(Still lazy after all these years)
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Last week, I turned sixty-three. No, not colors.

No, I didn’t turn sixty-three pages, or sixty-three heads. No, I didn’t turn state’s evidence sixty-three times, though I could have. No, I didn’t turn over sixty-three times in my sleep, though I often have. No, I didn’t turn sixty-three shades of grey; in fact, I’m not allowed to have sex any more, because it makes me infuriatingly pleasant.

Last week, I turned sixty-three years old, which is what often happens when you’ve been sixty-two, unless you’re Joan Rivers. Admittedly, my birthday celebration was a bit subdued, due to the Chinese Mexican Beer Virus — that showed up when I was sixty-two, and I haven’t been within sixty-odd feet of a human being since Valentine’s Day. But celebrate I did, in my wild, unrestrained single guy way – I drank coffee, after ten a.m.

Looking back at it all, I’ve witnessed a whirlwind of wonder over these last 23,000 days. I remember when my Dad brought home this mysterious new thing called a television. In those days, it was the size and weight of a small car, and if you wanted to watch one of the other two channels, you had to actually walk up to the thing and turn a knob. That’s right – way back then, we only had three channels, two genders, and one search engine (the dictionary).

Not many years later, the family visited a neighbor’s house one night, as a Christmas treat, to gasp at the amazing new color television (yes, way back then, we were still allowed to say ‘Christmas’). To be sure, the “color” part of color television still needed a lot of work… a lot of the TV performers looked like Dick “Lurch” Nixon at the Kennedy debates.

I can recall the year 1969, when NASA first landed a man on the surface of a desert in Arizona. I remember, in that same year, when the Woodstock music festival attracted 400,000 people, all named Jasmine and Bobby. Ultimately, the Guinness Book officially recognized the concert as world record-holder for “least number of bras per capita in a plot of farmland.” (I realize that bras per capita introduces a slight mathematical challenge, but I’ll leave it to you to work that one out.)

Since I had been immersed since birth in an appreciation for music, thanks to my talented Mom, I naturally remember the arrival of The Beatles. But at age six, I was mostly just confused as to why these four guys seemed to scare the living crap out of all the screaming young girls in the Ed Sullivan Show television audience.

Speaking of television, the #1 TV show in 1957 was Gunsmoke, a quirky, non-threatening western which to this day holds the record as the longest-running dramatic series in network TV history, if you don’t count the 2000 presidential recount in Florida.

Gunsmoke was based in Dodge City, Kansas, one of about 10,000 American cities that claim that they were the real “Gateway To The West.” The cast featured a crusty but benign Marshall, a crusty but benign doctor, a crusty but benign saloon owner, a crusty but benign deputy, and Burt Reynolds before he could afford to buy a shirt.

So let’s take a minute to review what else the world was up to in 1957, the year I jumped the stork.

• The Russians launched their Sputnik 1 satellite into space. Sputnik was mankind’s first successful space-bound projectile, if you don’t count Alice Kramden.
• Shortly after local authorities in Little Rock, Arkansas, refused to implement desegregation, President Dwight Eisenhower ordered federal troops to locate Al Sharpton, who was then three years old, and bring him to the city so he could start protesting. In their defense, high school students in Little Rock argued that they had nothing against desegregation – their teachers just hadn’t gotten to five-syllable words yet.
• In China, Chairman Mao announced something along the lines of “Let a thousand flowers bloom.” Some claimed he was announcing more social tolerance. Others opined an expansion of small businesses. Still others thought it was just the second line of a haiku in progress. The world may never know, because the following month, Mao executed all the flowers.
• The #1 song in 1957 was Elvis Presley’s Too Much, a love song about the singer’s favorite Memphis-based all-you-can-eat buffet. The #1 movie that year was The Ten Commandments, an epic featuring Charlton Heston leading the NRA as he parted the Red Menace.
• Both Russia and America decided to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), thereby creating MAS (Mutually Assured Stupidity)
• In Venezuela, a military dictatorship was installed, then ousted, then installed and ousted again. It turned out to be such fun that they pretty much do it every year now.
• Cambridge University’s Lord Alexander Todd won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on “nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes.” Years later, Google was add nucleotides to its list of 47 recognized genders.
• The West African country of Ghana achieved independence. High school students in Little Rock, tasked with finding Ghana on a map, asked if this was going to be on the test.

Well, there it is. Seems there was a whole lot of warfare going on in 1957. Good thing we humans worked all that out.

Oh, wait.

Anyway, thanks for attending my version of a birthday party! Sorry there wasn’t more beer – I’m still jacked on post-mid-morning coffee.

Maybe next orbit.