The last couple of weeks have been a blur as I’ve been down the rabbit hole with a sick child.
If you’re a parent, or even have a pet you adore, you know how that illness sitch goes: routines be damned, time stands still and you shore up in your nest, focusing all your healing energy on your baby.
When you emerge, it’s like leaving a movie theater after watching a traumatizing film, say about evil clowns or demonic puppets — you blink your eyes, attempting to focus as bright light shocks your system.
Try as you may, it’s nearly impossible to shake off that unnerving feeling that nothing is the same and nobody is safe.
And then I turned on the radio for the first time in a couple of weeks, and the first word I heard confirmed my worse fears… it was… OLDCHELLA.
Talk about shuffling off this mortal coil — in bedroom slippers and a drool-stained robe to the strains of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
If you don’t know what “Oldchella” is (because your kid is sicker than mine or you’re technically dead), it’s a megaconcert to be put on by Coachella producer Goldenvoice over two weekends, October 7-9, 2016 and October 14-16, 2016 featuring classic rock giants (dinosaurs?) The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who. The average age of the rockers is 71.7; at a price tag of around a grand, you better hope you get some sort of AARP discount or maybe they take Medicare?
I’d almost rather have ringside seats at Sherman’s Deli to watch the concertgoers battle the Palm Springs residents over the early bird special.
The actual name of the concert is “Desert Trip” — and I’m assuming it’s less about acid and more about parked walkers and canes strewn about that ensure the tripping factor is high at the festival — but you know who dubbed it “Oldchella?”
Freakin’ Mick Jagger himself!
If that’s not the lead horseman of the Apocalypse, I don’t know who is. (Although I always thought Keith would have that honor…)
I know the loss of Bowie and Prince freaked everyone out, and not in the good sense of the word “freak” — but c’mon, this feels like kicking the tires on a hearse to me.
And yet… I’m SO IN!
Are you kidding me? A chance to see the classics and even introduce my kiddos to the original people that created them?
Worth the price of admission, even if I’ll probably need a vat of Prozac to recover from the shock of seeing the rockers I cut my teeth on singing through their dentures.
(NOTE: I was always much more of a punk rock kid, and this piece by the Guardian, “Never mind the bus pass: punks look back on their wildest days” is priceless. Bankers to barristers, docs to vets, it’s proof positive that early years spent raging against the machine can lead to valuable and healing lives =)
Still reeling from Oldchella, the next mistake I made was watching SNL’s annual Mother’s Day “tribute” sketch — not just on my DVR, but littered all over my Facebook timeline.
Did we learn nothing from the trauma that was “Mom jeans?”
Big. Mistake.
Let me backtrack and say the viewing was on the heels of a healing retail therapy trip to West Elm where I fondled a variety of candles, seriously considered the blue sea glass vase collection for my bathroom, and ended up buying $270 worth of rustic glasses and dishware to gussy up my chipped and mismatched collection from the last couple of decades. With a certain farm-to-table je ne sais quoi, I was feeling pretty pleased with my new home goods look.
And then, “The Cut” kicked me right in my (aging, decrepit) ovaries.
For years now, I’ve been sporting a ‘do that looks like “a soft waterfall in the front, but knives in the back.” My own personal “curtains in the front, iron throne in the back.” And NO I can’t leave a wedding without snagging a centerpiece and YES I litter my house with candles in that I never light. My bathroom is styled like a seashore and it’s only thanks to tremendous restraint that I don’t have cow knick-knacks strewn about my kitchen.
WHEN DID I — YOU — BECOME A CLICHÉ?
After all, many of us managed to resist the siren song of the minivan all these years. That MUST count for something.
And while clinging desperately to fading youth is our society’s favorite pastime, there are times that maybe the best thing to do is to let go and embrace our inner tropes.
So if you see me popping some pills before heading out to Oldchella, just know ecstasy’s out, glucosamine is in. All the excesses of our youth have smoothed out the bumps in the gray matter and that is actually a good thing. Top that sucker off with an easy, breezy cunning short ‘do, and Audrey Hepburn’s got nothing on you. (Cindy Crawford, on the other hand, just might…)
Now, enjoy “The Cut” – and try to remember it’s satire, just satire. And all those young beyotches in the sketch will get “the cut” in real life soon enough…
Image of Mick Jagger: xiquinhosilva