise-y and older people's skin seems so thin and easy injured. I remember my great aunt's legs and hands having sores, like scabs, like the skin just barely still existed as a barrier. I suppose if we're lucky enough it happens to us all.

The band is called TIS, short for The Inessential Space, named for an art venue that the guitarist saw somewhere while on vacation in France. He's the guy who pulled us all together, so we just said "Sure, that's fine."

<3

I was about to go up to Pennsylvania so I went ahead and got an MMR (Measles) booster, felt like shit for a day but I do NOT want the Measles and subsequent total reset of my immune system. Pharmacy was absolutely fine with it, although my infant vaccine records being unavailable means officially I only ever had one MMR vaccine in college.

older people's skin seems so thin and easy injured

yeah, this was my uncle before his death... really dry skin that was liable to get cuts and sores. I wonder if regular lotion application would help? to keep it more pliable

It’s collagen degeneration iirc

Giving that signature crepey look

It puts the lotion on its skin

I've always wondered how it happens that people get bruise-y and older people's skin seems so thin and easy injured.

I feel like I'm already getting this. My skin has always been pale and dry but now I seem to really easily bruise, age spots all over. Christ I'm only 55. My face has somehow escaped the worst but the rest of me is covered in what I've been told are called "senile warts" which is a gross and misleading phrase for those blobs that kinda look like skin cancery moles but apparently aren't. And I just can't tell anymore.

Oh, I go to the docs, and they go "that's not one, that's not one, oh maybe that one.. yes...., not that one (etc).

Have had two removed over the years. Prob need to get checked over once more.

Apart from that, am 65 and doing OK.

On a complete tangent, I followed a tip from this story in The Register and bought a refurbished 4K 32-inch monitor from Morgan Computers recently. As a kind of early Christmas present, and also to give my elderly eyes a rest. When the people at the Post Office asked me what was in the box I was sorely tempted to tell them that it was a little Syrian orphan boy, but I didn't, because it would have been unfunny - in the "I don't understand how that's supposed to be a joke" sense - and also it wouldn't have worked because the box is far too large.

It's actually large enough to contain four little Syrian orphan boys, standing up, one in each corner, with possibly a fifth in the centre. So the joke wouldn't have worked at all. In fact I've just measured the box, and it's 100cm tall, which is on the lower side of average for a five-year-old boy in the United States, but a five-year-old Syrian boy would probably be shorter on account of malnutrition and the horrors of war. Could I use the box as a portable office? A miniature anti-stress room? I don't know. It's too useful-looking to break down, but not useful enough to keep.

The monitor is slightly disappointing. It works, it's fine, it has built-in speakers, lots of ports etc. But because it's so huge, I have to sit further away so that I can see the whole screen at once, with the result that after scaling up the UI the gain in clarity and screen real-estate is less mind-blowing than I expected. My favourite games run, but they make my graphics card heat up, and my old copy of Photoshop CS5, from 2010, doesn't detect UI scaling whatsoever, so it's almost unusable.

But, still, at the age of fifty I now have a large monitor. That's what women want. When I was a kid women wanted a man who had a car, and at least a 24" colour television. Now, I don't have a car, but I do have a 32" monitor. That's six larger. When I re-read this thread in ten years' time, huddling in the cold with all the other homeless people, wondering what happened to my once-in-a-lifetime £100 heating rebate, I will chuckle at the thought that I eventually sold the monitor for a single bottle of whisky and some fried rat.

laptop -> hdmi -> 43 inch, 4k tv. everything is tiny but there's so much of it.

In over 5p vision excitement, I recently discovered that the old clunky era of bifocal contact lenses has been replaced by these super neat multifocal lenses so (at least for now) I don't need reading lenses when I wear contacts.

Not sure if this is related to being in my 50s or just my crappy immune system, but had some mild wrist pain that started as "maybe I slept on it wrong" to extreme pain and swelling rendering my dominant hand unusable in the space of 36 hours. X-rays were negative so they thought it was an infection and put me on two antibiotics, which have improved it a lot after 4 days. No apparent source of the infection and the speed with which it happens is scary.

classic 50s experience

starting to feel the pressure of all the books i won't get to

Me too, except it's the books I'll never get around to writing.