As my 37th year approaches without significant fanfare, I find that I'm looking forward to advanced age more than any point since my 21st birthday. When I was young, like grade school young, I used to believe that 40 was probably the best age anyone could be. My idea of a "cool guy" back then was Bing Crosby (actually, that's still my idea of a "cool guy"), and even goofball adults like Jerry Lewis and Abbott & Costello seemed to be having a lot of fun in their mature years. I wanted the Monkees lifestyle (constant hijinx, rocknroll and a house full of toys and costumes), but the concept of being a young adult was hazy to me, and I couldn't quite conceive of someone being neither a school-bound child nor a family-saddled adult. So I figured that one way or another, by time a guy got to be 40, hell, he'd have it made. No way would his mom still boss him around, he'd definitely have some kind of cool job like acting or astronauting, and the broads, well broads love old guys, just check out how Dorothy Lamour couldn't keep her hands off those two prune-faces in the "Road" movies. By the time I hit 40, I'd be wearing awesome pinstripe suits every day, guest-star on chat programs and variety shows and have about $7,000 in the bank (which was as much money as I could conceive of at the time).

I guess it could still happen ... the broads started digging me a lot earlier than I imagined and even if I had a great suit I wouldn't wear it unless it was tailored out of denim. But I could still use seven grand in the bank (with my current credit limit I could spend that much pretty easily, so that ain't bad) and the whole "cool job" thing still taunts me on the horizon. I'm no optimist, but the idea that maybe I was right back in fifth grade is a notion that keeps me floating fairly evenly lately. It's unlikely that I'll regain my status as a youth revolution leader any time soon (although my seminal psychedelic manifesto THE WORLD IS DOOMED YEAH YEAH YEAH, a bestseller back in 1991, still commands some nice coin on Ebay) but what the hell ...